“I’m going to go mad.”

  That is what Hayate Sato was currently thinking to himself.

  Hayate Sato, he was 7ft tall with jet black hair, red eyes that if one didn’t know the man personally would say were filled with bloodlust, rage and a hate for all of humanity. Long pointy elf like ear’s which were pretty common in many races in Hollow, he had raven black feathery wings sprouting from his back and two horn’s protruding out-wards from either side of his head. He was a higher demon. Wearing black robes with silver linings in them, he looked wealthy and powerful — He was Hayate Sato now also known by the alias Lucifer, The former leader of the Angels of hell, The current leader of The black snakes, The strongest being in the entire world as of now.

  What was this said strongest being thinking about right now?

  All he could think about to himself were the events of the last few hours.

  He had been playing Hollow, a massively multiplayer online Role-playing game. Released for the first time in 2023, on July 20th. No one could have expected the worldwide sensation it became when it hit the market, but now that was history. Then, in the year 2024, on November 20th, He had shut down the game as he had been for hours at that moment — this was when he had been transported 85 years into the future to the year 2109 on the same date. He had been transported in the body of his in-game avatar which allowed him to use all the power’s it has back in Hollow in real life, it has been a day since that happened.

  After all this, now here he was. In his friend’s house who was the last surviving member of Angels of hell. Now, the fact that Hayate hadn’t slept in almost a day did not make thinking coherently any easier, even though he didn’t need sleep he felt tried just because his mind wasn’t accustomed to it yet.

  It was quite the day, people had gone crazy as they saw that...light appear everywhere on earth. Everyone was panicking, but he was trying to keep a level head. And now, today a lockdown had happened.

  The lockdown had made him curious, to say the least. It was all very suspicious and it didn’t help when Hayate had called Hiroshi asking for any info, the latter had told him that he hadn’t been given any info as of yet. To be honest, it didn’t really bother him as he could just use [true invisibility] to go out or use [teleportation].

  But still, just the audacity of the authorities was quite amazing, to think that they could just enforce a complete lockdown on the whole population without any proper info...or maybe they knew something that everyone else didn’t.

  He hated being kept in the dark, he liked being informed about everything.

  This whole thing was driving him mad, and to add fuel to the fire, all communication channels has been cut off, even the internet was down, which made it even harder to know anything

  Yesterday, after coming back from Tokyo. The first thing he had done was to destroy the undead he had created which funnily enough was sitting on the couch watching T.V with Taro. After destroying the undead, he told taro everything about what happened with the black snakes. About Ken, who had sold him (Taro) to the snakes, how the enforcer’s, the elite cybernetically enhanced unit of the black snakes had came to get taro and how Hayate had killed them. After that, he had told him how he was the new leader of the Black snakes and he had wiped Ken’s memories of whatever had happened and taro’s granddaughter’s too.

  After hearing all this, taro had been quite shocked to say the least...but he had taken it much more easy than expected, perhaps because he had seen bloodshed before? Hayate didn’t know.

  “I’m back, master.”

  The person...well not exactly a person, the summon who said this was a [Blood knight]. It was a tier 4 summon so it originally had a level of 40 but with Hayate’s skills it was boosted to 60. It was wearing black armour, it seemed like it was made up of some sort of unknown metal, it was black in colour but with a slight shiny glint to it, it seemed to absorb all the light around it. The armour covered the whole body, starting with the shoulders that had metal plates covering them and moving down to it’s arms, covering them in armour that were both practical and stylish, the gauntlets on its hands making its fingers longer. The body was covered by a chest plate that was held together by leather straps. The plates of the armour were also sharp and it looked like it could tear someone’s skin off if it came in contact.

  It’s face was obscured with a red cloak so you couldn’t it’s race or gender, and even if you tried to look at it’s body, the heavy armour made it impossible. It also wore a red cape which flowed down till it’s knee’s. In its left hand, it held a metal sword, however this sword was nothing ordinary. It emitted a strong aura, it was a magic sword.

  It was a type of undead which was immune to a variety of status effects. It was immune to [blinded] , [dominated] , [exhaustion] , [fear], [poisoned] and [paralyzed] and also possessed the skills [lesser magic resistance] and [immutable form] which rendered it immune to any attempt to change it’s form. It also had the skill [unknown] which allowed it to use [true invisibility] without any mana cost.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  According to the lore of the official hollow lore book which Hayate had a copy of in his inventory, each blood knight is the bound spirit of a knight who died in battle and is now trapped in the armour he passed away wearing, drenched in the blood of the innocent. And if the armour of a blood knight takes a human life, the victim’s soul will be taken into the armour and be trapped forever, suffering for an eternity.

  Hayate looked at the blood knight who was kneeling in front of him and after a bit of contemplation, he finally spoke.

  “Report.”

