Overlord - Prologue

The person in question was the leader of their clan, as well as the person Momonga was indebted to. He was in love with transforming heroes, and if the topic came up, he would be more than happy to begin discussing masked heroes who had debuted on wireless radio wave broadcast more than 150 years ago.

Thus, one could say that it was his style. One of his special effects was programmed to automatically trigger a meaningless explosion behind him when he struck a certain pose. The other one—

“Still, the explosion is one thing, but those words… The first time I saw them, I honestly had no idea what kind of face to make. I mean, they’re…”

“Really? I kind of like it.”

— Justice Has Arrived. The words would appear behind him, when he took the appropriate pose.

“Eh? Seriously? Peroroncino-san, you’re amazing. You’re really amazing.”

“Amazing?”

“Well, I think among us, only you like that sort of thing.”

“Ah, it’s true, my big sis said she wasn’t into it… Wait, does that mean I’m the one with weird taste?”

“…If I agree with you, it’ll reflect on Touch-san’s tastes too, so I’ll reserve comment.”

“…Isn’t that the same as just agreeing with me?”

Although their expressions had not changed, the mood in the air had become very solemn. Well, it was not really that gloomy. Or rather, it felt more like they were playing around.

Momonga laughed.

For some reason, talking about these unimportant things made him very happy.

He felt like he could keep chatting like this forever, but that would only impose on his friend Peroroncino, and he wanted to see his other friends too.

Momonga pointed to the tunnel.

“We shouldn’t talk here. Let’s go to the meeting point.”

“Yes, yes, I got it.”

The two of them walked forward, with matching strides.

The tunnel was made of the same inorganic material as before, which could be easily mistaken for a prison, and it extended straight ahead. Although there were doors on both sides, the two of them ignored them and kept moving forward. One could say that the doors beside their destination were little more than decorations, and they could not open them even if they really wanted to.

“Speaking of which, what’re we going to do today?”

“It wasn’t written on the mail, but we’re probably going to take people to level up. I mean, the new people are all somewhat low-levelled. Still, they can still fight if they want to, even with a difference of two or three levels.”

“Well, it’d be good if we could enrich ourselves along the way.”

In Yggdrasil, defeated monsters tended to drop money easily. This was because there were many crafting classes in the game. Most of them made scrolls or wands and staves, which were frequently used by magic casters, and which they could use as well.

If less money dropped, magic item production would become very difficult, and magic-using classes would have to think twice about going on adventures with intense combat. This went against the design philosophy of having players explore the world. Therefore, the game was much more generous than its contemporaries with dropped money.

“What do you mean? Data crystals? Or money?”

“Money, of course. Though there’s some data crystals I want too…”

The two of them walked side by side.

The two of them were in their full gear and were walking shoulder to shoulder, so they needed a lot of space. However, the dimensions of this tunnel were designated as variable, so the path would automatically change to match their body sizes. This was why they could walk this way.

“The data crystals you want are for your dream build’s weapon, right?”

A dream build.

Creating a second character was forbidden in the DMMORPG Yggdrasil. As a result, in order to make the most of their one avatar, the average player would develop their characters through trial and error. The aim of most players was power, or to fully develop the abilities of a non-combat profession such as cooking or alchemy or the like.

But among them were people who proceeded in a way, towards their dream builds.

This was the title given to those people who proudly declared their romantic streak, who eschewed the pursuit of power and sought to role-play.

For example, in order to make a barbarian who sang in battle, they would not gain levels in the vanguard classes which suited barbarians, but instead levelled up in classes like Dragon Priest or Bard, which was considered a waste.

By the way, most people disdained dream builders.

In Yggdrasil, the maximum size of a raid was five parties of six people each, or 30 people in total. Apart from exceptional cases like guild battles or fighting a World-Class enemy, people who were over the limit would be subjected to friendly fire. In other words, they had to take on bosses with just these 30 people. If there were joke characters among them, it would reduce the amount of fighting power they could bring to bear.

Because of that, it was popular for most dream builders to form guilds with others who felt the same way as them.

Then, what about Momonga?