The woman whipped the stiletto she’d used to kill the others, spattering the ground with blood and restoring the blade’s cold gleam.
“Nye-he-he-he! Looks like you’re the only one left!” She revealed all her teeth in a big, carnivorous smile.
“Wh-why are you doing this?” He knew it was a stupid thing to ask, but this was all out of the blue to him.
The men were adventurer guild dropouts known simply as workers. Sometimes also called dusk workers, they would take on jobs that were borderline criminal or even actual crimes. So while there wasn’t a total lack of reasons people would have something against them, they hadn’t even done any jobs in this city yet, and they’d had no recollection of ever meeting this woman.
“Why am I doing this? Oh, I just thought I’d like to have you.”
He blinked a few times in confusion and asked, “What do you mean?”
“The grandson of that famous apothecary is out, so I need someone to keep watch and tell me when he gets back. You think I wanna do a pain-in-the-ass job like that myself?”
“Why not just make that as a request, then? Wasn’t that the point?” They were workers who would take on illegal jobs, so he had no idea why this woman had to kill him.
“Nah, nah, nah. Ya might betray me!”
“We don’t betray anybody as long as we get paid!”
“Oh? Well, then let’s say this: I adore killing people! It’s my love, my passion!” She laughed and added, “Oh, and torture, too!”
The man’s face screwed up in disbelief at this thing on which common sense had no effect. “What…the hell? Why are you so insane?!”
“Why?” The woman’s expression suddenly changed, along with the tone of her voice. Her nonsensical attitude of just a moment before vanished. “Oh, I dunno… Maybe because it used to be my job to kill people? Or because I was always compared to my brilliant big brother? Or because our parents gave all their love to him? Or because I got abused when I was weak? Or because my friend died right in front of me? Or because I screwed up, got caught, and was tortured for days? Red-hot choke pears really hurt, ya know!” There was something childish about her then, but a moment later the adult had returned, grinning. “Just kidding! Those were all lies, lies, lies! None of that ever happened to me! But who cares, anyway? Even if you knew my past, it wouldn’t change anything. Just a lot of junk happened, and here I am. But man, I’m really glad Khaj did the research for me, and I could contact you right away. It would have taken forever if I had to start from finding someone to work with!”
The woman let go of her stiletto. Pulled by gravity, the knife’s tip sank into the earth far enough that it didn’t fall over. That abnormal sharpness implied that it was made of not steel but some other metal.
“It’s orichalcum! More specifically, orichalcum-coated mythril. That’s not so common, ya know.”
The rareness of her weapon spoke to her strength. In other words, the man realized he didn’t stand a chance.
“Okay, next! If I give you too big of an injury, ya won’t be any use to me… If only Khaj would use his faith magic so no matter how much I hurt ya we could heal ya back up… I’d be able to torture you forever! Wouldn’t that be great?”
Chattering on about such horrible things, the woman took out another stiletto from under her robe. “This should work… Sorry if I miss…,” the woman apologized, sticking out her tongue. Superficially, she was cute, but her true tainted nature was showing.
The man turned and started to run. Behind him, the woman yelped in what sounded like feigned surprise. He didn’t stop to pay attention, just ran desperately through the darkness, employing the sense of direction he was so proud of. But he heard a jangling from behind him and the woman’s icy voice, sounding like she wasn’t even breaking a sweat: “Too slow!” And then a white-hot pain shot through his shoulder. As he realized he’d been stabbed with the stiletto, a haze washed over his brain.
Mind control… The man fought frantically, but the haze hanging over his consciousness was stronger.
After a short time, he heard the voice of his new friend behind him. “Heyyy. Are you all right? The wound isn’t too deep, is it?”
“No, I’m fine.” He turned around to smile at his friend.
“Oh, good!” The girl smiled a horrifying grin back at him.
3
The party set out as the sun was coming up and proceeded along the road hidden in the grass.
“Carne is just a bit farther.”
