Overlord - Prologue

Part 1

The massive door seemed to shriek as it slowly opened. The ear-piercing sound never went away, no matter how many times he oiled it.

The reason was clear — because the door’s metal parts were warped beyond repair.

Replacing those parts meant the door would no longer make that sound, but he — Suzuki Satoru — did not feel it was necessary.

Spending money on this door, which he only used when he went to and came back from work, was too much of a waste.

In addition, he had come to think of this creepy noise as a welcome, so he was somewhat attached to it.

The most important thing was that this noise could serve as a burglar alarm of sorts — provided any burglars actually came to this broken-down apartment.

Nobody would think there was anything valuable hidden behind a door that made this kind of noise.

After all, if anyone was going to the effort of robbing a house, they would probably rob another, more promising home instead.

The white lights in the ceiling came on, triggered by motion sensors, and the ancient air purifier rumbled to life.

The hollow, cold and dark sensation still remained, despite the lights turning on. The scene beyond this door was the very picture of lonely, gloomy abandonment. However, this was an everyday sight for him.

He closed the door and engaged the three locks, but even so, any thief could probably still break in.

“An electronic lock… huh?”

Perhaps he should use something better here.

However, Suzuki Satoru’s high-speed mental calculations concluded that he should not waste his limited capital on theft prevention. The possibility of someone robbing him was very low, and at the moment he felt that his effort would be wasted, so he discarded the idea of spending money on it.

Truthfully speaking, he was not that poor. His salary was meager, but he still lived above the poverty line. He had an ample balance in his bank accounts, but he had no idea how to spend that money.

He forced himself to be thrifty because he felt that he should not waste money. He felt that some day, he would have the chance to use that money to enjoy himself.

He tossed his beat-up shoes aside, and suddenly his steps through the entrance hall felt very light, as though the heaviness of his previous movements were all because of his shoes.

The kitchen was near the hallway, and it was practically empty. To begin with, there were no cooking utensils at all. Suzuki Satoru washed his hands in the kitchen, then took out a towel, which he wetted. After that, he opened the small, old fridge — for some reason, he felt bad that it was still there — and took out his dinner.

Eating was important. Hunger would reduce his ability to think, and it would inconvenience his comrades. He passed three doors along the way — the toilet, the bathroom, and the bedroom, before finally opening the innermost door, to be greeted by a somewhat small room.

A black frame about 100 centimeters wide rested upon a stand of some sort. In front of that was a comfortable-looking, high-class chair, complete with a footrest. On the side was a remote control and power cables, resting on a wheeled, two-layered table. These were the only things in the room, apart from a calendar on the wall.

The furniture was clustered in the center of the room. The lack of anything else might make people think that the owner of this room was an empty shell of a human being who had no interest in anything. Upon the table was the sole bastion that attested to his humanity; a photo of a happy family cradling a baby.

Suzuki Satoru came to the chair and laid his dinner on the table. Then, he undid his necktie and dumped it on the ground. After that, he pulled off his air filtering mask and his goggles in a single motion.

His coats were next. He peeled them off, one after the other, and the sense of liberation he felt blooming from within was evident on his face.

Then, he shed his pants. In his unsightly attire of shirt and boxers, he wiped himself down with the damp towel. Although he planned to take a steam bath afterwards, he could not stand the discomfort of a sticky body.

As he wiped himself, he hooked his clothes on the tip of his toe and kicked them into a small pile in the corner of the room. Although they were contaminated by the outside air, they were still his property, which he had paid for, so he would need to wash them to get the dirt off. However, he would do that later — it was too troublesome right now.

He focused on wiping his face and hands, the parts of him which had been exposed to the outside air, and then laid the blackened cloth on the desk. After that, he practically threw himself onto the chair. It was brand name stuff, made by one of the Big Eight corporations in the world. It might well have been the most expensive thing in the entire apartment. Despite how delicate it looked, it did not even creak under the weight of a grown man, in stark contrast with the main door.

The man sighed deeply, and looked at the ceiling with dull, expressionless eyes. Then, he turned a keen gaze on the calendar.

