The Last Sunset of Gods Prologue: When Digital Valhalla Falls
In the dying breath of the twenty-second century, humanity carved sanctuaries from code and light—none more magnificent than the Dive Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game christened Yggdrasil. Released in 2126, it was never merely a game. It was resurrection. Rebirth. A second genesis where the shackled could soar, where the forgotten could become legend.
Its landscapes breathed with impossible beauty—mountains that touched manufactured stars, oceans that sang in colors without names. For twelve years, Yggdrasil had been more than pixels and polygons. It had been real. A sanctuary. A battleground. A cathedral of the damned and divine.
But even gods die.
Tonight, the final servers would bleed out their last electric hymn. Tonight, eternity would end.
The Weight of Silence
Deep beneath the earth, buried like a secret too dangerous to unearth, the Great Tomb of Nazarick pulsed with fading enchantments. In its heart—a chamber carved from obsidian and ambition—three figures gathered around a circular table black as a collapsed star.
Momonga sat motionless, a skeletal king draped in robes darker than mourning, darker than memory. His empty eye sockets held twin crimson embers that flickered like candles in a crypt. Every breath he didn't need to take felt heavy, deliberate, final.
Beside him, Thor—the God of Thunder reduced to pixels and passion—slouched with the weary grace of a warrior too tired to remember why he still held his hammer. His crimson hair, wild as wildfire, framed a face carved from stone and storm. Mjölnir rested against his thigh, thrumming with residual thunder. Red eyes—ancient, bored, piercing—swept the chamber like a judge measuring the worth of the condemned.
The third presence sagged between them: HeroHero, a purple slime whose exhaustion had become corporeal. He looked like hope after a three-day bender, melting slowly under gravity's cruelty.
For a long moment, no one spoke. The silence stretched taut as a bowstring. Then—
Momonga's jaw clicked—bone against bone—and something like laughter escaped. Brittle. Bitter. Beautiful. "Hard to believe it's really over. But hell… it was fun."
Thor's eyes didn't move, but the corner of his mouth twitched. A microexpression. Approval without sound. Momonga caught it instantly—their unspoken language flowing like current between live wires.
"Indeed." Thor's voice rumbled low, tectonic plates shifting beneath words. "The kind of battle that brands itself into eternity. Even when eternity ends."
HeroHero burbled—a wet, weary sound like rain on glass. "Momonga… Thor… God, how long has it been? Years? Centuries?"
"You vanished into the corporate void," Momonga said, his tone neither accusatory nor forgiving. Simply observing. "Years without a word. I didn't think you'd crawl back for the apocalypse."
Thor grunted. A single syllable heavy as a thunderclap. Momonga understood: Neither did I.
"Pleasant surprise," Thor added, because sometimes words mattered.
HeroHero quivered—laughter or grief, impossible to distinguish. "Time just… liquefied. Work became this endless loading screen. Wake, suffer, sleep, repeat. My avatar's basically a mood ring at this point."
"That sounds like death without the dignity of dying," Momonga observed.
Thor's eyes flickered to HeroHero, then away. His fingers drummed once—tap—against Mjölnir's haft. Momonga caught the gesture. Translation: Weak. But honest. Respect the honesty.
"Speak freely," Thor said, each word measured like lightning choosing where to strike. "Even gods need to bleed occasionally."
"This place…" HeroHero's voice cracked like old vinyl. "This place was built by people who got each other. You two… you kept it alive. Momonga, you wore the crown like you were born skeletal. Thor, you—" He laughed, helpless and breaking. "—you destroyed enemies so beautifully it looked like art."
Momonga's fingers laced together, bone against bone, a cathedral of regret. "We built this tomb as a family. Letting it rot felt… wrong. Like abandoning a grave."
Thor said nothing. But his jaw tightened—a glacier cracking—and Momonga felt the agreement slam between them. Yes. Exactly that.
"Thank you," HeroHero whispered. "Both of you. Maybe… maybe we'll meet out there. The real world. Coffee or something."
