A/N: Here's the next chapter folks, to all fifteen of you who read this. Last chapter I got some anonymous reviews… I would love to reply to you, but… oh well. One of you was positive, and I hope that this chapter continues on with your expectations, to the other person who was so confused that they decided to quit reading for their own sanity… I'm sorry that I'm writing non-linearly. What you are seeing is chapters as I write them. Unedited, unbetaed, and merely used as a way to get me to start writing before I go on to work on my actual original fiction. A writer's block icepick if you were.

I will say that this story does have a point, it does have a coherent timeline. I'm just a frikkin slow ass writer. Gloves are off for what I would deem 'intro' chapters. You should know the general idea by now. I promise to always put where a chapter fits into the timeline thus far into the chapter's A/N.

For instance: This one is WAY after everything up till now. Three years after "Breakfast Chat" Enjoy.

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Ryotaku casually pulled a chair away from one of many tables in the public promenade, the chain at the base of the leg drug along the tiles of the floor, wearing down another layer of colorant, leaving the formerly orange flooring a dirty grey of concrete. This was his favorite table to sit at in the food court on this level of publicly owned mall, in a corner facing the rest of the room. His law firm was five floors above, and he was a regular of this food court during lunch break.

Lunch was placed on the old plastic table, it tilted slightly, like usual. Steaming food created a plume of fragrance that had the middle aged man salivating. He pulled out a pair of chopsticks from a box in his pocket.

The food was why he kept to this court in general, as lower floors had cheaper fare that more resembled toothpaste in consistency than the faux chicken, rice, and beans in front of him. Even on his salary he couldn't afford to eat on any of the higher floors, the ones that served real produce instead of processed nutrient paste. The floors closer to the Domes at the top of every skyscraper, the floors that resembled the Arcologies that the truly rich lived in.

He was about to take a bite of toficken when the gaunt emaciated figure of Momonga appeared a few feet away from his table from between pedestrians. The sight of his old guildmaster caused him to pause, making eye contact with those nearly hollow sunken pits of eyes. Ryotaku gulped, there was a decisive edge to the man that he had a hard time reconciling with the memory of someone usually so self depreciating when they played together almost fifteen years before.

Momonga tapped his lavishly decorated cane on the floor, creating a loud but muffled snap. Briefly his odd black and purple billowy clothes fluttered in non-existent wind. Ryotaku chalked it up to a cooling airfiltrator turning on from behind his old friend.

"Touch-Me-San, I need to ask you something."

Ryotaku glanced around, looking for anybody who might recognize his old pen name. Unlike most of the rest of the guild, he had been a highly public name and face of their group, and due to the fact that player handles were reserved by the Devs, his was a name that still floated around in hushed whispers of awe from players of Ygg2.

Of course, it was nowhere near the fame that the man in front of him sported inside the game, the only player ever to solo a raid dungeon, and that dungeon being Nazarick only made the feat more talked about. That was three or so years ago now, and since then, the hoard of players trying to raid their old base only grew.

"What is it Satoru-san?" he asked, using his friend's real name instead of the handle from the game, following long held doctor's orders for the purpose of getting his friend back into society by doing so.

Momonga's grip on a large sapphire capping an otherwise charcoal black rod tightened, the miscellaneously colored and patterned gems and rings adorning each finger glinted strangely in the harsh florescent lighting of the windowless food court. Briefly Ryotaku felt a shiver run down his spine and noticed a flash of red light from the pair of sunken pits of eyes.

"It is only because you are a guildmate that my patience hasn't run thin Touch-San. Must I continue to tell you that my name is, at the least, Momonga?" he growled out in frustration, hoping that this time the order would stick. "Your Son and likeness, Sebas, was always the most dutiful butler, and never failed an order given to him." the why are you not the same was implied by the look of disappointment on Momonga's gaunt face.

"Sebas didn't exist Satoru-san." Ryotaku pointedly said, purposefully emphasizing his guild master's name. Four years should have been long enough to snap him out of actually believing the things he spouted. "That thing was nothing more than a string of data and written descriptions, an NPC."

