“U-umm, I came to see the head librarian. Uh, is he in the back?”
The elder lich pondered for a moment and then spoke. “The head librarian is currently creating scrolls, so he is in the Crafting Room.”
“Thank you.”
“Allow me to guide you. This way.”
“Oh, it’s okay! I don’t mean to interrupt your work.”
“Not to worry. Our role is to be of use to those who visit the library.”
Refusing at that point would have been rude.
“Understood. Then please take me there.”
A smile appeared on the elder lich’s horrifying face, and he set off walking out in front.
Mare followed, looking sidelong at the elder liches and other undead casters they passed on their way.
“By the way, shall I put that book back?”
“Oh yes, please.”
The elder lich looked at the title of the book as he took it. “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer? Was it interesting?”
“Yeah, it was! I’m trying to think of what to read next.”
“Oh, I have a recommendation for you. This book is so funny you won’t be able to stop laughing. It’s about a murderer who— Oh, here we are.”
“Thank you.”
Mare opened the door he’d been led to.
The room had originally felt fairly spacious, but it was cramped now, with huge shelves along every wall.
Lined up tidily on the shelves were countless catalysts: ores, precious metals, stones with attributes, gems, all sorts of powders, organs of various animals, and so on. There was also a large amount of parchment—both rolled and not.
These were all resources for scroll creation.
Of course, this wasn’t all the Great Tomb of Nazarick had. There were many hundreds of times this amount in the treasury.
The resources in this room were just the ones prepared for immediate use.
A fairly large drafting table stood in the center of the space, and a piece of parchment was spread across it. Standing before the table was a skeleton that looked like a combination of a human and some animal.
It wasn’t very tall—a little less than five feet, perhaps.
Two horns like an ogre’s stuck out of its skull, and its hands each had four fingers. Its feet were hooves.
This strange figure was wrapped in a bright saffron himation. A hoodlike sheet was draped over its head in a way that its horns wouldn’t tear it, and another sheet was wrapped around its hips.
It also had a silver bracelet with jewels the colors of the rainbow, a golden ankh around its neck, multiple bizarre rings curled around its finger bones, and gems studding its himation. All of these were fairly powerful magic items.
And at its hip, hanging like swords, were several scrolls.
Although its appearance and gear were peculiar, it was a skeleton mage, one of the early races of undead. It was a being a step below the elder lich Mare had just met.
But this skeleton mage, Titus Annaeus Secundus, was head of this huge library.
A Supreme Being created him to be specialized in crafting, not combat. His total levels were actually higher than that elder lich’s.
“Hello, Guardian Mare. I welcome you.”
“Oh, hi, Titus. I came to ask you a favor.”
“I see. Then let’s hear it, shall we?”
“O-okay. Umm, so I’m hoping you can lend me some level-seventy-five or higher minions.”
“Understood. So you’re heading outside.”
“Hmm? Y-yes, I am. You knew right away, huh?”
“…I would never forget the words of our ruler Lord Ainz. So when I considered your position, I arrived at the answer immediately. Very well!” He thought for a moment. “I’ll lend you our overlords Cocceius, Ulpius, Aelius, Fulvius, and Aurelius.”
“What? Really?”
“Yes, really. Honestly, their fighting power is a bit excessive for the library. They would be happier to guard you than to do the dusting here.”
“U-umm, uh, thank you!”
“That said, I can’t let you take them for free. I’d like you to assist me with something. We’re going to make a scroll.”
“Oh! Yes, sir! What do I need to do?”
“You don’t have to worry about a thing. All you need to do is cast a tier-four spell at the scroll when I give you the word.”
“Wh-what spell should I use?”
“I’ll leave that up to you.”
Mare looked puzzled. Being left to choose for himself was the most difficult. Is a common spell fine?
Titus reached a bony hand toward a small desk placed adjacent to the drafting table. His objective was at a mountain of golden glimmers—Yggdrasil gold.
Suddenly, some of the gold beneath his hand began to melt. Then, as if it had a mind of its own, it moved onto the parchment.
The snake of gold that had flowed onto the parchment writhed, and as if a place for it had been designated ahead of time, it began to spread.
In the space of a breath, a magic circle had been drawn in gold on the parchment. It was complex but in a delicate way.
“Okay.”
Mare, who had been waiting nervously for his turn, heeded the signal and cast his spell.
He felt his magic getting sucked into the magic circle.
Normally, that would mean the scroll was complete. In any case, that’s what Mare thought.
But then—
Crimson flames.
The unthinkable occurred on the drafting table.
Mare watched in horror as the drafting table blazed up the way the alcohol ignites when flambéing and vanished in the space of two blinks.
The flames left hardly any trace behind—it was as if they’d been an illusion. There wasn’t even a burning smell.
But the top of the drafting table proved the fire really happened.
On it were the remains of the scroll—charred remains.
As if he had been expecting just such an outcome, Titus snatched up the burned remnants and took a closer look. “So we can’t load it with a tier-four spell. It seems like it definitely doesn’t depend on the skill of the caster, either.” He mumbled about ten-year-olds being no good as he scribbled in his log.
