The Platinum Dragon Lord hesitated. The word 'costume' was something that he, with a jolt, remembered.
"Ah, yes, child, this is indeed a costume," he said.
"Well, it's really nice," the boy answered.
The Platinum Dragon Lord looked out towards the boy's house- right now his family was not looking this way, and so, he would have only a few minutes to ask what he wanted to.
Should he kidnap the boy? That could certainly turn problematic... should he instead go ahead and invite himself into these people's homes?
While a child would be naïve enough to talk to a total stranger, adults would definitely have more questions for him. On the other hand, how much would a child know?
"I just wanted to ask you, do you know where I am?" Platinum Dragon Lord asked.
"You mean, my address?" the boy asked before reciting it. It didn't make much sense to Platinum Dragon Lord, who had not heard any of the names the boy mentioned before. He didn't even mention anything about Yggdrasil.
"Do you know the leader of your country?" Platinum Dragon Lord asked.
"Yeah!" the boy said. "The President! And the president is-"
The boy said that the President was a woman. Something that the Platinum Dragon Lord asked the boy again to confirm. And he got the same answer...
"Madam President, we have a crisis on our hands," one of her advisors told her.
The President sighed and buried her face into her hands. She had spent the last few days putting out the numerous fires that had sprung up, and it was clear that they would not be able to deal with it much longer. Information leaked through private channels, through personnel that shared info with people that they shouldn't, and through simple old-fashioned word of mouth.
She would have to address the public sooner or later.
"I am well aware of that."
"No, this is from the Russians," he said. "We just got it, and it seems to be a sort of request for help, but..."
The President had not had much sleep in the past few days, and as such, as she watched the video what she was seeing didn't fully register in her mind until she watched it again.
"Am I looking at... zombies?" she asked.
"Indeed," the advisor answered. "It appears we have a situation in Russia with them."
"H-How many?" she asked.
Many stories and movies told of how governments collapsed due to zombie apocalypses. The only thing was that such situations usually arose slowly- with the problem festering over several months, and the inaction of the government was usually something such works of fiction focused on.
"Based on satellite imagery, we estimate at least two million," he answered.
"How is it possible that we missed out on such a thing?" she asked.
"It seems to be a recent event," he answered. "As a matter of fact, the only reason the Russians seem to be eager to inform the neighboring nations now is because they are no longer able to hide it. Several of them were reported in a village in Taiwan, and the northern border of China is reporting sightings. If it continues at this rate, we may end up losing a large portion of Asia."
"Can't these other countries control these things?" she asked.
"At best, all that they seem able to do for now is huddle down in government bunkers," the man answered. "The zombies don't seem to be that much stronger than humans, but they are large in number. And thanks to that, they have been able to overthrow many military installments, particularly as the Russians stationed most of their troops near their borders."
"How did it get to Taiwan though?" she asked.
"We believe the zombies can be transported via ocean currents," he answered.
A bead of sweat rolled down her forehead. That meant that it would only be a matter of time before they appeared on their shores. "How could this... how is it..."
"We believe it might be related to the wall of light we saw recently," the man answered. "For it to have happened now does suggest that... what should we do?"
"Mobilize the National Guard," she replied. "Have them secure our borders to the North and South, as well as the East and West via our navy. Withdraw our forces from other areas if necessary." She then paused. "Is it a viable strategy to nuke the zombies?"
"By the time an area is completely consumed, it is likely that the zombies have already spread elsewhere, so using nukes or wide-ranged firebombs might end up harming us more than helping," he replied. "But, the bad news doesn't end there. Though the Russians haven't openly admitted it, our spies confirm that they have lost one of their nuclear aircraft carriers."
She nearly jumped out of her seat. "One of their nuclear aircraft carriers... how?" Even the United States only had three of them, and the fact that Russia, in its current state, could afford even one was a major feat. The loss of it would mean a great weakening of its military power, even if a second one was in development as their sources told them. "Was it stolen?"
"It just... vanished somehow," the man answered. "And the crew cannot be contacted."
The President began having a stomachache, and almost felt like tearing her hair out. The nuclear force on that carrier could wipe out a fourth of the life on the planet, and the fact that its whereabouts were somehow unknown...
