"He won!" Yamaiko excimed excitedly as they entered the first floor of Nazarick. She paused for a moment before adding, "Well, I guess the raiders this time around only had a few members with a full set of Divine-level gear, but still! He won!"

  Amanomahitotsu nded beside the Nephilim, nodding at his creation. "And this is only the floor guardian, too," he said, his voice carrying excitement. "The trial run for Antikythera went pretty well, don’t you think?" His crab-like avatar turned toward the rest of Ainz Ooal Gown, who all responded with thumbs-up emoticons. "Adding an area guardian here would make it even better."

  "Won't that be too expensive?" Touch Me asked with concern. "I know you all don’t mind spending money on this game, but maybe we should control ourselves?"

  "Nonsense!" Peroroncino replied, fshing a smiling emoticon. "It’s completely fine! Right, guys?" He turned to Ulbert and Momonga, who both nodded in agreement. "See?"

  "Didn’t you three have an alliance about never spending money before?" Bukubukuchagama asked, confused. "What happened to that?"

  "Ulbert betrayed us."

  "No, it was Momonga."

  "Peroroncino, you're supposed to throw Ulbert under the bus!"

  "What? But it was you who spent money!"

  The three bickered while the rest of the guild began making pns for what they should add to the factory next. Amano led the discussion, having invested the most time and resources into the new floor. Everyone waited for him to speak.

  "I think I'll add an actual overseer for this floor," he finally said.

  "Like Albedo?" Tabu asked.

  "No, nothing like her. Garnet already pnned a backstory for her, I think?" Amano shook his head. "She’s going to be some kind of hologram, or maybe like those engrams the upper echelons have been raving about tely."

  "An AI copy?" Momonga, who had momentarily stopped arguing with his friends over their spending habits, turned to Amano in shock. "Why? And how? There aren’t any holograms in the game, or even futuristic machines."

  "A perfect copy of someone's brain, technically," Amano corrected. He began expining the backstory for the overseer. "She was once the owner of multiple companies, but her greed consumed her. She wanted to live forever, so she copied her mind into a machine. When the original died, the copied consciousness took form as a hologram inside the control tower. Now she’s everywhere, overseeing the weapon manufacturing pnt with a cold, unfeeling eye."

  "That’s... how exactly are you going to implement that?" Bukubukuchagama asked, gncing around the mostly empty control tower. "I mean, the models aren't exactly fantasy, but if that’s all..."

  "Not to mention the data crystals we’d need to actually implement something like that in the game," Tabu pointed out. "And then there’s the issue of csses and various other mechanics."

  "Csses?" Amano tilted his head. "She’ll be in the [Spectre] cssification, progressing from Ghost to Poltergeist, and eventually to Spectre. Complete with its own phyctery inside the control tower. Garnet said he’d model it after an exposed nervous system floating in stasis inside a vat."

  "Oh. That makes sense." Momonga looked toward the control tower, deep in thought. "So you’re just going to make the Spectre look like a hologram?"

  "And give her a backstory that fits the aesthetic, yeah," Amano confirmed. He tapped a cw against the metal casing of Antikythera. The stationary NPC barely reacted, merely tilting its head toward its creator. "I’ll probably have this guy patrol most of the first floor so the new NPC can act as an area guardian."

  "Aww, he'll leave this pce?" Mochi Mochi patted the automaton and sighed. "That’s sad."

  "It’s really not," Amano said seriously, shaking his head. "We have pns for the overall floor, too. We want to modify some of the conveyor belts to produce guns—even if it's just done through repeating animations. We also want to add a medical facility. Or maybe a morgue that turns organic factory workers into cyborgs?"

  "Trust me, once you’ve actually been to a hospital, you’ll realize there’s no difference," Touch Me said in an oddly serious tone, sending a shiver down everyone's spine.

  "It’s too expensive," Momonga rightfully compined. "I wouldn’t want to go to a hospital even if I was bleeding out."

  "Don’t joke like that!" Yamaiko pointed at the skeleton. "Take care of yourself, Momonga, okay?!"

  "Got it." Momonga replied, though he didn’t sound serious.

  "By the way, are you two adding organic NPCs around here?" Peroroncino asked. "Because if so, I think I have an idea for what the nurses in the morgue—hospital?—would be like."

  "You can work on the morgue if you want. I'll send you the image album that gives the overall feel of the theme we want," Amano said. "Follow it while designing the building and clothing for the nurses—actually, no, they can wear whatever they want." He shrugged.

  "That's not a good idea," Bukubukuchagama said in horror. "I’ll... maybe keep an eye on him?"

  "Sis, you know you can't just—"

  "Sure," Amano agreed readily.

  "Wait, does that mean I can also make my own NPC?" Bukubukuchagama asked, wanting to confirm.

  "Yes." Amano was already distracted, messaging Garnet, who had just come online. Garnet was telling him he’d be heading to the first floor after gathering materials to upgrade the new NPC’s css. "If you need me, I’ll be in the control tower editing it."

  "Got it~" Bukubukuchagama said while checking the album Amano had sent. "These look kinda bleak."

  "It’s on purpose," Amano replied before disappearing into the depths of the control tower.

  "So, do you guys wanna make nurse NPCs?" Bukubukuchagama invited the rest of the guild. "He didn’t seem to think the morgue was that important, so it should be fine, right?" She added shakily when Peroroncino gred at her. "Right?"

  "I think I’ll pass," Momonga and Ulbert said at the same time.

  "What about you, Touch Me?" Momonga asked.

  "Me too," nodded the insect knight. "But I’ll check out the results!"

  Ankoro Mochi Mochi and Yamaiko, completely missing the implications, squealed in excitement and dragged Bukubukuchagama away to the bottom of the control tower, talking over each other about where the morgue should be pced.

  Peroroncino sighed. "Anyone wanna bet my sister is going to voice the NPCs again?" He turned to his two friends.

  "We’ll just lose money on that," Ulbert said cautiously.

  "Agreed," Momonga added almost immediately.

  Weeks passed, and over time, the factory transformed dramatically. A transparent woman with a ponytail and a no-nonsense attitude began walking around the control tower's general area. Her crisp office suit and gsses suited the logbook she carried at all times.

  Elsewhere on the floor, a massive hospice had appeared overnight. Its unsullied white walls—formed from the reflective barrier surrounding it—looked alien compared to the rest of the factory.

  Occasionally, an undead cyborg, its body filled with various mechanical impnts, could be seen walking through its sterile halls, guided by a nurse with metallic augmentations and a... questionable outfit. At the top of the facility, three women presided over its operations. One was an artificer with extraordinary skill, another was a necromancer in css but a mad doctor in name, and the st was a healer for the dead—always carrying a scalpel and syringe, ever prepared to operate.