“Uh, wh-what happened? Did I do something wrong?”
“No, don’t worry. In order to conserve parchment, we’re trying to create scrolls using materials we can gather in this world, but the quality is so awful…”
There were limits on what kind of parchments could be used depending on the tier of the spell.
For instance, regular parchment could be used for spells up to tier two but no higher. With the highest-quality parchment, dragon hide, however, it was possible to make tier-ten spell scrolls.
Naturally, dragon hide was a first-class material that could be acquired only by hunting a dragon.
And so all the members of the guild Ainz Ooal Gown had hunted them like crazy, but that was back in the Yggdrasil days. Until they could confirm the existence of dragons—and other creatures—in this world, Ainz had limited the use of dragon hide, understandably so.
He wouldn’t allow the folly of using up their stores without a way to secure more. There might come a time when they absolutely needed it.
“No! Not my dragons!”
“Of course not. We wouldn’t do that. Your dragons and all the other summoned beings exist by the will of the Supreme Beings. Naturally, it is strictly prohibited to harm them.”
With an amused look at Mare, who had relaxed, Titus tossed the ruined scroll into the garbage.
“Uh, so does that mean the regular parchment in this world is no good for making scrolls?” Mare eyed the charred remains.
“There’s a very good chance that’s what it means. Well, I don’t know. It’s possible that in this world the way I make scrolls is heretical. Apparently, the way the people here make potions, for example, is quite different.”
“B-but you can’t say from just one failure that it�
�s the parchment’s fault, can you?”
“Just one? We’ve done a number of tests on parchment from the outside, but when we try to imbue any with spells over tier three, it always ends in a fire. Bursting into flames must be what happens when the magic cannot be sealed inside the parchment…”
“…But the casters in this world use that parchment, don’t they?”
“No, it’s possible that the sheet we just threw away wasn’t the typical variety used in this world. Of course, considering all the various countries, it’s not impossible, but… When we tried with the parchment used in the countries in Nazarick’s vicinity…” He held up a sheet with a different texture from the one they had just used. “…The results were even worse—it could only contain up to tier one.”
“Does that mean humans are good at making the best use of inferior materials?”
“No. Probably it’s a difference of techniques. It’s painful to admit, but perhaps theirs are more polished in a way. Somehow, I want to gain new techniques and advance beyond them.”
“That’s great!” Mare respected the head librarian for his spirit of self-improvement.
“It’s all thanks to the great Supreme Being. Now then, Guardian Mare, I’ll lend you the overlords as I promised. Come with me.”
10:28 AM Nazarick Time
After leaving his ring behind for safekeeping and passing through the ground level, Mare teleported with his party to the center of a room in a stone building.
Stone architecture was sturdy and heavy, but it required a solid base, so it wasn’t suited to the wetlands, and it required architectural technology that the lizardmen had no way of possessing. Obviously, this building had been made by a third party—workers dispatched by Nazarick.
The reason they had gone so far as to send personnel over to build the place was explained vividly by the object enshrined in the back of the room behind Mare.
He bowed to it deeply. The overlords accompanying him followed suit.
Elevated a few steps up was an exquisite statue of the ruler of the Great Tomb of Nazarick, Ainz Ooal Gown, so lifelike it was as if the man himself had been turned to stone. The way he was thrusting his staff up at an angle gave him the air of a ruler and imparted a sense of his majesty to all who saw it.
A number of offerings had been placed on the altar before the statue. Of course, to Mare, none of them had any value. They were all fish and sad little flowers.
But Mare didn’t find it offensive.
The offerings had clearly been made out of respect and worship. For example, the flowers were not the ones blooming on the marsh but rather varieties picked at the risk of life and limb in the forest. And the size of the fish far surpassed the average of the ones the lizardmen ate—they were offering their best.
Mare nodded in satisfaction.
That the rabble should admire his great master made him very happy.
“You’ve done a good job,” he called to the lizardmen who were nervously watching him.
They were the ones in charge of cleaning this shrine. They had druid powers—rare among lizardmen—and around their necks they wore medals with the Ainz Ooal Gown guild crest etched into them.
Really, the difference between Mare and them was night and day; he was with the conqueror, and they were the conquered, so there should have been no need for him to thank them. But his deep satisfaction stemming from the same reason as before compelled him.
Leaving behind the lizardmen as they bobbed their heads to him, he and the five overlords left the shrine.
Before them lay the marsh and the lizardman settlement. The lizardmen were more prosperous than before.
Of course, their numbers had decreased in the war, but as a result of the five tribes coming together, their village was bigger and stronger.
The large area was enclosed by a fence, and several watchtowers had been built, although it was unclear how, given the uneven ground. Keeping watch up inside them were bony white beings—probably Nazarick Old Guarders—armed with bows. There were also Nazarick Old Guarders in the marsh itself. They seemed to be on patrol to keep out any foreign threats.
“U-uh, I wonder where Cocytus is.”