Nuclear Aircraft Carriers were the new pinnacle of military technology in the year of 2138. They were cable of striking nearly any target anywhere on the Earth. Normal interplanetary defense systems were powerless against them, and it was only the presence of other Nuclear Aircraft Carriers and the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction that kept them in line.
The United States had been working on a potential countermeasure to them, but it was still in its infancy. As it was, the fallout from one of these weapons would be enough to render the small areas on Earth that were worth cultivating nearly absolutely useless, leading to widespread death even if one was fired somewhere such as the ocean.
And one of these were gone.
If it was discovered that some other country was responsible, Russia would do its best to retaliate. If it wasn't a country... no, no other group could possibly seize a military asset like that.
They could be looking at a full-fledged war of annihilation soon...
Tabito slowly came too.
He had expected to wake up to a splitting headache when he came too, but the symptoms of a hangover were strangely absent. Confused, he looked around at his surroundings and found that he did not recognize them.
Just like anyone else in that kind of situation- his mind immediately went to the fact that he had been drunk and gotten arrested. This had happened to him once, but he had been let go with a warning. After that incident he had made it a priority to not drink in public.
Come to think of it- he had been drinking in his apartment, right? So how was he somewhere else?
That was not all that was wrong. Something about his face felt different- as his hands went to his face they found that it was unblemished by scars.
Impossible.
Not only that, but his body somehow felt better than he it had in years.
He he gotten a lung transplant and plastic surgery without him knowing? No way that it would be done for him if he had been arrested- he would've been left to die if he had any medical issues in prison.
So what gives?
"Good morning, Tabula-sama," a female voice said to him.
Tabula... he had gone by that name once.
And then he realized where he had seen this room before.
It was his room- from the Great Tomb oF Nazarick. It was replicated almost flawlessly- who would've gone to such extents to recreate that room in real life? So that meant this wasn't real...
His eyes then found the source of the voice- a maid that was too beautiful for this reality. She also looked vaguely familiar somehow...
"Is it really the morning?" he asked her.
"Rather, it is closer to the afternoon, but I thought such a greeting would be appropriate given that you had just woken up," she answered.
Had he died? Was this was heaven was like?
Well, if heaven was being sent to the Great Tomb of Nazarick... well, he could imagine worse fates. "And you are...?"
"Solution Epsilon of the Pleiades," she responded.
Ah right, those maids. "And how did I get here?"
"Momonga-sama brought you here," she answered.
"Momonga... right, the Guildmaster," Tabito muttered to himself.
He had no memory of the events that transpired when Suzuki and Hiroshi had brought him back here- that was how badly the alcohol had affected his memory. As such, he suspected he was in some sort of really weird dream.
He pinched himself- it hurt, but what did that prove? He had never had a dream as lucid as this one before.
As such, there was no worry in his voice- which worried Solution somewhat. "So, let me meet the others then."
If this place wasn't a dream and was heaven, then would the others be here? Bellriver should've definitely been here, and if this was a dream, the others might be here too.
Solution was rather conflicted- though she had been ordered to watch over Tabula, the fact remained that this was still one of the Supreme Beings whose orders she was obliged to follow. If something that her creator, Herohero, said directly conflicted with what someone else said, she would follow her creator's orders. With that said though, she felt that someone such as her could not keep Tabula here against his will.
At the very least, she should tell Momonga-sama about what had happened, as he had instructed earlier.
Suzuki didn't have eyelids, but he wished at that moment that he could turn his vision off somehow.
The reason was that he hadn't anticipated that Bellriver was going to be resurructed without any of his clothes.
Granted, every single person in the room was man, but it was still something awkward to see another naked person sprawled out on the floor, even if they were of the same gender.
Suzuki swiftly pulled out a cloak and threw it over Bellriver.
Bellriver's, or rather, Tukuta's human body was far more muscular than Suzuki would've thought. Had he been a bodybuilder?
Tukuta rose up slowly and noticed Momonga. "Shinigami..."
"E-Eh?" Suzuki muttered. Well, it did make sense from some perspective, but shouldn't Bellriver remember him. "Do you not remember me? Momonga?"
