Clementine, who had flailed and tried so desperately to escape, had devolved into something that could only convulse.
But Ainz didn’t let up. On the contrary, he increased the pressure. Eventually Ainz felt the crack of a thick bone snapping against his arm. He let go of a body that was no longer even twitching.
Clementine’s corpse fell to the graveyard ground with a thud, like a bag of garbage. Her face looked ghastly, distorted by pain and fear. Like a deep-sea fish that had been reeled in all at once, her innards were poking out of her mouth.
As Ainz took out his Bottomless Pitcher of Water to wash the vomit and filth from his body with its endless stream of fresh water, he spoke quietly to Clementine, who could no longer reply. “Oh, I forgot to tell you—I’m extremely self-centered.”
5
Shrinking from his clothes that were sopping wet after their cleansing, Ainz sensed that something large was scampering his way. When he looked, it was Hamusuke, as he’d thought.
Hamusuke’s combat ability was far inferior to Ainz’s or Narberal’s. If he’d have forced her to fight and she got hurt, it would have led to unnecessary expenditures, so he’d had her stand by a little ways away, but apparently she had come out once she could no longer hear battle noises.
Ainz was a little depressed he was able to read the subtle change in expression (concerned for her master’s safety) on the super-giant hamster’s cute face.
Having no idea her master was feeling that way, the giant hamster ran over surprisingly quickly and scanned the area. When her eyes met Ainz’s—
“Blegh!” She keeled over belly up and continued shouting. “There’s some kind of crazy monster here, that there is! Masterrrr! Masterrrr!” Steeped in the torment of full-body weariness, Ainz held his head. Now that he thought of it, he had never shown Hamusuke his real face. But he couldn’t leave it like this. When he looked out at the wall in the distance, he saw there were some adventurers battling his wraiths. He wanted to think they couldn’t be overheard at this distance, but he couldn’t say for sure.
“…This is like a bad comedy routine. Would you cut it out?” Ainz scolded in his dignified tone.
“Oh? That magnificent, valiant voice… Could it be…? You’re my master, are you not?!”
“Yes, so could you keep it down?”
“What! Your appearance is far different from my most wild imaginings! I thought you possessed great power, but…now I will be even more loyal to you, that I will!”
“Uh-huh. More importantly, I’ll say it again: Keep it down.”
“M-master, you’re so mean, that you are! I would like that you not dismiss my oath of devotion so casually, that I would!”
“Did you not hear what Lord Ainz just said, you fool?!”
A dent appeared in Hamusuke and she went flying.
Where she’d been standing up until a moment before, Narberal was slowly lowering her foot. “Lord Ainz, I don’t believe there is any value in keeping such a stupid creature. May I grill her with lightning?”
“Don’t. She’s quite valuable to us in terms of reputation if we use her as the Wise King of the Forest. Even just taking her around with us live is beneficial. More importantly, Narberal, we don’t have much time. Start looting these guys. Assuming the peacekeepers in the city will request us to turn everything in, we need to check for valuables first.”
“Understood.”
“I’m going into the mausoleum. I’ll leave the cleanup to you.”
“My lord! What shall I do with the corpses? Will we take them to Nazarick?”
“No. We need to point to them as the masterminds behind this incident. Just strip their gear.”
“Understood.”
“It hurts, that it does…”
Narberal heaved an exaggerated sigh and sent Hamusuke, who had returned, a chilly glare. “Pay more attention to anything Lord Ainz says than your entire existence. That is the duty of a minion. Even a creature like you counts as a minion—barely—so keep that in mind! If you don’t, I’ll promptly kill you.”
Hamusuke shivered.
“Next time I’ll punish you with magic, not a physical attack. In accordance with Lord Ainz’s wishes, I’ll cause as much pain as I can without killing you.”
“I understand, that I do… Please don’t look at me with such a scary face, that I ask… But I’m astonished by our master’s new and powerful appearance, that I am. How magnificent!”
