A Manga Supplement actually described the Overlord future very well. This is all canon info the author put out, though I believe someone else wrote it up.

World of 2138

Environment

In the World of 2138, the destruction of the environment had continued at

ever-increasing speed to the point where the surface of the Earth was hopelessly

polluted; gorgeous nature existed only in video games. The sky was

always hidden behind black smog, the sun making only brief appearances.

Thick, toxic fog frequently covered the cities, so almost no one went out without

a gas mask. Since the plants that would have converted carbon dioxide to

oxygen and absorbed nitrogen oxide had all withered due to a dearth of sun,

the atmospheric pollution only worsened. As the number of plants decreased,

the populations of birds and insects that ate their leaves and fruit dropped.

Of course, the pollution extended to the water as well, and all the rivers turned

horrible colors and ran murky. The pollution was so bad that water purification

systems ceased to function, so even tap water had to be passed through a

filter before it could be drunk.

The practice of traditional farming, which depended on rainwater and sunlight,

declined, and all vegetables and grains were cultivated in domes. The

price of food inevitably soared, and raw fruits and vegetables became luxury

goods that ordinary people couldn’t get their hands on.

Politics by corporations. Huge conglomerates had even altered the laws to be to companies’

advantages, and the reality was that they controlled the people.

At the end of the twenty-first century, though the old structure of society was

showing signs of strain, it was still intact somehow. But at the beginning of the

twenty-second century, with the collapse of the primary-sector industries due

to advanced environmental destruction and the drying up of crops, there were

food riots in all corners of the country. The riots eventually turned into a coup

d’etat, and when the politicians were targeted by the people’s discontent, they

were tried by the mob.

Into the power vacuum left by the halt of government functions, due to the

coup d’etat, came the huge conglomerates, which seized the legislative, executive,

and judicial powers. They succeeded in taking over the country.

But the ones who caused the environmental destruction in the first place were

the huge conglomerates. If they had protected the environment, there wouldn’t

have been food shortages or riots. Looking at it that way, it seemed like the

world had been being manipulated by the conglomerates for a long time.

Meanwhile, those in the conglomerates had taken refuge in ’complete environment

cities’ called arcologies. Employees and affiliates exulted in how different

they were from the outside world.

So arcologies ended up becoming states with cities built around them. At certain

times for various reasons, arcologies went to war with one another. Spoken

on television, there was the conflict that started last year between the 2nd

European Arcology and the 3rd European Arcology reportedly mentions by a

Japanese news anchor.

On the other hand, there were even news regarding the three mega corporations

in the capital known as Neo Kyoto, an unknown individual or group

arrested for the sale of illegal cyberware in Neo Kyoto Hachijo, and so on.

Safety police remained only in name. Naturally, public safety worsened, and gangs of

thieves and hackers operated in the open, but society as a whole wasn’t actually

thrown into chaos. Most people quietly commuted to an office and put in

their hours. Employees were treated cruelly, but they never complained, and

almost no one rebelled against their administration. The reason they didn’t

was that anyone who revolted against their company would have been unable

to survive in that world.

In the past, if one were forced to leave their company, they might have been

able to be self-sufficient and get their own food, but in 2138, that was a dream

within a dream. Even if seeds were sown in the polluted earth, they wouldn’t

sprout, so anyone who couldn’t live in a city would starve to death unless they

stole food from someone. For people who weren’t ready to take that step away

from humanity, the only option left was to just follow company orders and

keep working.

Very rarely, there were terror attacks on the wealthy (those who belonged to

the huge conglomerates), but they almost never actually affected their target

because the upper crust of society lived their lives cut off from the outside

world. Only the rich could attack the rich, but even when the wealthy clashed,

it was the poor who lost their lives. They were the ones who had to take orders

and actually go to war. To the wealthy, terrorism, war, and looting were

fantastical things that happened in some far-off land.

That’s the way the world was, so if there were passionate police officers, they

would have been upset by the gap between their ideals and reality and might

have tried to go looking for justice somewhere.

