The Two Leaders

by Kugane Maruyama

  As Shalltear and Aura were chatting, Albedo slowly looked out over the village with a levelheaded gaze, as if she were observing experimental subjects. Then the first hint of emotion appeared in her eyes.

  “Oh? That’s the sous-chef over there in the field, isn’t it? I wonder what he’s doing.”

  The others followed her line of sight and saw hidden behind tall stalks bearing red fruit, in one corner of a field surrounded by a simple fence, a monster that looked sort of like a mushroom moving around. If they squinted, they could see that he was wearing work clothes while picking fruit.

  “It’s what it looks like. Sometimes he comes to get produce. He’s also growing a bunch of things. Should we go say hi?”

  Albedo and Shalltear exchanged glances. Upon confirming that neither of them felt like rejecting the idea, they headed over to see their friend. They figured it was fine as long as they wouldn’t be in his way.

  “Yoo-hoo! You’re working up a sweat as usual!”

  At the sound of Aura’s cheerful voice, the sous-chef looked up and saw the three of them. “Not that my body actually sweats, but…”

  He stood with an “oof” and stretched his back. It made sense, since he’d been sitting in the field working, but as he didn’t have anything that could be called a “back”—he didn’t have a waist, either—it was impossible to know if his back was actually stiff or if he was just doing it for a change of pace.

  Then the sous-chef rotated his neck like a stiff-shouldered human would. His head was shaped like a mushroom cap, and it looked like it had reddish-purple droplets of some kind of liquid about ready to roll off it, but actually they had a bizarre elasticity like dried glue and wouldn’t dribble or spatter.

  “Hey, is that a tomato?” When Albedo took an interest in the red fruit in the sous-chef’s hand, he held it up to the level of his eyes and marveled at it.

  “Yes, indeed. A tomato of the variety you all know. It’s neither the type that gathers the sun’s energy and explodes, nor the type that attacks you, nor the type that glimmers golden when you cut it open—it’s a normal tomato.”

  “In other words, it’s a not-very-rare regular tomato for eating, right?”

  “Yes. I don’t have the skill to grow vegetables with special effects. Does your interest indicate that you would like to eat dishes made with tomatoes? Unfortunately, I can only make drinks…”

  “No, I was just curious. Maybe Shalltear would like to eat tomatoes.”

  “…Why does everyone think vampires drink tomato juice? Undead don’t get any buffs from eating food.”

  “There are lots of people in Nazarick who don’t eat food.”

  The majority of the NPCs made eating and drinking unnecessary with an item.

  “Yeah, because if they did it would increase Nazarick’s maintenance costs. Big eaters like your magical beasts are a burden.”

  “Ack, so are we in trouble if I don’t go out and make some money?”

  “No, you don’t have to go that far. Lord Ainz and the other Supreme Beings calculated out a precise balance of expenditure and revenue when they built the tomb.”

  “Ahh, so that’s why he gave the order to only accept races that are self-sufficient. They won’t disrupt the balance even if their numbers increase.”

  “Yeah… You didn’t know that?” Albedo looked at each of the others in turn. “That’s no good. It’s pretty bad if you guys don’t even know about the place you’re guarding. Make some time in your schedules. I’ll explain everything.”

  She sighed and looked out at the fields, since they happened to be there. Then she found the leaves of a plant she recognized. “Are those carrots—er, magic carrots?”

  “No, those are something else. But, Captain, haven’t you heard?”

  “About what?”

  “Oh, uh, hmm, I guess we haven’t told you yet. Okay, Mistress Aura, what shall we do? Do you want to call them? I taught you how, right?”

  “I did file a report…” Aura grinned. Then she took a deep breath and shouted, “Long live Ainz Ooal Gown!”

  The row of the leaves reacted abruptly and began to move. They wiggled vigorously back and forth, pushing the soil aside, and the part that would have been the root underground, if they were carrots, popped out onto the surface.

  They looked almost like ginseng, but there was definitely something different about them. They had distinct feet and were clearly moving according to will, not reflex. At the top of the root near the stalk were depressions that seemed to be their eyes and mouth.

