I stood beside the Throne—the Guildmaster's chair that had dominated so many screenshots and inked fan-arts in my old life—watching Momonga in his bone-white regalia. The throne swallowed him like a proper altar swallows a priest, and the cavernous hall of the Great Tomb of Nazarick echoed with the muted breathing of a place that had known triumphs, rituals, and the quiet of too many posted commands. Light from the many chandeliers pooled like dark honey on polished stone. Statues watched us with stony apathy.
Momonga sat straight-backed, as solemn as a king with no subject. His skull-face tilted slightly, and for a moment his voice was softer than I expected.
Momonga: "…Kevin…This is the end, right?…haah…It's really sad to see Yggdrasil coming to an end. I really enjoyed my time playing this game…especially with you…hahaha."
'He sounds like he's trying to laugh his way into courage,' I thought. The words landed like slow footsteps in a hall that was used to marching. There was a fragile weight in them—nostalgia braided with resignation.
Kevin: "…You're right… but… we should at least enjoy our last moments, right?…"
I said it in my usual cool tone, letting the flat edge of my voice keep the sentiment from crowding me. The old reflex of this borrowed body—Kevin's body—made everything efficient: words clipped, posture controlled, face an unhelpful mask. Inside, though, my pulse was a little faster. The server shutdown had been the spark; my rebirth, the fuse that followed. I had expected grief. I had not expected the bright, sharp glee that lived under it.
Momonga: "Yeah…you're right…"
He smiled—if a skeleton can be said to smile—and glanced toward the Pleiades, Sebas, and Albedo assembled nearby. Their movements were near-flawless, the product of countless scripts and lovingly written AI. They made Nazarick feel like a garden laid out by obsessive hands.
Momonga's hand drifted to his inventory menu as if habit were muscle. He opened Albedo's settings without ceremony, scrolling with skeletal fingers through lines of parameters, temperament tags, loyalty coefficients. The text scrolled and scrolled until it hit a line that made him let out a small, flat sigh.
Momonga: 'She is an NPC that Tabula created...Let's see the setting.'
There was a moment where he stared at the screen—then reacted in the precise way the world had taught me to expect from him: he covered his face with bone and let out a tired breath.
Kevin: "…What's wrong?…"
I asked because it was the kind thing to do, and also because curiosity is the only habit stronger than grief in gamers. Momonga wanted to hide it, but the hand over his skull could not disguise the twitch of disbelief.
Momonga: "…No, it's nothing…"
'But Tabula is really something… I have to change it,' he thought, a private smile ghosting across an otherwise exhausted tone.
He altered a single line—an edit so small it would have made most players snort—and replaced the crude phrase "She is a bitch" with "She really loves Momonga." It was both lazy and meticulous, a patchwork attempt to sculpt affection into code. He did not know then that such tiny edits can echo in strange ways.
Once satisfied, Momonga moved on to Pleiades and Sebas, giving terse instructions.
Momonga: "…If I'm not mistaken the command is [kneel]."
At his prompt, Pleiades, Sebas, and Albedo knelt. The motion was synchronized enough to look like choreography. Momonga let his gaze sweep across banners of guild members—names burned into the tapestry of who we had been.
Momonga: "Me, you, Touch Me, Shijuuten Suzaku, Ankoro Mocchi Mocchi, Hero Hero, Peroroncino, Bukubuku Chagama, Tabula Smaragdina, Warrior Takemikazuchi, Variabel Talisma, Genjiro."
He sighed then, a sound threaded with fondness.
Momonga: "It was really fun, really."
'He keeps giving the past a ceremonial end,' I observed. 'And I… I feel like I'm standing at the lip of a cliff, smiling because I can't climb down yet.'
I wanted to say something bracing—something that would act like a bandage and not a plaster—but Momonga's grief had a distance I could not bridge with words. So I exhaled in tune with him.