Tukuta looked him up and down before saying, "Yes. Momonga. How on earth..."
Hachiman spoke up. "I guess you have a bunch of questions. Basically, for some reason, Yggdrasil has come to life, and Momonga was stuck in his skeleton avatar. Everyone else is human though, as far as we know, and the Great Tomb of Nazarick is real too. You died, and we brought you back to life with magic. Ah, right, we didn't meet before, I'm Hachiman- or Ulbert."
Tukuta's eyes widened. "Ulbert! Did you get the message I sent you?"
"Yeah," Hachiman said. "Thing is that I didn't really understand most of it. Good thing we could bring you back though, eh?"
"Before we continue," Suzuki said as he reached into his inventory for a spare pair of robes, "you should change into these."
As the clothes were magical, they fit him automatically. "These are surprisingly comfortable... so you're saying everything in the guild base became real? Even our weapons?"
"Yes," Suzuki said. "I know a lot of you said that I could sell off your items when you quit... but I couldn't bring myself to do that. Your entire set of gear is there somewhere in the treasury."
"I don't know if you'll be able to use them though," Hiroshi said.
"Beg pardon, but who are you?" Tukuta asked.
"Ah, sorry. I'm Hiroshi- or rather, you must have known me as Herohero," Hiroshi said.
"How come the rest of you aren't like... Momonga over there?" Tukuta asked.
"Ah, we don't really know," Hachiman said. "We think it was because he was still logged in when they shut the servers down."
"They shut the servers down?" Tukuta asked, bewildered.
"I think we need to give him a little update on what's happened in the past few years."
"Years!? How long was I dead?" Tukuta asked.
"A bit under two years, actually," Hachiman replied. "So yeah... welcome back to the guild..."
Then they heard a knocking at the door. Sebas's voice rang out,
"A thousand apologies for my interruption, Supreme Ones, but Touch-sama wishes to meet with you."
"Who was that?"
"Sebas."
"The butler?"
"Yeah."
"Wait- Touch Me? How'd he get here?"
Just then Suzuki received a Message from Solution telling him that Tabito had woken up, and that he wanted to come here. Tabito was also rather calm.
"Alright then," Suzuki said as he felt a pain in his nonexistent stomach. This was clearly going to take a lot of work to clear up. He replied to Solution and told her to take Tabito to where they were, and also he permitted Sebas to be let in.
A man walked behind Sebas, who looked around the room, and whose eyes stopped when looking at Suzuki.
"May I present, my creator, Touch Me-sama," Sebas said with a bow.
"Okay, okay, so that's what's going on..." Tukuta said.
Tukuta, Hayato, Hachiman, Hiroshi, Tabito, and Suzuki were all gathered around the room. Sebas had left, and they had spent the better part of an hour trying to sort things out between themselves.
Hayato had turned out to be the hardest to placate- he was still on duty as a police officer and demanded to know why they had stolen the equipment which had led him there in the first place. Suzuki felt like slapping himself when he realized that he had made a huge mistake leaving that stuff in his apartment- there was probably going to be a swarm of Kenpeitai bursting into his residence in a few hours.
When Hayato found out that it was Hachiman who had basically caused everything, he became even more irritated. The old rivalry between the two flared up and they glared at each other even now. It had nearly come to violence when Suzuki inserted himself between the two, defusing the situation partially.
Much of his ability to calm things down came to the fact that he looked like an eldritch monster and no one really wanted to get on his bad side.
While all of this was going on, Tabito had been watching from the sidelines. He had initially assumed this was all a dream, but as time went on, and he observed more and more things, he realized that there was no way that anyone's mind could have thought of something so convoluted. Slowly, he began to accept that this, for some reason, was real.
Tabito had tried to see if he retained his magical powers from the game, though much like Hachiman, he had been greatly disappointed when he found that he couldn't do anything that he could've done in game.
Tukuta had spent his time in a corner with Hiroshi, who had been filling him in on some more details of what happened since Tukuta had passed away.
They had now all reached a natural pause in their discussion, and it was now a question of what they should do next.
