"Since my vacation has been oh so wonderfully interrupted, along with the after-party for MY GODDAMN WEDDING," I roared, my voice amplified by a surge of divine power, echoing across the entire world, "all of you have gone well beyond signing your death warrants! Congrats on pissing me off so much that I've decided that you are, in fact, ALREADY DEAD!"
The last word left my mouth, and the world snapped. The invading undead froze, their expressions locked in masks of shock and dawning horror. Time, a plaything in my hands, accelerated around them, a localized distortion that aged them in the blink of an eye.
Their armor, once gleaming and menacing, crumbled into rust, flaking away like ancient parchment. Their flesh, preserved by unnatural means, withered and decayed, ravaged by the relentless march of time. Even their souls, tethered to their bodies by twisted magic, felt the strain, the agonizing weight of millennia compressed into mere moments.
Outside of their personal bubbles of accelerated time, only seconds ticked by. Ten seconds for the lesser undead to rot away, their bones turning to dust. Fifty seconds for the maids, their youthful faces collapsing into wizened masks of decay, their bodies shrinking into brittle husks.
Albedo, her arrogant confidence shattered, her beauty ravaged by the relentless passage of time, aged the slowest. A minute and twenty seconds. It was enough to watch her haughty features crumple, her proud form shrinking, her horns cracking and fading. She was a withered crone, a pathetic parody of her former self, before she finally succumbed to the inevitable.
Three minutes. That's all it took for the entire invading force to turn to dust, their existence erased by the cruel, inexorable flow of time.
Inside their frozen prisons, however, eons had passed. Millennia of agonizing decay, of watching their bodies crumble, their minds unraveling under the strain of unending time. It was a punishment far more fitting than a quick death, a lesson in the futility of defying a god.
I gathered their souls, those flickering embers of consciousness, and with a touch of my divine power, I cleansed them. Their memories, their personalities, their very identities, were wiped clean, leaving behind only blank slates, empty vessels ready to be reborn. Their punishment was over. Their suffering had ended.
"Found it," Asuna said, her voice a sharp and snapping sound of rage that cut through the lingering silence. She rose into the air, her form shimmering as she activated her gravity manipulation abilities. She shot off towards the horizon, a crimson blur that shattered the sound barrier with a thunderous boom.
"Wait up!" I shouted, activating my own spatial manipulation powers. The world blurred, reality twisting and folding upon itself as I followed Asuna, our destination clear: the heart of the Slane Theocracy.
The game was over. It was time to bring down the curtain on this farce. And those who had dared to interrupt our wedding… well, they were about to learn the true meaning of divine retribution well beyond the standard definition.
---
Twenty seconds. That's all it took to cross the vast expanse between the ruined manor and the Slane Theocracy border. The wind screamed past my ears, a symphony of fury that mirrored the storm raging within me. Below, the landscape blurred into a chaotic tapestry of greens and browns, the world itself seeming to shrink beneath my divine power.
A cold rage, a chilling fury unlike anything I'd ever felt before, pulsed through my veins. It wasn't the hot, baleful rage I usually felt, the kind that fueled my righteous anger against slavers and injustice. This was different. This was… icy. A relentless, gnawing fury that looped back on itself, a cycle of ice and fire that chilled me to the core even as it burned with an intensity that threatened to consume me.
I didn't let it bother me. I couldn't. There was a job to do, a score to settle. Those bastards, those undead and demonic bastards, had dared to interrupt our wedding. They had dared to bring their violence, their darkness, into our moment of joy. And now, they would pay.
I slammed through the roof of the first floor, my arrival heralded by a thunderous crash of splintering wood and shattered stone. The air reeked of decay, a sickening blend of added rot that made my stomach churn.
I moved, a blur of motion, a crimson whirlwind of death. Room by room, I tore through the facility, my rapier a silver flash, my divine power unleashed. Monsters, grotesque parodies of nature, disintegrated into clouds of black and purple mist. Humanoid figures, their eyes wide with terror, their bodies twisted by dark magic, exploded into sprays of green, yellow, and brown. Rarely did any of them bleed red.
