Tiamat dreamed.

It was a dream overflowing with happiness.

Guildmasters and guild members who had long since gone their separate ways returned one by one. To commemorate their final day, an enormous festival was held. Everyone gathered to celebrate the end of Yggdrasil, reminiscing about the joyful days of the Twelve, sparing neither resources nor items for the occasion.

Thousands of guild members danced and laughed, and in perfect harmony, thousands of NPCs served and entertained them.

It was the Twelve at its peak—the radiant, golden age he thought he would never see again.

As Tiamat gazed upon that scene, his eyes glimmered with emotion.

Memories of joy. Memories of youth. Memories he wanted desperately to return to.

Everything he had ever longed for was there before him.

And so, if this was a dream, then let it never end—let it continue for eternity.

With that prayer in his heart, Tiamat melted into the crowd, letting himself be swept away by the warmth of fellowship and the intoxication of celebration.

....

"…ter… …ter… Master! Please, wake up!"

But all beginnings must someday meet their end.

Something kept tapping at him—annoying, insistent. Tiamat frowned.

What? Leave me alone. Don't interrupt this. Don't take this happiness from me…

But the voice grew louder, and the tapping more forceful.

"Tiamat-san! Wake up, please!"

Stop it! Don't drag me away! he shouted inwardly.

And then, the world began to crack.

Black fissures ripped through the castle. The parade tore apart. Guild members scattered like dust in a storm. Guildmasters vanished one by one, fading with gentle smiles. NPCs shattered into fragments, collapsing like broken puppets across the ground.

Tiamat reached out desperately, trying to piece it all back together. But he couldn't touch them. His hands would not reach. His strength was not enough.

No. Come back. Please. Please…

Please don't leave me alone again.

Left kneeling in a pitch-black void, Tiamat lowered his head, drowning in despair.

....

He opened his eyes.

A heavy, bittersweet feeling clung to his chest—like he had just lost something precious and irreplaceable. He had dreamed of something warm… something joyful… something that vanished like foam on water.

He wanted to close his eyes again and savor the fading warmth.

But before he could, a voice snapped sharply at his ear, pulling him back to reality.

"Hey! I said wake up already, Tiamat-san!"

"…What? Who's interrupting a man's good dream at the best part…!"

Annoyed, Tiamat groaned and squinted—only for his eyes to fly wide open at the sight in front of him.

"…Huh? Momonga-san?"

"Yes! It's me, Momonga!"

Standing there was a familiar skeletal avatar—one he had not expected to see. Any trace of drowsiness vanished instantly.

"Wait—what? Momonga-san, why are YOU here?"

"That's MY question! Where in the world is this place?"

"…What?"

Tiamat blinked in confusion, stunned. Momonga sounded just as bewildered. For a moment, neither could process what was happening.

The dream was gone—but what stood before him now was something far stranger.

Tiamat lifted his head.

And he immediately realized his perspective was... considerably higher than before.

"Huh? What is—whoa—?!"

"Waaah!!"

Kudong!

As Tiamat raised his head and pushed himself up, a tremor rippled out as if an earthquake had struck.

When he planted his foot, the ground shook, and a spreading wave of powerful, pitch-black magic overwhelmed and withered every plant, insect, and living thing nearby.

The black, oppressive mana radiated outward in concentric circles—and it even struck Momonga standing right beside him.

Momonga, however, was largely unaffected. His own passive aura, the "Aura of Despair," naturally canceled out the effects of Tiamat's intimidation.

Still, the aftereffects were alarming enough that Momonga panicked and shouted.

"Tiamat-san! Turn off the passive aura! Turn off your Intimidation!"

"Huh? Passive aura... how do I turn it off, Momonga-san? The menu won't pop up!"

"Now that you mention it, it's not showing up for me either!"

Momonga echoed him and then turned pale himself—what was going on? Their bodies looked like game characters, yet no menu window appeared. What the heck!