"I say that we take in Ulber- I mean Hachiman," Hayato said, clearly still playing his role as police officer. "If any of you don't comply, you will be aiding and abetting in his crimes!"
The thing was though, that Suzuki and Hiroshi had already done things which were no doubt going to turn the Japanese government against them. Tukuta knew he was a marked man and enemy of various people in power, so he was off the table too. As such, Hayato's only possible ally was Tabito.
Tabito however, did not seem to be inclined towards helping either side.
"As it is, it looks like you're outnumbered," Hachiman said with a coy smile.
"Are you really that dumb? What do you intend to do- outrun the police forever? Eventually law enforcement is going to find you!" Hayato spat back.
"Then let them," Hachiman said and folded his arms. "I think you don't realize the magnitude of just what's happening here. First of all, we have powers that the Megacorps could not even dream of. Suzuki here for example, could level an entire city, teleport away, and repeat until all of Japan is a pile of ash. Our NPCs under our command could easily withstand even nuclear strikes. The only real threat to us are other guilds, assuming that they exist, and even if they do, all that means is that the guilds, not the Megacorps or the government, are the ones in charge of the world right now. Why should we give up or roll over then? If anything, we should do everything in our ability to seize as much power as possible."
"Hachiman-san, we know that some random people have also gained magical powers," Suzuki chimed in. "Our dominance is in no way assured."
"Sure they have," Hachiman said. "But what? Third tier magic? If I was still in my avatar form my piss would be stronger. And given all of our vassal NPCs, there is no way that we would lose to anyone unless it was one of the other top guilds..."
"And what if those guilds exist?" Hayato asked. "What if they go ahead and side with the Megacorps- because that is the right thing to do after all? What will you do then?"
"Right thing to do? Right thing to do?" Hachiman said and nearly began laughing. "You're telling me that the epitome of greed, those Megacorps which ruined our world, which practically forced a good portion of the workplace into indentured servitude, are supposed to be the good guys here? And why would any of the guild serve the Megacorps when they could seize power for themselves?"
"That said, I think he does have a point," Tabito chimed in. "Hayato I mean- shouldn't we try to keep our heads down rather than drawing the attention of the authorities?"
"Well, that's easily solved," Hachiman said. "All that Hayato has to do is call his buddies and say that whatever he saw was a false alarm, and we move those devices to Nazarick."
"Are you sure our anti-divination spells will work against things like satellite spying?" Hiroshi asked. "That's kind of something I've wondered about... like would Invisibility make us invisible to cameras also? It isn't supposed to work on things like golems, right? And aren't cameras like a kind of machine and should be "immune?" Or what it make it so that if a normal human viewed the footage, they still wouldn't be able to see us?"
"Okay then," Hachiman said. "Let's do an experiment then- we'll put the storage devices somewhere else. Somewhere where we'll have Nigredo cast magic against divination and we'll see if they're discovered. If not, that means that we're all safe, and if not, at the very least the location of our Guild Base won't be compromised, right?"
It did seem like a good idea.
"You're basically asking me to commit treason," Hayato said. "Against the Kenpeitai."
"Hey, it's them or your friends," Hachiman said. His voice then took on a threatening tone. "And as far as I can see, we seem to be far stronger than you or your new friends."
Even ignoring Suzuki, with the levels that Hiroshi had gained and also with Hachiman's World Item, it was clear who would win. Hayato hadn't even brought his service revolver with him.
"Enough, can't we decide with a majority vote as always?" Suzuki said.
Everyone else then looked at him strangely. Well, it was how they had made decisions back in the old days of the guild, but this was real life. Not Yggdrasil.
"I don't have a problem with that," Hachiman said.
"That's because you know you have the majority vote!" Hiroshi retorted. "And majority vote or not, what you're all doing is still illegal!"
Hachiman shrugged. "They killed off Bellriver, even though that should've been illegal. And he would've never gotten justice ever. Do you support that?"
"That doesn't mean that we can defy the rules," Hachiman said. "The law has to be followed. Two wrongs don't make a right-" His voice then dropped. "Then again, you've always been like that, haven't you? Even in the game... constantly bitching about how everything else was unfair and why that meant you could take it out on other people. You acted like an edgelord teenager and even now you seem to be living in some delusion- that the real world is something that you can actually conquer and control."