Ryotaku watched Momonga lean forward onto the cane, his free hand outstretched in a Yggdrasil command for performing magic. Emaciated fingers that looked more like bones than hands tilted the cane in such a way that Ryotaku wondered what magical effect was currently being woven inside his old friend's mind. Momonga snarled. "As much as I would like to argue the point Touch-Me-San..."

"It's Fujiwara Ryotaku in a public place like this. I am a respected lawyer now, and a police officer before that." he quieted down, almost whispering, "Like the rest of our guild, my livelihood would be at stake if it were found out that I was connected to Ainz Ooal Gown." Ryotaku placed a piece of fake chicken into his mouth while it was still warm, he knew from experience that it would be unpalatable once it cooled. While he was looking down, there was an odd green flash of light. He looked up quickly, trying to find the source.

"No, no. Circumstances, everything comes down to circumstances." Momonga calmly muttered to himself, his right hand grasping his chin. His expression was blank instead of harboring palpable anger. "Touch-Me-San," Ryotaku half glared at the man standing in front of him, "I will get down to the point. Who killed Bellriver."

The second piece of chicken was halfway down his throat, Ryotaku choked. "Seriously?" he gasped, catching his breath, "Out of everything you could ask me… you ask that?" he put down his chopsticks, giving up on having a peaceful meal. "Read the official report, he died of an accident. Sato…" Momonga glared daggers at him, daring his old friend to call him by a pathetic human title. "Momonga." he barked out, "It was an accident. An. Accident." he punctuated each word with a flurried gesture pointing first at Momonga and then at the table, tapping the surface violently. The world weary table wobbled under the abuse, sliding the tray of food from one edge to another.

"I am legally insane not stupid Touch-Me-San." Momonga replied darkly. "Bellriver was not of the lower stations of life in this world's society. Therefore a premature death, such as his, could be no mere accident."

Ryotaku had to admit the logic, had to admit at least to himself that the man standing in front of him was right. He kept a straight face.

Momonga continued, a random passerby walked straight between the two of them without a single glance at either of the men. "Fine. I shall start at the beginning. My Son, Pandora's Actor found a mysterious record that was left in the treasury by Bellriver."

He laughed, relaxing at that, anything concerning their old guild base coming from their insane guild master was a load of bull. Full of stories and odd mannerisms that were impossible even if dozens of other Yggdrasil coma patients corroborated the insanity. All easily chalked up to a shared nanite dream, an extension of the internet practically, reports of those were as old as the technology itself, even if they were unheard of in the last fifty years.

"This was, of course, after I finished reading the full contents of Ashurbanipal and any stray documents that all of you left laying around. Bellriver's quarters along with his section in the library were a treasure trove of first, second, and third hand information concerning long term political tampering. But all of that paled in comparison to the encrypted data he put into a tome inside of Nazarick's inner treasury. Of course by the time we found it, Demiurge already surpassed its listed techniques, and so I placed it in my personal inventory for safe keeping."

Ryotaku felt sick. His eyes scanned the people milling around them, looking for anybody who was listening in on what they were talking about. He grabbed the table corner, ready to leap to his feet in a heartbeat if anybody moved suddenly. "D-don't keep going Sato...Momonga." Ryotaku pleaded, suddenly quiet, his whisper barely audible in the din of their surroundings, "If they think you know something… they will kill you too." he sounded like a broken man.

Momonga stood straighter, his shoulders relaxed as a faked sense of being an utterly downtrodden human evaporated like it had never been there in the first place. There was an ease about him that said he was accustomed to displaying the wealth he was wearing without fear.

"Touch-Me-San, do not think me frail." Momonga warned, pulling millennia of rulership into that one statement. The cane in his hand glinted in the florescent lighting of the public area, as did a few of the rings.

"Frail?" he asked, "Frail!?" his knuckles gripped the table hard enough to go white. "You're nothing but the definition of frail! If I didn't know better I would think that you were the personification of death itself." All Ryotaku could think of was that at least this was away from talking about that.

