Chapter 2053: Stepping Out Of The Domain

Elayne walked out of her Domain with her party already formed and ready. Sailor, Norman, Blank, and Mark had joined her without hesitation. Granny Yaga preferred to stay behind for now and rest her old bones, while Shade and the Ghost Songstress, Dorothy, had also decided to accompany them on this next step.

"Ahhh~ What a wonderful... um..." Dorothy stopped singing midway through her soft melody, her translucent eyes widening as she took in the sight of the destroyed village around them. "Oh my... what tragedy..." she sighed, her voice filled with genuine sorrow.

"Yeah..." Norman nodded slowly, his skeletal frame shifting. "It was already like that when we got here... really awful, what that bastard did to this place... but well, he’s dead now! So that’s that... still... what he destroyed cannot be brought back no matter what."

Elayne nodded in quiet agreement. She quickly opened her Inventory Realm and dropped something she had carefully "collected" after the climax of her last battle.

BAAAM!

The ground trembled loudly as a massive body slammed down onto the earth, or at least what remained of it. The gigantic demon body was cleaved cleanly in half and was half mangled and heavily burnt. Faint traces of lingering soul fragments from what had once been one of the Death Apostles still clung to the corpse, along with the powerful elemental energies it had once commanded.

"W-Wait, what is this?" Sailor asked, gazing at the remains in pure disbelief. "Elayne, what are you planning now?"

"That’s... Jester’s corpse?!" Norman gasped, or at least made the closest sound a skeleton could manage. "Master Elayne, what exactly are you doing with it?"

"Hah! I thought that bastard died completely after the demon you summoned ate his soul," said Blank, crossing his arms tightly and staring at the ruined body with open contempt. "Elayne... don’t tell me you plan to turn this thing into... one of your servants?"

"Is that even possible?" Mark wondered aloud, frowning. "But he was a Player, right?"

"He was," Elayne confirmed calmly. "He’s dead now. Deader than ever before. Even his real body back on Earth is gone, so there’s little the System can do to protect him anymore. What I found most amusing was that his Player Avatar didn’t disappear. Did any of you realize that?"

"Usually when avatars die they leave no real corpse, yeah," Mark agreed. "They just turn into pixels or leave some kind of fading hologram. But that never happened with him!"

"His revival ability somehow remained active," Blank said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "But this is indeed a mystery. Could it be related to what happened when you died, Elayne? ...Sorry, no, I shouldn’t have brought that up—"

"No, no, it’s fine," Elayne replied with a kind and reassuring smile. "It’s truly fine. And... you may not be wrong, Blank. The reason why he didn’t disappear completely might be because... Brand New Life Online isn’t working the way it’s supposed to anymore. The entire program, the whole VRMMO, has been closed."

"It did?!" Mark gasped in shock.

"Um, sorry if I’m the one completely lost here, but what is a vee arr... em, em, oh?" Sailor asked, tilting his head. "Is that something to do with the world you come from, Elayne?"

"Yeah. And it’s another clear proof that the ’game’ as we once knew it has fully closed. There’s no longer any regulation on dialogue with NPCs," Elayne nodded. "See? We can openly speak to them about all of this being a game and there’s no censorship or automatic filters stopping us."

"Hm..." Mark nodded slowly as the realization settled in. "You’re right! So BNLO... closed? But why? Is it only because we died?"

"No..." she shook her head and checked her phone, showing him the latest information she had gathered. "I believe it has everything to do with the Demon King of Death. He overtook the majority of the surface of Arcadia, liberated the other Demon Kings, and terrorized everyone living here. With the real danger of him destroying people’s souls permanently, the company behind BNLO did the smart thing and simply closed their doors for now, prioritizing their customers’ safety above all else."

"The Gods..." Mark muttered. "They were the mods, right? The developers too... or well, they were wearing their skins."

"Yeah," Elayne nodded quietly. "They were. I’ve already discovered that the gods are truly dead... When the world was returned from nothing by the System’s intervention, it couldn’t bring everything back. The Gods were killed by the Demon King of the End. Their Divinities were all stolen by him. There was... there was only one single being He spared..."

Everyone looked at Elayne in heavy silence, waiting for her to continue.

"His mother..." she sighed, looking up toward the high mountain in the distance as she recalled everything she had experienced.

Of course, as she explained all of this, everyone aside from Mark (who had been with her from the very beginning) and Blank (who had put in the real effort to learn, memorize, and understand everything) did not fully grasp what they were talking about.

"I really am lost here," Sailor admitted openly. "I don’t know what you guys are talking about at all... The Gods? Brand New Life Online?"

"It’s... confusing..." Norman sighed, his bones rattling slightly. "Too complicated for these old bones of mine..."

"Hmm~ It does sound very, um..." Dorothy wondered aloud, searching for the right words. "Ah, I don’t know how to describe it."

"..." Shade remained completely silent, offering no comment.

"Sorry," Elayne said with a soft smile. "I guess I haven’t gone into much detail about any of this before... I’ll try to explain things more clearly so you can understand them better, but it is indeed very complicated. Only Blank here has truly tried to learn everything and understand it so well that it’s almost as if he had been with us from the very beginning."

"I just am not brainless," Blank replied flatly. "Anybody with a single working neuron could understand the basics, but... Hmph. I guess these undead aren’t even putting in the slightest effort. They’re living for free under your strength, benefiting from everything you do without even attempting to learn or understand who their leader truly is. They just blindly follow you with no real context about your past whatsoever. Gullible, if anything."

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