Chapter 4: 1-3: Make a Wish part 3

Momonga glanced sidelong at me, worry evident in his voice. "Ano… Ancient-san, are you certain that this will work? I know you've been planning this with Ulbert for ages, but the entire Guild is gathered, you know? If this fails…"

I snorted, a puff of smoke coming from my nostrils. "Please. Have some faith, my bony friend. Touch Me trusts me, right buddy?"

The World Champion nodded confidently. "Ancient-san, there's no one I would trust more to bring pain and suffering to innocent Players."

"I will own that." I agreed smugly. "If only to teach you to stop being so gullible."

We were all perched on a platform suspended in the air, hoovering hidden in the only corner of Asgard I hadn't gotten around to covering with countless [Spell Echo] Items. It took me years and more gold than most Players could ever dream of to cover the place to my satisfaction, but the end result was worth it. The whole of Ainz Ooal Gown was gathered, standing behind me. They were prepared to carry out what would once be considered a pipe dream—overtaking an entire World in the name of a single Guild.

"Is everyone ready?" I shouted, turning to look at them. A multitude of thumbs-up icons answered me. I smiled, turning back and closing my eyes.

I leapt from the platform, cancelling my Transformation Skill midair and taking to the sky as my human Avatar ballooned out into a lizard the size of a small mountain. I couldn't stop myself from shaking slightly from the anticipation as I sat back, taking a deep breath. I had already buffed myself with every Spell and Skill I had, as did the entire rest of the Guild. For the next ten minutes, I would be the most well-buffed Player in the game.

Numerous cash item cameras floated around the World, which would be immune to my Spells due to them being placed by me. I would have every little bit on tape for future viewing pleasure. I grinned to myself, flexing my claws.

There was no better time than this.

"[Widen Boosted Magic]." I began, my [Wish] ring beginning to glow as I activated it. "[I Wish To Cast: Sword of Damocles]!"

See, the entire setup was a bit tricky. It still functioned exactly as tested, but there was still some room for worry. It had never been tested on such an enormous scale before.

The metamagic enhancement [Boost Magic] allows the user to elevate the Tier and power of a single Spell. In this case, it bumped the Tenth-Tier Wish up a notch—beyond Tier, into Super-Tier. And as such, the restrictions on it changed to match. The Wish Spell allowed one to freely cast a single Spell equal to the Spell's own Tier—an exploit I was more than willing to abuse. The Super-Tier Spell [Sword of Damocles] hummed to life around me, a cash item turning the light a brilliant gold rather than its normal blue. I waited patiently, the entire Guild waiting with baited breath for the Spell to finish charging.

Now this was the tricky bit.

The Item [Spell Echo] was only able to echo Spells of Tenth-Tier or lower. But the Item was designed to cast the Spell only once, and as such the Developers added code designed to cast only the base Spell and not the enhancements to it, so as to avoid a Player using [Triplet Magic] to cheese the system. As such, the Item still read the Wish Spell as a Tenth-Tier, completely ignoring the metamagic enhancement of Boost.

The instant the Spell began to charge, the [Wish] Spell was marked as 'cast', and every [Spell Echo] in Asgard activated at once. Glowing golden Super-Tier circles stretched into the air as far as the eye could see, gently swirling in harmony with my own. An area three times the size of Tokyo glowed to life with innumerable golden lights.

"[Greater Project Voice]." I heard from behind me, the final buff to set the plan in motion.

And with that, it all began.

"People of Asgard… I serve notice on you all." I rumbled, voice carrying to every being within the Realm. "Too long I have stayed my hand. No more. Today you leave me no choice. Today, this war will end. No more will innocents be hunted and killed. No more will you take lives out of misguided malice. This will be the final shot, the last act of violence. Today, I pass judgement." The Super-Tier Spell chimed gently in my ear, its charge at last complete. "Today… and never again."

I released the Magic, and every Spell fired in unison.