Pop.
He vanished like a soap bubble kissed by flame.
The silence that followed wasn't empty. It was swollen—pregnant with all the things neither warrior knew how to say.
Then Momonga's composure shattered like glass struck by a hammer.
The Unraveling
"He could've stayed." Momonga's voice cracked—not with sadness, but fury. "One more hour. We could've watched the end together. Laughed about the old raids. Reminisced about—"
He stopped. Exhaled. A rattling, useless gesture for lungs he didn't possess.
"I'm grateful he came at all," he finished, quieter now. Hollower.
"Momonga." Thor's voice, soft as distant thunder.
Momonga didn't hear him. His thoughts spiraled—corrupted code looping endlessly, syntax errors multiplying in his skull.
"Where will we go? When? How do we find each other when the servers die? We're just… just anonymous slaves in meat-prisons out there, and—"
He slammed both fists onto the table.
CRACK.
The sound split the air like a gunshot. The obsidian didn't even dent.
"THIS SUCKS!" Momonga roared—voice like nails scraping tombstones. "This place is HOME! We bled for it! We died for it in a thousand raids! Forty-one members poured their souls into these stones, and he just—just logs off like it's—like it's—"
"MOMONGA."
Thor's voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. It was thunder choosing to be quiet, and the sheer restraint of it hit like a physical blow.
Momonga froze.
Thor stood—slow, deliberate, unstoppable. Mjölnir's hum deepened, resonating through bone and code. He crossed the distance between them in three measured steps and placed one calloused hand on Momonga's skeletal shoulder.
He didn't speak.
He didn't need to.
Momonga looked up into those ancient red eyes and understood: You're angry at the wrong thing. He didn't betray us. The world did. Hate the world. Not him.
Momonga's rage collapsed like a puppet with cut strings.
"Yeah," he whispered. "Yeah, I know. None of them betrayed us. Not one. Not ever." His voice steadied, finding purchase on old pride. "The Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown… remember when we forged it?"
Thor's mouth twitched. Almost a smile. "People used vacation days. Called in sick. We played like berserkers."
"Insane," Momonga agreed, nostalgic warmth bleeding into his tone. "Forty-one members. Thirty-nine walked away. And then…"
"Two," Thor finished. His grip tightened fractionally. "Us."
Momonga stood, straightened his robes, reclaimed his dignity like a crown. "The staff's still here. Let's take it. One last march."
Thor nodded. Finally.
The Procession of Ghosts
Momonga lifted the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown with reverence reserved for holy relics. Jewels embedded in its shaft glowed like dying stars—ruby, sapphire, emerald—each one a captured soul, a crystallized memory.
Thor fell into step beside him, Mjölnir slung casually over one shoulder. Their footfalls echoed—bone and boot—a funeral march through empty halls.
The doors slid open.
Waiting beyond stood Sebas Tian—silver-haired, impeccable, radiating restrained lethality like a drawn blade sheathed in silk. Behind him, the Pleiades: seven battle-maids arrayed like a bouquet of lethal flowers, each petal sharp enough to draw divine blood.
Momonga blinked. "Oh. Right. Sebas. The Pleiades."
Thor's eyes narrowed, amused. "You're here more than I am, and you still forget their names?"
"In my defense, we designed them to be the last wall before the Throne Room. No one ever got close enough to matter."
"Because," Thor said, voice dark with satisfaction, "the eighth floor was perfect."
Momonga's eyes gleamed. "Let's move them. One last time. They deserve that much."
"Follow," Thor commanded—voice like an avalanche choosing its path.
Sebas bowed. The Pleiades moved as one—synchronized, lethal, beautiful.
The procession advanced through corridors carved from ambition and obsidian, past murals depicting victories that would never be repeated, toward doors engraved with the symbols of forty-one vanished gods.
The Throne Room opened like a cathedral swallowing its congregation.
