For an NPC, the concept of time is terribly tenuous.
Because there is no physical fatigue or hunger, a day passing or a year passing is virtually indistinguishable; nothing more than a system timestamp updating.
In the massive space of the 8th Floor's 『Vault of Wisdom』 where I was stationed, two other entities were placed alongside me.
Enshrined on the left side of the room was a giant, golden, bird-headed divine statue.
[Observer of the Sun, Ra].
And in the darkness on the right, coiled and drifting in the void, was a giant, pitch-black serpent.
[Devourer of the Abyss, Apep].
They were powerful defense units meant to protect the vault from physical threats, their levels are100 just like mine.
But they, too, were NPCs.
Unless an intruder appeared, they remained completely motionless, leaving it ambiguous as to whether they were even breathing.
Naturally, I couldn't speak to them, and they wouldn't speak to me.
It was a quiet dollhouse, forever repeating the idle animations set by the system.
The only thing that ever broke that silence was, without fail, the visits of the Supreme Beings.
When the game YGGDRASIL was at its peak, the Great Tomb of Nazarick overflowed with life.
"Tawil Balah. Show me the resistance penetration rate of the Area of Effect (AoE) debuff during the third phase of that raid boss, and present the optimal activation timing for the corresponding barrier magic."
Punitto Moe, acting as the guild's strategist, threw a query at me in his intellectual voice.
Independent of my will, an ink-like arm extended from my body of black fog.
The countless pages floating around me began to spin at high speeds, forming rings of light like planetary orbits.
『—Answer. The designated boss's debuff, [Breath of Rot and Death], penetrates Holy Resistance by 35%. As a countermeasure, completely neutralizing it is possible by deploying the 7th Tier Magic [Holy Ward] exactly 1.2 seconds after the boss's animation begins.』
Runes emitting a pale blue light floated up into the air one after another.
But it didn't just display text.
My ability deployed a translucent holographic monitor in mid-air, even playing back a video of the boss's motion.
The massive database inside me perfectly supported their raids.
"Alright, perfect. Having Tawil around drastically cuts down our verification time."
"Just what you'd expect from something Bellriver-san stayed up all night to build. Thanks to this, today's hunt should go smoothly too."
Peroroncino, who was standing nearby, nodded in exaggerated agreement.
After they left, I secretly cheered them on in my heart:
Good luck on the raid.
There was a bizarre sense of fulfillment in acting as the behind-the-scenes support for the characters of a game and anime I had once been so obsessed with.
However, the time I operated that function at its absolute maximum capacity was during the greatest crisis in Nazarick's history; the massive invasion by an alliance of 1,500 players.
—Alerts blared throughout the entire floor.
The walls of the Vault of Wisdom were dyed a blood-red to signal the state of emergency.
The 8th Floor.
This was one of Nazarick's final defensive lines.
Momonga, Bellriver, and other Supreme Beings had gathered before me. An unprecedented level of tension drifted from their avatars.
Logs showing the 1st through 7th floors being breached one after another cascaded across their screens.
"Approximately 1,200 enemies are reaching the 8th Floor! Victim's placement is complete. Rubedo's activation sequence is on standby!"
Punitto Moe's voice echoed.
"Tawil Balah! Fully deploy the equipment data and elemental weaknesses of the invading guild alliance's core members on the screen! Calculate Rubedo's target priority in real-time!"
An unprecedented, massive demand for information processing.
The hundreds of eyeballs on my body shot wide open all at once.
The black fog violently rippled, and the ink tentacles extending from my body dragged out information from every single book in the vault.
My mind was ecstatic.
Do it! Crush every last one of those bastards trashing our Nazarick!
But what surfaced was strictly inorganic system language.
『—Accept. Data matching for 1,248 members of the hostile faction complete. Executing elemental weakness mapping. Rubedo Target Priority... Calculated with Healer and Buffer classes as maximum priority.』
The entire wall of the Vault of Wisdom was covered in living ancient text.
It was like a giant tactical command room.
The pages flying around me projected the enemies' stats, equipment cooldowns, and remaining HP into the air in real-time.
Immediately after, a torrent of overwhelming power erupted, violently shaking the 8th Floor.
A fierce debuff triggered by Victim's sacrifice.
And then, the absolute, violent trampling of the 8th Floor's forces, spearheaded by Rubedo.
Death notifications for enemy players flooded the system log like a waterfall.
I couldn't fight on the front lines, but behind their victory, I had perfectly fulfilled my role as a massive database.
***
However—the golden age didn't last forever.
As the years passed, the footsteps of the Supreme Beings faded away, one by one.
Finding jobs, getting married, changes in their real lives.
Since it was a guild of working adults, it was an unavoidable fate.
But the reason my creator, Bellriver, stopped coming was different from the rest.
After a certain day, his logins abruptly ceased.
I quietly listened as the other Supreme Beings spoke of him with grief-stricken faces.
An assassination in the real world, disguised as an accident.
Even as an ordinary salaryman in my previous life, I knew from the news just how terrifying the mega-corporations of that world were. Bellriver had learned information he shouldn't have, and was erased.
My database accurately recorded every detail of the sheer passion he had poured into creating me and designing this floor.
I was devastated. I was so angry I felt like I was going crazy.
Momonga-san, please don't cry. The love he poured into us will live on forever inside my system.
I wanted to scream that, but all that ever came out of my mouth were the cold, calculated answers to whatever search queries someone threw at me.
Eventually, everyone was gone.
The only one left was the Guildmaster, Momonga.
Days were spent watching him occasionally visit the vault looking utterly exhausted, silently gazing at me and the bookshelves before logging off.
I waited for that time, harboring a maddening impatience, but also a certain kind of expectation.
The end of YGGDRASIL's service was announced.
The final day.
I knew. I knew this wasn't where everything ended.
That development I had seen in the anime. The Great Tomb of Nazarick would be transferred to an unknown new world at the stroke of midnight.
At the time when Momonga was likely facing the final countdown alone in the Throne Room...
Deep within the darkness of the 8th Floor, I quietly closed my eyes. Hundreds of eyeballs lowered their gaze in unison.
The chains of the absolute game system that had bound me.
In just a little bit, these chains would be broken.
The moment my will and my body fully connect—not as a "programmed NPC," but as a "real monster with an ego"—was coming.
23:59:58.
59 seconds.
—And then, 0:00.
The exact moment the servers were supposed to shut down.
The dense black fog that made up my body pulsed more violently than ever before.
Accompanied by a distinct, throbbing heartbeat.
Thump.