The [Sword of Damocles] is an orbital weapon designed to target structures. A glowing circle that appears several hundred feet above the target before firing a laser that did enough damage to any surrounding objects to reduce them instantly to rubble. Players received only a small percentage of the damage, which heavily limited its usefulness for most.

But fully buffed, with my Job Class registering every Player targeted by my Spells as my enemy?

The sky turned gold as my Widened Spell circles covered every spot in the World. Most overlapped by quite a bit. I had already warned the Devs beforehand to transfer as much computational power to the server of Asgard as possible. They would probably be mad if I crashed all of YGGDRASIL. Countless angles and views were chosen to depict what would later be known as 'The Genocide of Asgard'.

The Spell drilled into the ground below, destroying every habitable spot that the Spells could possibly affect. Millions of pop-ups flickered by, coming and going as the Magic took the lives of every living being that hadn't been able to resist it—which was literally no one, thanks to a few Defense-penetrating Skills I had active.

As the light cleared and the Spell ran its course, the sheer devastation I caused became apparent. The area of land beneath us was the highest terrain anywhere, as well as the only one with any hint of trees or grass. Everything else was a barren wasteland of scorched stone and dirt, magma flowing out in different places. It looked like some war-torn landscape, the results of a terrible war that had lasted for centuries. Not a single soul would ever guess the truth without seeing it firsthand.

But see it they would.

I threw back my head and laughed, knowing full well that every Player in Asgard had seen the exact same message.

You have been slain by Player: [Ancient One].

I had just destroyed every Respawn Point in the entire fucking World. Every last one of them, gone. It would take a full week for them to reset, meaning that the Players that were directly behind me were the only ones in Asgard until then. If we left the World, we would be stuck in another one, just like everyone else. Only a World Item could fix it faster, and the only Item capable of doing so was still on its own respawn timer after the last time I used it.

"Ancient One…" A single voice called from behind me, Touch Me's tone utterly flat. "What. The. Fuck."

I wiped a nonexistent tear from my eye, laughter dying down to mere snickering. "Oh, calm down. That was only phase one. See, I just terraformed the landscape within the span of under two seconds. A World the size of a continent just got leveled. And the thing is, that's too fast for the server to handle. As such, it automatically resets all the key locations and Player-placed objects to the spot they were in the last time it checked them… which should be happening… now."

In front of us, buildings and random objects materialized on thin air. The game's mechanics never bothered to include gravity in their buildings so as to give Players as enjoyable of an experience as possible while creating them. The empty sky before us was now filled with replaced dungeons, assorted locations the server deemed as 'important', and every Player-generated structure since the beginning of the game.

"Hello, beautiful." I crowed smugly, rustling my wings. "See, the sheer amount of data required to back up the entirety of Asgard every few minutes would be ridiculous, not to mention the server lag, so the Devs just set up an algorithm like this. Apparently no one ever thought it would get abused in this way."

"Well no shit." Ulbert's voice cracked slightly. "Jesus fucking Christ, what was that? I thought we were just lightly strafing them, not turning Asgard into a crater the size of the Mariana Trench!"

I raised an eyebrow. "Are you complaining?"

"Hell no!" I could hear the excitement in his tone. "That was FUCKING AWESOME! Can we do it again?"

"Unfortunately not. That little project took me well over two years as well as a ridiculous amount of a very specific Item." I gestured widely to the spoils before us, utterly unguarded. "You'll just have to take the entire treasury of Asgard as a consolation prize."

Momonga finally found his voice, speaking up. "Do you hear that, everyone?" He shouted. "Let's do this! It's time to take Asgard as ours!"

A resounding cheer echoed over the empty world, a precursor to what was to come.

The Devs were flooded with millions of complaints over the next few days, but there really wasn't much they were willing to do. YGGDRASIL was a game that rewarded the ability to learn and use game mechanics, after all, and there wasn't actually anything wrong with me abusing the system in that way. They gently but firmly rebuffed all complaints, stating that I had not cheated in any way, shape, or form to achieve my magnum opus. They even went so far as to publicly post the game's log of what had happened, just to prove that my actions were completely legitimate. It was regrettable, they said, but they would take no action against me.