While they fussed, a huge dragon nearby thumped and hollered even louder.

"Huh?! Where'd my body go? That's a dragon—wait, Momonga's a skeleton here… Is the Yggdrasil service not shut down yet? I was definitely logged out at the guild hall at shutdown… So where is this place?!"

"Exactly! I was in the guild hall until shutdown too!"

Kuarrrr! Kudung! Pajiijik! Kwaddd!

With the skeleton and the dragon—two transcendent beings—panicking and running amok, the surrounding area began to crack, collapse, and become devastated just from the shockwaves.

"Ugh! Tiamat-san! Please calm down! That's causing an earthquake!"

"No, Momonga-san, you calm down! Your aura—your Aura of Despair is turning everything into sand! Gasp! Watch your step—you nearly stepped on something!"

"Eek! Tiamat-san, watch your foot!"

Despite knowing what was happening, neither of them could do anything but stand there stunned, and for a while they leveled the neighborhood.

Because of that, a few small tribes of Ainfolk living not far below ground were knocked out or foaming at the mouth from the tremendous pressure that rippled out—but fortunately their lives weren't in danger.

"Whew, it finally settled down somehow."

"Yeah..."

Tiamat wiped sweat from his brow as if exhausted.

At some point, his massive draconic form had returned to a human shape. Thanks to one of the three world items he always kept—no, was it now four?—the item he made most practical use of: Tarnhelm he had changed his race from a huge, unwieldy dragon into a humanoid form.

Momonga watched that transformation with obvious envy. To anyone else it probably only looked like a terrifying pair of glowing red eyes, but the longing was clear.

"That's still really enviable... Tarnhelm... Tiamat, will you trade it? Our guild has a lot of world items; I could give you one of them—"

"No thanks. Maybe if you gave me two. Or I'd swap it for a Ring of Twenty."

"Uh, no, that's—"

"Then don't."

Momonga let out a long sigh. He really wanted that item, but trading two World Items—or worse, a "Top 20" artifact—for just one was absurd. Sure, Tarnhelm was an incredible racial-shift item and a collector's treasure, but no matter how much he desired it, that deal was daylight robbery.

"Well, putting that aside… where are we, exactly, Momonga-san?"

"I'd like to know that too, Tiamat-san. Where in the world are we?"

"No idea…"

Tiamat swept his gaze across the landscape.

The land they had just devastated was cracked, barren, and cratered as though a battlefield had torn through it. Yet beyond the ruined zone, his sharp eyes spotted something else.

There was nature.

Grass swayed. Wildflowers bloomed. Trees stood in clusters, and beyond them, hills, forests, mountains, and tiny creatures moved about—bugs, small animals, all signs of a living ecosystem.

It looked like a Yggdrasil forest field at first glance… but something felt off. His instincts told him this wasn't it.

"…Something's strange, Momonga-san. I can smell things."

"Smell? Well, yes, I smell things too, but—"

"That's the strange part. In Yggdrasil, normal field areas had no scent, right? Unless you were in that special swamp zone your guild occupied, there shouldn't be any smell at all."

"…That's true. So why can we smell anything?"

"Mm…"

After thinking for a moment, Tiamat crouched and touched the ground.

He felt the sand slipping through his pale fingers. The gritty, granular sensation was too vivid, too real to be a mere VR haptic feedback. In reality, his ruined nerves would never allow him to feel something like this again.

Yet here it was. Sand. Texture. Pressure. Temperature.

And then—he pinched a bit of dirt and put it in his mouth.

"Tiamat-san?! Why are you eating dirt?!"

"Ugh—pth! Blech—! It tastes like dirt, Momonga-san!"

"Well of course it tastes like dirt, you ate dirt!"

"No—I mean it actually tastes like dirt, Momonga-san!"

"…What?"

Momonga had been about to retort, but suddenly froze.

A realization struck him like lightning.

