The Dark Warrior

by Kugane Maruyama

  Bam-bam…

  Undead with low intelligence made use of their inability to feel pain to senselessly beat on the gate. They must have known they’d get to attack some living things if they broke it down.

  Bam-bam…

  The repeated pounding sound, the squeaking of the hinges, the moaning of countless monsters.

  They didn’t need a battering ram. The mob of undead that rushed the gate without even considering if they could break it or not performed as well as any siege weapon.

  The cold sweat that drenched the guards’ backs when they saw that was like a bucket of ice water.

  “Ring the bell! Get help from the garrison! You two, alert the other gates that this is an emergency!” The squad leader returned to his senses and started commanding. “The rest of you, use your spears to stab the undead near the gate from above!”

  His voice reminded the guards what they were supposed to be doing, and they began plunging their spears into the throng of undead below. There were so many they couldn’t even see the ground. They could stab at random and still skewer one. Thrust, wind up, thrust again.

  Murky blood spilled, the reek of decomposing bodies numbed the guards’ noses, and the repetitiveness of their frantic motions made them feel almost like zombies themselves. Several undead lost their un-lives, tumbled to the ground, and were trampled by the ones behind them.

  Since they were so lacking in intelligence, they didn’t even try to counterattack. Lulled by the repetitive task, the guards gradually began to relax.

  But just as if the monsters had been waiting for that to happen—

  “Wah!” Someone screamed, and when the others turned to look, one of the guards had something long wrapped and wriggling around his neck.

  It had a slimy pink gleam to it—intestines. At the other end was an egg-shaped, yet human, corpse with its front split wide open vertically. Inside the gaping cavity were more entrails than one person could ever possibly have, writhing like parasitic worms. It was an undead called an organ egg.

  The squirming intestines yanked on the guard. “Yaaagh!” Faster than anyone could move to save him, he yelped and fell. “H-help! Someone! Aaarghghyaa!” he shrieked at the top of his lungs.

  The other guards had no choice but to witness their comrade’s fate. Undead piled onto every part of his body and began to eat him alive. The armor protecting his torso and the efforts he made to protect his head only prolonged the brutality. First his fingers went, then his calves, then his face was chewed apart…

  “Fall back! Retreat behind the wall!” ordered the squad leader, seeing that the organ egg’s innards were wriggling again.

  Everyone rushed down the stairs. The pounding behind them grew stronger, and the screeches made it plain that the door was about to give.

  The sense of tragedy gradually mounted. It didn’t seem very likely that the door would hold until reinforcements arrived, and the undead that appeared would only grow stronger. If the gate opened, a torrent of death would come flooding out and who knew how much damage would be done?

  The moment all the guards’ faces had turned a sickly shade of despair, a metallic clank sounded. Everyone instinctively turned to see where it had come from.

  It was a warrior in full plate armor astride a magical beast with wise black eyes. Next to him was a woman so pretty she looked out of place.

  “H-hey! It’s dangerous here! Hurry up and—” Having said that much, the guard noticed the metal plate hanging from the warrior’s neck.

  An adventurer!

  But when he saw that it was copper, his slightly raised hopes deflated. There’s no way an adventurer of the lowest possible rank will be able to turn this situation around! Disappointment shone in all the guards’ eyes.

  The warrior sprang lightly off the beast, as if he didn’t weigh a thing.

  “Didn’t you hear me? Get away from here!”

  “Nabe, my swords.” The warrior’s voice was soft compared to the guard’s yell, but strangely, it could be heard clearly over the symphony of noise the undead were making. The beautiful woman ran over to him, and the warrior drew a great sword.

  “Hey, look behind you. Better watch out!”

  The guards whipped around as if repelled by the sound of the warrior’s voice and faced The End.

  A shadow loomed taller than the thirteen-foot wall. Countless corpses had gathered together to form an undead titan, a necroswarm giant.

  “Wahhhh!” As the guards screamed and went to flee, every man for himself, an unexpected scene unfolded before their eyes.

  The warrior held his sword like he was about to throw a javelin.

  To do what?

  The next moment answered that question. He threw it and at an unbelievable speed. Turning quickly back around to watch where it flew, they saw something even more unexpected.

  The necroswarm giant—a colossal undead monster they would have never thought could be beaten—got knocked back as if it had taken a blow from an even bigger giant; it was defeated. As proof the giant had fallen, a colossal thud sounded over the squirming noises.

  “That thing was in my way,” was all he said before striding forward with his other sword drawn. “Open the gate.”

  For a moment the guards didn’t realize what he’d said. They blinked a few times, and the warrior’s words finally sank into their brains.

  “D-don’t be stupid! There’s a huge mob of undead on the other side!”

  “Oh? The name’s Momon. Does that have anything to do with me?”

  The guards were all overawed by the black warrior’s overflowing confidence and couldn’t say anything.

  “…Well, if you don’t want to open the gate, I guess I can’t blame you. I’ll just let myself in.” The warrior took a running start, kicked off the cobblestones, and vanished over the wall. He’d leaped over a thirteen-foot wall in a single bound—while wearing full plate armor.

  Were they seeing things?

  Unable to process what had just happened, they all stared gape-mouthed at the space where no one was standing anymore.

  The beautiful woman who was left behind floated lightly into the air and was about to soar over the wall when a voice called out to stop her.

  “Please wait, that I beg you! Take me, too, that I ask!” The voice’s owner was the robust magical beast the warrior had been riding. She sounded just as dignified as she looked.

  The beautiful woman frowned slightly—not that it compromised her beauty one bit—and told the beast, “…Take those stairs. Don’t tell me you’re gonna break your legs falling from that height.”

  “Of course not! Then away to my master’s side I go! Master, wait for me, that I ask!” The huge magical beast scampered past the guards, agilely ascended the stairs, and jumped down to the other side of the wall.

  Then it was silent.

  It was as if a typhoon had gone by. How long did they stand there, dumbfounded? Then one guard realized something and said, his voice trembling, “Hey… Can you hear it?”

  “What?”

  “The noises the undead were making.”

  Even if they strained their ears, they couldn’t hear a sound; silence had swallowed them up. All the pounding on the door had stopped.

  Awestruck, the shivering guard murmured, “Wow, can you believe it? That warrior…went in there against all those undead…and he actually broke through the mob…and is still going.”

  The guards were overcome by amazement and admiration. The reason the noises had stopped was that all the undead in the area had been drawn away toward a new target. And the reason the noises didn’t return was that the battle was still ongoing, so the undead hadn’t come back.

  The guards ran to the top of the wall in disbelief. Could this be real? They gasped.

  “What…! That warrior, what the…?”

  There were bodies everywhere. A mountain of them. There were so many corpses lying around that the guards couldn’t see the ground. Some of them, twitching, hadn’t c
ompletely lost their negative life, but none were able to fight.

  As they thought, the sounds of a far-off battle drifted over on the putrid-smelling breeze.

  “You gotta be kidding me… He’s still fighting?! He made an enemy of that whole mob…and broke through?! There’s no way…”

  “Who the heck is that guy?!”

  “…He said his name was Momon, right? That copper plate has to be a lie, right? He’s gotta be one of those adamantite plates you hear rumors of, don’t ya think?”

  Everyone nodded to someone’s muttering. There was no way that was a copper-plate adventurer. He was a hero who had to have the highest-ranking plate. That was all they could think.

  “We may have just seen a legend… The Dark Warrior… No, the Dark Hero…”

  The others all nodded in agreement.

  Every time his right arm moved, undead went flying. Every time his left arm moved, undead were sliced in two.

  Ainz had advanced like a tornado of one-hit death, but now he stopped. “You guys are such a pain.” Holding both great swords he’d remade with magic, he scanned the crowd of undead surrounding him with fed-up eyes. He addressed his sword, grimy with bodily fluids, to the monsters.

  With a flurry of flinches, the undead tried to squirm away from him. Undead shouldn’t have been able to feel fear, but they sure seemed scared of Ainz.

  “…I apologize for the trouble, that I do.” The voice came from above Ainz—quite a ways above. The Wise King of the Forest was floating floppily, four legs splayed, in the air. Her hair drooped and her voice was cheerless.

  The one she was apologizing to wasn’t Ainz. “Could you…not move around? You’re so soft and fluffy it’s hard to hold you.” Narberal’s voice came from somewhere around the Wise King of the Forest’s belly. It wasn’t the king who was flying—Narberal, half sunk into her squishy body, was holding her up using Fly.

  “I’m sorry, that I am…”

  The lower-tier undead with their subpar intelligence didn’t immediately treat Ainz as an enemy. Their senses were keenly attuned to life, so they took Ainz to be one of them.

  But they weren’t going to miss the living Wise King of the Forest. As a result, Ainz was drawn into a brawl, and to avoid the albeit medium-low possibility that the beast would be injured, Narberal had to heft her out of the undead’s reach.

  Ainz took a step forward. The undead mob took a step back. The distance between them didn’t change one bit, and the circle remained intact.

  The circle moved according to how Ainz moved. They seemed to be looking for openings to attack, but if they set one foot inside the circle, they’d be destroyed in one hit. That’s why they simply encircled him and none were attacking. It was the result of the low-intelligence monsters finally learning, after a ridiculous amount of repetition, that they would be annihilated if they made a careless approach.

  “But I’m not going to get anywhere at this rate…” Ainz was only grumbling about the annoying amount of undead still remaining. If he were to make a serious attempt at getting by, he’d plow right through this mob. But if he barreled ahead and the undead spread out, the guards back there might be killed. If that happened he would lose the witnesses who would testify that he resolved the incident; to minimally guarantee their safety, he needed to draw off at least a good chunk of the monsters. It did slow his progress, though.

  But Narberal took his comment at face value. “Then let’s call the army from Nazarick, my lord. With a hundred minions or so we could eliminate all in this graveyard who oppose you in the blink of an eye.”

  “…Don’t be stupid. How many times do I have to tell you the reason we came to this city?”

  “But Lord Ainz, if your aim is to gain a reputation, would it perhaps not be better to wait until the undead had breached the gate and racked up scores of human casualties?”

  “I’ve already considered that. If I were well-informed as to the aim of our enemy, the war potential of this city, and so on, I may have taken that route, but as it is, we know barely anything, so I’d like to avoid losing any more initiative. I don’t want things going according to their plan. It’s also possible that another team would swoop in to steal our show while we were standing around.”

  “I see… Brilliant, Lord Ainz. I should have expected that a Supreme Being would have thought everything out. I’m struck anew by admiration. By the way, I apologize for still being so ignorant, but I wonder if you might tell me if you don’t think that sending in some minions who specialize in stealth abilities, like eight-edged assassins or shadow demons, would have been a better plan? Then you could just stand back and watch the fight, unless anything major changed, to gauge the best timing…”

  Ainz said nothing and just looked up at her. The undead took the silence as lowered guard and stepped into the circle. And were hastily cut down. “…I-if I tell you everything, how will you ever learn to think for yourself?”

  “Yes, sir! My humble apologies!”

  Shaken, albeit slightly, Ainz whipped around to see how far from the gate they had come and to check if the guards could see them. “But! That said, time is short. I have no choice—I’ll have these guys slice through for us.”

  Ainz unleashed a power. “Create Middle-Tier Undead: Jack the Ripper, Create Middle-Tier Undead: Corpse Collector.” As the skill was used, two undead appeared.

  One wore a trench coat and had its face covered with a laughing mask. Its fingers turned into oversize, sharp scalpels partway through.

  The other had a robust enough physique, but its body was covered in pus and wrapped in yellowed bandages. At the ends of chains anchored to its flesh by several hooks were moaning skulls.

