"Adversity introduces a man to himself." - Albert Einstein
————
The Asterran straightened his posture and declared once more.
"The Imperial Capital, Asterra. The very planet we stand upon, it has been transported and separated from the rest of the empire!"
Alfred, his direct servant, one of the Asterrans Aman had personally designed to oversee imperial affairs, spoke.
For the first time he had witnessed everything he created moved with life.
He should have been overjoyed by this fact, yet the next words didn't quite register to him.
"…Wait. You mean only the whole planet?"
"Yes, my liege. Only the whole imperial planet. These are the sensor results."
Alfred sent him files that appeared as a glowing hovering hologram in front of his seat.
He instinctively operated the hologram and viewed the compressed files and datas with incompréhensible statistics and numbers, so much that his head started hurting.
"Absolutely…Impossible…"
Alfred nervously shifted as an imaginary sweat dropped down from his head.
'Did the Emperor not foresee this happening too? If so I could understand that we cannot detect this from happening as well, but still…this négligence of mine made this possible!'
While Alfred was having an emotional breakdown over having been unable to prevent this tragedy from happening.
His so-called emperor almost had a seizure just by looking at some paperwork.
'I freaking don't understand these things!'
Has he gone back from his time of being the CEO of his game developing company. No, it's more than that. This dense data that crosses his HUD is definitely much more horrifying to look at than reviewing some paper back in his front company.
'Wait! How come my paperwork that has me pinned reviewing updates of over 500 billion star systems is much easier than this?!'
Back then, after leaks about how one of the major shareholders of the company that developed Yggdrasil was developing another massive full dive game after saying he loved Yggdrasil. Speculations about Yggdrasil 2 were somehow out there being discussed by their massive reddit communities and SNS followers.
Although not on purpose, being so stressed about the frequency of his "being beaten up session" about his spending. He unwittingly agreed he was developing Yggdrasil 2, which unwittingly invited investors that push through where they are right now.
The 500 Billion Planetary Systems.
If you're asking how they could even develop a 500 Billion planetary system in a game.
Well first of all it's not that hard, every solar system only consists of either 3 to 5 fully populated planets the rest are either for production or industrial, with how advanced Earth-2138 technology is, it's as easy as taking a default presentation in Microsoft powerpoint and customizing it. You would only need a department of developers to create a whole ass planetary system, with billions of npcs with complete NPC settings, and events.
The most overworked are of course the Character, Design, and Writers department.
The Game industry has a very delicious profit design scheme, hence all sorts of investors, invested in proprietary technology to make these things possible just to push through the title for the game of the decade.
Yet those become utterly useless now.
He picked up one review among the hologram files that clearly says, "Important: Concerning the disappearance of the Dyson Sphere."
'My precious Dyson Sphere!'
Aman shifted uncomfortably on his throne, as the weight of the news finally got digested.
But before he was able to express more complaints, he saw the still kneeling Alfred on his knees, with his head bowed, suddenly asked.
"Could this be the work of the Children?"
When he heard that from Alfred, he only felt nostalgia.
The Children of Azgarom are the direct offspring of Azgarom, the Mad Chaos Sultan, primordial beings born from Chaos itself.
They are not simply Last Boss or Game Ending Events in a game, they are cosmic entities, each embodying a particular aspect of ruin, corruption, or entropy, trillions massacred, worlds destroyed….
'Right! For me it's just some random lore my subordinates cooked up, but for them it's a freaking reason for their PTSD to start acting up!'
"No. Don't jump to conclusions, Alfred."
"However, my liege, "
"Alfred. Do not let something like this shake you."
Seeing his master remain composed, Alfred forced himself to calm down.
"…Please excuse my outburst, my liege."
The empire had fallen into a state of panic. Memories of the past resurfaced, and even Alfted, who had lived through those times, felt an old, primal fear clawing at his core.
He couldn't bear the thought of those things remaining unknown.
"Better a visible wolf than a hidden serpent."
The fear of the unknown is primal to pretty much every species in the universe.
And yet, due to his own failure to detect any traces of the chaos, they had been thrown into this unknown disaster.
However, there's also the possibility that the failure to detect the presence of any chaos also meant that this catastrophe was not their doing. That should have been a relief, but instead, it only deepened his unease.
How? How did this happen? What force could move the entire sacred capital out of Imperial space and into an unknown region?
How did we not see it coming?
Without a usage of Turan's Gate? Anyone else who can do that is the Chaos-Borns and no one else?
But we did not detect a single sliver of chaos!
Reports flooded in, detailing the extent of their situation. Alfred found himself struggling to believe what he was hearing.
Many questions have taken root in his mind.
