23:59:35, 36, 37…
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Momonga counted down along with the numbers.
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23:59:48, 49, 50…
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He closed his eyes.
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23:59:58, 59—
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He counted the moments as they ticked off the clock…to the end of his fantasy… Here comes the blackout—
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0:00:00… One, two, three…
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“…Huh?”
Momonga opened his eyes. He wasn’t back in his room. He was still in Yggdrasil in the Throne Room.
“…What’s going on?”
The time was accurate. He should have been booted by now.
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0:00:38…
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It was definitely after midnight. The time displayed by the system clock could not possibly be off.
Unsure how to proceed, he looked around for any information.
“Was the shutdown postponed?”
Or is there some kind of loss time?
Countless possibilities crossed his mind, but they were all far from convincing. The most likely was that for some reason, some unfavorable reason, the server shutdown had been postponed. If that were the case, the GMs would probably be making announcements. He rushed to turn the communication channels back on—his hands stopped.
His menu wouldn’t come up.
“What the…?”
Feeling slightly uneasy and confused (but surprised by how calm he was), Momonga tried to use some other features: forced system access that bypassed the menu, chat, a GM call, force quit. He couldn’t get to any of them. It was like he’d been locked out of the system.
“What is going on?!” His irate voice echoed across the spacious Throne Room and faded away.
This is the last day. It’s unthinkable that something like this could happen on the day that is supposed to be the end of it all. Are they teasing us? What came over him now was irritation at not being able to make a beautiful exit at the game’s glorious end. It could be felt in each word he spoke and almost sounded like he was taking out his anger on someone, but there shouldn’t have been any response. However…
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“Is something the matter, Lord Momonga?”
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It was a woman’s pretty voice, and he was hearing it for the first time.
Dumbfounded, Momonga looked to see where it had come from. When he saw who had spoken, he was absolutely shocked.
It was an NPC who was looking up at him—Albedo.
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Carne.
It was a small village not far from the Tove Woodlands at the southern edge of the Azerlisia Mountains that formed the border between the empire and the kingdom. The population was about 120. Twenty-five households was not an uncommon size for a village on the frontiers of the Re-Estize Kingdom.
Carne mainly relied on agriculture and the bounty of the forest, and the only visitor apart from an apothecary who came to acquire herbs was the tax collector. The phrase like time had stopped was an apt descriptor of the place.
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The day started early in the village. Villagers generally awoke at dawn. Unlike the larger cities, they didn’t have magically maintained Continual Light, so they rose and slept with the sun.
Enri Emmott’s mornings began with fetching water from the well near her house. Fetching water was women’s work. Her first chore was done when the large pot in her house was full. By that time her mother would be finished preparing breakfast, and the four members of their family would sit down together to eat.
Breakfast was barley and wheat oatmeal, sautéed vegetables, and on some days, dried fruit.
After that, she would go out to work in the fields with her mother and father. Her younger sister, soon to be ten, would gather wood near where the forest started or help in the fields. The bell in the center of town on the edge of the village square rang at noon. They would take a break from their work and eat lunch.
Lunch was brown bread baked some days earlier and soup with bits of preserved meat in it.
Then, it was back to the fields. When the sky began to redden, they would return home and eat dinner.
Dinner was the same brown bread as lunch and bean soup. If a hunter caught an animal, they would sometimes get a share of the meat. After the meal, they would chat as a family and mend clothes by what light remained in the kitchen.
They usually slept around six PM.
Enri Emmott had lived her whole life, from the moment she was born to her current age of sixteen years, as a member of this village.
She thought her uneventful life would continue on the same way forever.