The real world was, as always, a suffocating disappointment.
Joseph sat in his cramped cubicle, the rhythmic, mechanical clatter of hundreds of keyboards washing over him like the droning of a dying insect. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed with a headache-inducing frequency, casting a sickly, pale illumination over the sea of identical desks.
Sakurai, the heavily overweight man to his right, was currently stress-eating a protein bar that smelled vaguely of chalk and artificial strawberries. The plastic chair groaned in perpetual agony beneath him.
Joseph stared blankly at his monitor. His fingers moved across the keyboard in a blur, completing his data-entry quotas with the mindless efficiency of a machine. He didn't even need to look at the screen. His mind was millions of lightyears away, currently soaring through the digital cosmos of Yggdrasil.
'The Caloric Stone,' Joseph mused internally, his eyes unfocused. 'If I remember the lore from that old light novel correctly, Ainz's guild got the Caloric Stone by accidentally hoarding a massive amount of Prismatic Ore. The developers essentially gave it to them as a hidden event trigger because they monopolized an entire mine.'
He needed that stone. If he could get his hands on a World Item that allowed him to make a request to the developers, he could alter the mechanics of his [Rot Attack], or perhaps even weaken the Hydra World Enemy. But to do that, he needed to find a Prismatic Ore mine, secure it, and harvest it before any of the large guilds even knew what it was.
The problem was time, and manpower.
Harvesting enough ore to trigger a World Item event wasn't something a single player could do in a weekend. It would require round-the-clock mining, logistical transport of materials, and defense against other players who might stumble upon the operation.
'I need a guild,' Joseph concluded, a frown marring his otherwise perfectly neutral corporate expression. 'But I despise other people. They are inefficient, emotional, and prone to betrayal. The only person I can trust to perfectly execute my grand design is myself.'
Which brought him to his ultimate trump card.
The eight alternate accounts.
In Yggdrasil, possessing multiple accounts was strictly forbidden by the Terms of Service. The corporate overlords at DMMO-RPG wanted to ensure every avatar represented a unique, paying human being. But Joseph was not a normal human being. He was a man who had spent a third of his salary on the game, and the other two-thirds on illegal, black-market neural-link splitters.
When Joseph went home, he didn't just log into Shiraori. While his primary consciousness piloted the terrifying spider monster, a series of complex, macro-scripted sub-routines—essentially highly advanced, illegal AI botting programs he had coded himself—piloted his eight alt accounts.
He had designed them to be the perfect farming slaves. They were all Heteromorphic races with high stamina and defensive stats. Currently, they were spread across the nine realms, endlessly grinding low-level mobs to slowly amass levels and gold while keeping their profiles practically invisible.
'If I can find the Prismatic Ore vein, I can relocate the eight alts to the mine. They can dig 24/7. But first, I have to find it.'
"Hey, Joseph," Sakurai whispered, leaning over slightly. The chair shrieked. "Did you hear about the new memo? Management is cutting our lunch break by five minutes starting tomorrow."
Joseph slowly turned his head, fixing Sakurai with that unblinking, dead-eyed stare he had perfected over sixty years of combined lifetimes. He stared into Sakurai's soul until the larger man began to visibly sweat.
"Five minutes," Joseph finally said, his voice dripping with synthetic warmth. "What a tragedy, Sakurai. How will we ever manage to chew our nutrient paste in time? Perhaps if you chew faster, you'll burn more calories."
Sakurai swallowed hard, quickly turning back to his monitor. "Y-yeah. Good point."
'Meatbags,' Joseph thought, turning back to his screen. 'I wonder what his face would look like if I hit him with [Rot Attack].'
The moment his shift ended, Joseph practically sprinted home, ignoring the acidic rain that sizzled against his hazmat suit. He threw open the door to his empty apartment, bypassed the soup can throne—which was coming along nicely, now standing three tiers high—and stripped naked.
He strapped himself into his VR rig, engaged the illegal neural-splitter interface, and plunged into Yggdrasil.
The familiar sensation of his human body fading away was replaced by the cold, calculated perfection of Shiraori.
Joseph opened his eight compound eyes. He was standing exactly where he had logged off: a hidden cave system on the outskirts of Midgard.
He immediately pulled up his command console. A series of green lines cascaded down his vision—the status reports of his eight alts.