Hachiman smirked. "Let's bring some of my demons in and we'll see how delusional my powers are when I use them on you!"
"Enough! No more fighting!" Suzuki said.
"Well, Suzuki-san, your idea of a vote is kind of, well, weird," Tabito said. "All of us aren't even here. If it was a game then we could let it slide and say the others hadn't logged in for so long they shouldn't count, but the fact is, there are more of us out there, right?"
"And there's no guarantee some people won't hold grudges," Tukuta added.
It was one thing not to hold grudges no matter the outcome of a decision when it was a video game, but when your actual life was on the line, there was no guarantee that they could live up to that ideal.
"Well, given that we can't reach a decision," Suzuki said, "I would first like to hear what Bellr- I mean, Tukuta-san has to say regarding why he was killed in the first place."
"Ah, right, that," Tukuta said. "You see, I worked for a firm which basically got rid of... problems for the Megacorps, as a kind of fixer, I guess you'd say. I found out something interesting about a certain company- namely that all of a sudden, a dozen employees had committed suicide on the same day."
The odds of that happening were of course, quite low.
"As such, I didn't think that was true so I did some snooping around," Tukuta said. "A bit too much I guess... the thing was that I was tasked with getting rid of the bodies. It was clear none of these people had died due to suicide- they didn't have a mark on them! They didn't even look sick, and most of them were young. And to see twelve of them die at the same time- well it was clear that there was some sort of corporate conspiracy going on. But, it turned out that I dug too far, and I was then, well, you know, taken out..."
"What was the company?" Hachiman asked.
And then Tukuta dropped a name which all of them knew.
The company that had developed and designed Yggdrasil.
Pandora's Actor was doing what he did best- organizing items within the Treasury when the clicking of heels reached his ears.
A visitor? That was uncommon. Few even knew of the Treasury.
He turned his head to see it was Albedo.
"Al-bay-do-sama! What can this one do for you?" he asked.
Albedo sighed. While she had initially dismissed the idea of relying on this person for help, she quickly realized she would be out of options soon. "I require you assistance for a matter."
"Ah, what can I, Guardian of the Treasury, do for you?" he answered.
"I have an idea," Albedo said. "With the return of the other Supreme Beings, it appears that the authority of Momonga-sama is slowly being eroded. Nazarick itself may fall into civil war soon... and with that, we need to be ready to secure Momonga-sama's position as the supreme ruler of Nazarick."
"Eh? Civil war? The Supreme Beings fighting amongst themselves!?" Pandora's Actor then wringed his hands. "Surely such an event could not come to pass?"
"I just watched Solution let Tabula-sama leave his room because he asked too," Albedo said. "Soon, conflicting orders are going to be sent all over glorious Nazarick."
"So, why do you want my help?" Pandora's Actor asked. "I can mimic the other Supreme Beings, but I can't fool any of the NPCs into thinking that I am them if that's what you want."
"I don't need you to do that," Albedo said. "I need you to assist me if we need to eliminate any threats to Momonga-sama. In addition, I need you to try and not give away powerful artifacts to the other NPCs or the Supreme Beings. They aren't as strong as they once were- but if they find a way to regain their old forms- we need to keep them from getting their old items."
"So, it's just going to be you and me?" Pandora's Actor asked. "That... how many people could we realistically take on?"
"Not just two," Albedo said. "We will have the mercenary summons which aren't otherwise assigned to the other NPCs, numbering close to about three hundred. And I have a feeling that I can rely on my younger sister, Rubedo. Of course, the two of us need to work together on this."
"Understood," Pandora's Actor said. "But pardon me, what is Momonga-sama's opinion on this?"
Albedo's smile vanished for an instant before reappearing again. "Momonga-sama, due to his love of the others, may not see their betrayal coming. In a way, is that not also our duty as Guardians? To protect him from all threats- even those that might arise due to his own actions?"
Pandora's Actor had a blank expression- which wasn't too different from his normal expression, but he seemed to be thinking about it. "Alright..."