Momonga chuckled lightly at hearing one of his more deserved titles. "As are all Liches."

"That's what you were in the game Dammit!" Ryotaku snapped back, looking away by focusing on another concrete colored patch underneath a nearby table caused by a chained chair. "I realize that you believe you lived in a fantasy world where you ruled over Nazarick of all things," he waved his hand in the air emphatically, then pointed at the ground, "But this is reality. Reality. Stop thinking like that and get a job already. Hikuri can't keep supporting you, especially if you're just going to waste money buying Ygg2 merch." he pointed at the odd collection of rings and jewelry to prove his point.

"My equipment is not a paltry imitation crafted by exhausted workers. Nor is it important right now. I need to know what happened to Bellriver, and I need to know who knew what he knew."

"Get a grip Momonga." a group of people walked their way, happily talking about an upcoming wedding, each carrying their own plate of food. "If this weren't one of the rich layers on this building you walking around like that would get you attacked instantly."

He pointed a spindle finger at a pink stoned ring, "Do not worry about any violence erupting for a few minutes." Momonga said while tapping it with a bony finger. The surface swirled like boiling glitter. "It's a [Peace Keeper's Ring], causes low level mobs to ignore Hate Values unless directly provoked."

Ryotaku growled in frustration at the horrendously overconfident man in front of him, and tried to pull out some of his hair while he was at it. "Game. It was all a Game."

"No Touch-Me-San. It is not." Momonga stated simply, taking on a tone that belied the millennia he had lived through. "Just like Bellriver's death is no game, my life has not been one long play session of Yggdrasil."

He looked around again, specifically at the group of six people who had stopped talking about the upcoming wedding and were now chatting amicably about Ygg2. Despite being within hearing distance of them, none of their party seemed to have overheard their odd conversation.

"Now, while my illusion craft is good, I currently don't have the MP to sustain both of the [Sense Blind] spells I cast when I teleported here. Once this staff is drained, the spells will wear off and our privacy will be shattered. Fortunately the anti-divination skills I have are sufficient to block any scrying of other Players in this world. But Technological means will be open in a few minutes."

At that Ryotaku groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to hide the shame his insane friend should be feeling at believing anything of what he just spouted. He grabbed his chopsticks and snarfed as much of the toficken as he possibly could. The 'rice and beans' he knew could be reheated back in his office, but the chicken would turn into rubber soon.

"To get back to the earlier topic, Bellriver was one of the last players from our guild to log in, three days before the server shutdown was announced. That day was the last well put together raid attempt upon Nazarick in the original Yggdrasil world. The raiders didn't get far, and I believe that they had to give up because of the overwhelming force on the first three floors."

"Due to the constant barrage and previous raid sizes, Nazarick and all of her contents are actually hosted on a separate server typically used for loading maps of heavily trafficked areas. So it could not be taken offline. Meaning the Devs couldn't remove any information from Nazarick."

Momonga paused to let the information sink in, purposefully ignoring the look of flat denial the likeness and creator of Sebas Tian had in his eye. Silently he cursed the Barbarian Bard for foisting him with the insanity label, it made getting information so much more difficult, and it made convincing anybody even more so.

Ryotaku ate slower, now out of toficken chunks, if his old guildmaster wanted to ramble, then let him ramble. He still kept an eye for anybody in the room that looked like they were even remotely interested in either of them. Nobody batted an eyelash in their general direction. It was actually getting eerie to the avid people-watcher, not to be noticed back.

"This means that up until the server shutdown, the depths of Nazarick's treasury, in this world, were the safest place for anybody to put data they wanted to keep hidden, locked away, or out of someone's reach. To this day, the treasury still is. Bellriver was correct in that assumption." Momonga shrugged, it looked more like a clawed hand pawing at the air. He ground the cane into the floor with the other hand, "Now, I found out that he was dead a couple years ago. I do not appreciate being left in the dark about this fact, but for now I will overlook your involvement in that."