[Alt 1 (Gargoyle) - Status: Grinding (Midgard Forest) - Level 45] [Alt 2 (Automaton) - Status: Grinding (Alfheim Borders) - Level 42] [Alt 3 (Golem) - Status: Grinding (Jotunheim Tundra) - Level 46] ...
'Perfect. They are functioning flawlessly,' Joseph thought, swiping the window away.
His priority today was finding the Prismatic Ore. According to his deductions, the most logical place for the developers to hide high-tier ores was in the realm of Niðavellir, the home of the Dwarves and a realm categorized by endless underground caverns, volcanic mountains, and darkness.
Joseph opened his spell list and activated [Greater Teleportation].
Because he had never visited Niðavellir, he couldn't teleport directly into its depths. He had to teleport to the realm-gate connection point located in the northernmost mountains of Midgard.
His vision shifted. The damp cave was replaced by a roaring blizzard. Howling winds battered against his spider body, carrying shards of ice that dealt fractional points of damage.
[-1 HP] [-1 HP]
Joseph ignored the minor damage; his [HP Auto-Recovery] skill healed the scratches instantly. He stood before a massive, arching gateway carved into the side of a frozen peak. The gateway swirled with a chaotic, grey energy.
Without hesitation, Joseph scuttled forward, his six armored legs gripping the icy stone effortlessly thanks to his [Wall Crawling] passive. He stepped into the portal.
When his vision cleared, the blizzard was gone. He was standing on a narrow precipice overlooking a subterranean chasm so vast it defied logic. Glowing rivers of magma cut through the darkness far below, illuminating gargantuan stalactites that hung from a ceiling miles above. The air was thick with the smell of sulfur and ash.
Welcome to Niðavellir.
'Alright, let's look for the highest level dungeon in the vicinity. Prismatic Ores, like Celestial Uranium or Star Silver, won't just be sitting in a beginner cave.'
Joseph cast [Magic Detection] and [Spacial Detection] simultaneously. His field of vision expanded, translating the magical energies of the realm into a topographical map in his mind.
He sensed numerous small clusters of low-level mobs—mostly rock worms and fire sprites—but far to the east, buried deep within a jagged mountain of black basalt, he sensed a massive concentration of high-tier data crystals.
'Bingo.'
Joseph launched himself off the precipice. Instead of falling to his death in the magma below, he shot a thick, white line of [Spider Thread] from his abdomen, attaching it to a massive stalactite above. He swung through the subterranean expanse like a horrifying, eight-legged pendulum.
The sheer speed of his traversal was staggering. Because he had invested heavily in agility to survive the Hydra, Shiraori moved through the air with the grace of a deadly acrobat. He released the thread, plummeted for two seconds, then fired another line at a protruding rock face, catapulting himself forward.
Within ten minutes of high-speed swinging, he arrived at the entrance of the black basalt mountain.
A massive pair of iron doors, rusted shut and covered in glowing red runes, barred the way. Above the doors, a system prompt floated in the air:
[Danger: You are entering The Roaring Depths. Recommended Level: 85+]
'A level 85 dungeon. For most players right now, this would be a death trap. For me, it's a grocery store.'
Joseph didn't bother trying to open the doors. He raised his front scythe-like legs, activating the skill [Cutting Thread]. Invisible wires of hyper-compressed spider silk laced with magic shot forward, wrapping around the massive iron hinges. With a sharp tug of his front legs, the threads sliced through the ancient iron like a hot knife through butter. The doors crashed inward with a deafening boom.
Joseph scuttled inside into the pitch-black darkness. His [Night Vision] and [Vision Enhancement] rendered the dark tunnels as clear as day.
The interior of the dungeon was a labyrinth of active mine shafts, wooden scaffolding, and rail carts. The silence was absolute, save for the rhythmic clicking of his legs on the stone.
Suddenly, the ground began to tremble.
From the walls of the cavern, massive chunks of rock began to pull themselves free, assembling into towering, bipedal figures. Their bodies glittered with a dark, metallic sheen.
[Mithril Golem - Level 82] [Mithril Golem - Level 82] [Mithril Golem - Level 82]
Three of them. They were heavily armored tanks, highly resistant to physical damage and completely immune to poison.
'Poison immunity. How annoying,' Joseph clicked his mandibles in irritation. 'My [Rot Attack] would kill them instantly, but it would also kill me, and I'm not wasting a revival item on some over-glorified rocks.'
The first Golem charged, raising massive stone fists to crush the spider into paste.
