"I was human once, you know?" The Demon Lord spoke in a weary tone while looking at the scene of devastation around him.
Broken walls, fallen buildings, and many corpses were sprawled on the ground where once stood the biggest capital of the continent.
Just yesterday, this had been a place full of life, with millions of citizens moving around, fearful of the imminent visit of the Demon Lord.
"I was not from here, but from another planet called Earth." The Demon Lord continued his speech, seemingly unbothered by the destruction of the city. If asked, he probably wouldn't even remember the name of this place or which country it belonged to.
"Damn, it's been so long that I don't even remember my own name, but I guess it doesn't matter."
"Well, after coming here, I was unceremoniously killed and turned into a skeleton, but miraculously, I kept my conscience and awakened a World Domination System." His voice was laced with nostalgia.
"Yeah, those were the good days, everything was fresh and exciting. But now…" He sighed.
" The system was a bit useless, but it promised that if I dominated the world, it would fulfill one of my wishes, so I had to give it a shot, right?"
"It took a few years, but I killed the necromancer who made me a skeleton. Then I spent a good while learning his spells and began to create an army of undead."
"I was still very human back then," he sighed again, " I tried to govern a few villages as a benevolent ruler, improving the lives of the villagers, and hoping to have a happy co-existence with them."
"But I underestimated the prejudice against undeads in this world. Not even a month passed before parties of adventurers began to reclaim the villages, with the villagers revolting with them. My army was destroyed, and I needed to flee."
"At the time, I tried to think positively, maybe only those villages were like this, and I would have better luck elsewhere?"
"Yeah, I was that naive. But after trying again in villages in another country and facing the same results, I had to face reality."
"In anger, I destroyed a few villages to replenish my army, and that was when I discovered a loophole in the system."
"You see, for the system, a destroyed village is a dominated village. Maybe it's something like, if there is no village, then it doesn't count as a place I need to dominate? I don't care why, to be honest."
"I was really happy with this discovery, cause you see, I didn't need to go through the trouble of governing places that would inevitably betray me; I just needed to destroy everything, and the system would give me my wish hehehe." The Demon King laughed.
"Anyway, I went through villages, reached towns, cities, and finally countries. At some point, people began to call me Demon Lord, and I accepted it."
"After that, there were some monsters who swore allegiance to me. They always said the same thing: that they admired me for being the Demon Lord and wanted to serve me."
"I accepted them at first, but as more and more of them tried to overthrow me and become the new Demon Lord, it got so annoying that I gave up on having them. I would dominate the world using only my undead."
"Just like that, centuries passed, until we reached today."
"What do you think?" The Demon King turned to a man on the ground with his mouth closed.
The man looked middle-aged, with refined features that gave him a noble appearance. It helped that he wore a crown.
"Oh, right. I cast [Silence] on you since you kept interrupting my story. I'm sorry, last king of the humans." The Demon King moved his hand, and the force holding the Human King's mouth shut vanished.
"GASP!" The Human King desperately gasped for air.
"Oh! I forgot that you needed to breathe to live, sorry." The Demon King seemed legitimately apologetic. He almost unintentionally killed the last human on the continent. "Take your time."
After a few minutes of catching his breath, the Human King turned to the Demon King with eyes full of hatred.
"What do you want from me, you deranged undead!?"
"So we're going straight for name-calling, huh?"
The Demon King felt an urge to kill this human immediately, but held back.
He moved his hand and conjured a throne where he promptly sat.
"What do I want?" He began to think about it.
At first, he wanted to go back to being human, or to go back to Earth as a human; he couldn't remember the details anymore.
But as time passed, the perspective of his wish grew ever distant. He focused more on the job and stopped thinking about his future.
He hadn't thought about what he would wish for in more than a century, but now that the wish was so close to him, he needed to think this through.
Did he wish to go back to Earth?
He couldn't even remember his own name; he didn't even remember what country he was from or what language he spoke there, so even if he went back, would that place feel like home to him?
And to be a human? He looked at the Human King on the ground, and then at the many corpses in the city. Did he want to be like them? Not really. He was too used to being powerful, so he didn't want to go back to being a weak creature that could be easily killed by an amateur necromancer right after arriving in this world.
"I want to be acknowledged," the words came from his mouth on their own, surprising him.
"I want to have my existence acknowledged by someone." Yes, this was why he didn't kill this human immediately.
"Destroying everything was the most efficient way to dominate this world, but I must admit that even I feel lonely sometimes." He felt a weight leaving his non-existent heart.
"There are times when I even miss my unloyal subordinates and their machinations to kill me." It felt good to admit this. He wondered when was the last time he talked with someone?
"So, Human King, I kept you alive so you could witness this accomplishment of mine. To see the moment I finally dominate this empty world." There was some self-mockery in his tone.
Here was the strongest being in the world, the Demon King, someone who accomplished his quest of world domination, but still couldn't purge his heart of its human need for companionship.
The Human King looked at him with wide eyes. Never in a million years would he have guessed that this was why the Demon King kept him alive.
Then he laughed.
His laugh was full of derision, mockery, and hatred. His eyes turned red, and thick tears rolled from them with reckless abandon.
The Demon King waited patiently for the Human King to vent his emotions while sitting on the throne. For some reason, he felt nervous.
