On the top floor of the headquarters of the mega-corporation Arasaka Group, a handsome black-haired man stood by the railing, enjoying the top-tier natural air of this despairing world—a breeze carrying the stench of blood and rust. In just a few seconds, the man vomited out all the high-end red wine he had just drunk.
The man angrily threw the glass out the window, turned to look at the penthouse villa, and couldn't help but sneer.
His name is Walton, a Transmigrator, and this world is a despairing abyss after a nuclear war. Mega-corporations and high-level rulers united to establish an oppressive government, extracting every drop of sweat from the laboring people at the bottom in this world already full of radiation and decay.
At the beginning of his transmigration, Walton thought this was Cyberpunk 2077. So, originally from a middle-class background, he achieved leadership in the Arasaka Group, one of the world's mega-corporations, at the age of forty, through various struggles and efforts, becoming one of the people with a certain degree of influence.
Just as he was full of ambition and preparing to do something for the laboring people at the bottom, he was told an astonishing secret. This secret once plunged him into despair and panic... No, he is actually still in despair now, but panic? He's just numb to it.
"Whatever, I've done everything I could anyway." Walton seemed to have had enough of the breeze carrying the scent of an industrial wasteland. He turned and walked into the villa. Accompanied by the elegant music emanating from inside, he swayed his body slightly and casually picked up a crowbar from the side.
Walton stepped into the living room, a place that had witnessed countless people indulging in pleasure, a place only the most elite "upper-class individuals" could enter. But now, dozens of corpses lay before Walton, all of them having died with expressions of terror and anger, and some seemed not to have even recovered from the revelry yet?
But it didn't matter, they were all dead anyway, killed by him, with a fully automatic submachine gun.
"Ugh! Wuwu..." But there was one exception: an old man in a white suit, wearing the Arasaka Group logo. He wasn't dead yet, but was tied up and fixed to a bar stool. Things from above and below gushed out in a messy torrent, as he alternately pleaded and accused Walton, who was walking towards him.
"Do you know? There are only five minutes left..." Walton raised his right hand, wiped his blood-smeared watch with the sleeve of his exquisite suit, and spoke to the old man in front of him.
Hearing this, the old man seemed to recall something hopeful, his eyes lit up, and then he began to struggle incessantly, shaking his head back and forth, whimpering something, as if he intended to stall for these five minutes?
"No, not really," Walton shook his head, shattering the old man's illusion, "No one is coming to save you. I'm just saying, in five minutes, the game YGGDRASIL will shut down."
The old man froze, his entire body stiffening and stopping his movements. Then he stared blankly for a few seconds in disbelief, before whimpering and struggling madly, as if he had been injected with 1ml of adrenaline.
YGGDRASIL was the only psychological comfort Walton received when he learned the truth and secret of the world. This was not an ordinary nuclear disaster world; it was the real world described in the novel "Overlord."
Flying Squirrel, the protagonist of the novel, struggled in a desperate real world, spending all his hard-earned money on this bottomless pit of a pay-to-win, full-immersion online game. In the game, he organized like-minded individuals and established a PVP guild composed entirely of Heteromorphic Races.
This guild was named Ainz Ooal Gown, with the Great Tomb of Nazarick as its base. At the time of the final server shutdown, Flying Squirrel, the guild master, along with the guild's base and its NPCs, transmigrated to a fantasy world of swords and magic.
As for why only the guild master transmigrated, it was, of course, because players gradually left the guild during its growth, eventually leaving only Flying Squirrel to support it alone.
Walton couldn't help but feel that Flying Squirrel was incredibly hardworking when he thought about how, in the original story, Flying Squirrel had to log in every day and do an entire guild's daily tasks alone to maintain the guild's operations.
Walton logged into the game relatively early. Through some small tricks, he successfully found Flying Squirrel and his PVP small group, who were then only the "Nine's Own Goal," and through this, he confirmed another layer of reality in this world—this was indeed not Night City.
So, what he needed to do was simple: lay out all his plans in the real world, solve problems for future generations as much as possible, and then directly transmigrate to the other world.
He had two backup plans. If the transmigration failed, he could still act as the dark side of the world, slowly trying to cultivate a successor to save this hopeless world. After all, he was already over fifty years old, and his body couldn't support him fighting on the front lines anymore. He could only retreat behind the scenes and train a successor. Moreover, if he hadn't been in a high-ranking position in the company, he wouldn't have been able to live so long in this wasteland world, which shows how terrible this world truly was.
And if the transmigration succeeded, his hidden lines would operate on their own, and perhaps one day, they would bring the first ray of dawn to humanity after the nuclear war.
"Even if the hope is slim, this is all I can do..." Walton shook his head, looked at the old man who had grown tired of struggling, raised the crowbar, and smiled slightly.
"'Emperor' Saburo Arasaka, you calculated everything, but you didn't calculate that you would die by my hand, did you? Oh, right, I also destroyed your cyber-immortality project. How about it? Am I qualified to be your executioner?"
Thud! Walton swung down the crowbar, splattering blood and causing Saburo Arasaka to struggle and tremble violently.
"Don't move! It'll hurt more if I miss! Don't move! I! Told! You! To! Stop! Moving!!!"
Thud! Thud! Thud thud thud...
At 11:59 PM, Flying Squirrel, holding the guild's symbol, the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown, sat in the guild's throne room, which contained only NPCs, in the form of his game character, the "Supreme Undead Archmage," or a skeleton mage. He awaited the server shutdown countdown amidst endless sorrow and regret.
"In the end... no one stayed behind..." Flying Squirrel silently raised his head, looking past the puppet-like NPCs, and gazed at the 42 flags in the throne room—emblems representing the guild's 42 members. What disappointed him most was a flag that seemed to be pushed into a small corner but had always been cherished by Flying Squirrel.
"Eye of the Void... have you forgotten me too, Xiu...?"
Flying Squirrel murmured, wanting to recall the past, but the server shutdown countdown would not wait for him.
10... 8... 7...
"Sigh, even just once, I wanted to thank you all... to thank you, in the game, one last time... You, who were 'Dawn'... what are you busy with now?"
5... 4... 3...
As the countdown neared its end, Flying Squirrel's last shred of hope also vanished. He sat up straight, awaiting the outcome.
Then, a figure teleported in.
"Hey, Flying Squirrel."