“Ah, it’s still a long way off…”

It was still the middle of the week. His next rest day seemed unbearably distant.

“Ah—. Ah—. Ah—. Ah—.”

As Suzuki Satoru mused on the number of days remaining, he ended up making a bunch of strangely modulated, and ultimately unintelligible noises with his mouth. After that — as though his batteries had run out — the noises stopped.

Then, a smile dawned on his face.

“Ah well, forget it.”

Indeed. As long as he thought of what would soon come, even pain like that could be forgotten.

Suzuki Satoru picked up his dinner, which he had just laid on the table.

He inserted the straw into the steak-flavored liquid food, and sucked it up.

It was little more than a sticky, meat-flavored gel. The truth was that it was awful, but he strongly felt that the pursuit of perfection in food was pointless. After all, it all became shit in the end, so investing money in it was pointless. The important thing was filling one’s stomach, and if it was not nutritious enough, there were always pills for that.

After that, Suzuki Satoru gulped down several multivitamin and supplement pills with a mouthful of health drink.

That was the end of his 220 yen dinner. He usually ate lunch outside, which was more expensive than the most economical meal he could get, so he had to save money on his breakfast and dinner.

After replenishing his nutrients, Suzuki Satoru finally began acting like a human being.

Unlike the clumsy fumbling when he first came home, his eyes were bright and his movements were nimble.

He picked up a black power cable, which was connected to a wall outlet.

Suzuki Satoru removed the protective plastic covering on one end of the plug, revealing a plug that was roughly three centimeters across. A silver gleam blended with the liquid glittering of the slippery protective fluid.

He held the cable in one hand and lifted up the hair on the back of his neck with the other. The subdued glint there came from the man-made object embedded in the nape of his neck.

With practiced ease, he opened the roughly-three-centimeter cover on the back of his neck. The sliding motion exposed the socket hidden beneath it.

He pressed the plug home, without any hesitation.

“Ohh…”

In time with his quiet sigh, he could feel light moving through his body, as though his blood vessels were filled with radiance.

The room had not changed, but his field of vision was different now.

Several windows popped up within his line of sight, showing him the information flowing into the processor within his brain.

He began operating the CPU.

Someone from an earlier age might look askance at the strange gestures he was performing in empty space. However, his cranial CPU read the weak electrical impulses of his synapses — in other words, it was thought-controlled — and converted it into data.

His thoughts reached his supercomputer through the medium of the cable, and turned on the television. The power came on, and a screen appeared in the black frame.

Within it, a primly-dressed Japanese female began reading the news.

“—The conflict that started last year between the 2nd European Arcology and the 3rd European Arcology—”

He manipulated an invisible console and changed the channel.

“—Regarding the three mega corporations in the capital, Neo Kyoto—”

He changed the channel again.

“—Arrested for the sale of illegal cyberware in Neo Kyoto Hachijo—”

The screen flickered rapidly between several channels, but the news he was hoping to see did not appear. Suzuki Satoru moved his hand, and turned off the TV.

“Then — let’s begin.”

He picked up the helmet that almost covered his entire head as mandated by the computer laws, connected another wire to his neck and linked it to the helmet, then put it over his head.

Although it was supposed to be a full-face helmet, the camera mounted on the outside would transmit its video signal directly to the brain, so his field of vision was still clear.

This helmet included a system that would automatically record everything which went on in the virtual world. As an aside, it would retain footage for a month, automatically deleting it after that.

A lot of people wanted to avoid wearing this helmet. It was only natural, since putting it on was something like giving up one’s privacy.

Yet, almost everyone wore these helmets.

It was not just because of the law.

It was because it protected people.

The neural nano-interface was a human brain augmentation which allowed it to function as a supercomputer — a super high-performance personal computer. It was essential for daily life, but sometimes they were used in crimes as well.

In particular, hackers would use the brains of others as a springboard to commit crimes.

Because of that, helmets like these could prove one’s innocence, even if the wearer was implicated in a crime. One could say this was the safety net of the computing world. In contrast, not having one of these greatly increased the chances that one might be charged when involved in a crime, so only a handful of people chose not to wear them.