Joseph didn't retreat. He didn't even draw a weapon. He simply stood still until the Golem was inches away, and then, utilizing his absurd 60 Agility stat, he vanished.
He reappeared directly above the Golem, clinging upside-down to the cavern ceiling using [Wall Crawling].
"Dance for me," Joseph whispered, his voice a cold, feminine hiss echoing in the cavern.
He unleashed a torrent of [Spider Thread]. But this wasn't just normal thread. He channeled his MP, casting [Darkness Wave] directly into the silk as it left his body. The threads, glowing with an ominous purple-black aura, rained down on the Golems like a net of shadows.
The threads wrapped around the Golems' limbs, binding their joints. The Mithril Golems struggled, their massive strength attempting to snap the silk, but Shiraori's threads were scaled to her level. They held firm.
'Now for the fun part.'
Joseph dropped from the ceiling, landing gracefully behind the bound Golems. He summoned one of his custom-made, 1-stat trash scythes. Since the Golems were immune to his poison build, he would have to use his magic stats.
He cast [Reinforce Armor] on the scythe to temporarily keep it from snapping, then cast [Ignition] and [Darkness Lance] simultaneously.
Combining spells was a difficult mechanic in Yggdrasil, requiring precise timing, but Joseph had practiced it endlessly in the Arena. The darkness and fire merged, coating the scythe's blade in a shroud of black flames.
He swung.
The scythe sliced cleanly through the joints of the first Golem where the armor was thinnest. The black flames erupted, bypassing the physical defense and dealing massive magical damage. The Golem let out a low, grinding groan before its HP bar hit zero. It crumbled into a pile of mundane rocks and a single glowing data crystal.
[You have slain a Mithril Golem. EXP gained.]
Joseph spun, parrying a desperate swing from the second Golem, and retaliated with a flurry of strikes, his eight legs allowing him to maneuver around the heavy enemies with effortless superiority.
In less than three minutes, the three level 82 Golems were reduced to rubble.
Joseph didn't even bother looting the data crystals yet. He moved deeper into the dungeon. For hours, he cleared out the winding shafts, slaughtering Adamantite Elementals, Lava Slimes, and Deep Cavern Bats. His EXP bar steadily ticked upward, bringing him closer to level 85.
Eventually, the tunnels opened up into a massive, cavernous geode.
The walls of this chamber were completely covered in glowing, multi-colored crystals. But it wasn't the regular crystals that caught Joseph's attention.
In the dead center of the room, protruding from a pedestal of dark rock, was a vein of ore that pulsed with a hypnotic, starlight radiance. It shifted colors, bleeding from deep violet to iridescent silver, casting a beautiful, eerie light across the room.
Joseph approached it, his compound eyes narrowing. He reached out a scythe and tapped the ore. A system window popped up.
[Celestial Uranium Vein - Unmined] [Yield: 5-10 units per hour]
Joseph's mandibles clicked together in a rapid, excited rhythm. 'Celestial Uranium. A Prismatic Ore. The rarest crafting material in the game, used to forge Divine-class gear and guild weapons. And if I gather enough of it... a World Item.'
He did the math in his head. If this vein yielded a maximum of 10 units an hour, and he needed tens of thousands of units to trigger the Caloric Stone event, he would be here for years if he mined it alone.
'I need to bring the alts here immediately. I can set them to auto-mine.'
Just as Joseph was about to open his command console to issue the recall order to his bots, his [Spacial Detection] pinged violently.
A red dot had just entered the cavern behind him.
No, not a red dot. A cluster of them. Players.
Joseph instantly leaped backward, casting [Invisibility] mid-air. He scrambled up the crystalline wall, adhering to the shadows near the ceiling, and watched the entrance of the geode.
Five players walked into the glowing cavern.
They were a heavily armed party, their gear shining with the distinct aura of high-tier items.
The leader was a tall, imposing figure clad in crimson plate armor, wielding a massive halberd. Beside him walked a female Elf Ranger with a glowing green bow, a heavily armored Dwarf Cleric, a human Wizard floating a few inches off the ground, and a small, shadowy figure that looked like an Assassin.
"Are you sure this is the right coordinate, BloodAxe?" the Elf Ranger asked, her voice carrying through the cavern.