Gold and shadow warred for dominance. Pillars soared toward a ceiling lost in artificial night. Banners hung like captured ghosts—each one bearing the sigil of a fallen comrade.
Thor stopped. His eyes swept the chamber with something almost like reverence.
"Never gets old," he murmured.
"No," Momonga agreed softly. "It really doesn't."
At the far end of the throne room stood a woman sculpted from divine malice and impossible beauty.
Albedo.
Jet-black hair cascaded like liquid midnight down to her waist, framing a face so perfect it hurt to perceive. Golden eyes—slit-pupiled, serpentine—glowed with intelligence that felt almost aware. Curved obsidian horns crowned her head. Black wings folded elegantly against her back, feathered in shadow. Her white gown floated as though gravity had signed a separate treaty with her body. A golden spiderweb necklace—intricate, delicate, predatory—draped across her collarbone.
Thor stopped mid-step.
His eyes widened fractionally. His breath—unnecessary, automatic—caught.
"Beautiful," he whispered, helpless as a mortal.
Momonga glanced at his friend. Caught the expression. Something wicked stirred in his hollow chest.
He sank into his throne—bone against ancient stone—and raised one skeletal hand. "Stand by."
Every NPC froze like statues awaiting activation.
"What were her settings again?" Momonga mused, opening Albedo's character bio.
Text flooded his vision—paragraphs upon paragraphs of obsessive detail.
"Good God, Tabula went insane. She oversees defensive protocols, diplomatic negotiations, internal hierarchy, and—" He stopped. His jaw clicked. "Wait. WHAT? He made her a bitch?!"
Thor glanced over, one eyebrow raised.
"Tabula loved contradictions," Momonga muttered. "But this is…"
An idea bloomed. Wicked. Impulsive. Perfect.
He glanced at the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown in his hands—the ultimate admin tool. Normally, editing NPC settings required external software. But with this…
His bony fingers moved across invisible menus, rewriting reality one line at a time.
"She is madly, obsessively, irrevocably in love with Thor."
He saved the changes.
"Did you say something?" Thor asked, eyes still lingering on Albedo's frozen form.
"Hmm? No. Nothing important." Momonga's tone was suspiciously innocent. "Command: Bow down."
Every NPC in the chamber dropped to one knee in perfect synchronization—a wave of submission rippling through the throne room.
Momonga's gaze drifted upward. Forty-one banners swayed in non-existent wind, each one a ghost refusing to leave.
"Touch Me. Shizyuutensuzaku. Ankoro Mocchi Mochi. HeroHero. Peroroncino. Bukubukuchagama. Tabula Smaragdina. Warrior Takemikazuchi. Variable Talisman. Genjiro…"
He paused.
"And Thor."
Thor's eyes didn't leave the banners. "We had one hell of a war."
"I have to wake at 4 A.M.," Momonga said quietly. "After this ends, I need sleep, or I'll be a corporate zombie."
"Same."
They exchanged no farewells. What existed between them didn't need words.
Both closed their eyes.
Waiting.
Waiting for oblivion.
Three… two… one…
Nothing.
Thor's eyes snapped open—crimson flaring like struck matches.
"What—"
Momonga bolted upright. "Did they delay the shutdown?!"
Thor's hand shot toward his interface. "I can't—there's no console! No chat! No GM contact! What the hell—"
A voice, soft as silk over a blade's edge, cut through their panic.
"Is something troubling you, Lord Thor? Lord Momonga?"
Both froze.
Turned.
Albedo tilted her head, wings fluttering gently, golden eyes shining with something that looked dangerously close to consciousness.
"Lord Thor?" she repeated, her gaze locking onto the thunder god with intensity that felt hungry. "Lord Momonga?"
Thor's mouth opened.
Closed.
No sound emerged.
Momonga stared at his friend, then at Albedo, then at the living, breathing, impossibly aware NPCs surrounding them.
Oh.
Oh no.
What have I done?
TO BE CONTINUED