He gulped at the forcefulness in the Guildmaster's voice, there was a promise in it that Ryotaku couldn't deny.

"Once I conquered Nazarick in Ygg2, I had private access to everything in it. They kept every single detail exactly as it was at the server shutdown, except for one record. The book of encrypted data Bellriver left in the treasury. It was conspicuous in its absence honestly. If they had left a dummy book in its place I would never have put all of this together."

"What?" Ryotaku asked at the mention of the cursed earlier topic, stiffening again at the mention of their former guildmate. His thoughts caught back up to him, and logic won out, it was another impossible statement from his old friend, "You are insane."

Momonga sighed. "Dam KlubSanger and his stupid insistence upon labeling all of the heteromorph Players insane!" He stepped forward to avoid getting walked into by a middle aged man who was clearly looking around for someone specific, all the while repeatedly looking at Ryotaku's table. He walked off, hitting the black top surface of his phone hard with his finger. "As I was saying, the encrypted data was put into a tome in Nazarick, found by my Son, Pandora's Actor, and then I put it into my inventory for safe keeping. This was where it stayed for the subsequent years of my reign as the Sorcerer King."

Ryotaku glared at Momonga, trying to get him to admit that he was lying through his teeth about things that came straight out of his imagination. This wasn't even the lighter toned drivel that he usually spouted about dragon freight, dwarf marriage practices, riding around on a giant hamster, or watching the enjoyment on a warrior's face as they saw Ia Shub Niggurath being cast for the first time.

The confidently standing former lich shook his head, "There is nothing you can say or do that will get me to deny my reign, to deny magic exists, or to say that what I am telling you right now is false Touch-San." The color on the [Peace Keeper's Ring] dulled, "Hmm, we are running out of time. I must demonstrate this quickly then." Momonga reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of golden wire framed spectacles. "These are [Translation Glasses], put them on briefly."

The man came back around, this time with a plate of food, and sat across the table from Ryotaku. The table leaned towards the newcomer as the man put his elbow on the table and scanned the area for whoever he was looking for. "Oi. Hey! Get your own table man!" Ryotaku said while waving in his face.

"Do not bother Touch-San. As I told you earlier, I double cast [Sense Blind], once for sound, and once for sight as I teleported in. We are imperceptible to the humans around us until my staff runs out of MP." Momonga pushed the glasses onto Ryotaku's face.

There was dawning realization from Touch-San the more he waved at the man sitting across from him. He touched the back of his neck, and blinked in panic at still finding his own computer port attached to his skin there. Ryotaku's mouth hung open as he pulled the tiny lensed glasses off his face.

Momonga reached into the air in front of himself in a gesture that was one of four non-default selections a player could make for accessing their inventory. A memory from oh so long ago of watching the lich avatar of the man in front of him testing out which one felt right for his RP and settling on number three because it seemed the best for a mage came to Ryotaku. Default was to pull your inventory out of your right pocket, and number one was to pull it out of your opposite pocket across your body, most rogues and thief classes took that one or the one where you pulled from the base of your back.

Purple miasma pooled around a black cloud as Momonga's arm faded into a temporary hole in reality. Ryotaku backed into the wall, straining the chain attached to the chair his feet were tangled up in. "Bellriver's death is much more important to me than secrecy Touch-San. I have already done what I can to adhere to PKing for Dummies, locking out scrying in both magical and technological means. Still, if I were to be found out by the rest of the Players, they would have an agreed upon cause to come after me, and while I can take any of them one-on-one, if even two of them team up, I would lose."

"H-h-ho-" Ryotaku gulped down air, "How?" his eyes fixated on how his guildmaster's arm appeared to end just below the elbow in a cloud of particle effects straight out of Yggdrasil.

"This book is the physical representation of the encrypted data that Bellriver placed in the bowels of Nazarick's treasury." he pulled out a thick unassuming brown leather bound book from his inventory. It had no title, it had no other marks on the surface, and the pages appeared to be made out of parchment instead of paper. Edges wrinkled with age, but still neatly sanded down to a solid surface, kept from disaster by being held inside of a player's inventory for thousands of years.

