Karrion in Nigh City

[UnMaverick]

I hummed a song softly that doesn't exist, as far as Night City is concerned, while I stir fry a number of minced meat into perfect golden bits, and a kettle whistling as the formerly contaminated water boiled. Letting both the smell and the vapor hang and drift in the air, the former being more like siren's call, causing my brother to say; "That smells good," and my mother to agree with him while I continue to cook and hum a song that only I know.

Waking up into the year 2138 is nothing short of a nightmare if I'm being honest. But after a few seconds of exploration, I figured it wasn't just a sort of time skip that I woke up to. But by some morbid stroke of luck, it was the setting of Overlord, an anime a binged watch multiple times that I didn't bother to count after my 20th rewatch (not to mention the times I spent re-reading the available light novels). It was both amazing and terrifying to know that I'm in my favorite anime of all time. But also knowing about the game Yggdrasil, and what would happen next after it shuts down. By then, fear took a back seat.

So I played the game with every spare time I had that I didn't spend working, or sleeping.

For 12 years I played and grinded the game to oblivion. I min maxed my stats while also making some room for roleplay.

Joining Nine Owns Goal, then be there to watch it turn into a proper guild after Touch Me's announcement. Experiencing the ups and downs of the guild first hand, then help raise the guild into 2nd place in the rankings. All the while playing cupid with Momonga and Bukubukuchagama.

It was something I took pride in, as even Peroroncino helped me with setting up his sister to date the best person in the guild.

Hell, even the rest of the guild helped, especially Touch Me and Ulbert of all people.

So far it was the best I could do for the person that I wanted to see happy the most.

Also because of that one fanfiction that I read, and wanted a follow up on.

Curse you ZeroSenpai! How hard is it to write an actual second chapter!?

So I watched and played for twelve years, and slowly understand the loneliness that Momonga felt in the last year of YGGDRASIL.

One by one, the guild members left, until it was just me, remaining, waiting, playing.

I thought that Momonga would still be there for me to play with in the last year, and maybe even at the day of the shutdown.

But that was then that I remembered that I butterflied that possibility away when I successfully played cupid with him and Buku.

So I stayed there in the last day of the game, alone, and not at all happy.

The only thing that was different was that I was the guild leader after Momonga transferred the role to me. I asked him why, and he simply answered that he needed to focus on Buku, especially with her being 3 months pregnant. So I could only congratulate him, and accept the title so he could be free from his obligations to the guild.

After that, was the loneliness that Momonga should have been experiencing.

Not me.

But I accepted it bitterly, as even with how happy I was for them, I had to accept it and push down my hatred for them for leaving the game, the tomb…

…Me

So at the end of the game, a minute away from midnight, I acted on my selfishness, and actually did what Momonga has done before the shutdown.

I used the staff, the guild weapon, the staff of Ainz Ooal Gown to delete the part of Albedo's flavor text that should have said: She is also a slut.

But instead of that, the last line simply said: The Perfect Wife of Karrion, The Primordial Flesh and Imminent Scourge of YGGDRASIL.

I could still remember how I laughed and cried at that last line.

More happy at how Tabula finally used the title that I wasted a world item on according to him.

The Primordial Flesh and Imminent Scourge of YGGDRASIL.

It was a title that I used Ouroboros on, requesting the developers for me to make my own Title and being able to add flavour texts to it. Like a lore, or background lore for it. Then they delivered and actually added the feature of adding flavour texts to titles in the game.

But mine was special, more special than other titles according to them.

The title allowed me to reallocate levels without any costs, but the downsides were brutal.

The title didn't allow me to equip anything, anything at all, or even use any sort of consumables. While also quadrupling any weaknesses those jobs and race levels made.

But that was fine, I was in roleplay heaven then, and so was most of the player base that year.

So when the clock counted down to midnight, I turned my head and said to Albedo; "At least I'll have you," then turned to the Pleiades and Sebas below while I sat at the throne, "and all of you, by my side."

Even after all these years, seventeen years to be exact, I still cringe at that last moment before darkness took over.

Like seriously? What was up with me at that time? I know I was angry and happy-angry at that time, but that has to be some sort of false memory, because no way would I say that. I had a girlfriend before I got isekaid into Overlord, I might not have graduated from being a virgin despite having a girlfriend, but come on, that had to be the most virgin like of all virgin lines of all time.

That had to be a false memory, a Mandela effect or something like that.

I would take being alone in YGGDRASIL for a year any day rather than have to actually say that cringiest of all cringelord line ever.

But apparently, the New World wasn't taking in a new player at that time, as I woke up screaming, but no doubt crying, from the darkness as the clock disappeared. Then found myself in a moving room with a stranger, looking down at me, and a blade sticking out of his forearm. Saying words that I couldn't understand.

So I screamed and cried while a stranger passed me over to a woman I know very well from an anime that left me scarred after it's last episode.