Yet, as he looked at his liege, a sense of reassurance took hold.
Perhaps my liege knows the cause… or at least, the reason behind this event.
Aman noticed the way his advisor looked at him, and for the first time in a long while, he felt nervous about what to say.
"First, we should investigate nearby celestial bodies,"
"If only the Capital was transported, that must mean the Turan's gate is also not with us, then we must consider gathering resources from nearby systems. We need to restart the disabled infrastructure as soon as possible."
"Understood, my liege."
Though Aman had anticipated this possibility, he hadn't fully prepared for it.
He ignored this certain possibility and his mistake is he is fully aware of this certain possibility yet didn't make an action.
He had ignored the chance that the empire might not fully transfer with him, that his ambition to bring his handmade intergalactic empire into the new world could result in something incomplete.
He hoped he's just being paranoid, but being paranoid isn't his thing at all.
After all, how could he have predicted this?
He didn't extensively research the reason behind the transfer of Overlord back in his previous world, so how could he know, and how could he not make this mistake.
The Guild of Ainz Ooal Gown completely transferred to the new world. Then why is the empire incomplete?
Perhaps the Guild was just small enough to be completely transfered.
"Perhaps my own ambition might be really too big, it was too big for me."
Like Ahab's singular, obsessive ambition to conquer the white whale blinded him to reason, destroying his ship, his crew, and himself under the sheer weight of a goal too massive for any one to bear.
His mistake was clear.
His ambition was too big.
He had poured everything into creating a custom-made intergalactic empire and bringing it into this new world.
He imagined possibilities on how the empire would likely appear in the new world.
For example, there is the most favorable outcome of spawning the entire Asrameda galaxy, which contains the empire.
However, doing so would most likely result in a catastrophe caused by two galaxies colliding, bringing disaster to the new world.
Not that he cares, about the new world he only cares about the empire. He has already prepared countermeasures for this particular scenario.
But, of all the possible scenarios, theirs is the most unfavorable.
How does the transfer even work?
He knows a vague but concrete fact back in his original world, that World Items are gradually being summoned to the New World and those that have World Items Near them or items essentially equipped to a guild, will pull them along to the New World.
Well, guess what?
Everything on the entire planet of the Imperial Capital is in the vicinity of a World-class Item, after all the whole continental palace is one gigantical World Item.
A literal world as a World Item.
That's the only fact he knew from his original world. It has been so long he doesn't remember much anymore.
He was fortunate enough to remember the key to success in this life!
He even starts to forget that he's a reincarnator in the first place.
And Reincarnator/Transmigrator have one distinct identifying nature.
They're bound for success.
However, believing in that nature alone is a fool's work.
That was when he encountered clues and information about the Guild of Ainz Ooal Gown.
The name and term was catchy enough to make him recall his past life that was mostly forgotten due to stress and undiagnosed mental disorder.
He considered mingling with the Guild, but knowing their personality and his latecomer status, he won't be able to reach their status enough to be able to blend with them.
At that time, he only learnt of Yggdrasil in a short time, there's only five years left before the event of Yggdrasils Server shut down. Maxing his Biomaton character aint gonna bring him nowhere at this point, because by the time he's done leveling his character, completing all thousands of events, and side quest, farming for legendary items, the server might as well shut down.
So, No. He was too late for the party to play camaraderie with Suzuki Satoru and his Guildmates who's on the verge of falling out.
That's when he started his grueling plan and we arrived at this current situation.
Aman doesn't care about the little details about time discrepancy, or some shit like, was he in the same timeline as the Guild of Ainz Ooal Gown or Not? Was he in the future? Was he in the distant past?
Who cares?
No one! The only important thing is his Empire.
The only thing proven is that the initial theory about being close to a World Item is the key to the New World.
But the fact that his empire doesn't materialize as whole in the current scenario, means there's an exact limit to the transfer.
If he could have known that limit before, he could have made proper preparation.
He was so busy he didn't have a chance to think about it.
He knows there's something wrong with his thinking.
When he first started his project, it was only personal private work, he spent millions of dollars on the developers and he had bled for it, quite literally, his enemies had given him more than enough "warnings" about his reckless spending on games, "not to spend so much money on freaking games". They are wondering about how there's a sudden unusual withdrawal from his ledgers, they thought he was funding a military group to start an uprising and retake his status as a Zaibatsu heir.
But who could have known that money is spent to gather companies of developers and artists, and pay them an extra for honest work of making games?!
If it's the usual, they would work those developers to death and give them just barely enough, to come work again another day.
It reached the point where his personal expenditures had reached absurd heights. He had hired multiple gaming companies to assist his original team, ensuring every detail was crafted to perfection. This way he's also helping multiple people by paying them the right price for their work.
