Reality or Virtual?

00:00:01

00:00:02

00:00:03

Hades stared at the watch on his wrist. The digits kept steadily counting past midnight.

His breathing slowed, and tiny beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. He shifted his gaze from his watch to the surroundings.

Floating in the air, he saw an endless plain of grassland and forest below him. Above him stretched a clear, starry sky, with a full moon hanging high overhead and stars scattered around it like sparkling gems.

"Holy hell!"

Hades cursed. The cold air high above made him shiver involuntarily. He had shivered when he entered Helheim, too, but then it had only been because Helheim's hellish scenery had shocked him.

This time, though, the shiver was genuinely caused by the cold air up here. Come to think of it, why could he feel cold in YGGDRASIL? It made no sense.

According to the rules governing the use of nano-virtual devices, sensations such as pain were not permitted in games. So the temperature he could feel should have been limited to the temperature in his room.

But...

Hades wrapped his arms around himself. He could indeed feel the difference between the warmth of his hands and the cold air.

Although he couldn't understand why he could feel cold, there was something even more baffling than that.

"I should be in Helheim, right? But... where is this?"

Hades muttered stupidly to himself as he looked at the unfamiliar surroundings. Not long ago, he had arrived in the Helheim region where the Great Tomb of Nazarick was located. But now, aside from Nazarick's aboveground buildings, the surrounding swamps had inexplicably disappeared.

The sky was no longer gloomy, and the rolling forest in the distance seemed full of life. It was clearly unlike Helheim's usual bleak, death-filled atmosphere.

"No, no."

Hades looked at the digital watch on his wrist. It showed 00:01:29.

That time wouldn't be a problem in reality, but it was a big problem in YGGDRASIL. Hades remembered that the message Karamifamiao~ had sent him included an official YGGDRASIL announcement. The game was indeed scheduled to shut down at midnight, but why...

"No..."

Hades suddenly noticed another problem. He had been so shocked that he'd failed to realize the YGGDRASIL control panel, which was always in his field of vision, had disappeared.

Without the control panel, there was nowhere he could log out. In other words, he was trapped in this virtual world.

At the thought, Hades' heart leaped into his throat. He hurriedly tried to contact a GM, but fortunately, some YGGDRASIL functions could be controlled by voice.

But as the seconds ticked by, there was no response from the GM.

Hades then tried messaging the guild members who had still been online earlier, but none of them replied.

"What's going on?"

Hades floated in the air and clenched his hand. The sensation was so real, just like reality. To keep users safe and prevent confusion between the game and reality, this kind of realism was generally unavailable in nano-virtual devices. But his device was a high-end model in its series. Within legal limits, it could provide some realistic sensations for medical purposes—but only to a limited extent, not without limit.

"Could the device have malfunctioned?" Hades wondered.

But even if the device had malfunctioned, he should have been forcibly ejected when YGGDRASIL shut down. Could it be that the YGGDRASIL developers had postponed the shutdown at the same time as his device had broken down...?

"But that's far too unlikely a coincidence..." Hades shook his head, dismissing the possibility.

Just moments ago, as the clock struck midnight, the scenery before him had changed from the gloomy, death-filled Helheim to this pasture-like plain.

Most importantly...

Hades looked down at the aboveground buildings of the Great Tomb of Nazarick beneath him. Although he didn't understand what was happening, the existence of this heteromorphic guild reminded him that he still seemed to be inside YGGDRASIL.

Although he didn't know what had gone wrong, his priority now wasn't to storm Nazarick, but to find a way to log out. Being trapped in a virtual world was something he'd never imagined.

He gripped the staff in his hand. It looked ordinary, but it was one of the World Items: World Will, one of the Twenty.

Of the two hundred World Items in total, twenty were exceptionally powerful, far surpassing ordinary World Items. They were collectively known as the Twenty.

The World Item World Will in his hand was normally no different from an ordinary weapon, but it could grow without limit. Even a World Champion could be killed with one strike. Once activated, it could be used for twenty-four hours. After that time, the World Item, as one of the Twenty, would disappear and reappear at random somewhere in the world.

Although it was a one-use item, if he used it to attack Nazarick, surely they wouldn't end up in the same situation as the fifteen hundred players who had failed to conquer it.

After obtaining this World Item, Hades had considered using it to bring down Nazarick. But after running the numbers, he'd decided his chances of winning alone were too low.

That was because the embryo angel on Nazarick's Eighth Floor had an extremely troublesome skill. Without teammates to cover him, even if he could handle the monsters on the Eighth Floor—which were practically cheating—he would still be hit by the embryo angel's skill.

Besides, he knew nothing about what lay beyond the Eighth Floor, or what kinds of traps might be waiting for him.

Hades thought the safest approach was to gather a group of powerful level-100 players and attack together. But by the time he obtained World Will, the game had already passed its heyday. His friends had all quit or moved on to other games, and he didn't want to team up with strangers.

A World Item was a powerful temptation, and killing other players to take their equipment was commonplace in YGGDRASIL. Perhaps before they even conquered Nazarick, his unfamiliar teammates would rob him. After all, even near the end of the game, World Will remained an enticing prize.

Hades put World Will back in his inventory. Compared with bringing down Nazarick, finding a way to log out was far more important right now.

He glanced at Nazarick below and sighed. If this was still YGGDRASIL, Nazarick wouldn't be easy to break into. Besides, he had no way to contact any of the members of that heteromorphic guild. Even if he did, he didn't want to have much to do with them.

"Let's look around first. It really feels like I've come to the real world..."

Hades muttered to himself and, as a matter of course, flew off in the direction of the nearby area, using the same sensation he'd had when controlling the Fly spell in the game.