He noted the words that said recording had begun, and then he operated the console window floating near his hand. He opened several new windows nearby, then brought one of them near his hand and touched it.

The window he touched had the word Yggdrasil on it.

Soon, Suzuki Satoru’s real life would begin. However—

Suddenly, an alert rang in his ear. Only he could hear it.

A frustrated expression came over his face.

The newly-appeared window said, “Intracranial nanomachine depletion over 85 %. Please replenish nanomachines.”

“Haa…”

Suzuki Satoru sighed with exaggerated loudness, in response to the damper on his enjoyment. Nobody was here, of course, but he could not help wanting to express his feelings.

“Fine, fine, I got it, I got it…”

Suzuki Satoru minimized the window, which was making annoying alert noises.

“I know. I don’t want to be booted out halfway during the game because of an error, so sit there and wait…”

He grabbed the painless syringe[1] as he mumbled to himself.

The injector looked like a seal stamp as he brought it to his arm, and then he pressed it. Much like how he felt when he inserted the plug into his head, he felt a radiance moving through his body.

It started from his arms, and then spread through his body like wildfire.

He calmly placed the empty syringe on the table. He could cheaply exchange it for a new one at a clinic, but if he broke it, the replacement would be very expensive. Therefore, he treated it carefully, in order not to waste money needlessly.

A message told him that a quantity of cerebral nanomachines had been infused into his body, and then it automatically vanished.

And now, the preparations were complete.

That should be everything. There should be nothing else to get in his way.

Nobody would call him, so there was no need to switch off the integrated mobile phone network.

His eyes gleaming like a teenager at a theme park, Suzuki Satoru clicked the window named Yggdrasil.

— The world changed.

His cerebral nanomachines began their computations, disrupting his field of vision and taking control of his voluntary nervous system, and everything changed.

An empty void extended in all directions — no, there were things sparkling in the darkness like stars — like space. Among them floated a gigantic tree that seemed to encompass everything.

Part of his visual field flickered, and if he tilted his head to the side, he could see something.

It was a monster.

Red-black flames burned in the eyes of the skeletal monster.

He was not at all confused or afraid by the inhuman being that had appeared out of nothingness. Naturally, it was because that creature was his other self, with which he was intimately familiar.

He reached out a hand — and in the moment that he touched the skeleton, his point of view changed once more.

Countless lines of algorithms swept across his vision, and they vanished in an instant. They seemed to have some significance, but since he knew nothing about them, they were meaningless to him. Besides, not knowing them would not inconvenience him in the slightest.

However, there was one line that he recognized.

It was on the bar at the top of his view. If the number on the right did not reach 100 %, the adventure would not begin.

With nothing to do, he looked at his hands. They were now bereft of flesh, with only skeletal, inhuman hands in its place.

He clenched his fists and opened them again. While the sensations were dull, it was close to reality now.

The number on the top row became the 100 % he was hoping for, and several icons appeared. The one he selected was composed of a triangle joined to a rectangle.

In other words, the HOME button.

If he clicked it, it would in turn change shape into a bar that represented a waiting area.

The 18/30 on it represented that out of the maximum of 30 people, there were 18 already there. He hid his growing excitement under his unmoving, skeletal face, and then touched it with a bony hand. After that, he selected YES when he was asked “Are you sure?”

— Beginning entry.

— Please stand by.

The female voice coming from beside his ear had a musical quality about it, and sounded like a human speaking. Of course, it was electronically generated.

Even people with good senses could not tell the difference. He knew that only someone like his friend, with excellent hearing — which his friend called “useless pitch” — would know about it. That piece of information came from that friend’s elder sister, who told him about it in great detail.

While it was good that she told him that, she had no intention of hiding her hatred of the people who stole her job, so he looked back on that thirty-minute lecture — more of a protest, actually — with a small amount of dread.

Even if people with experience in the field knew it was pointless, he still believed in that rumor of the online world — that telling the voice to hurry up would let you into the game more quickly. Therefore, he said to the voice: “Let me in faster.”