Overlord Prologue
Part 1
The massive door seemed to shriek as it slowly opened. The ear-piercing sound never went away, no matter how many times he oiled it.
The reason was clear — because the door’s metal parts were warped beyond repair.
Replacing those parts meant the door would no longer make that sound, but he — Suzuki Satoru — did not feel it was necessary.
Spending money on this door, which he only used when he went to and came back from work, was too much of a waste.
In addition, he had come to think of this creepy noise as a welcome, so he was somewhat attached to it.
The most important thing was that this noise could serve as a burglar alarm of sorts — provided any burglars actually came to this broken-down apartment.
Nobody would think there was anything valuable hidden behind a door that made this kind of noise.
After all, if anyone was going to the effort of robbing a house, they would probably rob another, more promising home instead.
The white lights in the ceiling came on, triggered by motion sensors, and the ancient air purifier rumbled to life.
The hollow, cold and dark sensation still remained, despite the lights turning on. The scene beyond this door was the very picture of lonely, gloomy abandonment. However, this was an everyday sight for him.
He closed the door and engaged the three locks, but even so, any thief could probably still break in.
“An electronic lock… huh?”
Perhaps he should use something better here.
However, Suzuki Satoru’s high-speed mental calculations concluded that he should not waste his limited capital on theft prevention. The possibility of someone robbing him was very low, and at the moment he felt that his effort would be wasted, so he discarded the idea of spending money on it.
Truthfully speaking, he was not that poor. His salary was meager, but he still lived above the poverty line. He had an ample balance in his bank accounts, but he had no idea how to spend that money.
He forced himself to be thrifty because he felt that he should not waste money. He felt that some day, he would have the chance to use that money to enjoy himself.
He tossed his beat-up shoes aside, and suddenly his steps through the entrance hall felt very light, as though the heaviness of his previous movements were all because of his shoes.
The kitchen was near the hallway, and it was practically empty. To begin with, there were no cooking utensils at all. Suzuki Satoru washed his hands in the kitchen, then took out a towel, which he wetted. After that, he opened the small, old fridge — for some reason, he felt bad that it was still there — and took out his dinner.
Eating was important. Hunger would reduce his ability to think, and it would inconvenience his comrades. He passed three doors along the way — the toilet, the bathroom, and the bedroom, before finally opening the innermost door, to be greeted by a somewhat small room.
A black frame about 100 centimeters wide rested upon a stand of some sort. In front of that was a comfortable-looking, high-class chair, complete with a footrest. On the side was a remote control and power cables, resting on a wheeled, two-layered table. These were the only things in the room, apart from a calendar on the wall.
The furniture was clustered in the center of the room. The lack of anything else might make people think that the owner of this room was an empty shell of a human being who had no interest in anything. Upon the table was the sole bastion that attested to his humanity; a photo of a happy family cradling a baby.
Suzuki Satoru came to the chair and laid his dinner on the table. Then, he undid his necktie and dumped it on the ground. After that, he pulled off his air filtering mask and his goggles in a single motion.
His coats were next. He peeled them off, one after the other, and the sense of liberation he felt blooming from within was evident on his face.
Then, he shed his pants. In his unsightly attire of shirt and boxers, he wiped himself down with the damp towel. Although he planned to take a steam bath afterwards, he could not stand the discomfort of a sticky body.
As he wiped himself, he hooked his clothes on the tip of his toe and kicked them into a small pile in the corner of the room. Although they were contaminated by the outside air, they were still his property, which he had paid for, so he would need to wash them to get the dirt off. However, he would do that later — it was too troublesome right now.
He focused on wiping his face and hands, the parts of him which had been exposed to the outside air, and then laid the blackened cloth on the desk. After that, he practically threw himself onto the chair. It was brand name stuff, made by one of the Big Eight corporations in the world. It might well have been the most expensive thing in the entire apartment. Despite how delicate it looked, it did not even creak under the weight of a grown man, in stark contrast with the main door.
The man sighed deeply, and looked at the ceiling with dull, expressionless eyes. Then, he turned a keen gaze on the calendar.
“Ah, it’s still a long way off…”
It was still the middle of the week. His next rest day seemed unbearably distant.
“Ah—. Ah—. Ah—. Ah—.”
As Suzuki Satoru mused on the number of days remaining, he ended up making a bunch of strangely modulated, and ultimately unintelligible noises with his mouth. After that — as though his batteries had run out — the noises stopped.
Then, a smile dawned on his face.
“Ah well, forget it.”
Indeed. As long as he thought of what would soon come, even pain like that could be forgotten.
Suzuki Satoru picked up his dinner, which he had just laid on the table.
He inserted the straw into the steak-flavored liquid food, and sucked it up.
It was little more than a sticky, meat-flavored gel. The truth was that it was awful, but he strongly felt that the pursuit of perfection in food was pointless. After all, it all became shit in the end, so investing money in it was pointless. The important thing was filling one’s stomach, and if it was not nutritious enough, there were always pills for that.
After that, Suzuki Satoru gulped down several multivitamin and supplement pills with a mouthful of health drink.
That was the end of his 220 yen dinner. He usually ate lunch outside, which was more expensive than the most economical meal he could get, so he had to save money on his breakfast and dinner.
After replenishing his nutrients, Suzuki Satoru finally began acting like a human being.
Unlike the clumsy fumbling when he first came home, his eyes were bright and his movements were nimble.
He picked up a black power cable, which was connected to a wall outlet.
Suzuki Satoru removed the protective plastic covering on one end of the plug, revealing a plug that was roughly three centimeters across. A silver gleam blended with the liquid glittering of the slippery protective fluid.
He held the cable in one hand and lifted up the hair on the back of his neck with the other. The subdued glint there came from the man-made object embedded in the nape of his neck.
With practiced ease, he opened the roughly-three-centimeter cover on the back of his neck. The sliding motion exposed the socket hidden beneath it.
He pressed the plug home, without any hesitation.
“Ohh…”
In time with his quiet sigh, he could feel light moving through his body, as though his blood vessels were filled with radiance.
The room had not changed, but his field of vision was different now.
Several windows popped up within his line of sight, showing him the information flowing into the processor within his brain.
He began operating the CPU.
Someone from an earlier age might look askance at the strange gestures he was performing in empty space. However, his cranial CPU read the weak electrical impulses of his synapses — in other words, it was thought-controlled — and converted it into data.