As news spread, the company that owned YGGDRASIL used the opportunity to proclaim that The Asgardian Genocide was possible because the Player investing into numerous cash-shop items and they could try their luck by doing the same. People were complaining, sure, but money were flowing at an unprecedented rate. Publically, I was the first and only owner of the Title 'The World Slayer'. It gave no bonuses whatsoever, but damn did it sound epic.

Privately, more than one of the Devs messaged me a note of congratulation. No, they weren't going to patch it since it had taken so many resources to pull off in the first place, but they were going to severely nerf the drop rate of [Spell Echo] to deter anyone from repeating my magnum opus. I didn't care, I was too busy being over the moon about the numerous World Items I acquired (read: stole) from the ruins of Asgard.

The Player-made golden city remained intact, gleaming beautifully in the sky some eleven kilometers above the 'ground'. It didn't remain pristine for very long. Its treasures were plundered, then packed into Infinite Backpacks. Despite their name, the Backpacks could only hold a limit of five hundred kilograms worth of items. YGGDRASIL Players commonly put their immediate-use Items into this bag, because the Items within it could be assigned to several hotkeys in the game interface. As such, it was simple to cheese the game and stuff all sixty-four-plus Inventory slots with the things.

Some of my Guildmates had bought cash items capable of extending the limit of one's Inventory Slots, but for fear of ruining a certain exploitable glitch I won't get into now, I never bothered to do the same. Instead I left the bulk theft to my Guildmates, instead clearing the various Guild Bases left abandoned and plundering them for their best Items.

Four days came and went in a flash, and upon checking the timer placed in the Developers' site for the next Spawn Reset, decided to close down our operations. We packed up, gave the place a once-over, then began the final phase of our plan.

Three days were used to utterly reshape the world, burning numerous uses of Super-Tier Spells designed to modify the entirety of Asgard. [Creation] was used en masse, every Player capable of using it doing so to terraform large sections of land.

By the time we were finished, the wasteland had been transformed into a hellscape.

And then we really started fucking with the place.

Ulbert went batshit crazy, cackling like a madman as he spammed the World Item I lent him for the occasion. Hundreds of Demons spewed out into the world, aimed to attack everything that moved. Tabula used numerous [Pandemonium] Spells to add to the mix, though admittedly with less enthusiasm.

Monuments were erected of each one of us, each one actually a disguised Golem I not-so-subtly upgraded with a hefty chunk of Caloric Stone. They would attack when approached, killing any unwary fools.

Members of the Guild littered the entire World in various Spells cast with [Delay Magic] to activate only when someone came near, and god forbid that anyone try to get close to any existing structure, they would find themselves dead faster than you can blink.

In the exact center of Asgard was placed a gigantic sign. It was formed of many torn-up pieces of the ruined city, fused crudely together and propped up with the still-standing buildings.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

|PKING SUCKS, HUH?|

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|

Similar signs were posted above the Guild Halls of numerous infamous PK Guilds, as well as a few crude messages left by some of our more bitter members. The Guild Weapons of each place were rigged to several dozen explosive traps, all designed to blow if anyone was stupid enough to trigger them.

World ransacked, goods stripped from every conceivable source, mines depleted of all valuables, we finally retreated back to our base. Leaving the burning World behind us.

Our objective was never long-term control. Such a thing was impossible with so many powerful Players capable of upsetting any power struggle we attempted. So instead, we made it perfectly clear that Ainz Ooal Gown had once been there. We might not have the manpower or resources for World domination, but we made damn sure that people knew what we were capable of.

For the week before the Spawn Reset, I loosed forty-one weapons of mass destruction upon Asgard and cackled as they beset upon the World with the raw, unmatched ferocity of internet trolls.

Asgard was fucked.