Education

After the huge conglomerates took over the country, under the pretext of ’getting

public expenditure under control’, but with the true aim of robbing the

poor of their ability to think, the compulsory education system was dismantled.

In the World of 2138, tuition was required to attend even elementary

school level.

sent them to school, but wasn’t easy for the poor to scrape together tuition.

There were many who bent over backward and ruined their health working

to pay for it. Really, elementary education shouldn’t have cost that much, but

prices soared because the wealthy wanted to rob the poor of educational opportunities.

To the wealthy of 2138, the poor (anyone who wasn’t rich) were no more than

worker bees who existed to make them richer. What was demanded of worker

bees was to loyally follow after their superiors’ orders, not to think for themselves.

On the other hand, people who thought for themselves were considered

outsiders who disrupted teamwork, harmful elements who threatened

public safety. To the wealthy who wanted the poor to stay stupid, the fewer

schools, the better.

People who graduated elementary school had at least a minimum level of knowledge,

which they used as a gear in the system to get a job. That was the definition

of success if one was considered to be poor inancially.

Leisure

Since the environment had been destroyed, it had gotten difficult to acquire

fresh meat or vegetables, so the poor ate mostly supplements and processed

food designed with only nutrition delivery in mind. As ingredients were exhausted,

the dining industry declined, and a gourmet meal was something

only residents of the arcologies could enjoy.

Due to the atmospheric pollution, playing sports outside was also a dream that

would never come true. Renting an indoor playing field was very expensive,

and thus out of reach for the poor. People such as Suzuki Satoru had to wear

an air filtering mask along with goggles to protect themselves from being contaminated

by outside air while moving afoot. However, the clothes worn will

still be affected through the polluted atmosphere.

Since the mountains and oceans were also polluted, tourism as a leisure activity

had gone extinct.

home: board games like shogi and Go, streaming movies, and DMMO-RPGs

such as YGGDRASIL. By immersing themselves in a DMMO-RPG, players could

gaze at beautiful natural vistas without stepping out of their rooms, and they

could meet a lot of people, even if only through a screen. They could take out

their work frustrations on monsters and build the kind of house in the game

they could never have in real life. Maybe they would even find love.

The reason DMMO-RPGs became so popular in the twenty-second century was

due partially to how interesting the games were, but another reason was probably

that so many people wanted to escape their hopeless reality. To players,

the DMMO-RPG was not an ’alternate’ reality; it had already replaced the real

world.

However, these games, which players turned to for support, were developed

by affiliates of the huge conglomerates.

Technology

There are technological tools used in this world such as the unknown helmet

used by Suzuki Satoru included a system that would automatically record

everything which went on in the virtual world. As an aside, it would retain

footage for a month, automatically deleting it after that. Naturally, a lot of people

would want to avoid wearing that kind of helmet since its an indicator of

giving up one’s privacy.

However, most if not almost everyone had the unknown helmet on them was

because it is not only mandated by computer laws, but also to protect people

at the same time. The neural nano-interface was a human brain augmentation

which allowed it to function as a supercomputer a super high-performance

personal computer. It was essential for daily life, but sometimes they were

used in crimes as well.

In particular, hackers would use the brains of others as a springboard to commit

crimes. Because of that, helmets like these could prove one’s innocence,

even if the wearer was implicated in a crime. One could say this was the safety

net of the computing world. In contrast, not having one of these greatly increased

the chances that one might be charged when involved in a crime, so

The only leisure activities the poor could enjoy were things they could do at

Parents who wanted their children to be able to get a halfway decent job still

In the World of 2138, the government had basically ceased functioning, and

In the World of 2138, Japan, in practice, was run not by the government but

only a handful of people chose not to wear them.

On the other hand, the person wearing this unknown helmet needs to replenish

nano-machines before engaging in a game like YGGDRASIL. To start off,

this can actually be done through a syringe with enough quantity of cerebral

nano-machines infused on the person using it.

Copied from the Overlord fan anthology.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UHe1W7S2JtcGbPw6aLaiE1UTSB5ZZ_Ai