The warrior in crimson armor, [BloodAxe], nodded, lowering his halberd. "Yeah. My guildmaster paid a premium for this intel. The data brokers said there was an untouched Prismatic Ore vein in The Roaring Depths. Look." He pointed his halberd directly at the Celestial Uranium.
The party gasped collectively.
"Holy shit," the Wizard breathed. "Celestial Uranium. Do you know how much this is worth on the auction house? We're going to be rich."
"Don't get greedy," BloodAxe commanded. "Our guild needs this to forge our Guild Weapon. We secure the perimeter, set up a mining camp, and hold it until the guildmaster arrives with the rest of the vanguard."
Hanging from the ceiling, Joseph's eyes narrowed into crimson slits.
'A guild operation? How annoying.' Joseph mentally calculated their levels. Based on their gear and the fact they had survived a level 85 dungeon, they were likely in the high 80s or early 90s.
'If they set up a camp here, I won't be able to bring my alts. They'll monopolize my Caloric Stone.'
Joseph could just let them mine it, and then PK them when they tried to leave, stealing their inventory. But that was risky. If they used a high-tier teleportation scroll, they could instantly transport the ore straight to their guild base.
No. He had to exterminate them here and now. And he had to do it in a way that ensured they never wanted to come back to this dungeon. He didn't just need to kill them; he needed to traumatize them.
Joseph silently dropped his [Invisibility].
He didn't attack immediately. Instead, he simply let himself fall from the ceiling.
He landed directly on top of the Celestial Uranium vein with a heavy, chitinous thud.
The five players instantly drew their weapons, startled by the sudden appearance of the giant, skull-marked spider abomination.
"What the hell is that?!" the Dwarf Cleric shouted, raising his shield. "A boss monster?"
"I don't see a boss health bar!" the Ranger yelled, drawing an arrow back. "It looks like a Heteromorph player!"
BloodAxe stepped forward, gripping his halberd tightly. "Hey! You! This area is claimed by the [Trinity] guild. Back off now, or we'll drop your level to the floor!"
Joseph slowly raised his human torso up, his slender hands resting gently on his scythe-like front legs. He cocked his head to the side, looking down at the five players as if they were nothing more than a stain on his shoes.
He opened his mouth, and a cold, chillingly sweet voice echoed in the cavern.
"Claimed? How presumptuous."
Joseph activated his [Poison Aura] and [Fear Resistance] bypass. A thick, violet miasma began to ooze from his pores, filling the center of the room with a toxic fog.
"You look like a bunch of walking data crystals to me," Joseph purred.
BloodAxe didn't hesitate. "Take it down!"
The Wizard immediately chanted, "[Maximize Magic: Chain Dragon Lightning]!"
A massive serpent of pure electricity roared from the Wizard's staff, arcing violently toward Joseph. At the exact same moment, the Ranger fired a volley of three glowing arrows, and the Assassin vanished into stealth.
It was a perfectly coordinated strike.
But against Joseph, it was practically moving in slow motion.
Joseph didn't even bother teleporting. He utilized his absurd Agility stat. He sidestepped the lightning dragon, the electrical current missing his abdomen by mere millimeters. As he moved, he raised his scythe legs, swatting the three arrows out of the air with surgical precision.
"Impossible," the Ranger gasped. "She parried [Seeking Arrows]?"
Joseph didn't give them time to recover. He lunged forward, moving so fast his body blurred into a white and black streak.
He bypassed the heavily armored BloodAxe entirely, aiming straight for the squishy backline. He appeared directly in front of the Wizard.
The Wizard's eyes widened in terror. He tried to cast [Teleportation], but Joseph was faster.
Activating [Cutting Thread], Joseph whipped his front legs outward. A dozen invisible wires wrapped around the Wizard's neck and limbs.
"Goodbye," Joseph whispered.
With a sharp jerk, the threads constricted. The Wizard didn't even have time to scream before his HP bar vanished. His avatar was instantly bisected, turning into a shower of golden data crystals and dropped loot.
[You have slain a player. Penalty applied.]
"MAGE!" BloodAxe roared, spinning around and swinging his halberd in a massive, sweeping arc. "[Cleave]!"
Joseph gracefully backflipped, the halberd missing him by a hair. He landed lightly on the walls of the cavern.
Suddenly, Joseph's [Spider Sense] flared. A dagger aimed perfectly at the back of his human neck materialized from the shadows as the Assassin broke stealth.
Instead of dodging, Joseph activated [Poison Touch] and deliberately leaned his back into the strike.