Narberal’s expression softened just a bit. “Yeah. Lord Ainz is truly wonderful to behold. If you understand that, you might have a pretty good eye.”
“I thank you, that I do. But if our master has a true form, do you have another form as well, hmm?”
“…I’m a doppelgänger; I just changed my face. See?” She took off her gauntlet to reveal a hand with only three fingers. They were longer than human fingers and looked just like inchworms.
“O-oh, I didn’t know, that I did not.”
“Why are you surprised? You’re a part of the Great Tomb of Nazarick as one of its lowest-class minions now, so you can’t let a little thing like that shock you. More importantly, why don’t you help me loot these corpses?”
“Yes, ma’am! That I will!”
Nfirea was inside the mausoleum. When Ainz saw him, the red sparkles in his orbits grew dark. He was wearing some strangely transparent garments, but what Ainz was looking at was his face. A cut had been made straight across it, and the trails of hardened blood like reddish-black tears showed that his eyes under their lids had been sliced. It was clear he had been blinded.
“Well, blindness I can fix… Magic is so handy.”
The bigger problem was his mental condition. He was standing stiff as a rod and hadn’t reacted to Ainz’s presence. Even if he couldn’t see, he should have been able to tell if someone was standing right in front of him. Since he didn’t, it meant he was being mind controlled. The question was, via what?
“It has to be this.” Ainz was looking at the spiderweb-like circlet around Nfirea’s head. There was nothing more suspicious around.
He casually reached out to remove it but stopped. Interfering before he understood what had caused this state was too risky. He faced the circlet and used a spell. “Appraise Any Magic Item.”
In Yggdrasil, the spell would tell who made an item and what it did, and it worked in this world as well. Actually, it worked even better. Things he never would have learned in Yggdrasil popped into his head.
“…A Crown of Wisdom…I see. But hmm, considering what it does, this couldn’t exist in Yggdrasil. I guess it couldn’t be reproduced there?” he commented, impressed after acquiring general knowledge about the item. Then, he thought about what to do next.
The most important thing he considered was the argument for taking Nfirea to the Great Tomb of Nazarick just as he was. Getting control of a rare item and a rare talent was huge.
But he only wavered for a moment. “Deliberately failing at a job I already undertook would be a disgrace to the name of Ainz Ooal Gown. Crumble away—Greater Break Item!”
Ainz’s spell shot at the circlet, and it crumbled elegantly into innumerable tiny sparkles. He gently caught the boy as he slumped over, then carefully laid him down and looked at his face. “All that’s left is…to fix his eyes. I guess it’d be better to do that somewhere else, though…”
Stroking his bony chin, Ainz stood up. The undead he’d summoned hadn’t been wiped out, but some of them had been destroyed. There was no doubt that reinforcements—the meddlers—would reach this place at some point. He had to recast his illusion and recreate his armor and swords before that happened.
And they had to finish looting. Ainz experienced a dark joy in the simple act of robbing all of a corpse’s gear at once, something that hadn’t been possible PK-ing in Yggdrasil.
As he thought to go help Narberal with that, she appeared at the entrance to the mausoleum with perfect timing. “Lord Ainz.”
“What is it? Did you take all th
eir stuff? Money, too?”
“Yes, it’s about that. I found this.” Narberal went into the mausoleum. She was clutching a black orb. It wasn’t a very nice-looking stone—it seemed like the type of rock one could find on the shore of a river. It certainly didn’t look valuable.
“…What is it?”
“It seemed very important to the hammerhead worm I was fighting. I don’t know what it does…”
“I see…”
Narberal the NPC didn’t know as many spells as Ainz, and most of them were for combat, hence her not being able to appraise the item.
Ainz took it and used the same spell as before. “Appraise Any Magic Item.”
The red sparks in his eyes burned brilliantly.
“What…is this? A Jewel of Death? And it’s an intelligent item?”