  Shalltear’s eyes widened, and she said the monster’s name. “Are those mandrakes? I thought we didn’t have any of those…”

  “Ohh! That’s what those are! I knew about them from the report, but I had never seen one before.”

  The mandrakes chanted, “Long live Ainz Ooal Gown! Long live Ainz Ooal Gown!” and were forming a line.

  “These guys aren’t very smart. Supposedly their relatives galgenmännlein, alruna, and alraune are fairly intelligent, but…I did a general search in that forest and couldn’t find any. It’s pretty big, so maybe I just haven’t found them yet. There also seems to be a pretty sizable cave carved out in the direction of the mountains with a myconid colony in it. Haven’t bothered them yet, though.”

  “But I’m impressed you managed to teach them how to say this much.” The sous-chef plucked one of the mandrakes out of the line and took a closer look.

  Perhaps it hurt to be grabbed by its stalk. The mandrake started to struggle.

  “Long live Ainz Ooal Gown!”

  “Long live Ainz Ooal Gown!”

  The other mandrakes broke their line and surrounded the sous-chef to protest the mistreatment of their comrade—although they shouted the same thing as before.

  “Oh, pardon me. Mistress Aura, could you send them back?”

  “Okeydoke! All right, return!”

  Beginning with the mandrake that the sous-chef had gently placed back on the ground, they all hopped back into their holes and burrowed into the soil. In only a few seconds, they were completely concealed underground, like the way someone burrows into bed in the middle of winter.

  “I see. So the way they talk is just like an animal call, huh?”

  “Indeed. They only parrot the sounds; they aren’t using them as words with meaning. Apparently, there is a minimum threshold of intelligence that must be crossed for language comprehension to be possible. I heard it’s being studied right now.” The sous-chef mentioned he heard all this from Demiurge.

  “Hmm! By the way, Albedo, may I ask you something? Isn’t it sort of bad for you to not know about newcomers to Nazarick, as captain of the guardians? What would you do if there was a spy?”

  Someone else objected faster than Albedo could reply.

  “Ah-ha-ha-ha! Good one, Shalltear. It’s definitely natural to think that because the sixth level is so vast it would be harder to capture and slaughter raiders. If they escaped the arena…if they scattered like baby spiders, it’d be a pain to catch them if there were a lot.” The laugh was empty, and Aura’s eyes were like ice. “But aren’t you underestimating me? This is my hunting ground. Even if they scattered, I would hunt them all down. And even if they wanted to hurt Lord Ainz and slipped out of the sixth level, they’d still have to break through Crimson’s world on the seventh level, and next is the impassable eighth level, you know. Even if they wanted to run away, they’d have to get through the frigid hell of the fifth level, the dark waters of the fourth level, and all the domains you guard… Do you really think that’s possible?”

  Shalltear shook her head. “It’s not possible.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. So even if the newcomers multiply on this level, there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Aura said it all. Uh, so…so as a result the current plan is to gather all sorts of monsters here.”

  “Huh? Not just plant monsters?”

  Albedo smiled in response to Aura’s surprise. “That was the or
iginal idea. But thanks to you and Mare, we’ve seen that there shouldn’t be any issues, so a more ambitious plan was drawn up. That said, it’s still only a draft, so it’s unclear if we’ll actually implement it or not. That’s why I hadn’t told you guys yet, even though you’re the guardians of this level.” Albedo prefaced her explanation of the plan with, “Don’t tell anyone, but…

  “The plan is called the Paradise Project. It starts with the hideout Aura built, but it’s a large-scale project to eventually gather monsters friendly with humans and have them live here.”

  “Why do they have to be friendly specifically with humans?”

  Albedo had expected that reaction, so she smiled. It was an incredibly sinister smile. “That’s the point of the Paradise Project.”

  “Honestly, I find that difficult to understand. We work in this place, Nazarick, to make it a paradise for the Supreme Beings, so why that name?”

  “It’s to appeal to the outside world, like, ‘Hey, we live in peace with outsiders.’”

  “I see… So that’s the idea.”

  “No way! I can’t believe you understood, Shalltear!”

  She glared at Aura with a face that could obliterate a hundred-year romance. “Do you by any chance think I’m stupid?”

  “…H-hold up a second, Shalltear. Reflect on your past deeds and ask that question again, will you? All you have to do is remember a few things.”

  It took only a moment—she must have considered what she had done so far. Shalltear’s pupils dilated like a dead animal’s. Then her eyes flickered as if she had been tossed around on rough waves.

  She looked so distressed that Albedo changed the topic back for her. “U-uh, the plan is another of Lord Ainz’s proposals. We were discussing the sixth level, and he suddenly said he wanted to collect a bunch of different monsters. That’s not the kind of idea I could come up with, thinking within the confines of my small world. I was talking with Demiurge a while back about how resourceful Lord Ainz is. Our conclusion was that he really is a genius.”

  “We already knew he was a genius. I heard he is a man of few words, though.”

  “From Demiurge, right? Geez… Certainly, Lord Ainz does not speak of his plans in a straightforward way. And sometimes he does strange things. But just as the cowardly are often heroes, so are fools often wise. I really believe that.” Albedo shook her head, her eyes moist. “I couldn’t make out his aim in creating the adventurer Momon. What a terrific being… It’s astounding that he has been controlling everything that has happened…”

  “Momon is Lord Ainz as an adventurer, right? So why did he do that?”

  “You’ll understand soon enough… It’s precisely because he has the persona of Momon that Lord Ainz’s rule will be rock-solid. He’s so awesome… Maybe Demiurge’s proposals are even due to his influe—”

  “What are you mumbling about? It’s a trifle disturbing.”

  Shalltear’s voice brought Albedo to her senses, and she cleared her throat before looking at the other three. “Uh, what were we talking about? Oh, right! Each word Lord Ainz says, each move he makes—they’re all full of meaning. So what I’m saying is that even if you can’t reach his level, you should endeavor to at least understand the meaning behind his words.”

  “That’s hard. Lord Ainz is a little too smart. Oh, spearneedles!”

  Two big white lumps well over six feet tall lumbered out of the woods toward Aura. They were magical beasts that looked sort of like Angora rabbits.

  “How cute!” Shalltear stood next to Aura and petted the white fur balls. “They’re so soft. I want one of these.”

  “Yeah, it feels good, right? But this fur gets sharp like needles when they encounter an enemy.”

  Spearneedles were level-67 monsters.

  When they engaged in combat, they became balls of extremely fine needles. If they were killed in that state, they wouldn’t go back to being soft, so people requested that they be taken by surprise and killed in one hit before they could go on guard. For that reason, the players hunting them were always a much higher level.

  “Really? Wow. Frightening!” Shalltear exclaimed these and other things as she continued petting them.

  “Well, they won’t engage in combat unless I order them to. I guess it would be different if there were enemies around, but how would hostile forces—raiders—get in here? And without any reports from other levels?”

  “Yeah. Of course. There are minions with superior detection skills stationed on the upper three floors, so it would be really hard to make it this far without being discovered.”

  Just then Aura froze, then turned her head toward the arena.

  “What is it, Aura?”

  “Seems like the portal to the seventh level activated.”

  “From below? Demiurge is outside, I think, so…one of his subordinates? Do you need to go check on it?”

  “No, Mare is there, so I think it’s okay. He should get in touch if something comes up.” She touched the earring hung around her neck. “And it’s not such a rare thing. If you want to get to the surface from below, the only way is to use the teleportation gates and go up one level at a time. Oh right, I remember someone didn’t want to run and used magic instead.”

  “Ahem, the Great Tomb of Nazarick certainly is an impregnable fortress.”

  “Yeah. You probably couldn’t blow up a level even with the super-tier spell Sword of Damocles and the World Item I have. That’s why we really have to avoid getting the free teleportation rings stolen.”

  Everyone’s eyes gathered on Albedo’s left ring finger.

