Ch. 1Three Days Later, YGGDRASIL Shuts Down
Key Plot Points
- Higashino Makoto, a game designer at YGGDRASIL's developer company, submits his resignation three days before the game's permanent shutdown.
- The manager approves quickly, exploiting the resignation to keep most of his pay; Makoto doesn't care because he only wanted to free himself from work to prepare for the game's final days.
- Makoto leaves the company, retrieves a newly purchased game helmet and a medical nutrient package from Beach Umbrella Pharmaceuticals (meant to keep him alive/awake for a week).
- He plans to spend the next three days in-game: building a character, creating NPCs, founding a small guild, and buying equipment, materials, and World Items with borrowed and liquidated money.
- He hopes to obtain a hidden Easter egg class for pure humans and a powerful World-Class Item to ensure survival after transmigration into the game world.
- He briefly considers joining the guild Ainz Ooal Gown (Suzuki Satoru's guild) but knows it's impossible; he accepts they may become enemies.
Character Development
- Higashino Makoto is pragmatic, calculating, and ruthless in resource management — willing to spend everything, go into debt, and forgo sleep to seize a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
- He shows no regret about quitting or about the original body's death; his focus is entirely on the future transformation of YGGDRASIL into a real world.
Significant Themes
- Corporate exploitation in a cyberpunk-like setting: employees are disposable, managers steal wages, and the company cares nothing for workers once they're useless.
- Last-minute preparation and survivalism: using knowledge of the game's future as an edge in an impending world-ending event.
- Cost of ambition: sacrificing health, wealth, and social stability for a gamble at immortality/power.
Character Interactions
- The manager: dismissive and predatory, approves the resignation only to pocket Makoto's wages.
- Makoto's internal thoughts drive the chapter; no other substantive interpersonal interactions occur.
Overall: This is a setup chapter introducing the protagonist's desperate, calculated plan to exploit YGGDRASIL's final days and the impending shutdown as a gateway to a new world.