Red hair, round face with two studs of rubies just below her right eye, and wearing a high visibility yellow EMT jacket.

The word 'twins' was the only thing I understood at the time, and that sent me into a crying spree as I was not ready to experience that anime first hand.

Not after all of that, I couldn't even bear to watch it a second time.

But now here I am, humming and cooking breakfast for my mother, Gloria Martinez, and my twin brother, David Martinez.

Turning off both stoves, I turned and quickly placed portions for each of us.

"Dear, you don't need to put so much on my plate," Mom told me with her usual warm and tired voice, clearly noticing me putting more meat on her plate compared to David's and mine.

For seventeen years she has been like this, always caring, and spoiling both me and David rotten. All the while ruining her health, well away from our sight. It was one of the things I keep trying to change after I settled with the fact that I will be experiencing the tragic events in the anime.

At first I tried to tell her, and even make her stop taking unpaid overtime in anyway I can. From being cute, to outright using chemical warfare with my pheromones. The last one something I discovered to be a cause for my abilities from YGGDRASIL being roughly translated into Cyberpunk, more on that later. But everytime, somehow and someway she would always be able to power through it, and go volunteer for overtime regardless.

For our sake.

And I didn't want to accidentally harm her with what I'm doing, so instead of stopping her, I'm at least lessening the impact of her overtime. Not only on her body, but also on her mind. Which is one of the reason why I took up cooking for us.

The meat? The meat is not made out of the grounded up worms, no the meat is made of my meat, a courtesy of the very wide range of abilities from YGGDRASIL. Each piece are all altered and changed to have the right mix of vitamins, nutrients, and calories needed to not only maintain her overworked body, but also to improve it as she continues to abuse it for our sake. Not to mention changing it so much so that it won't count as cannibalism.

Even now, I can see it affecting her in a positive way. Since as far as I can tell, her skin is glowing healthily without any need for cyberware to make it look like that, and she's obviously not as tired as someone who works as much as she does. Not to mention that despite her still baggy EMT jacket and black shirt, her body now had developed muscles and fat evenly distributed all over her body. Resulting her not only looking robust, but also curvy in all the right kind of way. I even got the chance to tease David about it, before doing the same for him, making him not only tall and muscular for his age, but also handsome enough that even some low and mid level corpo kids in the academy can't help but oggle him like a lean piece of meat. Which is somewhat true and appropriate description after what I was doing with him.

Having to alter and engineer his hormone levels so he won't see Mom as a woman, also caused me to focus on him for the most part. Because as much as I want him and mom to be happy compared to the anime, I don't want them to be that kind of happy just because I fuck up their hormones. The sex kind of hormones especially.

Nope, no incest kind of happiness here, nope, nu-uh, nadah. No incest.

I could also say that David's eyes were less bored about our lot in life. He still idolize being an edgerunner, but it's not as much compared to how I remember him looking up at the edgrunning lifestyle compared to the anime. It's also another thing that I was trying to change this time around, to change fate so to speak.

Since we were seven, even until now, I am doing my best for the last ten years to limit his exposure and focus on the ads and anything that glamorize edgrunning, so far it's a somewhat of a success. He doesn't look up to it as much as he had back in the show, and I saw that as enough progress. But not enough as he still has this look in his eyes, that all his wishing for is that reason, that one reason to abandon school and go off edgrunning for all the fun and grief it would bring to his dull life.

I don't want that to happen, so I did my best to sway his attention, and change his goal from finding that reason to run at the edge, to finding a reason to stay out of the edge, and be more family centered. Like what I am doing now.

As much as I feel bad for manipulating my now family, it's better this way rather than what happened to them at the show. Eventually, I won't have to continue this any longer, because even I am getting tired of it for tackling this change mostly alone for almost two decades. It's not like YGGDRASIL where I can forget what I'm trying to change by simply grinding for loot and levels, no, I had to focus and micromanage every variable I can think of that contributes to the end result being as such.

Motivation, personality, environment, and social connections like friends and family. All of those supposed simple things, that are not only complex in actuality, but also volatile to change, for good or bad, those variables will change and affect the end result.

Not that all of that was bad, but it does feel like that at times, but the bright side is that I'm discovering more and more about my YGGDRASIL abilities being translated into Cyberpunk, especially the Title specific abilities.

Since as far as I can tell, I can be anything as much as biology is concerned, and as far as magic is concerned, I am everything and everyone all at once depending on how creative I get with my biology enhanced with numerous class and racial abilities from YGGDRASIL.

"It's alright ma," I replied, "Out of us three on this table. You deserve the most of what I cooked up."

I should have framed that sentence better.

Though it did seem to make her squeal inside as she smiles, as she grabs me and David by our necks as she hugs and kisses our cheeks while occasionally rubbing it with her own.

