Chapter Seven

  Ulbert’s mood was neither good nor bad. On the one hand, it was yet another beautiful day… ‘I’m getting used to these…’ He thought with glee as he traveled with the quiet company of knights. On the other hand, for the first three days, the humans he traveled with said nothing, at least not openly. They looked up at him with a kind of quiet, reverential mix of awe and fear.

  That in and of itself wasn’t a problem, ‘I could get used to that too.’ Ulbert mused.

  The trouble was two fold.

  The first and simplest was that they were a rather dull lot, to the point of being frankly boring. It was tedious to travel in such total silence.

  The second was that every now and then, he saw the very same signs of the world he hated and left behind, beginning here. Tanners dumped their mercury into water, animal and human waste was disposed of in the same way as if to say ‘screw whoever is down river and wants a drink.’

  It wasn’t as bad as his own world, but he could see those beginnings.

  The reception he received from humans seemed to vary depending on whether or not anyone he rescued, lived there.

  And when they did, there was kneeling, bowing heads, and cries of praise.

  When they didn’t?

  The street would empty and fearful looks would come through cracks in shuttered windows.

  Still, for those first few days, Ulbert found he had little will to communicate. ‘See, Ulbert, this is what happens when you only communicate through games. You have nobody but yourself to blame for this.’ He thought and clenched his fingers together, scraping his metallic claws against one another.

  That made him think of his companions. ‘Were the others logged out, or did they end up here with me, somewhere else perhaps? What about Momonga, did he end up here too? I need to find out more about the rest of the world, but everybody here has been just going mad over the beastmen, may they rest in pieces.’

  ‘If only I hadn’t left the game.’ He cursed his decision to depart, but what choice had there been? ‘I needed to work to live, I had to look after my brothers and sisters…’ His jaw clenched at the recollection.

  Handing over his equipment to Momonga for the last time, even in game, his hand hesitated in the act, “It was fun. Keep my gear for me, I’ll return to the game one day, when I can… but for now, I have things I have to do…” Ulbert’s final words to him were, as even he knew, likely the final words they would ever trade.

  Momonga was better at these things than he, and it showed in Momonga’s response. “Of course, your things will be here for you, and so will I.”

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Ulbert shut his eyes against the memory, but it only became more vivid. ‘Momonga… my friends…’ He thought, and recalled the email he got from Momonga about the shutdown and one final reunion. The others gathered together too, those that could. ‘Though how we ended up ‘outside’ of Nazarick, who knows… must have been part of the shutdown process scrambling location data… but we were so close…’

  It should have been their last hurrah as one band of players.

  But now?

  ‘I’m all alone, maybe the others got scattered around, or logged off, or maybe even we ended up in different times, or other worlds other than this one? Will I ever see them again?’ Ulbert couldn’t even begin to guess, and so he sought distraction from the whirlwind thoughts that circled around in his brain.

  And it was he who finally broke that silence with his escort. “How many other kingdoms are here?” Ulbert asked as they rounded the bend of a forest road.

  “In the world? I don’t know, Lord Ulbert.” Sir Torald said. He was relaxed on his horse, the most at ease amongst the little band of knights. The others remained tense on their horses, riding several paces farther away and well behind them both. “But to the west, there is the Slane Theocracy, to the south of them, the Elves, to the west of the Theocracy are the dark elves, then there are the Abelion Hills, the Holy Kingdom…bad business, that. And there are also two kingdoms to the north, I can’t remember their names offhand. One of them is pretty new, though. Supposed to have some powerful magic, for all the good it did us here.” He said and spat into the dirt road.

  “Could I see a map at our next stop? I want to know more about where I am.” Ulbert asked as politely as he could, and Torald cleared his throat.

  “I see no reason why not, but… m’lord, may I ask something, if it please you?” Torald rubbed his chin thoughtfully and cocked his head as he looked over at Ulbert.

  Ulbert nodded, “What else is there to do but talk? You may as well ask things.”

  Torald grunted, “Ah, yes, if you’ll pardon me, m’lord… you don’t act like a typical demon.”

  “That wasn’t a question.” Ulbert pointed out.

  Torald blinked several times, “Why does m’lord not act like a typical demon?”

  Ulbert scratched his head as he thought that over, ‘Because I’m a human from another world trapped in the body of my game avatar which is in turn trapped in another world’ is probably not going to make any sense.’ He thought, but out loud he said, “How does someone answer a question like ‘why are you like you and not like someone else,’ human?” Ulbert asked in turn.

  “M’lord?” Torald’s confused, wide eyed expression was obvious, he was quite lost.

  “Your fellow knights are back behind us, they still don’t trust me. But you’re riding close at hand, more like a companion or a proper escort. If I were to ask you, ‘why don’t you act like a typical knight?’ how would you answer that?” Ulbert opened his hands out at his sides, and that seemed to sink in.

  “It’s true though, many demons hate humans, or at least, view them poorly. Some, most probably, are little better than animals or monsters with no higher thoughts of their own. But I’m the highest level demon, I have my reason, my mind, intact. So I’m simply ‘me’. I’m not some Overlord of darkness. Just ‘myself’ which is by definition ‘atypical’. Does that answer satisfy you, Torald?”

  The knight rubbed at his beard as he listened, “It… actually does, m’lord.”

  ‘He’s not wrong, though.’ Ulbert acknowledged to himself alone. ‘When I was killing those beastmen, I didn’t really care about the lives of the humans, it was more about the fact that the beastmen reminded me of those I hated back home… and I felt nothing but ‘bliss’ while killing them. There’s no real reason I wouldn’t enjoy killing humans just as much. Especially if they reminded me even more of those bastards that ruined my world…’

  While he thought that over, it wasn’t hard to imagine such people were here too, if there was a Queen, there would be other nobles, and if there were nobles, then there would be vile nobles, and those would be a delight to slaughter in all kinds of tortuous ways.