Presently they arrived at a large domed hall. Crystals in four colors on the ceiling gave off white light. There were seventy-two alcoves dug into the walls, most of which contained a statue. There were sixty-seven in all, each in the form of a demon.

This room was called Lemegeton after the famed grimoire also known as The Lesser Key of Solomon. All of the statues, carved out of ultrarare magical metals, were golems based on Solomon’s seventy-two demons. The only reason there were sixty-seven instead of seventy-two was that the person making them got bored partway through.

The crystals on the ceiling were monsters. During an enemy raid they could summon the major elementals (earth, wind, fire, and water) and simultaneously bombard the enemy with wide-range area-of-effect magic attacks. If all of them were mobilized, it would be enough power to take out two parties of level-100 players (twelve people) with ease.

This room was the very last line of defense before entering the heart of the Great Tomb of Nazarick.

Momonga took the servants with him as he crossed Lemegeton to stand in front of a large door. It was a huge—probably more than sixteen feet tall—double door with extraordinarily detailed carvings: a goddess on the left and a demon on the right. They looked so real it seemed like they might jump off the door to attack. Despite that, Momonga was fairly sure they didn’t move. “If a bunch of heroes manage to get this far, we should welcome them. A lot of people say we’re evil and whatnot, so let’s lie in wait for them here like final bosses.” The suggestion was adopted by majority rule.

“Ulbert…” Ulbert Alain Odle had been the most obsessed with the word evil out of anybody in the guild. “That guy just never got through adolescence…”

Momonga took another sentimental look around the grand hall.

“…Okay, you’re not going to attack me, right?”

His anxiety was not unwarranted. Even he didn’t know how everything in this labyrinth worked. He wouldn’t have been surprised if one of the retired members had left a twisted “parting gift,” and the guy who made this door was definitely the type to do something like that.

Once, he said he wanted to show Momonga a powerful golem he had just made, but when Momonga booted the golem up, a bug in the combat AI caused it to start throwing punches at him. He still wondered if that had been on purpose.

“Hey, LuciFer. If you attack me today of all days, I will be seriously angry.”

Momonga touched the massive door with caution, but his worries had been for nothing; it opened automatically but slowly, with appropriate gravity.

The mood changed.

The previous room had already been as tranquil and solemn as a shrine, but the scene here surpassed even that. The new atmosphere exerted a physical pressure; the exquisite workmanship could be felt weighing on one’s entire body.

The room was huge—a hundred people could come in and there would still be space left over—and the ceilings so high. The walls were primarily white with ornamentation done mainly in gold. The magnificent chandeliers that hung from the ceiling were made of jewels in a rainbow of colors and cast a dreamy sparkling light. On the walls, hanging from the ceiling to the floor, were large flags, each with a different crest—forty-one in all.

On the far side of this lavish gold-and-silver room was a short flight of ten stairs. At the top was a throne carved out of a giant crystal, its back practically tall enough to reach the heavens. Behind it was a large scarlet tapestry bearing the guild’s crest.

This was the most important location in the entire Great Tomb of Nazarick, the Throne Room.

A “wow” escaped Momonga’s lips as he admired the overwhelming room. He was sure the workmanship was the best, or maybe second best, in all of Yggdrasil. That made it a perfect place to spend the last few minutes of the game.

It was so large, the sound of his footsteps seemed to vanish into the room as he entered. He eyed the female NPC standing next to the throne.

She was gorgeous, wearing a snow-white dress. Her faint smile was like that of a goddess. Her lustrous hair was a black the exact opposite of her dress and reached all the way to her waist. Her golden irises and vertical slit pupils were odd, but they didn’t detract one bit from her peerless feminine beauty. She did, however, have thick horns that curled forward out of her temples, like a ram’s. But that wasn’t all. Black angel wings sprouted out of her back near her hips. Perhaps because of the shadows caused by her horns, her goddess smile seemed like it might be a mask hiding something else. She wore a glittering golden necklace like a spiderweb covering her shoulders and chest. In her delicate silken-gloved hands, she carried a strange wand-like object. It was about eighteen inches long, its end tipped by a black orb that floated there with no supports.

Momonga hadn’t forgotten her name. How could he have? She was Albedo, captain of the Great Tomb of Nazarick’s floor guardians. There were seven floor guardians, and she was the NPC who oversaw them; she was the character at the top of the NPC hierarchy in the Great Tomb of Nazarick. Which was why she was allowed to stand by in that innermost room.

But there was some harshness in the way Momonga looked at her now. “I knew there was one World Item here, but why are there two?”

There were only two hundred of these extraordinary items in Yggdrasil. Each World Item contained an absolutely unique power. There were even game-breaking items that allowed their owner to demand the admins to change a part of the game’s system. Of course, not all of them were so extravagant. Even so, if a player were able to own one individually, one can imagine how far their reputation would spread.

Ainz Ooal Gown was in possession of eleven World Items. That was more than any other guild—far more, in fact. The guild with the next most had only three. Of Ainz Ooal Gown’s, Momonga had gotten permission from the guild to carry one as his own, and the rest were scattered around the Great Tomb of Nazarick, although most of them stayed in the treasury, protected by the Avataras.

There could only be one reason that Albedo had come into possession of one of these secret treasures without his knowledge: The guild member who created her had given it to her.

Ainz Ooal Gown valued majority rule. It was unacceptable to move the treasure everyone collected together around on one’s own. Momonga was somewhat offended and felt he should probably take it back. But today was the last day. He decided to take that guildmate’s feelings into account and leave the item where it was.

“That’s far enough,” Momonga said to Sebas and the Pleiades in a dignified tone when they’d reached the steps to the throne.

Then, he started up the stairs, but after he had gone up a couple, he realized he could still hear footsteps behind him and winced (although, of course, the graphics of his skull face didn’t move a bit). When it came down to it, NPCs were inflexible programs. They wouldn’t take an order unless it was one of their set phrases. Momonga used NPCs so rarely that he had managed to forget that simple fact.

Since the other guild members left, Momonga had been doing all he reasonably could to go treasure hunting and raise the funds necessary to maintain the Great Tomb of Nazarick. He never teamed up with any other players and stealthily avoided the kinds of difficult areas the guild had quested in back when the members were still around. Every day he just threw money into the treasury like it was his job and logged out. He didn’t have much occasion to meet NPCs.

“Stand by.” The footsteps stopped when he gave the correct command. Then, he climbed the stairs and stood before the throne.

He scrutinized Albedo without reserve. He never really came to this room and couldn’t remember ever taking a good look at her. “I wonder what her backstory is…” All he could remember was that she was captain of the floor guardians and the most elite NPC in the Great Tomb of Nazarick. With curiosity fluttering in his chest, he accessed the menu to look up her info.

And there certainly was info—writing flooded his field of vision. Her backstory was the length of an epic poem. If he were to take his time reading it, the servers would shut down before he was done.

If Momonga’s expression could move, his face would have been screwed up in disbelief. He felt more or less like he’d stepped on a land mine. How could he have forgotten that the guild member who created Albedo was so obsessed with backstories? He was extremely disappointed in himself.

He was the one who had looked it up, so he resigned himself to browsing the bio. He barely even skimmed it, scrolling in one big swipe to the bottom. The last thing it said caught his attention: “By the way, she’s a bitch.”