"Demon King, I really didn't expect to see such a pathetic side from you in the end." The Human King stood up and unsheathed his sword.
The Demon King saw this, knowing full well that he could stop the Human King from wielding the sword if he so wanted, but decided to let it happen.
"You destroyed the whole world, and now you feel lonely? Don't make me laugh!" The sword was of a lustrous silver. The sunlight reflected off its surface, making it look like a sacred sword full of divine might. The Demon Lord felt like he had faced someone with this sword before, but couldn't quite remember who. This king, he figured, might have been one of his descendants.
"I hope you live a long, lonely life, full of regrets for the harm you inflicted on this world, you monster!" Then the Human King brought his sword against his own neck, decapitating himself in a swift motion.
His head fell on the ground and rolled until it hit the feet of the Demon King, leaving a trail of blood on its way.
He grabbed the head and looked at it.
"He didn't need to do that, did he?" He asked, but no one answered.
"Sigh." There were only mindless undead surrounding him now, and in the whole world, there was no longer any living being remaining.
"Now what?" This time, something responded.
[World Domination Quest- Complete]
[The Host can now make a wish]
"A wish, huh?" He looked at the sky, thinking about what he wanted.
He wanted companionship, but also to continue being powerful. He had no attachment to this world, a hateful place that only brought him headaches.
In this case…
"I wish to go to another world, one where I have many companions that won't betray me and where I'm powerful."
A blinding light came from the sky and hit him.
***
Momonga sat on a throne, with the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown in hand, and a lot of difficult emotions to process.
In the end, no one stayed with him to wait for the server to shut down.
Yggdrasil was coming to an end, and with it Ainz Ooal Gown and The Great Tomb of Nazarick.
Looking around on this 10th floor, he could see quite a few NPCs that he and his friends had created with great love.
Albedo, the Guardian Overseer, whom he had selfishly changed to be in love with him as a way to replace the weird setting her creator designed for her, Pestonya, the Head Maid who led the 41 hommunculi maids, as well as Sebas, and the other Pleiades, who normally wouldn't be on this floor, but that he had brought here to wait with him for the end.
He looked up, silently admiring the 41 flags representing each member of the Guild Ainz Ooal Gown, the infamous guild that had once reached the 9th rank on Yggdrasil. A guild so powerful and so influential that it had once survived an attack made by a coalition of 1500 players.
Now it only had 4 members, and he was the only one who actually played, desperately trying to keep the guild base functioning on the off chance that one of his friends might come back.
He wanted them to see that the place of their memories was still here, that they could come back at any time, and everything would still be the same.
But no one came back. One by one everyone of them chose to prioritize their real lives, and he was the only one who stayed attached to this game.
And right now, he thought, even that would be taken from him.
"What's so great about the real world, anyway?" The world was a dump of pollution controlled by corporations.
He thought about the orphans dying on the streets, and how he could have easily become one of them.
He thought about his mother fainting in the kitchen and never waking up again, her body still warm in his arms as his childish mind struggled to comprehend what was happening.
He thought about his awful work as a salesman and how his boss had been hinting at replacing him and his colleagues with a robot.
"Why is it wrong to want to preserve this happy memory?" He didn't have friends in real life. Ainz Ooal Gown had been the first friend group he had been a part of, and he knew that if it weren't for Touch Me reaching out for him, he wouldn't even have been able to be a part of this.
For him The Great Tomb of Nazarick represented the happiest moments of his life. It was a memento of his friendship with the other 40 members of Ainz Ooal Gown, and he was sad to see how little this meant to them.
"Sigh." He looked at the clock; it was 23:45, and in another 15 minutes the server would shut down.
"ARRRRGGHH!" He suddenly felt something invading his head, something big and powerful. It was expanding.
He felt an irresistible force from within, touching what felt like his very being and forcing him to expose all his secrets, desires, and regrets.
His memories flashed, starting with his childhood and extending until his 12 years playing Yggdrasil.
Hum… I see. The system only moved my soul, and it placed it on someone compatible with me.
He heard a wise voice coming from his head. It sounded amused by the situation.
"Who are you? What do you want?" He yelled at it.
People are asking me that a lot today.
Well, little boy, I'm someone who, much like you, has felt his fair share of loneliness and who wishes for companionship.
Unfortunately for you, a higher power decided to place my soul on your body, but you don't have to worry.
I could erase your whole being if I so desired, but I feel no small amount of kinship towards you after seeing your situation, so I decided to fuse our souls.
Let's become one!
Their souls interlocked, and the fusion began.
***
Momonga, was he still Momonga?, woke up after a while, still feeling a bit confused.
He felt a mixture of thoughts and memories still wrestling in his mind, but he ignored them.
Looking up, he saw that there were only 5 minutes until the server shut down. He also saw the familiar window of his World Domination System loading; what would come of it, he didn't know, but its presence made him think he was about to be transported to another world.
The circumstances of Suzuki Satoru, also known as Momonga, didn't correspond to his wish, so he figured that something would change pretty soon, and by his memories, the server of a game shutting down was as good a trigger as any.
He felt a wave of tenderness towards the NPCs surrounding him, but also a lot of resentment for their creators for having abandoned him.
"There are still 5 minutes, let's not waste them." He smiled and activated the NPC creation tools with the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown.