The Dark Warrior

by Kugane Maruyama

  “Here’s what I think: You should take care of this as soon as possible.”

  “That’s a given…but what do you mean?”

  “These guys could have manipulated them with mind control, or they could have hidden the bodies—there were other options, but instead of taking them, they set up this little game. Maybe they didn’t care if they were found out? Or were they just that confident that they could get away? Hmm…it has to be one of those. If they were going to go to the trouble of making zombies, they could have taken them with them.”

  If their aim was strictly to kidnap Nfirea, they could have gained plenty of time just by concealing the corpses. The fact that they didn’t do that meant that either they had some secondary aim or they wanted to force Lizzy to do something. The latter was a simple matter, but the former would mean that Nfirea’s life and powers had value to them. And probably, whatever they wanted could be completed in a short amount of time. Would these brutal killers send him home safely when they were done?

  Lizzy’s face, as she understood what Ainz was getting at, went past pale to white as a sheet. To figure out where in this huge city they’d gone, and then begin searching from there—it would take way too long. The only clue they had was the sewers, but Momon was voicing doubts. This time slipping through their fingers was the waning light of Nfirea’s life.

  Ainz made a quiet suggestion. “How about making a request?” His icy voice continued. “This is definitely the sort of thing you should hire an adventurer to take on.” A light in Lizzy’s eyes seemed to indicate that she had grasped his meaning. “You’re in luck, Lizzy Baleare. Standing before you is the best adventurer in town. I’m the only one who can bring back your grandson. If you make a request, I might even take it on. But…it’ll cost you! I can tell what a tricky job this is going to be.”

  “But yes, you could… You had that potion…and you must be strong if the Wise King of the Forest obeys you. I’ll do it. I’ll hire you!”

  “I see…and you’re prepared to compensate me?”

  “How much will it take?”

  “Everything.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll take everything you have.”

  Lizzy’s eyes grew wide and she shuddered.

  “Everything you have. If Nfirea comes home safely, give me everything.”

  “You…,” Lizzy murmured, backing away as if she were frightened. “You don’t mean money or potions by this everything of yours, do you…? They say a demon can grant a wish in exchange for your soul. You’re not demons, are you?”

  “Even if we were, does it matter? You want to save your grandson, don’t you?”

  Lizzy said nothing, just nodded once, biting her lip.

  “Then there’s only one answer, right?”

  “Yeah…I’ll hire you. I’ll give you everything I have. Save my grandson!”

  “Okay, the deal is sealed, then. To get right down to business, do you have a map of the city? If you do, I want to borrow it.”

  She seemed dubious but went to get him a map right away.

  “Okay, now we’re going to find out where Nfirea is.”

  “You can do that?!”

  “This time, I can. Either our enemies are idiots, or…” As his sentence trailed off, he looked at the four bodies. “Well, we’re going to get things under way in here, so go look in the other rooms and see if you can find anything that might lead us to Nfirea’s kidnappers. Things’ll get hairy if this was just a diversion. Anyhow, this is your house, so you know it best.”

  Having made up some reason to get rid of Lizzy, Ainz watched her go and then turned to Narberal.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “It’s simple. Look, their plates are gone. It was probably the kidnappers who took them. The question is, why would they take those when they didn’t take any of the more valuable items? What do you think?”

  “My apologies. I don’t know.”

  “They’re—”

  “Lord Ainz!” A slightly shrill voice sounded in his head—and some kind of squeaking noise layered over it like a second audio track.

  “Entoma?”

  “Yes, sir.” Entoma Vasilissa Zeta was, like Narberal, one of the Pleiades. “There’s something I need to talk to you abou—”

  “I’m busy right now. I’ll contact you when I get some time.”

  “Understood. Then, please contact Mistress Albedo when you have time.”

  The spell vanished and Ainz continued his conversation with Narberal, who was looking at him curiously. “Trophies. They’re hunting trophies. The criminals must have taken them as mementos. But that was a fatal mistake. Narberal, use this.” He reached into an Infinity Haversack and pulled out a scroll. “It’s Locate Object. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what we’re looking for.”

  “Understood.”

  The moment she unrolled the scroll and was about to cast the spell, Ainz grabbed her hand. She was caught by surprise. “…You fool,” he declared icily.

  His level tone made her shoulders jump. “M-my apologies!”

  “When you’re using intelligence-gathering magic, preparing adequately to guard against your enemy’s potential counterspells before casting is an iron rule. Considering your opponent could be using Detect Locate, protecting yourself with Fake Cover and Counter Detect is the most basic of the basics. Then you have—” Ainz had prepared ten scrolls. He went on to explain the rest of them to Narberal as if he were lecturing at a university.

  When collecting intelligence using magic, it was necessary to take elaborate defensive measures. That was fundamental.

  When Ainz Ooal Gown was going to PK someone, they first collected any information they could get about the player and then sneak-attacked to win in one fell swoop. That was their basic strategy, No Fuss PK-ing, developed by guild member Squishy Moe, who declared, “The battle is over before it begins!”