Of course, we returned to see our own base in shambles, but that was perfectly fine. We had deliberately downgraded the place as much as possible, taking our Treasury and NPCs into Asgard with us. Any invaders would get absolutely nothing of value, and we could restore it all with a click of a button thanks to the game's handy 'restore previous version' function. Sure we had to pay a shitload of gold from all the times that it was invaded, but it was chump change compared to what Asgard had given in return.

All in all… it was quite good for YGGDRASIL's first-ever World domination.

Time to ponder my spoils, I suppose.

My piece de resistance was complete.

My best spoils had been tossed into my Inventory, waiting for me to exploit them.

All in all, my day was going pretty damn well.

I hummed happily to myself, at last putting Archer's finished bow into my Inventory. The Stat rolls were utterly perfect, bumping the border of being a World Item. If I ever bothered to sell it it really would crash the economy. That just went to show that a well-crafted Rare could be better than a World Item in most cases. Sure, I might have a few bow-type World Items, but none of them fit Archer's Skillset at all. Thus I was forced to make my own arrangements.

Time to do perform my favorite activity—abusing loopholes in the game's code.

I gathered a large amount of Caloric Stone beneath my talons, clearing my throat and activating the 'Consume' function. A single Stone glowed, and a screen appeared.

Ah, hello Miyagi-san. What'll it be today?

…Yes, I do this enough that the Developers there know my name too. So sue me.

"Hello, Developer-san." I returned in kind. "Could you give me a Mirror of Desire?"

Sure thing. It'll cost the usual, ten thousand units of Caloric Stone. Is that all right?

Some might consider such an item to be ridiculously overpriced, considering a single high-grade custom enchantment was only a couple thousand at most. Not I. I knew full well what it did, having coded the whole thing myself. The Devs also knew full well how overpowered it was, considering it would take several dozen uses of a very specific World Item to replicate it.

Hence the ridiculous cost.

"Yes, it is. I somehow managed to scrape together enough again." I lied through my teeth.

All right, here you are. Enjoy!

The text box disappeared, as did all the Caloric Stone in the cave. In its place, a beautifully glimmering mirror shimmered into existence. I grinned widely, stepping over to the hidden chest I had been using to store the bulk of my Caloric Stone.

What, you don't honestly think that I'd let the Devs know I figured out how to mass-produce the stuff, do you? How silly of you to even suggest such a thing. Not when they so generously give me such valuable Items.

I emptied my Inventory of everything but Archer's bow, then began refilling it with the contents of the chest.

Mirrors of Desire were an insanely overpowered item that I coded myself for one function—to duplicate the user's entire Inventory into their Storage. The Items in the user's Inventory became 'Mirrored', which prevented them from ever being altered but still allowed them to function just fine. The Mirrored copy could then feasibly be Mirrored if one paid the exorbitant amount of Caloric Stone needed to make another one, but the Mirror was one-use only so it limited its effectiveness by a lot.

Still. If you think that sounds like one hell of a glaring exploit, you're absolutely right. It is. Not to get yourself more Caloric Stone of course, the Inventory only has sixty-four slots and the Stone can only stack up to twenty. Even if you duplicated your entire Inventory full of the Stone, you still wouldn't get even close to the amount you spent to get it. The Devs never seemed to consider that you could use it in other ways, though.

They did, however, foresee someone trying to get by with buying cash items that gave them infinite Inventory slots, though, so that unfortunately meant that I was stuck with only sixty-four until I was done using this particular exploit.

Despite their power, however, the Mirrors still weren't World Items. Sure one might think that they broke the balance of the game, but think about it. You have to burn ten thousand World Items in order to get it. And besides, they still did have one limit. Mirrors of Desire couldn't duplicate World Items or any Quest Items. Beyond that, though, there were no rules. And that left the door wi~de open for some shenanigans.

See, you didn't actually have to be near your Storage for the Mirror to work. You just had to activate it and have enough space.

I had sixty-four slots open right now, excluding the one taken by the Mirror of Desire.

To exploit this, you have to do something I think is rather clever.

