the last day of the game

A flood of densely-packed characters filled his vision. It was like reading an ancient epic poem. If he took his time to read it in detail, he would probably still be reading until the game ended.

Momonga felt like he had stepped on a landmine. If he could move, he would have been trembling now.

He wanted to scold himself for having forgotten that Albedo's creator was obsessed with this sort of thing.

However, since he had already opened it, he had no choice but to abandon his resistance and continue scrolling.

He didn't even skim the text for the important points; he simply scrolled to the bottom as fast as he could while looking at the title.

After skipping past vast expanses of text, Momonga's mind settled on the last line, and froze.

"She is also a slut."

He could not help but stare.

"...Eh? What does this mean?"

A cry of disbelief escaped Momonga's nonexistent lips. He looked the words over several more times, eyes filled with suspicion, but in the end, he could not find any other meaning to them. After several rounds of thought, he could only come to the conclusion he had started with.

"A slut… it must be an insult of some sort."

Each of the forty one guild members had designed their own NPCs, so he could not understand why anyone would want to treat the NPCs they had designed themselves in this manner. Perhaps he would understand why after reading that long essay of flavor text.

However, there were guild members who would come up with these unconventional designs.

Albedo's designer, Tabula Smaragdina, was one of those people.

"Ah, is this what they call gap moe? Tabula-san… even so…"

Isn't a backstory like this far too much?

Momonga could not help but think that. All the NPCs made by everyone were an inheritance of the guild. Designing the highest-ranked NPC Albedo in this manner made him think that Tabula Smaragdina was beyond saving.

"Umu."

Would it be fine to change an NPC's backstory based on a personal decision? After thinking about it for some time, Momonga came to a conclusion.

"Should I change it?"

Currently, with the guild weapon in his possession, Momonga could be said to be the master of the guild. It should be all right to exercise the guildmaster's authority he had never used before.

Momonga's doubts vanished like mist, as he steeled himself to right the wrongs of his guildmate.

He extended the staff of Ainz Ooal Gown that he was holding. Normally, one would need developer tools to change a character's backstory, but through his power as guildmaster, he could directly access her settings and edit them. After some action on his console, the "slut" line vanished.

"Well, it should be like that."

Momonga thought a bit more, and looked at the gap in Albedo's flavor text.

I should probably fill that up...

"This feels a little silly."

Although he was laughing at himself, he still typed out a few words on the console keyboard. The words formed a sentence:

"She loves Momonga."

"Uwah, how embarrassing."

Momonga covered his face with his palm. It felt as though he were designing his ideal girlfriend complete with love events for himself, which embarrassed him so much that his heart began pounding. Although he wanted to rewrite it again out of shame, in the end he changed his mind and decided against it.

The game would end soon, after all, and his shame would vanish with it. Besides, the sentence he added matched the gap left by the deleted sentence exactly. It would be a shame if he deleted it and left an empty space again.

Momonga sat on the throne, scanning his surroundings with eyes filled with satisfaction and a little embarrassment. He noticed that Sebas and the maids were still standing by in a dormant state. It seemed a little lonely, and a little odd, to have them standing motionless like that.

I think there was a command for that.

Momonga recalled the words he had heard before, and extended a hand before lightly bringing it down.

"Kneel."

As one, Albedo, Sebas, and the six maids fell to one knee in obeisance.

Good.

Momonga raised his left hand to check the time.

[23:55:48]

He was just in time.

In all likelihood, the GMs were probably flooding the public channels and setting off fireworks. Momonga, who had put his heart and soul into this place and cut off all contact with the outside world, was unaware of that.

Momonga leaned against the back of the throne, and slowly raised his head to look at the ceiling.

He believed that even on the last day of the game, some invaders might come to Nazarick.

He would wait for them. He would accept any challenges in his position as guildmaster.

He had sent emails to all the guild members, but only a few had come.

He would wait for them. He would welcome his comrades back in his position as guildmaster.

"A relic of the past, huh—"