  That was why Ainz was teaching Narberal now—so that in the future, when they encountered players, she would be able to fight with an advantage.

  “—and that’s it. Really, it’s also basic to use skills for boosts and counters, as well, but we probably don’t need to go that far against these guys. If they had casters able to do anything stronger than this, they wouldn’t have cast such low-level spells on those corpses. Okay, Narberal, do it.”

  Finally free to act, Narberal unfurled each scroll in order, naming each spell as she went. The scrolls burst into heatless flames and burned up in a matter of seconds to release the magic sealed inside.

  Once she had used them all and was protected by numerous defensive spells, she cast Locate Object. Then, she pointed at the map.

  “They’re here.”

  Ainz couldn’t read what was written there, so he searched his memory to remember what was in that area. “…The graveyard? So there’s a good chance it’s not the sewers.”

  The graveyard in E-Rantel was in a league of hugeness all its own, partially because the city was used as a military base. The magic was pointing to the location farthest in.

  “Okay, then next use Clairvoyance. Cast Crystal Monitor at the same time, and show me what’s going on over there, too.”

  Narberal used the two scrolls, and they saw countless human figures on the screen that appeared in the air. But something was strange about the way they were moving—many of them were jerking awkwardly. There were also countless figures that were definitely not human.

  And in the center of it all was a boy. He was dressed differently, but there was still no mistaking him.

  “Got him. And the plates are in this area… An undead mob, huh?”

  The place was occupied by a huge swarm of undead. They were all lower tier, but there were lots of them.

  “…What will you do? Should we teleport in to attack all at once? Or take them by storm from the air with Fly?”

  “Yeah, sure, we can wrap it up on the down low—don’t be stupid.” Narberal looked confused, so he explained. “They ha
ve this huge mob of undead, so they must be trying to do something big. If we can put a stop to that while saving Nfirea, it’ll be great for our reputation. If we deal with this in secret, all we’re likely to get is the reward from Lizzy.”

  Of course, if they didn’t deal with it as soon as possible, Nfirea could be killed. Even Ainz couldn’t summon and control that many undead at once, so there had to be some trick to it. Maybe it’s somehow dependent on Nfirea’s life? But if that were the case, then he wanted to know that trick, even if it meant sacrificing Nfirea. Ainz was most concerned with strengthening the Great Tomb of Nazarick. If letting Nfirea die would benefit Nazarick, he would choose that.

  “Well, we can’t gather much more intelligence as we are, and it would take too long anyways…,” Ainz murmured as he proceeded to the door. Flinging it open, he shouted, “Lizzy! We’re done! And we’re going to the graveyard!”

  “What about the sewers?!” she screamed from somewhere, and they could hear her footsteps rushing over.

  “They were just misleading us. Their real aim was the graveyard. And as a bonus, there’s an undead army numbering easily in the thousands.”

  “What!”

  He’d just taken a guess. It wasn’t like he was going to count them all.

  “Don’t be so surprised. We’re going to break through. The problem is what happens if the undead overflow the graveyard. Please tell as many people about this as possible, that we need people to stop them as they start escaping. It’s not a very convincing story, but you’re famous here, so people will listen to you, right? If the undead overflow the graveyard and no one is ready for them…there’ll be trouble.”

  Ainz frowned under his helmet. He needed people to make a fuss. The bigger the fuss, the better his reputation would get at the end. Telling her to spread the word was a strategic move.

  “That’s enough chitchat. Time is running out, so we’re leaving.”

  “Do you have a way to break through the undead army?!”

  Ainz looked calmly at Lizzy and pointed at the great swords on his back. “…It’s right here, isn’t it?”

  3

  Taking up about a quarter of the area inside E-Rantel’s outermost wall in a huge block that occupied most of the western district was the E-Rantel Public Cemetery. Of course, other cities had cemeteries, but not as gigantic as this one. They needed it to prevent undead from spawning.

  How undead spawned was still a mystery in many ways, but they often appeared, with their impure “life,” in places where a living thing had met its end. If the person died a tragic death or went unmourned, the chances of undead appearing were much higher. For that reason it was very common for them to spawn in ruins or places where battles had been fought.

  Since E-Rantel was close to the sites of the battles with the empire, they needed to build a huge cemetery—a place to mourn—so that their dead wouldn’t turn undead.

  This went for the empire as well, so the two sides arranged it so that even though they were at war with each other, they would both make sure the other could properly mourn their dead. Even if they were killing each other on the battlefield, they knew that the undead who attacked the living out of hatred were the common enemy of all life.

  There was another problem with undead. If they were left alone, the probability that a stronger undead would spawn went up. That’s why adventurers and guards swept the graveyard every night and took out any undead while they were still just lower tier.

  The graveyard was surrounded by a wall. It was the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead. At about thirteen feet, it wasn’t as tall as the city walls, but it was fairly thick, and it was possible to walk along the top. The gates were sturdy, too. This was all as a precaution against the undead that spawned inside.

  Flanking the gates were staircases that led to lookouts. Five men to a side exchanged yawns while keeping watch.