Momonga held it out in offering to Ryotaku, who slowly sat back down in his seat and took the tome carefully.

"You will need the [Translation Glasses] to read it, the writing is still encrypted."

Ryotaku gingerly opened the cover, blinking down at nonsense before putting the wire framed glasses on and squinting through their bottlecap sized lenses. Instantly he shut the book. "Momonga, hide this, don't show it to anybody." he whispered desperately, "Give up your pursuit on this one." trembling hands forced the tome back.

"I will not." Momonga said plainly, he was used to getting his way, and some pathetic fear tactics coming from mere humans would not deter him in the slightest.

"They will kill you for this. They will kill anybody they think you might have told. If not killing then blackmail, career destruction, kidnapping. If we had this after Bellriver was found dead it might have been different, but… don't keep prying."

"They can try all they like." Momonga grabbed the book and glasses back, returning them to his rip in reality. "Buku-Chan and her children have wards and trip spells surrounding them and their house, as does Peroronchino. Yamaiko too has a trip spell bracelet and is armed. Hero-hero, Punnitto Moe, and Tabula Smaragdina are… adequately protected. Ulbert and Luci*Fer too are taken care of. All of our guildmates have a trip spell on them at the very least, the ones I've talked to have their guild rings as well." his arm returned carrying a golden ring with a red gemstone, the symbol of the Sorcerous Kingdom and the Guild emblazoned in its center. "Nine's Own Goal might have known defeat, but the name Ainz Ooal Gown never will so long as I live."

Ryotaku shivered at the threat hidden in those words. Their guild was known for a reason. Lots of reasons actually. Despite being the smallest guild in the first hundred rankings, they were in the top ten for capabilities in the game. Even though they were inactive until Momonga started playing Ygg2, their legacy in the form of the unconquerable dungeon was secure. The guild was so well known that once Bellriver started digging where he shouldn't have, all of their names were put on watch by the government. A fact that Bellriver, Ulbert, and Luci*Fer all found hilarious and terrifying at the same time. It was why they had only ever had one IRL meeting with everybody in their guild.

With a gesture that indicated practiced ceremony, Momonga slid the oversized ring onto Ryotaku's left hand thumb. Like its other ninety-nine companions, it shrank to fit the wearer. The lawyer shivered at the familiar sensation of equipping an item from Yggdrasil. Something that he hadn't felt since he was forced to quit by political scandal.

Clear beads of water formed at the edges of Ryotaku's eyes, "They have my wife, they have my children." he was breaking inside again.

"As relations to the guild, I will protect them under the name of Ainz Ooal Gown." Momonga leaned heavily on his cane, his right hand wrapped around the twisting sore spot just below where his stomach was. "Quickly Touch-San. Who killed Bellriver?" he asked with a wince.

"I… don't know their names, just where they get their jobs…" Ryotaku said quickly.

The man sitting on the opposite side of the table jumped back, the chain on his chair snapped taught and he fell over.

"Momonga…"

"Later. I'll find you when I can." Momonga snapped his fingers and vanished like he had never been there.

The air warmed suddenly, and the atmosphere in the promenade grew quiet at the sudden appearance and disappearance of the strangely dressed man. Ryotaku collapsed into the chair below him like a puppet with its strings cut.

The man whispered "Momonga…" while typing onto his now lit phone screen from the floor.

"Who are you?" Ryotaku asked, suddenly wary of the unassuming man, his cop and player instincts were triggered by the way he was reacting. Punnitto Moe had hammered the tactics of PKing for dummies into everybody in the guild. While he never participated in revenge raids, he still knew how to set one up, and how to spot one.

"Um… ah… nobody?" he said before untangling his legs and practically running out of the room.

"Shit." Ryotaku said while looking down at the guild ring wrapped around his thumb tightly. Like equipped items in the game, he couldn't even tell that it was on his thumb. He tried to pull it off, to no avail. "Seriously?" he exclaimed to nobody. "Man, I hope nobody recognizes the symbol."