Lord of the Dead in the Land of Lust

CH1 - Arrival

Momonga opened his eyes to a brilliantly bright sky of aquamarine and clouds that could be mistaken for puffed marshmallows. A light breeze blew across his body smelling faintly of grass and flowers, and the sounds of birds and trickling and running water was a calm back ground noise.

All of these were, of course, a distinct problem because Dive games like Yggdrasil did not have scent implemented, and background noise was nearly nonexistent due to laws that forbade games from being to realistic.

It was also a problem because he had been sitting on his throne in the great tomb of Nazarick awaiting the forced logout that would signal the end of years of fun and work.

"Ah I see, I must have dozed off and am dreaming," Momonga said right before realizing that his normal voice was not so low or gravelly. His voice as Momonga was, but that was due to in-game filters as a part of his race.

'Some kind of lucid dream perhaps then? Recalling the joy I have lost?' He thought himself with a sigh, closing his eyes and raising a hand to his face.

Only to go rigid at the feeling of his hand. It was hard, shaped with ridges and creases as was his face. The laws against games being to realistic meant that the feeling of touch in games was off. Things felt hard or soft but had little discernable texture. A sword handle often felt the same in game as a potion bottle or a chunk of metal. Yet his fingers felt bony, and his face was full of pits and crevices that a face normally would not have.

Unless of course, if that face was a skull.

Another gust of wind washed over him, flapping his clothing across his body making him feel each movement, and bringing the with it the scent of grass and water once more. As well as the smell of smoke.

"Can one smell in a dream?" Momonga asked himself before opening his eyes and looking at his hand to find it to be made of bone. Long rough looking bone that could never be a human hand, at least not a normal human hand, it was much too big. "Perhaps not a dream then," Momonga mused as he moved his fingers and even snapped them, feeling every movement, though it did feel somewhat muted, like his fingers were covered in plastic wrap. "This is still too much feeling. And the smells and sounds are, too vivid. This doesn't make sense."

Another gust of wind blew past, a plume of dark black smoke trailing with it and carrying ash, some of which brushed past him.

With a sigh he sat up, looking over his body to find he was indeed still his Yggdrasil avatar Momonga, and then fully stood up to take a look at the area around him.

He was at the edge of a grassland and a forest with a stubby mountain range in the distance. A river lazily ran through the grassland and joined with another that came out of the forest and then turned and disappeared further away. Up the one river was what appeared to be the classic fantasy town or village surrounded by a palisade wall. It also had numerous plumes of smoke and what sounded like screaming and clashing metal coming from within.

"Seems like an event, but there has not been an Event since the announced the closure. I should have been forced to logout already," Momonga muttered to himself before letting out a light sigh. "Message."

What should have been a spell that made a pinging noise to alert him to its activation caused nothing to happen.

"That is, odd," Momonga said simply as he held out an open palm. "Inventory."

Again, nothing happened. There was no sound that was made, no window that opened, not even a message saying he was in an area where he was unable to open his inventory. There was nothing.

"inventory!" Momonga called out, with nothing happening. "Storage!" he called out to the same effect. "Fireball!"

A ball of fire formed in his open palm and shot out like a bullet, colliding into the side of the nearby creek and exploding with a four meter wide blast of fire and force. Momonga threw up his arms instinctually to cover his face from the blast, and when he removed them he saw that the grass was singed, and that the creek now had a crater in the side of it, rapidly filling with water and making the crater steam for a few seconds as the water cooled the heated earth.