Nfirea was the only one who had been to Carne before (well, Ainz had, too, but he was hiding the fact), so everyone nodded at this information. They didn’t, however, do anything else besides walk along silently. Nfirea looked like he couldn’t take it anymore.
Morale was extremely bad. I messed up, Ainz thought, hidden beneath his helmet. Ninya glanced over at him now and then. It bothered him, but it was his own fault, so he couldn’t say anything.
In other words, they were still feeling the aftereffects of what he’d said last night. Ninya apologized again at breakfast, so forgiving him would have ended it; he just couldn’t get out the words. He sensed that he was being petty, but he just couldn’t let it go.
I guess I have to deal with this kind of thing even as an undead…
Since becoming an undead, stronger emotions were suppressed, but weaker ones didn’t go anywhere. In other words, he was experiencing a slow-burning anger. That showed how important his old friends were to him. That part of it was a good feeling, but at the same time, he knew things couldn’t go on like they were.
He just wasn’t motivated to take the initiative and change the mood. It was a feeling that was difficult to describe; he knew he was acting like an ornery child and got annoyed at himself for being such a brat.
The only person who seemed unaffected by the bad morale was Narberal, walking next to Ainz—she was pleased as punch that Lukrut couldn’t bother her. Everyone else just kept marching silently along at a fairly fast pace until they reached a place near Carne.
“So, I was thinking… It’s such a nice view and all… Maybe we didn’t need to form ranks…” Lukrut spoke, perhaps just to say something. Next to them was the dense forest, so it was a little puzzling what he meant by “nice view.” And besides, not dropping one’s guard just because of a nice view was one of the fundamentals of escort duty, so they were right to be in ranks.
However, it was clear that this time the reason they were marching silently in ranks wasn’t the result of adventurer precaution.
“It’s important to stay on guard! Let’s keep—er, let’s hurry on to the village,” Peter said.
“Exactly! It’s crucial to keep a constant watch so we don’t get caught off guard,” Dyne said, but his expression made it clear he didn’t think that was true.
Ninya tossed out, “Plus, a dragon might fly over from super far away and suddenly attack us.”
Lukrut bit right away. “Where’d that stupid idea come from? Use your brain, Ninya—could that really happen?”
“That would never happen. The last time a dragon was in the vicinity of E-Rantel was a long time ago, but that was just some made-up folktale; it said there was a dragon who could control natural disasters. You don’t hear stories of dragon sightings nowadays. Oh, wait. There is that one about a bunch of frost dragons living in the Azerlisia Mountains. Pretty far up north, though, I think.”
So there were dragons here a long time ago? I heard from the Sunlit Scripture captives that dragons were the strongest race on the continent…
Dragons could also be counted among the most powerful races in Yggdrasil. They had high physical attack and defense and seemingly inexhaustible health, plus countless special abilities and spells. They were very nearly overpowered.
Among Yggdrasil’s monsters, named monsters, area bosses, and so on were the superpowerful World Enemies. These were balance-breaking monsters that were hard for even a legion (six teams of up to six players each) to beat.
O
ne was the final boss of the so-so official story, Devourer of the Nine Worlds. Then there were the Eight Dragons, the Seven Sin Lords, the Ten Angels of the Sephirot, and then with the big update, “The Fall of Valkyria,” the Sixth Master Angel and the Five Transcendent Ones were added for a total of thirty-two. The fact that dragons were one of the races represented there showed that the developers must have liked them.
If dragons still exist, then I should be careful. In Yggdrasil, dragons’ lives don’t end… Even just one could have more power than we can even imagine.
“Hmm, would you happen to know the name of that dragon that could control natural disasters?” Ainz mumbled, not quite bold enough to jump casually into a conversation with someone he was having a fight with. But it seemed like they’d heard him fine, and Ninya whipped around to face him.
It was as if they were a couple who’d had an argument, and he was looking for any possible chance to make up. (At least, that’s how Ainz felt when he compared the situation to conversations of couples he’d seen in coffeehouses.)
