The air in the throne room of Nazarick, thick with ancient power and quiet dread, tore open with a soundless scream of fractured reality. Ainz Ooal Gown, the Overlord, Supreme Ruler of the Great Tomb, was mid-stride when the world dissolved. One moment, he was contemplating the optimal fertilizer for the Seventh Floor's gardens; the next, he was standing in a silent, sun-baked field of overgrown grass and rusted cars.
His great castle, his loyal Floor Guardians, the familiar chill of polished stone—all gone. Replaced by a pervasive, oppressive heat and a smell of decay that even his non-existent nostrils could parse. [System Alert: Unknown World Transition. Spatial Connection to Nazarick: Severed. Mana Density: Critically Low. Threat Assessment: Inconsequential... and Proliferating.]
A red orb flickered in his empty socket. A world item? A trap? No... the severance is absolute. This is not Yggdrasil. He cast a series of silent spells. [Greater Teleportation] failed. [Message] to Albedo returned only static. A faint pang of something he would call alarm echoed in his undead soul. He was alone.
He began to walk, his massive frame clad in regal robes, a stark monument of black and gold against the rural American decay. For hours, he encountered nothing but the wandering dead. They shambled towards him, drawn by some base instinct, only to stop a few feet away, confused. They would sniff the air, tilt their heads, and then shamble off, ignoring the ultimate embodiment of undeath in their midst. Ainz observed them clinically. Low-level undead. No intelligence, no magic. Pure physical degradation. Fascinating in their utter simplicity. A pandemic of necromancy? He dissected one with a [Dark Wisdom] analysis spell and found no trace of mana, only a crude, replicating curse of flesh.
This world has fallen to a primitive form of undeath. The living here must be in a state of perpetual, desperate struggle. A logical conclusion. And where there was struggle, there were resources—information, primarily. He needed to understand this world, find a way to re-establish contact with Nazarick, or at least secure a base of operations.
He found them at dusk, drawn by the faint glow of a fire in a cleared-out farmhouse. Through a [Perfect Unknowable] spell, he observed the group. A man with a sheriff's hat, his face etched with grim leadership. A crossbow-wielding man with a feral survival instinct. A young boy. They moved with the tense efficiency of cornered animals, their weapons crude, their defenses laughable.
Ainz decided on a diplomatic approach. He would present himself as a lost traveler, gauge their knowledge, and assess their utility. He dropped the invisibility spell at the edge of their perimeter and walked forward, his footsteps unnaturally silent.
The reaction was instantaneous. A shout. The cocking of guns. The man with the crossbow had his weapon trained on Ainz's head in a heartbeat.
"Stop right there! Don't move!" Rick Grimes' voice was harsh, frayed at the edges.
Ainz stopped, raising his hands in a placating gesture he had seen from human merchants. "I mean no harm," he boomed, his voice resonating with an otherworldly depth that made several survivors flinch. "I am... displaced. I seek information."
Daryl Dixon spat on the ground, his finger tight on the trigger. "What the hell are you supposed to be? Some kinda... goth spaceman?"
"I am Ainz. You are the first living beings I have encountered who are not... afflicted." He gestured loosely towards a walker moaning in the distant tree line.
Rick's eyes narrowed. The sheer strangeness of the figure before him was a threat in itself. The perfectly crafted skull, the jewels, the aura of stillness that made the walkers seem frenetic in comparison. "Where did you come from? How are you alive out here alone?"
"A place far from here. As for survival..." Ainz let the sentence hang. A walker, drawn by their voices, stumbled out from behind a tractor. Rick cursed, raising his revolver.
Before he could fire, Ainz twitched a finger. [Death Knight Summon]. The ground at the walker's feet erupted. A being of far more terrible aspect clawed its way free—eight feet tall, clad in black plate armor that seemed to drink the firelight, a massive sword in its grip. With a single, contemptuous swing, it cleaved the walker in two, then stood motionless, awaiting its master's command.
The farmyard was frozen in silent terror. Every gun was now trained on the new, far greater monster. Daryl's crossbow trembled. Carl hid behind his father.
"You..." Rick whispered, horror dawning. "You control them."
"I control that," Ainz corrected, his tone that of a scholar correcting a minor error. "The shambling ones are beneath even my lowest servant. They are... background noise." He looked at the Death Knight, then back at the petrified survivors. Their fear was palpable, a useful tool. But he also saw the calculation in Rick's eyes, the survivalist's calculus shifting to include this impossible new variable.
"I propose a... transaction," Ainz said, his voice cutting through the silence. "You require security, sustenance, a stable base. These things are trivial for me to provide." He gestured, and a [Create Greater Item] spell conjured a crate of spotless, clean water bottles and another of nutrient-dense Yggdrasil rations at his feet—a king's ransom in this broken world.
"In return," the red light in his eye socket flared, "you will tell me everything about this world's collapse. You will help me locate centers of knowledge—libraries, data storage, government bunkers. And you will... acclimate to my presence."
Rick stared at the miraculous supplies, then at the silent, terrifying Death Knight, and finally at the impossible skeletal king. The old world's rules were dead. This was a new world, with new gods, new monsters. And this one was offering a devil's bargain: safety in exchange for servitude to a power they could not hope to understand or resist.
He lowered his gun, not in surrender, but in grim, weary pragmatism. "What do you want to know first?"
Ainz's jawbone might have twitched in the approximation of a smile. Excellent. The acquisition of local assets proceeds smoothly. Now, to gather data. And perhaps... to see what order can be built upon the foundation of this ruin. The walkers in the distance moaned, unaware that their apocalypse had just been rendered quaint by the arrival of a true Overlord