  “Get ’em.”

  Taking Ainz’s order, the two undead sprang at the surrounding monsters. There were only two of them, but their power was overwhelming. While the Jack the Ripper sliced off limbs with its scalpels and the corpse collector ripped off heads with its chains, Ainz took an added measure.

  “Those plus these should be good. Create Lower-Tier Undead: Wraith, Create Lower-Tier Undead: Bone Vulture.” He summoned a few of each and gave them all orders. “If anyone enters this graveyard, chase them out. I don’t care if you kill adventurers, but leave the guards.”

  The wraiths drifted into the air, and the bone vultures flapped their bone wings. Ainz chuckled to himself in satisfaction that his preparation was complete. He’d dispatched the lower-tier undead to make sure that no adventurers stole this great job out from under them by using flight magic to swoop in and defeat the ringleader.

  “Now, then, shall we?” Thanks to the two undead Ainz had sent out, the mob had thinned out quite a bit. Ainz gripped his swords and jumped in.

  Accompanied only by Narberal, Ainz reached the mausoleum farthest back and saw a group of suspicious-looking people doing something in a circle outside. The black robes concealing each member were not dyed very well, so there were patches of lighter and darker areas. Black triangular caps covered their heads except for the eyes. A strange pattern was carved into the ends of the wooden staves they held. The figures were all different heights, but judging by their silhouettes, they were all male.

  Only one man, standing in the middle of the circle and looking a bit like an undead himself, had his face uncovered; the impression he made was not so shabby. In his hand he clutched a black stone, and it seemed like he was focusing his spirit on it.

  The wind carried the sound of undulating murmurs to where Ainz stood; sometimes they were high-pitched, sometimes low. The harmonizing undertones sounded almost like a prayer, but this was no solemn service for the dead. It was more like some kind of blasphemous, evil ritual.

  “Should we launch a sneak attack?” Narberal spoke softly so only Ainz could hear, but he shook his head.

  “That won’t work. It seems like they’ve already noticed us.” Because neither of them had stealth skills, they walked right over. They’d avoided the lights, but if their opponents had Night Vision, they�
��d be able to spot them as if it were the middle of the day. And in Ainz’s experience, there was a mental connection between summoned monsters and the summoner. There was no way their approach hadn’t been sensed after they’d killed that many.

  There were actually a few people looking right at them. Ainz guessed the reason they didn’t attack immediately was that he wasn’t the only one who wanted to talk, so they walked straight toward them.

  When they reached the light, the members of the group braced themselves, and one of them spoke to the man in the center. “Lord Khajit, they’re here.”

  Welp, now we know they’re idiots… Or I guess it could be a fake name. I’ll take it with a grain of salt. “Hey there, isn’t it kind of a waste to perform a boring ritual on such a beautiful night?”

  “Hmph, I’m the one who decides what night is appropriate for a ritual. More importantly, who are you? How did you break through that mob of undead?” The man in the center of the circle—Khajit, if it wasn’t a fake name—did seem to be the highest-ranking one among them and addressed Ainz on behalf of the group.

  “I’m an adventurer who undertook a request. I’m looking for a certain boy… I’m sure I don’t even have to say his name for you to know who I mean.” As the members of the group shifted into subtly more defensive positions, Ainz whispered, “Okay, then,” under his breath. The possibility that they were innocents who had just gotten mixed up in the incident vanished.

  As Khajit scanned the area, Ainz smiled wryly at him from under his helmet.

  “Are you the only ones? Any others?”

  Ha-ha, what? Who asks that? I get that you’re worried about an ambush, but maybe you should think a little more before you start chitchatting. This guy must just be another pawn. Ainz seemed to have lost interest, and his shoulders slumped. Then he replied, “It’s just us. We flew in a straight shot.”

  “That’s a lie. That can’t be.”

  Sensing something in those words of conviction, Ainz countered, “Whether you believe it or not is up to you. More pertinently, if you return the boy unharmed, you won’t have to die, Khajit.”