"Hooh, you boys are the best, what did I do to deserve either of you. I swear my mama in heaven just decided to give me the best sons in world."

She said while still hugging us and rubbing our cheeks with her own, while I make sure to not spill anything from the pan that I was holding. But it's a bit hard being forced to bend down, just being a head taller than David, and be loved by an overprotective mother that it's almost worth cleaning the spill from grease.

'Almost' being the keyword, and enough to keep me to not letting a drop of grease to fall from the pan for me to clean up.

"Okay, okay ma," David finally had enough, "We know, we love you too ma, now come on little bro's meat are gonna get cold."

To his remark, I had to pull back and was about to start my faux argument of how I'm the older one, or at least the same age as him, being twins and all. While also being one of the routines I do to sway him from being to self-centered, to being family centered, hopefully building that voice in the back of his head and have it be loud enough to keep him from thinking about edgrunning.

But he continued before I could do so.

"We're gonna be late if we don't eat up now."

"Ooh, okay. Eat up hombrecitos guapos."

I blushed, and David was a bit worse off than me.

Even with my supposed neuroplasticity, I'm still not confident in my Spanish, but I understood that she just called us handsome, and hearing your mom call you handsome hits different despite how everyone tries to downplay it. It's a bit embarrassing, but feels good to be called handsome by someone you love.

After finally letting us go, I walked back to the stove and picked up the kettle, and poured hot water to each of our mugs a quarter-full of questionably and convolutedly illegally aquired natural and grounded to powder coffee beans. Then all three of us sat and ate, and drank the coffee I haphazardly prepared while a live video of a female NCT reporter played overhead.

"Good morning Night City. This is Harleen Carlons live in Island of Eden, an island owned and constructed by the Nazarick International Corporations. And behind me is their newly constructed skyscraper called, The Tower of Babel. Just outside the coast of Night City, the city of neon lights."

I hear David scoff and mutter 'show off' while mom just rolled her eyes at his antics as the live news broadcast continued, and showed Sebas in a pedestal while he gives out a speech, publicly welcoming everyone that would attend tonight's party.

I couldn't help but smirk at that, and hide it from both Mom and David.

They would certainly be in for a surprise.

Especially with how David is sulking about rich people being rich, and Mom consoling him that we will be there someday. We just had to work hard.

'Sorry Mom, but that last bit is already taken care of. After our crash in the highway, you, me, and David will be royalty when you wake up'

As worried as I am for mom's reaction, and no doubt David's. I just can't help but think of how I discovered that the Tomb of Nazarick followed me into Cyberpunk.

A year already passed when I found out, but in truth, they found me instead of the other way around.

It was one night when I noticed a shadow was not acting as it should while I was lying on the crib I shared with David. Mom was sleeping on the couch then, obviously tired from not only her work as a Meatwagon EMT, but also from taking care of me and David. But I helped by not acting out as much as David was as a baby, and even making sure that David's sleep well and long enough for mom to get some proper sleep herself.

When I was about to try and "somehow" deal with it as I find out what it was, mostly thinking it was someone in optical camo since it's the cyberpunk setting after all, before all of a sudden, a [Gate] opened right in the middle of the living room, and despite being a baby at the time, I had to use all the skills I could safely use to keep both mom and David asleep, and myself alive. Because as beautiful as Albedo is, she would no doubt be terrifying to see since she looked more like Nigredo, rather than herself when she stepped through the [Gate]. She made the reason for that abundantly clear soon after as she outright snatched me from the crib, and almost crushed me with her strength, and suffocated me with her breasts.

Apparently saying the words; At least I'll have you, and all of you by my side, is enough to make a sex demon, and the physical represention of twisted love to go on a rabid frenzy after seeing me die seconds later from her perspective. Which according to Demiurge, almost destroyed the entire 9th floor if it wasn't for Shalltear of all people to restrain her, and be forced to spend time with her sister, Nigredo, in the Frozen Prison.

Still being a baby, I could only talk to them through [Message] and not much else.

Not to mention when my diapers had to be changed, or even the numerous times that Albedo had tried to kidnap me in the dead of night to "nurse" me. So that I could grow up strong according to her.

That earned her the position of managing not only the tomb, but also the corporation within the Ice Prison by my order. While also being guarded by high level units led by Cocytus, and supported by Shalltear, to keep her there until the end of the decade.

Or when I order her release, which I just did last night.

Since this is the week I'll need her and everyone in the tomb to do their best in making sure that when the accident happen. All three of us, Gloria, David, and Me cover our disappearance by faking our deaths in that highway accident, just like in the anime, except not one of us will "survive" as far as Night City is concerned.

Raising my plate to my mouth, I inhaled my breakfast and then rose up.

"Come on David, we're gonna be late if we miss the NCart," then proceed to runout of our apartment, making him yell 'wait' before doing the same and say 'goodbye' to mom as he followed me out.