A surge of emotion welled up—only to be instantly crushed by his automatic Emotional Suppression, forcing his thoughts back into icy calm. His red eye-lights widened.

"…It has taste? Are you certain?"

"Yes. I can taste it. In Yggdrasil, there was no taste content whatsoever."

In Yggdrasil, taste was a forbidden sense—disabled to prevent psychological dependence and addiction. Only sight, sound, limited smell, and dampened touch were permitted. There were no flavors, no matter what one ate. At best, wealthy elites used illegal sensory rigs to simulate taste—but that was never part of official gameplay.

Yet here, dirt tasted like dirt. Salty, dry, unpleasant… unmistakably real.

Which could only mean one thing.

"…Momonga-san."

"…Tiamat-san."

The two stared at each other, stunned.

"What do we do now?"

"I… don't know."

Tiamat slowly sank to the ground, overwhelmed. This place wasn't Yggdrasil. It wasn't reality either—not with this draconic body and functioning magic items. The shock was too great; for a moment, he simply gave up trying to think at all.

However, Momonga couldn't fall apart—not even if he wanted to. No matter the shock, his undead trait Emotional Suppression forcibly stabilized his mind over and over again. Thanks to that, he could still think clearly and assess reality with cold logic.

"Tiamat-san?"

"Yes, Momonga-san…?"

"For now… how about we figure out what this world is?"

"…What?"

"We don't know where this is, and we don't know what kind of world we're in, but we are here now. We can't just sit and stare at the dirt forever, right?"

Normally, he would not have taken the lead so assertively. But having a companion at his side—and seeing that companion shaken—pushed Momonga to step forward. Of course, it also helped that his emotions were being forcefully suppressed, keeping him calm… yet the presence of someone who needed direction gave him real resolve.

"You're right… We don't know where we are, but at least our bodies work, our items function, and it doesn't look like we're going to drop dead in a ditch somewhere."

"True. Though, in my case, I don't know if I could 'die' even if I wanted to… I am undead, after all."

"Pfft—Momonga-san, was that supposed to be a joke?"

"Uh… let's call it… half a joke?"

"Hah!"

Tiamat let out a small, helpless laugh and rose to his feet. In the form of a young boy, he stood, then lifted a hand to the crown upon his head—channeling a command through its power.

His body swelled like an inflating balloon—and then burst outward, covered in glossy black scales. In moments, his small frame expanded into a colossal beast. Where a boy once stood, a massive black dragon now loomed, like a living fortress of obsidian.

He opened a maw large enough to swallow a carriage.

"In that case, climb on, Momonga-san."

"Uh… Tiamat-san, are you sure you can fly? If this isn't Yggdrasil—"

"I feel like I can. Call it instinct. And if items, magic, and skills still work, flying shouldn't be an issue. Yes, you can fly on your own, Momonga-san, but I'm faster in the air. If we want to scout the area, riding me will be quicker. No matter how large this world is, I'll fly us all the way past the stars if I have to."

"…Let's not go that far. For now, just—"

"For now?"

"…just the upper atmosphere, please."

The skeletal magic caster landed atop the dragon's massive back, grinning—well, as much as a skull could grin.

Seeing that, the dragon tilted his enormous head and grinned back.

"Very well. I'll take us up. Hold on tight, Momonga-san."

"Of course. Tiamat-san, let's see how fast you can fly."

"With pleasure. I've been curious myself, honestly!"

Tiamat drew in a deep flood of mana. Black streams of aura surged out, cloaking his gigantic frame as his wings spread wide. With a single mighty flap, he launched himself skyward. The force of the takeoff was like a rocket blast—tearing up the ground below a second time as a shockwave erupted outward.

Then, like a streak of black lightning, the dragon shot toward the heavens.

That day…

a skeletal magic caster and an obsidian dragon, beings who could shake worlds, descended upon a new land.

The roar that echoed across the continent became a proclamation:

A new force had arrived—one powerful enough to shake the world to its core.

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