  Right now, two undead and one doppelganger was present in Neo-Tokyo. First, there was the doppelganger which was acting as Tanaki at the moment. Second, was this blood knight, and third was another blood knight who was going around the city gathering info.

  Hayate had ordered this blood knight to see what the police were upto as he had observed a lot of police cars going somewhere barley an hour ago.

  I did as you ordered and it seems like the entire police force approximately 40,000 police men have been mobilized to enforce the current lockdown, the lockdown itself was announced by the police superintendent general and the vice president of the kusonoki conglomerate and it seems, the entire metropolitan area has been locked, no one can enter or leave without a proper permit or approval from the office and the reason for the lockdown is said to be a diseases and they have given orders to shoot anyone who’s outside on sight.”

  The entire metropolitan area had been locked and the reason given was some disease..although the reason could have been possible, the police mobilizing the entire force to enforce it was quite ridiculous. It was all very suspicious indeed..was it possible that it was related to the light from yesterday..that can be the case too.

  “Anything else?” Hayate asked the blood knight, wanting to get as much info as possible, so he can understand what the hell is going on.

  “no..i don’t think so.”

  The Blood knight said, his voice was metallic as if it was coming out of a speaker instead of coming from a normal mouth.

  “Alright, you can go. Gather more info.”

  Hayate said, as he waved his hand and the Blood knight nodded and then disappeared into thin air.

  Hayate let out a sigh, this was going to be a tiring day again to say the least. There was too much that was happening recently. With the Black Snakes, the Lockdown and that strange event that happened yesterday.

  Speaking of the black snakes, Hayate had went through the various documents he had gotten from Tanaki about the Black Snakes and he had learned some interesting things. The Black Snakes were all over Japan, with even plans to establish a foothold in the “United Republic of Korea.”

  The interesting thing about the “United Republic of Korea” was that it was formed after WW3 when North Korea attacked South Korea, and after winning, South Korea took over the whole of Korea and created the “United Republic”.

  He didn’t know much about this timeline’s wars, this was still quite surprising to learn.

  The documents were very long and had a lot of names, locations, ranks, etc and it would take time to fully go over them all. So, Hayate had only skimmed over a few of them as of now, and would read all of them in detail later.

  He also had to talk to his men and see how it was going. He had taken over the Snakes just a day ago, so everything was still in a chaos and it needed to be organized. The Snakes were a big organization and he couldn’t just wing it. There was supposed to be a meeting in two days where all the members would come back to Neo-Tokyo and he would announce that he was their new leader but then today this stupid lockdown had to happen!

  “Ugh..” Hayate groaned. This was not something he wanted to deal with. The lockdown could last days and he would not be able to meet all of his members. He could have announced it online after all he had been desperately searching for a computer and now that he had found one, ken taro’s grandson owed one the whole internet had been shut down so it wouldn’t work!

  What should he do now?

  He knew that he can use [true invisibility] to move around and not get noticed but there was still some doubts which he had. He wanted to see if camera’s could see through his spell, if yes then that would be bad, really bad so he refrained from using it right now.

  Also, after that white light swept across the world, he had refrained from going outside at all, just to be safe.

  He was just trying to be cautious. A lockdown was one thing but that white light was something else. It came out of no where and swept across the whole world, and it wasn’t a natural phenomenon either. It was strange, and to be honest rather scary. Hayate himself could do a lot of things, but the power to spread a light across the entire planet? Even his [World Ruler] skill was not that powerful, maybe [wish] could do that though. But, he didn’t know any other players’ who had come to real life except for him.

  No, no, that was just impossible. The chances of any other players being there was next to none and he was the only one there..or at least hopefully..he hoped so..

  He really hoped that he was the only player there, because who knows what would happen if there were players stronger than him..or of the same level..

  After all, according to taro, Hollow shut down in 2035. Hayate had disappeared in 2024 so it ran for 11 more years, who knows what sort of other stuff was added while he didn’t know. For all he knew, the level cap could have been increased to 200.

  Of course, that wouldn’t be that big of a hurdle for him, but someone who was level 200 would have more experience and more skills, not to mention the equipment and items. Which meant that such a player wouldn’t be easy to deal with.

  And if he had a high intelligence, then he would be downright terrifying.

  Hayate let out a sigh, these thoughts were depressing him. There was no point dwelling on these things, it was better to be cautious and prepared. After all, if he did come across something, anything from Hollow. He would try to negotiate first and if they were hostile he would capture them or if not then kill them.

  He was not going to take any chances.

  He would kill without mercy, capture or just outright destroy whoever or whatever it was. No matter the cost, he would not let anyone disturb what he had achieved here or kill the ones that he wanted to protect. Especially the latter, he had lost so much already.

  He didn’t want to lose anything or anyone anymore.

  Not that he has much more to lose, the only thing still here from his past is Taro.

  Yes, just him. Hayate had lost everything else but at least he still had him.

  “And, I want to keep it that way.”

  Hayate mumbled to himself.