Alright so, I recently got back into Overlord after taking a long break. I rewatched the 4th season and then immediately went to go find some new and interesting fanfiction hoping to find something that was a somewhat good SI fic, but after coming through ao3 and fanfiction.net I discovered all of the fanfics that do something somewhat new are pretty shit, even if they have good premises. So I'm giving it a go. This will be an SI fic based on a character that lives in the New World before Ainz arrives. I will be making a character sheet at the end of each chapter to help establish where the character is at in terms of YGGDRASIL level. Anyway I hope you all enjoy.
The void between life and death was silent. No warmth, no gravity—only pressure, like a scream swallowed by eternity.
He didn't walk toward rebirth; he fell in.
A tear in the void yawned open, pulling him down into the first light he'd seen in what felt like years.
Suddenly, the silence shattered with a wail. A man crying out through the darkness—then a bright orb of light rushing toward him.
No, not just one. Many.
A dozen of these orbs chased after him as he was dragged into the light—into him.
And just as suddenly, all noise vanished.
Silence returned.
He realized what had happened. He had been reborn. But this time… not alone.
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Warmth. Wetness. Sound. For the first time in what felt like forever, there was something other than silence.
A chorus of harsh voices, wood creaking under hurried steps, cloth rustling. Then pain. A pressure like his body was being wrung out.
He screamed.
Not out of fear. Not as a reflex. He screamed because he remembered what silence felt like, and this was the opposite.
"He's breathing," someone muttered. A woman, weary and soft.
He tried to open his eyes. The world was a blur of candlelight, straw, smoke. The roof above him wasn't smooth—it was made of rough planks and thatch. A dirt floor. No beeping machines. No steel. No bright fluorescent lights.
Not Earth.
The woman held him in trembling arms. Her hands were calloused, nails dirty, and she wept into his tiny form like she had never held something warm before.
"He's healthy," someone else said—a man.
His vision narrowed. His breath slowed. Something inside his chest—something deep and quiet—rippled. Like a drum being struck in water.
"His eyes... did you see that? They glowed, just for a second."
"Nonsense. You're sleep-deprived."
But the woman holding him tightened her grip. She whispered something into his ear.
He didn't understand the words.
He wasn't just reborn. He was already being watched. And whatever stirred in his soul… was awake.
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By the time he was two, the villagers whispered about him. He began walking at only 6 months old and talking 6 months later. They acted as if he couldn't hear their hushed tones, the comments about his unnatural progression.
His mother brushed it all off with a tired smile, but even she looked at him as if he wasn't normal. As if, he was going to suddenly sprout wings and fly away.
He new what they felt, even if they didn't.
His soul was loud. He filled the room in a way no 2 year old should. Even if they couldn't see his soul as he could, something so large contained in something so small made it impossible not to feel. He had been able to see it ever since he reincarnated, ever present but just out of reach, like a loose hair in the corner of your eye.
But, along with his unnatural soul came unnatural instinct. 6 months ago when he was walking through the small town of Velden the butcher's dog lunged at him, but he had already dodged without a thought. A trend of these unexplainable instincts continued as he began to sense things fractions of seconds before they happened
"It's like the world slows down for you," Marella said once, while sewing by firelight.
"No," he answered plainly, small hands gripping the wood-carved sword he'd been whittling.
"It doesn't slow. I just… feel where it's going before it gets there."
She looked at him too long. Then said nothing.
That night, he stared at the moon for hours. Not because he liked it. But because it was quiet.
Inside, the storm of souls churned. Restless. Faint emotions sometimes surged from nowhere—rage, sorrow, hunger. Not his.
He'd learned to drown them. But they left their mark.
Sometimes, when he struck the air with his little wooden blade, it cracked with a sound like splintering cloth.
The first time it happened, the blade vibrated in his hand for minutes after.
He didn't know the name for it yet.
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He wasn't supposed to be awake.
But the fire was too loud. It kept him awake.
Through the cracks in the floorboards above the tavern's main hall, he listened—quiet as a mouse.
"You hear the Slane Theocracy wiped out an entire demi-human village last week?"
The voice was gruff. Mercenary.
"Yeah. Claimed they were plotting something. Said it was preemptive."
"That's rich, coming from the Theocracy."
A pause. Mug slams.
"Honestly? I'm more worried about the Re-Estize nobles starting another border skirmish. They say King Ramposa's still struggling to hold the east. Third warband pulled back from Katze Plain last month."
Re-Estize.
Slane Theocracy.
Katze Plain.
His breath caught in his throat. Those weren't just names.
He knew this world.
This was Yggdrasil.
Or whatever came after it.
He pushed himself away from the boards, heart hammering. The cold wood beneath his feet couldn't ground him. His stomach twisted. Bile rose up in his throat as he kneeled over in distress.
This was the world of Ainz Ooal Gown.
A world of god-tier monsters who would kill a human without a second thought.
He was five.
And he had a stick.
A scream rose in his chest but never left his lips.
How the hell was he supposed to survive that.
He curled into a ball beside the hearth in the loft and stayed there long after the voices quieted and the fire died.
It wasn't fear that kept him awake.
It was a certainty.
A certainty that he would die.
Unless—
Unless he changed everything.
That night, he didn't sleep.
He walked outside under the stars, wooden sword in hand. He stood alone in the clearing behind the fields, the frost on the grass crunching beneath his bare feet.
And he began to move.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Each swing followed by a breath, in and out.
It wasn't about mastering a style.
It was about becoming strong enough to survive
And so the boy began to train—not because he loved the sword.
But because somewhere out there was a skeleton who could crush him like an ant, and if he ever wanted to stand in front of him as more than an insect…
He had twenty years to become a monster.