Cocytus stood out in more ways than one. If he was in the village, it should have been easy to pick him out immediately, and if he was inside a house, his attendants, fitting the same criteria as Mare’s, should have been standing outside the door. Mare scanned the area with those things in mind but couldn’t see any sign of him.
“Can you ask someone where Cocytus is?”
“Understood. One moment please.”
The overlord who replied, Aurelius, returned to the shrine.
Mare looked out over the marsh, the peaceful lizardman village. The lizardmen didn’t seem on guard against the Nazarick Old Guarders. That went for the lizardman young as well. They coexisted as if it were perfectly natural.
They don’t seem to hold any grudges after being attacked and conquered by undead, so it must mean Cocytus’s policy of friendly relations is working. Or are lizardmen just a docile species?
Mare absentmindedly wondered about those things until Aurelius returned a moment later.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Master Mare. The ones working at the shrine say they don’t know where he is but that the chief of the united tribe, Shasuryu Shasha, might.”
“Oh, okay. Then, uh, let’s go see him.”
Mare set off following Aurelius. They weren’t aiming for the village on the marsh, but rather they walked along the lakeshore to a place just outside the forest. They could see Nazarick Old Guarders in the trees from a distance.
The party’s destination was on the edge of another marsh, a place where a fairly large-scale construction project was under way.
The water had been dammed, and about ten stone golems were digging. They carried the dirt to land, after which lizardmen carted it away in wheelbarrows.
As Mare watched them to figure out what they were doing, a big lizardman ran over to him, all flustered.
It was a splendidly built lizardman covered in scars, and he was clearly different from the other lizardmen in more ways than one. The medal around his neck swung wildly in his panic.
The medals, worn for protection and as a sign of subordination, had no magic power themselves, but they were proof of being owned by Ainz. And that was the reason no one in the Great Tomb of Nazarick, under the influence of the Supreme Beings, could harm the lizardmen for no reason. Of course, if they deserved to die, that would have been a different story, but luckily, perhaps, lizardmen knew their place and respected the strong—no one among them was foolish enough to offend their keepers.
“Welcome, Master Mare. My name is—”
“You’re Shasuryu Shasha, right?”
“That I am. I’m honored you know me.”
“Oh, I—I heard about you from Cocytus… Uh, do you know where he is right now?”
Shasuryu began to think. “I’m fairly certain he took several of his subordinates to go conquer the toadmen. He also took a few dozen lizardmen so they could observe.”
“Toadmen?”
“A toad-like subhuman race that inhabits the northeastern part of the lake. We don’t get along very well. They have the ability to order around large monsters and magical beasts, so from our perspective they’re a difficult opponent. I heard that in the generation of my father’s father, there was a huge war, and the lizardmen lost so badly that one tribe collapsed.”
“F-figures they’re strong if they’re from the north.”
The large body of water was actually more like two lakes stuck together, shaped like an upside-down gourd. The southern, slightly smaller lake where the lizardmen lived was half-marshland, half–open water. Not many large monsters lived there because the water was shallow. In contrast, the northern lake was deeper and was home to many larger monsters; they tended to be more powerful than the ones from the southern lake. Of course, to Mare the difference was negligible.
“These toadmen, they aren’t actually tsveiks, are they?”
Tsveiks were the monsters that lived in the poisonous swamp that once surrounded Nazarick. Mare knew that his sister had a few.
“I’m afraid I don’t know about that. Perhaps you can ask Cocytus when he returns? I imagine he’ll be back soon.”
“I’ll do that. Then I wanted to ask about something else, u-uh… This seems like quite a big construction project. What are you making? It’s not very close to the village, and it doesn’t seem like a fence or something for defense…”
“We’re building our fourth fish preserve.”
When Mare heard Shasuryu’s detailed explanation, it made sense to him.
It was a good thing that the lizardman tribes had combined, but when they all gathered, food became a problem. Many of their members had died in the war, but in this location, they couldn’t catch enough to go around. Of course, if they went back to their old villages to go fishing, the problem would be solved, but their new ruler, Cocytus, wouldn’t allow it.
Regardless of how it would have gone if an entire tribe of adults traveled the marsh, sending a small number would increase their chances of getting attacked by monsters. The lizardman numbers were already down, so he didn’t want to lose any more.
Cocytus wanted the lizardmen to thrive, so he had started to work on the food issue.
First, he brought and distributed food from Nazarick—with Ainz’s permission, of course. Then he struggled to come up with a lasting source of food for them. It goes without saying that he found Zaryusu’s fish preserves. And with advice from Demiurge, he helped them build preserves that were even more efficient.
Construction proceeded rapidly, and they already had three large preserves. This was to be the fourth.
“But you haven’t raised any fries yet, right?”
“No, all we can do using our—no, my brother’s—knowledge is care for fish that are already grown to some extent. But using what we learned from Demiurge, we’ve built fry preserves and are nearly ready to use them. Within the next few years, we should be able to support double the number of lizardmen we currently have with farmed fish alone.”
“I—I see. So after a few years, we won’t have to bring any more fish from Nazarick, huh? Of course, I’m sure you’d be able to get some anytime if there was an emergency.”
The Two Leaders Page 21
