Is That Him?! Momonga!

Using magic, Hades created an underground space and placed the newly made bed inside. He left a discreet ventilation hole among the grass above, then enjoyed a wonderful night's sleep.

As expected of a magic bed with a buff, Hades woke feeling refreshed and full of energy. The only downside was that he was hungry again, and had nothing to eat.

"Come to think of it, it's strange that I haven't seen any animals in such a vast forest."

Hades put the wooden bed away in his Infinite Backpack. Although the wood used to make it came from the forest, a small portion of the materials had come from YGGDRASIL.

Until he knew whether this world had a way to replenish high-grade materials, he couldn't afford to waste them. Besides, he still had some space in his backpack.

Hades stretched, then suddenly crouched low. He tensed his muscles and sprang upward, stirring up a whirlwind in the cramped space.

He was about to hit the ceiling, but Hades made no attempt to change his posture. Instead, he clenched his fists and shot straight up, bursting through the roof of the underground space like a bullet and emerging onto the surface.

But breaking through the thick ground wasn't enough to dissipate the force of his leap. It wasn't until Hades had risen dozens of meters into the air that the momentum finally began to fade.

At that moment, a blazing sunset and an immense forest below came into view.

"It's already evening? I slept all day."

Hades wasn't surprised. The previous night, he had tested his skills until just before dawn before finally resting. He was usually pretty lazy, too, and often slept until noon.

When the force carrying him upward finally vanished, he felt himself begin to fall. Unhurried, Hades activated his Necklace of Flight and hovered in the air.

Although Hades didn't know how strong people in this world were, having all his YGGDRASIL abilities gave him some confidence.

So his next step was to gather information. And to do that, he would naturally start with the village from the previous night and learn the basics.

He remembered the man saying that this was the border of Re-Estize, with the Baharuth Empire to the west. Judging by the word "empire," and based on his experience in his original world, the level of civilization here probably wasn't very high.

There was still some time before sunset. If he went now, he probably wouldn't run into the same situation as last night.

Thinking this, Hades flew toward the village. It was a reasonable distance from the forest—not too close, not too far—and he reached the village from the previous night in no time.

But when Hades arrived above it, he suddenly sensed that something was wrong. From the sky, the village looked as though it had been ravaged by war. Many houses had burned down to their ruins, and broken pottery and fragments of metal littered the ground. Even the shed the man had kindly let him use was now nothing but charred wood.

From where he was, he could smell something burning wafting up from below. Something had clearly happened here. His gaze shifted, and he noticed what looked like some kind of liquid splashed across the ground and walls.

"What happened here?"

Hades froze. Just as he was about to descend, his eyes widened and his heart began to race. He immediately shot upward, climbing until the village houses were no more than tiny specks to the naked eye.

But he didn't stop there. He pulled a monocular out of his Infinite Backpack. It was a cash-shop item from the game, useful for scouting in person during guild wars. It couldn't be disrupted by anti-intelligence magic, and could magnify an image up to a hundred times.

Of course, the magnification depended on how much you spent. In Hades's case, he had bought the highest-grade monocular, capable of a hundredfold magnification.

Hades put his eye to the lens and looked down. When he made out the scene, his heart began to pound even harder.

No mistake. It's him!

The figure in the monocular's lens was none other than Momonga, the guild leader of Ainz Ooal Gown, the notorious guild that had run rampant through YGGDRASIL.

"Ha, this is trouble." Hades kept watching Momonga below. There was no mistaking that luxurious mage robe, edged with gold thread.

He didn't believe in coincidences like this. There couldn't be a second outfit just like it. In YGGDRASIL, equipment could be customized to look however you wanted, just like classes, so identical designs were rare unless someone had deliberately copied them.

Besides, the Great Tomb of Nazarick lay northwest of this village. There was no way that wasn't Momonga.

"No. I need to calm down first."

Hades activated the Seed of the World Tree, and in the space of a breath, he became an undead character. The undead passive ability finally calmed him down.

He wasn't so excited just because he'd run into a player in this strange world. He was alarmed because a member of that evil heteromorphic guild had come here—and he was their guild leader, Momonga.

That put him in a difficult position. What Momonga had done to him in the past hadn't really amounted to much, but Ainz Ooal Gown's infamy had left Hades with a terrible impression of them. Unless something forced his hand, he wanted nothing to do with those people.

After a whole night of testing, he knew he could use all his YGGDRASIL abilities. That would be an enormous temptation to an ordinary person.

Momonga would surely feel the same. What would happen if a villain who had run wild in the game suddenly gained that kind of power?

In the early twenty-second century, environmental destruction had become severe, and primary industries—agriculture in particular—had collapsed. The sky was often shrouded in black smog, and the sun was almost never visible. Toxic fog engulfed the streets, making it impossible to go outside without a gas mask. With so little sunlight, plants withered away, while birds and insects rapidly declined. Water pollution was just as bad, and rivers had turned into murky torrents that were nothing like actual rivers. Water treatment plants were crippled by the severe contamination. Without a purification filter attached to the tap, the water was undrinkable.