See, there's a World Item capable of duplicating absolutely any one Item, including other World Items if you had them on hand. It's called a Mirror of Kalandra. I found it completely by chance on a random Raid Boss drop and immediately hid it away, not telling a soul of its existence. It was one-use of course, but that didn't matter. Not for what I was using it for.

"[Greater Teleportation]." I murmured, concentrating on a very specific location.

I appeared in a low-Level dungeon called 'the Greed King's Lair', famous for being a rookie killer. The Boss was easy to get to for me though, and I simply swatted any monsters I found into a wall. They didn't get up again. I made it to the grand double doors in record time, the phony gold piled around it almost an eyesore. I entered, and the heavyset Greed King rose with a roar.

The Greed King was an odd Boss in that its damage value was based strictly off of the amount of currency a Player had in their Inventory. The more currency, the more damage the Boss dealt with every blow. It was meant to be a fun little mechanic as the Dev in question described it to me, but I saw it as so much more.

This place was very interesting because it interacted strangely with certain Items. If an Item was one-use, no matter what it was, the game considered it currency and counted it towards the Boss's damage multiplier.

Any one-use item, no matter what it is, is counted as currency.

A Mirror of Kalandra is considered by the game as a one-use Item.

Thus, in this area only, a Mirror is considered as a Currency Item rather than a World Item for the sake of certain effects. Certain effects, which just so happen to include the Mirror of Desire.

Heheheheheh.

Never underestimate a gamer's power to find miniscule loopholes in the game's code.

I opened my Inventory, flat-out ignoring the Boss's attacks. I activated the Mirror of Desire, and the Mirrored copies of the Mirror of Kalandra filling every last slot were Mirrored again. Nearly a full Inventory's worth of new Mirrors of Kalandra were sent directly into my Storage, leaving me with yet another set of the World Items. I did the same with a copy of the Mirror of Desire I had made mere seconds before, and the loop began.

I had done this little ruse precisely nine times before. It took me seven times to fill my Inventory with Mirrors, but from then on it just rinse and repeat.

But wait, you may ask. How could you have done it nine times if it cost so much Caloric Stone to craft even a single Mirror of Desire?

Well, it's quite simple really. I only bought two Desires originally, and from then on it was completely sustainable. I used one of my Mirrored Mirrors of Kalandra to duplicate a Mirror of Desire, which was then used to duplicate an Inventory of Kalandras. I used the Kalandras to clone Derires, Desires to clone the Kalandras, and soon I had to buy a Storage upgrade to increase the number of slots in my Storage container.

So why did I have to buy another Mirror just now to repeat the glitch?

Well, as normal Items Mirrors of Desire have durability, which runs out over time. How much durability? Precisely five. They can only be held onto for a day or two before they simply disappear. Even when I'm exploiting the game, the Devs still find a way to troll me.

…Even if they didn't know they were doing it.

It didn't really matter, though. I had the last laugh here.

I spent some time using Mirrored Desires and Kalandras to make a somewhat stable loop, until I finally ran out of space and killed the Boss in one hit. My Storage was now full of Mirrors of Kalandra, which meant I could repeat the loop as soon as I piled them all into my Treasury in Nazarick. I already had one Storage Room stuffed to the brim with the Mirrors, but if this all worked out then I should have another two ready to stock.

Hey. I have to cheese this game as much as possible while it's still a game.

See, unlike those who foolishly flaunt their treasures, I keep everything to myself and hide it deep within the bowels of Nazarick, never sharing it with anyone. None of Devs has the slightest inkling of what I have hidden away, let alone my fellow Guildmates. I never once upset the game balance or used my spoils against others, staying as far away from negative light as possible.

It didn't matter.

This was all just prep time, weekly visiting hours before moving on to the rest of my life.

I chuckled to myself, teleporting out of the dungeon and back to my Treasury to unload.

When the New World came, I would be ready. The Devs would never notice, but once the End came, I would effectively have stacks of literally every useful Item in the game.

Sure it's a bit slimy, but it's all for the sake of the future. After all…

Who needs morals when you can just mod the game?

Word count: 4000