For having such a grandiose name, being “of death” and all, it wasn’t such a fancy item. It augmented the user’s ability to control undead and allowed them to cast a number of ghost magic spells so many times per day—neither of which powers held much fascination for Ainz. The downside was that it could control a human in possession of it, but Ainz and Narberal were protected against mind control and the jewel couldn’t control subhumans or grotesques anyhow.
“This is a pretty meh item, but…” There was one thing about it that interested Ainz, and that was that it was intelligent. When he poked it, as if telling it to say something, a voice echoed in his mind.
“We meet for the first time, O great King of Death.”
Ainz stared at the stone. This was a world with magic and monsters, so it didn’t surprise him that something like this would exist. “Hmm. You really are intelligent, huh?” He deftly rolled the stone in his hand and then stared at it again, but it didn’t seem like it was going to say anything. He wondered what the deal was but then had an idea. “I permit you to speak.”
“I humbly thank you, O great King of Death.”
That response reminded him of the ardent devotion of the Nazarick NPCs, and Ainz smiled faintly.
“I revere and worship your majesty’s presence of absolute death.”
Ainz was pretty sure he had all his auras turned off, so why was this item calling him the King of Death? Considering Ainz was undead, he figured it was flattery at best. “Go ahead.”
“Thank you, Being of Profound Death. I thank all death that exists in this world that I should get to meet you, whom I worship.”
For brownnosing, those were pretty serious words, and despite feeling self-conscious, Ainz puffed out his chest.
“And? Do you have anything to say besides flattery?”
“Yes. I am deeply aware how impertinent it is of me, but please, I beg that you would grant my wish.”
“What is it?”
“I always thought I was born into this world to bestow death upon large numbers of people. But now that I have met you, O great King of Death, I realize the true reason: I was born into this world to serve you, your majesty.”
“…Hmm…”
“O great King of Death, please accept my loyalty. And I humbly request that your majesty count me among the lowliest of your faithful servants.” It was a sincere voice. Had the jewel had a head, it surely would have been bowed low.
Ainz curled his right hand and placed it near his mouth while he thought—about whether he should make it one of his subordinates or not, about whether he could trust it or not.
After a time, he slowly returned his gaze to the item. To be “safe,” he should destroy it, but it seemed like a waste to destroy any more things that hadn’t existed in Yggdrasil.
After casting some defensive spells on the orb, he went to the entrance of the mausoleum and called out to the giant hamster. “Hamusuke!”
“Master, what is it, hmm?”
“I’m giving this to you.”
Ainz tossed the orb. Hamusuke nimbly caught it.
“Master, what in the world is this, hmm?”
“A magic item. Can you use it?”
“Hrm? …It seems I can, that it does! But how noisy it is! It clamors to be returned to you, master, it does.”
Seeing Hamusuke like that, Narberal’s eyes grew wide. “You would bestow it on a newcomer?!” Her slightly shrill voice showed how shocked she was.
“I took some precautions against detection magic, but I can’t say for sure that it’s a hundred percent safe; that’s why I’m having Hamusuke hold on to it.”
“Aha! Brilliant as usual, Lord Ainz. Not careless even for a moment, you make another admirable judgment call.” Narberal indicated she understood, and Hamusuke, with a lump in her cheek pouch (slightly smaller than a human fist), made a dignified bow.
As Ainz was giving the two of them the order to withdraw, the red of his cape caught his eye. Feeling a bit playful, he grabbed the edge of it. “Once you’re done looting, let’s take Nfirea”—he flourished his cape—“and make our triumphant return.”
Epilogue
Ainz pushed open the door of the inn where they’d stayed the other day. That instant, the place was swallowed up by perfect silence. Countless eyes were on him and Narberal, but no one got in their way. They stood before the innkeeper.
“Y…ou…”
Both his and the guests’ eyes were all on the plates hanging from their necks.
Ainz made it short and nonchalant. “A room for two.” He smirked. He tossed down the coins and silently took the key from the innkeeper.