The Amazon rainforest had been completely cleared. As environmental pollution worsened, traditional farming in open fields declined, and crops were mainly grown in domed greenhouses. Agricultural products had skyrocketed in price, becoming luxurious goods that ordinary people couldn't afford.

In the modern world, only wealthy residents of the [Arcologies] could enjoy the pleasure of fine dining. The poor subsisted on processed products made purely for nutrition and [supplements].

Nations were controlled by megacorporations. To serve their own interests, the corporations rewrote laws and controlled the people. The world had barely managed to hold itself together until the twenty-first century, but by the early twenty-second, the natural environment had collapsed.

Food shortages sparked riots and coups. The politicians of the time were strung up by revolutionaries, paralyzing the political system. The megacorporations took the opportunity to seize control of the judiciary, legislature, and executive branch, becoming the de facto rulers of the nations.

The government had stopped functioning, and the police were little more than a formality. Even as public safety deteriorated, most people kept working diligently. Once fired by a company, they had no way to survive, so almost no one resisted, even when treated cruelly.

Homeless children were a common sight in poor neighborhoods. Even finding a corpse lying openly in the street was nothing unusual.

Those who belonged to megacorporations lived inside the [Arcologies], in a paradise entirely unlike the outside world. Each [Arcology] was effectively a country, with poor districts built around it to form a city.

Terrorist attacks against the wealthy, as well as conflicts between the wealthy themselves, sometimes led to wars. But those who fought in them were usually poor people.

In 2118, a war broke out between [Arcologies] in Europe, and a neo-Nazi organization emerged.

After megacorporations took control, compulsory education was abolished. Officially, it was done to "reduce public spending," but in reality, the wealthy were stripping the poor of their ability to think.

To the wealthy, the poor were worker bees who existed to serve them. They wanted them to know nothing, think about nothing, and become cogs in the company machine.

Even primary school cost a considerable sum, but poor parents tried to send their children to school whenever possible so they could find decent jobs. Still, tuition was extremely hard for poor families to afford, and some people even worked themselves to death trying to pay for it.

Anyone who graduated from primary school and gained a basic education could do work requiring a relatively high level of intelligence. They could be considered one of the lucky cogs.

As the natural environment disappeared, outdoor activities such as sports, hiking, and sightseeing vanished. Fine dining made with expensive agricultural products and indoor stadiums with high admission fees were luxuries only the wealthy could enjoy.

The poor were limited to indoor entertainment, including board games like chess and Go, watching movies online, and online games such as DMMO-RPGs.

Once players logged in, they found themselves in beautiful natural surroundings, able to interact with many people and vent their dissatisfaction with their companies through combat.

DMMO-RPGs let people do all kinds of things they could no longer do in real life without even leaving home. For players, the game world could already be said to be reality itself.

Relationships between people had become cold and distant, and almost everyone had grown selfish.

So it wasn't surprising that some people regarded the game world as the real world. The things they didn't dare do in reality because of the law, they did in the game.

Here in the New World, there didn't seem to be any laws to hold them back. In his original world, the law had kept people in check outside the game.

But now both sides had YGGDRASIL's power, and neither was under the jurisdiction of the law...

Hades felt a chill run through him. Judging by the conditions of his original world, people whose minds had been warped by society's abuse would probably grow emboldened. Given the past behavior of Ainz Ooal Gown's members, that seemed very likely.

Perhaps, once they discovered him, they would kill him to ensure that they remained the only ones.

He held his breath. The reason he had climbed so quickly wasn't just that he'd seen Momonga. He had also spotted someone else he hadn't expected.

Albedo, an NPC from the ninth floor of the Great Tomb of Nazarick.

Hades had only ever made it as far as the eighth floor of Nazarick, so he shouldn't have known anything about the ninth floor. But precisely because of that, he had spent heavily to strengthen himself and had sought out information about Nazarick from all sides, preparing for the day he would topple Ainz Ooal Gown.

That information was extremely secret. Only members of Ainz Ooal Gown would know about it, but he had still managed to buy some.

Burning Three Eyes was a YGGDRASIL guild that specialized in selling information. They had once sent spies to infiltrate top guilds and steal information to sell. Not only had the game's operators refused to ban them, they had even praised them for it, infuriating every top guild.

In the end, an alliance of top guilds attacked Burning Three Eyes. Its members were repeatedly killed at their respawn points, the guild collapsed, and its members scattered.

Burning Three Eyes had behaved despicably, but Hades didn't care. If they could get him the information he needed, he would pay them.

Hades offered a high price to former members of Burning Three Eyes for information on everything beyond the eighth floor of the Great Tomb of Nazarick.

It wasn't until the game's popularity had declined that he managed to obtain some information on the ninth and tenth floors of Nazarick. By then, however, Hades had already lost interest in Ainz Ooal Gown. According to the former Burning Three Eyes member who sold him the information,

it had come from a member of Ainz Ooal Gown who had quit the game. Since Hades had offered a high price and YGGDRASIL's popularity had already passed its peak, that member had wanted to make some money, so he had let a few details slip.