After all, he requires all of that for his empire, which has since then grown to a galaxy of over 500 billion conquered stars and a planetary system populated by completely unique individual inhabitants, each with rich histories, deep lore, and intricate flavor text.
Imagine the workload.
The sheer workload of monitoring each update had nearly driven him to insanity. He had pulled countless all-nighters, while the public thought that he was funding the new Yggdrasil 2 with an entirely new concept and dimension.
And why wouldn't they?
He was a shareholder in the company that had developed Yggdrasil.
The rumors had even been leaked to the public, and in the end, he had used them to his advantage, turning the speculation into leverage that stopped his enemies as they thought he was making money, so why not invest into it.
He made his private work public and pulled in massive investments which he honestly appropriately spent on the right people. He personally manages the money so as to not have any case of embezzlement or inappropriate use. So aside from being a shareholder, a Project Director, he was also the Chief Financial Officer.
Sponsorships and investors continuosly followed, pushing the project even further and becoming the first 10 billion dollar worth game development, surpassing the first game.
The massive workforce and money on hand made the time to make the supposed "Ygggdrasil 2" cut its own game development time from 10 years to 5 years. Barely enough time to release it before the Yggdrasil 1 service shut down.
Totally all according to plan.
If the stakeholders knew the actual purpose of crafting the supposed Sci-Fantasy Yggdrasil 2 Game on papers. They would laugh themselves to death.
But now…
Now, all of it has vanished.
Of all those affected, no one could be more bitter than him.
Now seeing all that hard work disappear like a bubble.
"I need a full report on all our arsenal, what was transported with us and what was lost due to the displacement."
"Understood, my liege."
It was a predetermined future where every holder of World Items was destined to be transported along with their possessions.
He had made sure to implant throughout the empire his name and countless world items, so it'd be clearly his possession.
Even Momonga was just the guild leader of Ainz Ooal Gown himself.
He couldn't not tell them that to them, could he?
That he, the Emperor himself, doesn't know the nature of this transfer, else they might become suspicious of him.
Aman knew that admitting he didn't know the nature for their displacement could be dangerous.
The empire was built on his absolute rule.
In their flavor text, they have fought horrors of the universe, where a soldier may perish within a ratio of fifty percent. Fifty percent you'll endure the corruption, fifty percent you'll be corrupted and mutate, before you could even land a gaze on the enemies.
And that's before the emperor Aman arrived and saved them.
In other words, he is just impersonating this avatar. In essence he's not really the emperor of the empire.
To his people, he was the only emperor, he was the foundation of their civilization, the one who led them through countless wars and crises.
His knowledge was seen as limitless, his decisions unquestionable.
If he admitted his ignorance, it would shake those zealots' beliefs.
Doubt would spread among his subjects. If even their emperor didn't understand what had happened, how serious was this situation?
Could this be an enemy they couldn't see, something even he hadn't prepared for?
But that's impossible! We're talking about the all-powerful emperor, there's nothing that he would not expect.
So how serious is their situation?
The worse his subjects can do would lead themselves to fear and disorder.
Some might start searching for an enemy that wasn't there, wasting time and resources.
Others might see it as weakness, if their ruler didn't have all the answers, could they truly rely on him? That kind of thinking could turn into hesitation, and hesitation could break the empire from within.
He couldn't allow that, could he?
He needed to project absolute confidence, guiding their fear into action instead of panic. Just like Momonga did, he had to appear all-knowing, even when he was just as confused as they were. If they believed he had anticipated this, they would remain confident. And if they remained strong, then the empire would survive and he would survive.
Although he was confident in the flavor text, he knew one thing for certain, his people might hold absolute loyalty toward him but with the transfer, growth was inevitable.
When his subordinates became real, the limitations imposed on them as NPCs would vanish. Freed from those shackles, they would finally have room to grow, whether in strength or personality.
He had remembered reading theories about the guild members of Ainz Ooal Gown, speculations that they might betray him or, worse, that they had already done so without realizing it. But those were just theories, nothing more. At least, that was what he told himself.
And he could only hope reality wouldn't prove him wrong.
He recalled a crucial detail about his subordinates.
Before their unwavering fanaticism, they were soldiers, veterans who had fought valiantly for countless millennia. They were also diplomats, pacifists who once promoted unity. But against enemies they can be considered to be one thing.
Xenociders.
And these bunch of xenocide freaks, suffer from PTSD. :3
Unlike the Astartes who did not know fear, his men knew it.
Their trauma didn't make them lose control, it fueled them. To them, the survival of the empire was everything, and dying in its defense was the ultimate honor.
Although they don't actually die…but that's a story for later.