The moment the light dissipated into the void, the suffocating sensation that hit them made everyone stop involuntarily.
They landed in a ruined, dim alleyway.
This was the Tokyo Metropolis slums in the year 2138 AD.
The air was thick with the pungent stench of chemicals and rust, while the sky was smothered beneath a heavy yellow-green toxic haze, as thick and greasy as filthy oil.
As far as the eye could see, the narrow, gloomy streets were filled with people in tattered rubber protective suits and crude gas masks.
Their bodies were gaunt as sticks, their eyes hollow like clockwork mechanical corpses. Silent and numb, they dragged their feet through the mud.
Lin Xiao tapped his fingertip and quietly activated the Myriad Worlds Chat Group's synchronized holographic livestream.
On the other side of the screen.
Yukino Yukinoshita in her upscale Chiba Prefecture apartment, Emiya Shirou in his Fuyuki City kitchen, Shinobu Kocho at the Butterfly Mansion, Homura Akemi, and the others watched the scene unfold before them. The group chat fell into deathly silence.
There were no comments, no wisecracks.
Even those veterans who had seen every kind of storm were left with nothing but a heavy chill in their hearts when faced with such cold despair, where even breathing had to be paid for and ordinary people were treated as nothing more than disposable supplies.
"This place is monopolized by three massive multinational corporations. Their security forces are fully armed corporate private armies."
Ainz's voice trembled beneath his hood. "They... control everything."
"Leave it to me."
Bruce Wayne's face was icy, without the slightest hesitation. A faintly glowing nano-interface sprang from his gauntlet, and he drove it straight into an abandoned public data terminal by the roadside.
"Bzz!!"
The supercomputing core, the pinnacle of Wayne Enterprises technology, tore