  “I’m pretty sure Mare leaves his ring here when he ventures outside. Just goes to show how important they— Oh, Mare’s calling.”

  Aura moved a short distance away from the others, grabbed her earring, and began talking to Mare, who was elsewhere. Her face grew gradually sterner as their conversation went on, and by the time she was finished, she looked disappointed.

  “Sorry, it looks like something came up and Mare has to go out, so I have to head back.”

  “Oh. In that case, shall we go back, too? What do you think, Shalltear?”

  “No objections.”

  “I’m going to putz around in this field a little longer. I want to talk to the dryads and trents.”

  “Then I guess we’re splitting up. Thanks, guys. I feel like I figured out how to spend a day off. Let’s do something again… Oh yeah, we should all go to the baths sometime.”

  2

  9:28 AM Nazarick Time

  Mare looked up from his book and slowly shifted his gaze to the teleportation gate that led to the seventh level.

  At the slight sensation of power waves, he marked his place and quietly put his book on the chair next to him. He picked up his god-tier staff—Shadow of Yggdrasil—and held it aloft.

  He reached for the magic item hanging around his neck with his free hand but stopped.

  He didn’t need to contact his sister. He hadn’t received any reports of intruders, so the person coming in had to be one of his colleagues.

  He scampered away to the gate. His sister liked to jump from the arena seating, but Mare didn’t. In the first place, there were stairs, so wouldn’t using them to get down show the most loyalty to the Supreme Beings? They must have created the stairs for a reason.

  But I can’t say that to Aura… She’d look at me with her scary eyes…

  Mare had decided that he, at least, wouldn’t let the Supreme Beings’ intentions be in vain, so he took the stairs. Then he raced into the waiting room to find someone standing before the giant oval mirror sparkling in the colors of the rainbow.

  “S-sorry to keep you waiting.”

  “Oh, if it isn’t Floor Guardian Mare. I am ever so delighted that you’ve come to meet me.” The clown dressed all in white with a raven beak mask made a little bow, and Mare bowed back in the same way.

  “Hello, Pulcinella. What can I do for you today?”

  “Perhaps you’ve heard,
but I am currently working for Master Demiurge. I’ve come today as his messenger. Please take this.” The clown held out a folder.

  “If Demiurge is giving it to me, it must be a circular?”

  “Indeed. Ah, I’m so lucky you came, Master Mare. If it was Mistress Aura, I would have had to have her call you.”

  “Huh? R-really?”

  The circular system was devised by the ruler of the Great Tomb of Nazarick, Ainz Ooal Gown, himself. All it entailed was writing a nonurgent message on a piece of paper and passing it around to each guardian, but they hadn’t had anything like it before—which was why Mare, intrigued and moved, fixed his eyes on it so intently when he took it.

  “So this is…? W-wait! Why c-can’t you give it to Aura?”

  Both Aura and Mare were floor guardians, so there shouldn’t have been any reason not to. She could be surprisingly methodical, so it wasn’t as if she would have thrown the message away.

  “That I don’t know, either. Master Demiurge ordered me to hand it directly to you and not to Mistress Aura.”

  “I see… I—I wonder…”

  He didn’t say enough to specify the question on his mind, but Pulcinella understood what he meant. “Hmm, no, I don’t know. Perhaps the answer or reason is contained within that folder.”

  “I see… B-by the way, what is Demiurge doing now?”

  “Crossbreeding experiments. Crossbreeding is possible between humanoid races but impossible between humanoid and subhuman races. How sad! Just because two lovers are of slightly different races, their love cannot bear fruit. Demiurge is endeavoring to rescue them from those unfortunate circumstances, to create the possibility between humanoids and subhumans!” He practically sang in a sonorous voice, spreading his arms wide and looking to the heavens.

  Mare blinked in surprise at the sudden change in mood.

  “Oh, do excuse me. Master Demiurge’s kindness as he tries to bring smiles to people’s faces excites me so. Please forgive my rudeness.”

  “Su-sure. It’s all right. Yeah.”