Then, they went to their room where Ainz canceled all of his magic and returned to his true form. His mythril plate emitted a bright ring when it clinked his Nemean Lion. Up until just a bit ago, they’d been at the guild being debriefed about the previous day’s incident. They’d been hurriedly awarded the plates there.
It went without saying that the silence in the inn had been caused by the plates. If a guy who arrived just a few days ago as a copper plate came back the next time with a mythril plate, it probably felt like he’d demolished the common sense they’d been building up all their careers. Their raw reactions did give him a sense of superiority, but he was also dissatisfied—because he was expecting they’d skip him all the way to orichalcum and instead he got one below that. How would everyone have reacted if his plate had been orichalcum?
Well, there was still a chance.
There were still only very few people who knew about the incident. And according to what he’d heard during his debriefing, their achievements were unbelievable and were really worthy of adamantite plates. The only reason they hadn’t been given that was because they had no previous accomplishments, and the guild wanted to err on the side of caution, since the investigation was still incomplete.
In other words, internally at the guild they were viewed as adamantite-rank adventurers, of which there were only two teams in the entire kingdom.
He expected that, over time, the story of the fight in the graveyard and the name Momon would be known all over town. The guards who survived would surely talk. Everything was going so according to his plan that he chuckled to himself. It was more than a smooth start—it was perfect.
Ainz pinged his mythril plate with a finger, and then Narberal spoke up, curious. “What are you going to do with those two? You left it that you would contact them later about the reward, right?”
She meant Nfirea and Lizzy, the two apothecaries. Ainz had already made up his mind how to handle them. “Lizzy said she would give me everything, so I’m planning to have her take her grandson and go to Carne. I’ll force them to make potions for me—no, for the Great Tomb of Nazarick.”
“…Nazarick has ways to make potions. Why make those penis fish do it?”
“What I’m after is new ways to make potions.”
Narberal looked at him vacantly without reacting, so Ainz explained, “The development of ways to create potions that didn’t exist in Yggdrasil is important to work on, keeping in mind that our potion ingredients won’t last forever. And we should probably work on combining techniques from Yggd
rasil and this world to create new powers. It’s entirely possible that we’re six hundred years late to the game. Of course, we’ll have to keep a strict watch to make sure no potions they make leave the premises, but…the way they were when I saw them, it probably won’t be an issue.”
Ainz had healed Nfirea’s eyes, but perhaps because the mental strain was too great, the boy was still unconscious. Still, Lizzy was so deeply grateful her grandson was safe that she cried her eyes out and promised to pay the agreed-upon price.
“So I’ll deal with them later. There are other things I need to do first.”
Ainz cast Message to Albedo. Not contacting her despite receiving Entoma’s Message was a pretty big slipup, but he hadn’t had the time; he’d just have to get her to forgive him.
Then the Message connected, and the first thing she said was far beyond anything he’d expected:
“Lord Ainz, Shalltear has staged a rebellion!”
For a time, he couldn’t understand what she’d said to him, but when he finally processed it, he vocalized his stupefaction:
“…What?!”
Afterword
Long time no see, everyone. This is Kugane Maruyama.
Here is a story that happened while I was writing a battle scene. I was enacting a motion and my left hand smashed into a cup full of café au lait. Brown liquid splashed everywhere and tears welled up in my eyes. The only saving grace was that not a lot got on the bed and my manuscript didn’t get hit… It might be fun for you to try to guess which scene was the one where I spilled my coffee, like, “This is about where it starts to smell like milk…”
That is the kind of challenge I faced while writing this, Overlord, Volume 2: The Dark Warrior. I hope you enjoyed reading it.
Perhaps you can recommend this story to someone who is sick to death of heroes saving girls? A protagonist could go save a boy now and then, right? It’s gender equality! I do hope you like this protagonist even though he’s crafty and only thinks of his own gains.
From here on, allow me to make some thank-yous:
The Dark Warrior Page 24