It was a massacre, a symphony of destruction orchestrated by none other than myself. I was and am a goddess scorned. And I reveled in the deaths of these rotten fools.
Kirito caught up just as I reached the throne room, his eyes wide with a mixture of awe and manic glee mixed with the same look of rage that I felt. The doors, massive slabs of iron bound with arcane symbols, pulsed with a dark energy that would have made even the most seasoned adventurer hesitate. But I didn't hesitate. I didn't even slow down.
I slammed into the doors, my divine power over mass and momentum shattering them into a thousand pieces. The throne room, a cavernous space filled with shiny and pointless gothic decorations and the lingering stench of death, was filled with figures clad in black robes and bone-white armor. At the center of it all, seated upon a throne of twisted bone and obsidian, sat a figure that made my blood run cold.
It was Momon, except the leather armor was gone, replaced by A fancy purple robe. His eyes were empty but his mind was a mess.
"I. Am. Done. You. Goddamn. Motherfucking. Skeleton. In A Flesh Sack Of Evil Shit!" I roared, my voice echoing through the chamber, each word a hammer blow of fury.
My rage, a storm of ice and fire, consumed me. It was time to end this.
---
Asuna's rage was a tangible thing, a crackling storm of divine energy that filled the throne room. I watched her, a mixture of pride and apprehension swirling within me. My own anger burned, but a part of me, the analytical, strategic part that never truly switched off, was fixated on the figure seated upon that grotesque throne.
Momon. Or rather, the thing that I couldn't goddamn figure out just sat there.
His eyes were empty, his posture slumped, his entire being radiating an aura of defeat. He was waiting for the end, accepting his fate with a passivity that was both unsettling and… strangely familiar.
I focused my perception, my enhanced senses peeling back the layers of his psyche like an onion. It was a mess. A chaotic jumble of conflicting personalities, each one vying for dominance.
There was the "Many Lives Justice" persona, a carefully crafted narrative of heroic deeds and tragic sacrifices. It was a compelling story, a tapestry of sorrow and determination woven together with threads of righteous anger. But it was also utterly fake. A fabrication designed to evoke sympathy, to deflect scrutiny.
Beneath that, I found the "Unknowable Evil" personality, the one that radiated an aura of cold, calculating malice. This was the persona Ainz had presented during our first encounter, the one that had triggered my initial suspicion. But even this, I now realized, was a facade. A mask designed to intimidate, to instill fear.
And then, at the core of it all, I found it. The "Salaryman" image. The pathetic, overwhelmed soul of a man thrust into a situation far beyond his comprehension. He was lost, confused, drowning in a sea of responsibilities he never asked for.
This has to be another fake, I thought, my mind reeling. It's too perfect. Too pathetic. He's playing us.
But something wasn't right. This "salaryman" persona… it felt… real. The despair, the confusion, the utter lack of malice… it was all too genuine. But how could that be? This was the leader of a force that had committed atrocities on a scale that made my skin crawl. He'd turned the Slane Theocracy into a nightmarish landscape of death and suffering.
There had to be something I was missing. Some hidden layer of deception, some master plan I hadn't uncovered.
With a surge of divine power, I ripped away the illusions, the obfuscations, the carefully constructed facades. I flooded the room with a truth-compelling aura, making it impossible to lie, to deceive, to hide. And then, Ainz's "Perfectly Unknowable: Alignment" skill, the one that had projected both absolute good and absolute evil, shattered. It crumbled away, revealing…
The salaryman. Just the salaryman. His face, no longer hidden behind a mask of false heroism, was etched with a deep, bone-weary sadness. His eyes, no longer glowing with an unnatural light, were dull, lifeless.
"The… fuck?" was all I could manage, my voice a strangled whisper.
This couldn't be real. It just couldn't. But it was. The truth, stark and undeniable, stood before me. Ainz Ooal Gown, the "Supreme Being," the "Overlord of Death," was nothing more than a pathetic, incompetent fool.