  Although it was nighttime, light posts lit with Continual Light kept the place bright. That said, there were still pockets of darkness here and there, and gravestones impeded visibility.

  One guard with a spear, gazing absentmindedly out over the cemetery, said to the fellow next to him through a yawn, “Quiet night.”

  “Yeah. Just those five skeletons so far? Seems like the spawn rate went way down all of a sudden.”

  “Yeah. Maybe everyone’s souls were called to be with the Four Gods. If so, we lucked out!”

  The other guards joined in.

  “As long as it’s skeletons and zombies, we can handle ’em…although skeletons are a pain to get with spears…”

  “The worst one I ever saw was a wight.”

  “Mine’s a skeleton centipede. If the adventurer on guard nearby hadn’t run over I’d a been a goner.”

  “A skeleton centipede? The ugly ones only come out if you overlook weak ones. Just wipe ’em out while they’re wimpy, and we won’t have to deal with the strong ones.”

  “Exactly! The liquor the squad patrolling the tombs sent us the other week after our leader gave them what for tasted great, but I never want to go through an ordeal like that ever again.”

  “But when you think about it like that…doesn’t it kinda give you the creeps that nothing has spawned lately?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, like, maybe we’re missing them or something…”

  “You worry too much. Supposedly there aren’t usually that many to begin with. There’s talk that the reason we had such a high rate of appearance was because we were burying people who died in battles against the empire. In other words, maybe this is what it’s like when there’s no fighting.”

  The guards nodded at one another. Villages buried people just like they did, but they’d never heard of a place with so many undead.

  “Supposedly the Katze Plain is just a mess.”

  “Yeah, the undead that spawn there are on a whole ’nother level.”

  The plain where the kingdom and the empire clashed was known as a region with frequent undead outbreaks, so adventurers requested by the kingdom and knights from the empire worked together to clean it up. Sweeping the area was so important that the kingdom and empire both sent goods to maintain a little town built out there to support the people suppressing the undead.

  “I heard a rumor that—” one of the guards started to say and then closed his mouth.

  One of the others got anxious. “Hey, if you’re trying to scare us—”

  “Quiet!” The one who had closed his mouth was looking toward the graveyard as if he could pierce the darkness if he stared hard enough. The others followed his line of sight and looked, too.

  “…Do you hear something?”

  “Probably just your imagination.”

  “Nah, I don’t hear anything, but it smells kinda like dirt. Like when we had to dig that one time? It smells like that.”

  “Okay, not funny. Cut it out.”

  “…Huh? Ah, hey! Look over there!”

  One of the guards pointed out into the graveyard. Everyone turned to look.

  Two guards were running frantically toward the gate. They were both breathing heavily, eyes wide and bloodshot, hair plastered to their foreheads with sweat.

  The guards in the lookout had a bad feeling. Patrols went out in groups of at least ten. Why were there only two? Running that desperately with no weapons, they could only be running away from something.

  “O-open up! Open the gate!”

  A guard ran down the stairs in response to their panicked screams and opened the gate. The pair tumbled out of the graveyard as if they couldn’t wait for the door to open. “What the heck—?” the guard started to ask, but the two patrollers, faces white as sheets, interrupted him, shouting with what little breath they had left.

  “C-close the gate! Hurry!”

  Frightened by how upset they were, the guards all helped shut and bar the gate.

  “What the heck happened?! Where are the others?”

  The guard who l
ooked up to respond had terror written all over his face. “Th-they were eaten! By undead!”

  Learning that eight of their comrades had been killed, the guards looked at their squad leader. He responded with orders.

  “…Hey, someone go look from up top!”

  One of them sprang up and started running up the stairs but froze partway.

  “Wh-what’s wrong?”

  Trembling uncontrollably, the guard screamed back, “It’s undead! A huge mob of them!”

  If they listened closely, they could hear a kind of squirming noise coming from the other side of the wall. Everyone followed the first guard, and one by one they were rendered speechless by the view.

  A number of undead for which there were no words was coming across the graveyard, heading straight for them.

  “What the heck? How are there so many…?”

  “It’s not even a hundred or two… There’s gotta be…at least a thousand?”

  There were so many even just in the areas the light reached that they couldn’t count them. Figuring in the human shapes wriggling in the darkness, their number was unfathomable.

  The undead shuffled their swaying way toward the gate in a horde, accompanied by the smell of rot. Among them were not only skeletons and zombies but also stronger undead—though not as many—such as ghouls, ghasts, wights, swollskins, and corrupt dead.

  All the guards were shaking now.

  The city proper was behind another wall, so unless that was breached, no residents would be attacked. But they weren’t sure they could take this mob, even if they called for a general mobilization of all the guards. They may have been called “guards,” but they were just burlier versions of regular citizens. They weren’t confident they could subdue this many undead.

  And some undead possessed the ability to turn anything they killed into the same type of monster. One wrong move and they’d be getting attacked by their undead comrades. On top of that, there weren’t any flying ones now, but they knew that if they didn’t wipe these out soon, some fiendish fliers would show up, and that terrified them even more.

  The flood of undead reached the wall.