Still, after Ainz spoke to him, Ninya was looking a little more cheerful, and the rest of the Swords of Darkness and Nfirea brightened up a bit, too. The only one who seemed unchanged was Narberal—or rather, there wasn’t the slightest indication that the awkward mood had registered for her at all.
“My apologies, but no! Shall I look it up once we get back to town?!”
Uh, you don’t have to get so excited about it… And if you don’t know, you can just say so… I was just making conversation. But he couldn’t say those things. “Sure, Ninya. Please do, but only if you happen to have time.”
“Okay, Momon!”
Ainz felt a tad shamed by everyone’s content nods. If their positions had been reversed, it would have been fine, but as the oldest one in the party, he was embarrassed.
“Okay, we’re just about—” Nfirea spoke in practically the first cheerful voice of the morning but abruptly closed his mouth.
Everyone’s eyes looked at the village up ahead. It was a simple village right next to the forest. They didn’t sense anything that would have caused Nfirea to clam up, and nothing about the scene bothered them.
“What is it, Nfirea? Is something wrong?”
“Oh no. Just…there didn’t used to be such a sturdy fence there…”
“Oh yeah? Well, it doesn’t seem like such a tough fence. Compared to the fences around the border villages, it’s pretty shabby, actually. Wouldn’t you think they’d have something stronger to protect against monsters with the forest so close?!”
“Well, maybe, but…they have the Wise King of the Forest, so they didn’t even have this one before…”
Everyone looked at the village. The fence was made of thick logs that seemed difficult to break, and as far as they could tell, it surrounded the entire village.
“That’s so weird… Did something happen…?”
Even hearing the concern in the boy’s voice, Ainz said nothing, of course. The one who came here before was Ainz Ooal Gown the caster—this time it was Momon the adventurer.
Ninya spoke up with a sober look on his face. “Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I’m from a village, so I remember the lifestyle well, and two things stick out to me. First, at this time of day there should be people out in the fields, but there aren’t. And second, I see that some of the wheat has already been harvested.” Looking in the direction Ninya’s finger pointed, the group noted that part of one of the wheat fields was indeed harvested.
“Oh yeah. You’re right… I wonder if something happened…”
Ainz addressed the group as they exchanged worried looks. “Let us handle this, everyone. Nabe, go invisible and fly over the village to see what’s going on.”
After acknowledging the order, Narberal used an invisibility spell and disappeared. Then, they heard her disembodied voice chant the Flight spell and felt her presence move away. Everyone waited right there in the middle of the road, and it wasn’t long before she returned.
“Villagers were walking around normally inside. It didn’t particularly seem like they were acting under orders from anyone. And there are people working the fields on the other side of the village.”
“Oh! I guess I was just worrying too much.”
“There doesn’t seem to be any problem for the moment, then. Can we…continue on to the village?” Peter asked Ainz and Nfirea, and they both responded in the affirmative.
The road narrowed, so the party walked toward the entrance to the village in single file. The fields on either side of the road were green with wheat that waved gently in the occasional breeze. From far away it would have looked almost like the party was waist-deep in a green sea.
“Hmm?” As the cart clattered along, Lukrut, walking second in line, made an odd noise and peered into the field. It wasn’t even harvest season, but the wheat stalks were already more than two feet tall. Of course, just like the sea, it was impossible to see inside.
“What is it?” Ninya, walking behind him, asked nervously.
“Huh? Oh, maybe just my imagination…” Lukrut cocked his head for a moment and then sped up to close the gap with Peter.
Ninya looked in the same direction and then, having confirmed nothing was moving, hurried along to catch up with the other two.
The road was even partially covered with wheat as if the green sea were eroding it. They almost wanted to hack at the plants that stuck out to make more space to walk, but it would have been more trouble than it was worth.