"You fucking asinine moron!" I roared, my voice echoing through the chamber. "Saying the words 'Stop everything and interpret my words literally' would have saved millions of lives! And yet you just… let them run rampant!"
My anger, a white-hot inferno, burned with a new intensity. This wasn't just about our interrupted wedding. This was about the countless lives lost, the unimaginable suffering inflicted, all because of this… this idiot's inability to lead, to control, to even understand the consequences of his actions or lack thereof!
Ainz didn't even flinch as I unleashed my fury. He just sat there, his gaze fixed on some distant point beyond the shattered throne room doors, his expression a mask of weary resignation. It was like he'd already given up, accepted his fate as a foregone conclusion.
My anger faltered, a flicker of confusion replacing the white-hot rage. I focused my perception, my divine senses probing deeper, seeking the source of his apathy. And then I saw it. His karmic value. Or rather, his two karmic values.
One was a -170, a number that reeked of negligence, of inaction, of allowing evil to flourish unchecked. It was the karma of someone who had committed war crimes not through direct action, but through a passive acceptance of the horrors unfolding around him.
But the other… the other was a -999. A number so deeply negative, so utterly devoid of any redeeming qualities, that it made my skin crawl. It was the karma of someone who had embraced the darkest impulses of their soul, someone whose gluttony, greed, and apathy towards life itself knew no bounds. And it was leaking, slowly but surely, into that -170, corrupting it, dragging it further into the abyss.
"I just don't care anymore," I said, my voice weary, my anger draining away, replaced by a bone-deep exhaustion. "Keep your goddamn impossible secrets of why you have two karma numbers and just fucking let me go home. I want to see my daughter. I want to sleep in my palace. Hell, I just want to do bureaucracy and rule my multiversal nation so I can prove to myself I will never be as apathetic as you."
I drew my sword, its black blade humming with divine power. Asuna, her eyes mirroring my own weariness, drew her rapier, its silver tip glowing with a cold, hard light.
"I'm going home," I said, my voice flat, devoid of emotion. "Just after I do this."
I plunged my sword into Ainz's chest, the blade piercing his flesh, his bone, his very soul. Asuna, her movements synchronized with mine, drove her rapier through his forehead, the tip emerging from the back of his skull. Ainz, Momon, whoever the hell he was… he didn't even react. He just stared at us, his empty eyes reflecting the flames that were already consuming him.
"Let's go home, Asuna," I said, watching as Ainz's body dissolved into ashes, his soul, a flickering ember of darkness, extinguished by the cleansing fire of our divine power.
"Yeah," Asuna replied, her voice quiet and exhausted. "I'm tired. Let's go see Yui."
We turned and walked away, leaving behind the remnants of a shattered empire and a cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked ambition of one's subordinates and the corrosive nature of apathy. It was time to go home. To a world where we could be gods, yes, but also parents, rulers, and, most importantly… humane.
---
And so the—
You know what? Fuck this. I'm out.
Ainz, the Supreme Being, the Overlord of Death, the guy who was supposed to be the big bad, the ultimate challenge… he just… poofed. No epic battle, no grand pronouncements, no final, desperate gambit. Just… ashes. And a really depressing karmic value.
I'm disappointed. You're probably disappointed. Hell, even the pigeons outside my window are giving me the side-eye.
This isn't how it was supposed to go. Where's the drama? The tension? The existential dread? I signed up for a multiversal shitstorm, not a cosmic tea party!
I'm going to go find that bar at the edge of the narrative, the one where the eldritch bartenders serve drinks that taste like existential despair and regret. Maybe I'll get lucky and bump into a nihilistic squirrel or a depressed deity with a drinking problem. At least they'll understand my pain.
As for the rest of this… this… thing… I don't even know what to call it anymore. Do what you want. Conquer worlds, build empires, have tea parties with cosmic horrors. I don't care. I'm officially checked out.
So, yeah… Find out next time on… I Don't Give a Damn.
---
The narrator stumbles off, muttering about the futility of existence and the disappointing lack of epic boss battles.