The dagger pierced his flesh, dealing a chunk of damage. But the moment the Assassin's hand made contact with Joseph's body, the [Poison Touch] activated.
The Assassin shrieked, instantly inflicted with [Deadly Poison], [Paralysis], and [Rot]. His HP bar began to melt at a terrifying speed. He fell to the floor, twitching uncontrollably as the rot consumed his avatar. Within three seconds, he too burst into data crystals.
Two down. Three left.
"Cleric! Heal the Assassin! Ranger, keep her pinned!" BloodAxe was panicking now, his previous arrogance completely shattered.
"I can't heal him! He's dead!" the Cleric yelled, desperately casting [Protection from Poison] on himself and BloodAxe.
Joseph chuckled, a low, unsettling sound. He raised a hand, casting [Darkness Bullet]. A barrage of black orbs shot out, forcing the Ranger to dive for cover behind a stalagmite, completely disrupting her aim.
Joseph turned his eight crimson eyes onto BloodAxe.
"Your guildmaster paid a premium for this intel, you said?" Joseph asked, slowly scuttling down the wall toward the warrior. "I suggest you ask for a refund."
BloodAxe roared in fury, activating a martial art. His body glowed red. "[Limit Break]! [Furious Strike]!"
He launched himself at Joseph, his halberd glowing with enough kinetic energy to shatter a mountain. It was an undeniable, high-tier attack. If it hit, it would deal massive damage even to Joseph.
So, Joseph didn't let it hit.
He tapped his inventory, instantly equipping one of his trash, 1-stat scythes. He didn't try to block or parry. Instead, as BloodAxe swung down, Joseph lunged forward, willingly taking the halberd strike directly into his left spider-shoulder.
The halberd cleaved deep into Joseph's carapace. His HP bar instantly dropped by 40%.
BloodAxe grinned, thinking he had landed a fatal blow.
But Joseph just smiled back, a twisted, maniacal grin on his human face.
Because Joseph was now inside BloodAxe's guard.
"Checkmate," Joseph whispered.
He swung the trash scythe, the blade lightly grazing BloodAxe's crimson armor. It dealt exactly 1 point of physical damage.
But the scythe wasn't designed for physical damage.
"What...?" BloodAxe muttered, looking at the tiny scratch on his armor.
Then, Joseph activated the skill imbued in the weapon.
[Rot Attack].
A wave of grey, decaying energy exploded from the scythe. It completely bypassed BloodAxe's physical and magical defenses. The crimson armor rusted and crumbled into dust instantly. The rot spread into BloodAxe's avatar, dissolving his flesh and bone into ash in a fraction of a second.
BloodAxe didn't even have time to register what had happened. He was just gone. Erased.
The only consequence was that Joseph's avatar also instantly died, the blowback of the [Rot Attack] claiming his life as well. Both the Spider and the Warrior shattered into data crystals simultaneously.
The cavern went dead silent.
The remaining Cleric and Ranger stared in absolute, unadulterated horror at the spot where their leader had just been instantly vaporized by a suicide attack.
"He... he killed himself to kill BloodAxe," the Ranger whispered, her bow trembling in her hands. "What kind of psycho..."
Before she could finish her sentence, a dark red portal tore open in the center of the cavern, right next to the Celestial Uranium.
A pale hand reached out of the portal, gripping a pristine white scythe.
Shiraori stepped out, fully revived, perfectly unharmed, and completely devoid of the 40% damage she had taken earlier. Thanks to her [n%I=W] skill and the immense EXP she had gained from killing three high-level players, she had instantly leveled up and fully recovered her HP.
Joseph locked his crimson eyes onto the trembling Cleric and Ranger. He pulled another trash scythe from his inventory.
"Now then," Joseph smiled, his voice echoing in the silent cave. "Who wants to be next?"
The Ranger didn't hesitate. She dropped her bow, opened her menu, and immediately logged out. The Cleric scrambled backward, tripping over a rock before casting [Greater Teleportation] and vanishing in a flash of light.
Joseph stood alone in the cavern, surrounded by the glowing loot of three dead players.
He had secured the mine.
'Fools,' Joseph scoffed, walking over and tossing BloodAxe's dropped halberd into his inventory. 'Did they really think a simple party of five could stop me?'
He turned his attention back to the Celestial Uranium vein. The beautiful, prismatic light reflected in his eyes .