“They should really take better care of the fields. This is such a waste.” Peter was taking long strides out in front, and when the heads of the wheat collided with his leg armor, berries fell to the ground. Just as he was lamenting this, he was seized by the feeling that something was amiss.
The intuition forged by the life-or-death situations he’d encountered so far was whispering: Would green berries really fall off so easily?
Following his gut, he nonchalantly looked into the field—and saw a pair of eyes staring back at him. There was a little creature there that had wrapped its body in wheat to blend in. Its face was mostly covered, so he couldn’t tell what it was, only that it wasn’t human.
“Whoa!” He was so surprised that before he could alert his friends, the creature, a subhuman, spoke.
“Do yuh mind disarming?” The little subhuman had already drawn a blade and could probably stab Peter faster than he could do anything, no matter how quickly he moved.
“Not so fast! Drop yer weapons. And would yuh tell the people behind yuh, too? I wouldn’t want to have to shoot them with my bow here.” Another little voice came from somewhere else. When he turned to look, he found another subhuman waist-deep in a hole it had ingeniously dug in the field. It was also wrapped in wheat.
Peter hesitated; from the way they were talking, he felt like there was still room to negotiate. “…Can you guarantee our lives?”
“Of course. If yuh surrender, that is.”
Peter wasn’t sure what to do. He had to block the line of fire to the cart where Nfirea was and get a handle on how many enemies there were and their positions. And it was also important to find out what they wanted. Under the current circumstances, he couldn’t submit to them or refuse to listen.
They must have noticed his confusion. With a rustling noise, two subhumans in the field stood up.
“Goblins…,” Ninya murmured.
The race of the subhumans matched the one of the monsters they had fought the previous day. They had nocked arrows and were aiming with keen eyes.
Shall we? Ninya, Lukrut, and Dyne tried to read one another’s thoughts from their eyes.
Goblins were inferior to humans when it came to physical ability based on height, weight, or muscle mass. They did have Darkvision, so attacking them at night was tricky, but in broad daylight the veteran Swords of Darkness didn’t think it would be a terribly difficult fight.
And Ainz was with them. He could probably slaughter them like he h
ad the others the previous day with no problem.
Peter was being held hostage, but everyone was certain they could rescue him from these goblins.
There was one reason they hadn’t made up their minds yet—they could tell that these goblins were somehow different from the ones they had fought earlier. In a nutshell, these goblins had the air of trained fighters about them. And they were in good physical condition; the ones from yesterday lacked muscle tone, but these were covered head to toe in muscles.
That wasn’t all. The posture of the goblin with the bow was perfect. If the other goblins had been children swinging clubs, this was an experienced warrior.
Last but not least, their gear was of decent quality. In fact, it might have been on par with what the Swords of Darkness were using, and everything had been polished meticulously.
Just as humans could train to get stronger, so could monsters. Even for subhumans like goblins, it was only natural. In other words, it was possible these goblins were far stronger than the ones the Swords of Darkness had fought before.
Suddenly a rustling came from the field that was different from the wind blowing through it. Lukrut whipped around to look at their rear.
“Eh-heh, yuh found me, ’ey?” A goblin poked its head out of the field and stuck out its tongue. Apparently it had been trying to sneak up behind them, but its skills weren’t enough to fool ranger Lukrut. Still, just discovering them didn’t mean the adventurers had gained the advantage.
Calmly looking out over the wheat fields, Lukrut could see movements indicating goblins lurking here and there. They were moving in to surround them, with the cart at the center.
The Swords of Darkness were at a complete disadvantage, and none of them could think of a way out.
Ainz stayed Narberal, who was about to open fire, with a hand and finished observing the goblins. His hunch had been right. “These are goblins and goblin archers summoned by the Goblin General’s Horns.” If these monsters were working for the girls he’d given the horns to, Ainz wanted to avoid acting in a way that could be perceived as hostile. If that wasn’t possible, something would need to be done, but Ainz and Narberal could handle them no problem.
The Dark Warrior Page 11