Kevin: "…You're right… this is really fun…"
'Tomorrow I have to wake up early…' Momonga thought quietly, closing his eyes as if to receive the countdown as a benediction.
The digits on the magical console, synchronized with the servers of a world that had once been virtual, slid toward oblivion.
23:59:56
23:59:57
23:59:58
23:59:59
The last second folded inward like the final crease of a well-made letter.
tuk tuk tuk
The sound—three soft knocks—was small and entirely ordinary. Then everything changed.
Momonga's eyes snapped open. His skull tilted. He, and I beside him, blinked against the same shock.
Momonga: "…What the hell is this!?…"
His voice fractured the throne room's calm. For a breath, I thought the whole world might be a trembling thing. The GM call—our bridge back to the dev console, our cheat-code to reality—was dead. The shutdown had happened. And yet here we were. Nazarick remained. The candles burned. The Pleiades looked at us with eyes that had only ever been programmed for obedience.
'Finally! Finally I'm here!' I thought, and the raw, childish joy nearly pushed my composed mask into a grin. But I tamped it down. There was work to be done.
I turned, letting a faint, confused expression mar my usually placid features—an acting choice as much as an emotion. If anything, the situation demanded performance. If the world had rules, I wanted the benefit of watching them present themselves.
Momonga: 'GM call can't be used? And Kevin also looks confused, is the server shutdown cancelled?'
His brow—skull—furrowed in that skeletal way of his. I could see every calculation run and discard itself behind his hollow stare.
Before he could form a plan, a voice like music sliced across the hall.
Albedo: "…Lord Momonga what's wrong?…Lord Momonga?…Lord Momonga!?"
Her voice was a bell that had learned how to tremble. She paced closer, panic tightening the sweetness of her tone. For the first time since I had come to this world, I noticed scent—not a simulated tag but actual perfume? It hit Momonga the same way it hit me. The air carried something floral and overwhelmingly present.
Momonga: "…GM call cannot be used…"
Albedo: "I'm sorry Lord Momonga, I don't know anything about GM Call magic but I will try my best to help you!"
Her devotion was immediate, automatic… and that was when the strangeness cut deeper. Her lips moved. Her voice carried texture beyond scripts. She smelled like a stage set come alive.
Momonga: 'His lips are moving!? And also…Scent!?'
He stared at me. I met his gaze with the same usual coldness, and answered before he had to.
Kevin: "...I can't make a GM Call either…"
Momonga: "…What about the console?"
Kevin: "...It can't be accessed either…"
'…Should I take action? Or should I just leave it as in the anime plot?…No, it's better to leave it as in the anime plot…' I thought, weighing the tempting divergence of improvisation against the safety of following a story I knew well. There is comfort in familiar beats. For now, I would let them play out.
The throne room hummed—less like a machine and more like a thing that had been woken from a long sleep. Albedo hovered near Momonga, voice trembling between ceremony and panic. Pleiades and Sebas exchanged looks that were almost human in their calculation. The guild banners shivered as the echo of our small talk died into the stone.
For a sliver of a second, I felt the uncanny truth of the situation settle like frost in the marrow: the game had not simply died. Something of it had stayed. Something had learned. And if the NPCs could taste worry, if they could smell fear and speak like living things—then whatever boundary I had assumed between code and being had been thoroughly broken.
'This is the part where the plot becomes a doorway,' I told myself. 'And we have just stepped—eager, terrified—beyond the threshold.'
Momonga's skeletal hands flexed. He drew a single breath as if preparing a declaration. Albedo looked at him with eyes that gleamed too bright.
Momonga: "…We will investigate. For now, stand by."
The command settled like law. The Pleiades stiffened, Sebas bowed, Albedo straightened with the dignity of someone dressing for war.
I remained at Momonga's side, watching the man I had known as a guildmaster and friend fold into something larger: a leader in a world that had stopped being a game and started being a grave and a garden both. My chest felt full of stories, of vows I hadn't yet learned to make in this life.
END.