Overlord - Prologue

“Ah, big sis… she had a less mainstream stage name, Kazeumi Kumi. Her old fans used to call her Kaze-chin. She changed it several times, but she liked it the best.”

“I see…”

At a glance, the pink slime seemed to be spinning round and round the nephilim. Although it might be a kind of dance, this bizarre, unbelievable sight reminded onlookers of some wicked ceremony. Of course, it was an everyday scene in a clan of heteromorphs.

“Then, my apologies for interrupting you ladies’ fun, but since everyone is here, we should be able to begin. Or rather, the faster we start, the faster we finish. Oi, guys, the meeting’s about to start.”

After Touch Me raised his voice and stood up, so did everyone else. Everyone shuffled to the round table, one by one, finding a place they liked and sitting down.

“Then, we shall begin the meeting. I have some things I want to discuss with you later, so I hope everyone can give me some time. Next, has anybody discovered anything this week? Does anyone have anything to share?”

One could say that these meetings were conferences for communication. It was a weekly organized sharing of information and requests for help. That said, new information did not come easily.

According to the developers’ website, Yggdrasil was a game of exploration, and so many things were mysteries. It was a game where all you were told was the controls before being thrown into the deep end. While a lot of information had already been collected, most of it pertained to dungeons or other locations, and it was estimated that only 30 % of the nine worlds had been mapped so far.

For instance, there were the World-Class Items, also known as the “crapped out”. There were supposed to be 200 of them in total, but according to the developers, only 50 had been found so far. Many players had tried hard to look for them, but this was all they could come up with.

As working adults, the members of the clan played during their free time and did not have time for in-depth investigations. Therefore, they usually did not have any information worth mentioning.

However, today was different.

“Yes.”

A hand went up in response to Touch Me’s question to the clan.

Described in a word, the speaker was a ninja. He wore the stereotypical ninja outfit and a weird mask, with two swords at his waist. Saying he was anything other than a ninja would be a lie.

He was one of Momonga’s earliest comrades — Nishiki Enrai.

“Nishiki-san. Did something happen?”

“Indeed, Touch-san. This is a truly incredible discovery.”

As he said that, everyone else went “ohhhh” in curiosity and excitement.

“—I’ve discovered an unexplored dungeon.”

Joy and curiosity were masked by surprise, and many of the clan members made even greater sounds of awe.

Everyone asked Nishiki Enrai questions. Momonga, Peroroncino and Touch Me were no different. The only one who didn’t seem excited were the girls, Yamaiko and Bukubukuchagama.

The game Yggdrasil was composed of nine separate worlds. Each of them was ridiculously huge, and there were many places within them which were difficult to explore. For instance, there were gigantic swamps, verdant expanses of rainforest, scorching deserts, and the like. One needed special equipment to delve into the dungeons there, as well as a proper strategy and the determination to throw one’s life away for the trip. Even so, there were many people who wasted their time on a trip.

This was because these hard-to-find dungeons contained monsters which dropped valuable data crystals. Anyone would be excited to find a hitherto unexplored dungeon. One could say it was a gold mine.

In addition, discovering a dungeon could affect the world ranking of a guild. So there were no downsides to it.

“Where exactly did you find it?”

The one who asked on behalf of the incredulous clan members was not the clan leader Touch Me, but the man who had taken a goat-headed demon as his avatar, Ulbert Alain Odle.

He was a member of a class that was called World Disaster. In Yggdrasil, there were a limited number of people who could join it — because the requirement for taking levels in this class was killing its previous holder. It was a class which specialized in destructive magic, and he was the man with the highest firepower in the clan.

Before opening his mouth, Nishiki Enrai — who was as blank-faced as the rest of the clan — snuck a peek at Touch Me.

“…Are you aware of the huge poison swamp in the marshes of Helheim?”

“Do you mean the gigantic camp of the poison-resistant Tuvegs? That poison swamp?”

“That’s the one. I found it in the swamps there.”

“Amazing. But how did you do it? A lot of people did aerial reconnaissance, but none of them reported finding a dungeon. I’ve seen their recordings, and they weren’t lying.”

The quiet speaker was part of the clan’s intellectual elite, Tabula Smaragdina.

His fearsome heteromorphic avatar, wearing gear which made onlookers think of torture tools, was the fruit of his hard work.

“We’re not doubting you~”