Cocytus agreed silently with her reply.
There was a type of undead guard called an old guarder. Nazarick old guarders were an elite undead found only in Nazarick. They were brilliant, proficient in a number of combat skills, and had weapons enchanted with all sorts of effects as well as magic armor and shields.
“That’s fine. How many do you need?”
“Three thousand.”
“That’s not very many. That might not overwhelm them enough. These guys beat us and probably underestimate us now—we have to terrify them! It’s no fun if we send fewer than last time. I want double that. Anything else you need?”
“Then how about also mobilizing the Nazarick elder guarders and Nazarick master guarders? Then we’ll have six thousand.”
In response to Albedo’s smooth answer befitting her position as captain, Ainz was clear and concise. “Great! And is there any issue with activating Gargantua?”
“No, Lord Ainz. He’s fully mobile.”
“Then Shalltear, use Gate to transport our troops all at once.”
“I may not have enough magical energy on my own.”
“Get support from Pestonia; have her transfer some energy. If that’s still not enough, get some from Lupusregina.”
“Understood.”
“Next, have Nigredo’s and Pandora’s Actor’s security net focused on us. That will loosen up the coverage on Sebas’s crew, but…we’ll just have to up the physical surveillance. Good. Move out, everybody! Tomorrow we’ll show the lizardmen the power of the Great Tomb of Nazarick!”
2
“THANKS, DEMIURGE.” The first thing Cocytus did after their master had left the Throne Room was bow low and thank his comrade.
Demiurge flashed his usual smile. “That’s not necessary.”
“I INSIST. WE WOULD HAVE HAD TO KILL ALL THE LIZARDMEN IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOU.”
“I said you don’t have to worry about it, Cocytus. I think this is what Lord Ainz wanted from the start.”
Someone answered “Huh?” to Demiurge and his single raised finger. Cocytus had the feeling it could have been him or one of the other guardians.
“In other words, I think he made you general in the attack on the lizardman village because he anticipated the remarks you made earlier. He appeared extremely happy when you said you were against destroying the villages, and he seemed disappointed when you couldn’t make a counterproposal.”
“You mean he was disappointed because things didn’t go according to plan?”
“That’s right, Shalltear. In other words, there is a very high probability that all the things that were said here were according to his plan.”
“He was able to foresee everything? I’d expect nothing less from Lord Ainz!”
“B-but, you know, uh, er…”
“…Spit it out!” Aura sharply urged on her fidgeting little brother.
“I—I am! Uh, I was wondering why we used such weak undead. Uh, um, like, well, just maybe, but uh…maybe he assumed we would lose?”
“Or rather than losing, perhaps he thought Cocytus would investigate how strong they were and advise on whether or not we could win.”
Cocytus remembered his talk with Demiurge, and the same shame welled up inside him. So he’d been doing it all wrong.
“That plan would be impossible to make without knowing Cocytus’s personality inside out. Magnificent, Lord Ainz…”
“I learned during the duel with Shalltear that Lord Ainz’s skill as a fighter is exceptional, but he’s also a brilliant strategist. I really admire him. He says all those nice things, but we’re just his pawns.” Demiurge gave his remarks as the most brilliant mind among the Nazarick guardians.
“He is simply too amazing. Perhaps he just arrived to lead the Supreme Beings on a whim?” Shalltear shivered with joy as she spoke of their master, and the other guardians nodded in agreement.
Ainz returned to his room and dove into bed. After being airborne for an unusually long time, his body clumsily sank into the mattress. Then…he rolled around for a bit.
To the right, to the left.
It was something he could do only because the bed was so gigantic. Ainz rolled back and forth, giggling a little, paying not the slightest attention to the fact that his luxurious robe was getting all wrinkled. Of course, he was acting like a little kid only because no one else was in the room.
Eventually, after returning sufficiently to childlike innocence and enjoying the softness of the bed to the fullest degree, he lay there and stared at the ceiling.
“Man, I’m beat… I wanna throw back some drinks and get totally wasted…but I can’t do either,” he grumbled and heaved a sigh—albeit an imitation sigh, since he didn’t actually breathe.
Because he was undead, neither physical nor mental exhaustion affected him, but every day of the past month or so had taken a toll on his human mental state. If he weren’t undead, he would’ve had stomach trouble for sure.
There was a lot of pressure on Ainz in his position.
Momon the warrior defeated a silver-haired vampire—Shalltear. For someone who knew nothing, it was simply an amazing feat, but for the ones who had used the World Item on Shalltear, it held a different meaning. There was a high probability they would come after him or try to contact him.
For that reason, Ainz was always on alert and carried cash store items so he could make a quick getaway at any time. In his free time, still on guard, he role-played (or image trained) in his head how to figure out how to run away while gathering intelligence in the event they tried to make contact.
Those tense days had no effect on Ainz Ooal Gown, but the vestiges of the human Satoru Suzuki were a wreck. The moment he was alone in a free and open space, away from the pressure of having to act like the ruler of Nazarick, he had probably regressed to a childlike state not out of Ainz’s wishes but because Satoru Suzuki had been stretched thin and wanted to act out.
“I don’t think I’ve ever worked this long without a day off… I wonder how much overtime I get this month?” This flavor of mumbled griping, too, was perhaps Satoru Suzuki strongly manifesting. “The Great Tomb of Nazarick…no, Ainz Ooal Gown… It’s not really a corporation. We are a limited partnership and a fair company that guarantees its workers overtime pay…” After grumbling a little, he furrowed his nonexistent brow. “Hmm? There are managerial bonuses, so I don’t get overtime? Ahhhhh!” He began rolling back and forth again. After five laps, he stopped on a dime. “Now then…enough with this nonsense… But wow, I can’t belive Cocytus said all that stuff!”
He hadn’t imagined that such a thing was possible. Cocytus wanted to show the lizardmen mercy?
That was a real problem for Ainz.
Satoru Suzuki’s personality was such that he went into presentations with plenty of documents prepared. He wasn’t very good at dealing with unexpected questions, but if the answer was written down in his documents, he could just read it. In other words, to Satoru Suzuki, the key to a good presentation was doing enough research that he could answer any question thrown at him. With such an outlook, he wasn’t very good at adapting on the fly—no, he’d gone past that. He hated it.
Of course, he couldn’t march into the Throne Room with documents and say, Now, please take a look at the next page. That was why he’d gone over what would happen in the Throne Room in his head more than ten times, hoping all the while that no one would do anything that would take him by surprise.
Cocytus had shattered that tiny hope.
He’d been really nervous about what Cocytus was going to say, but he was glad he’d said it. He felt a kind of familial happiness, like when a quiet child says something selfish for the first time. Above all, Cocytus had grown far more than he’d expected him to.
One time when Ainz returned to Nazarick, he had had a maid cook for him. He had requested a steak. Taking into consideration things like how well-done it should be would have required some practice, but he didn’t ask for anything terribly complica
ted. And he wasn’t asking for any stat bonuses like one would get from cooked food in Yggdrasil. As long as he could eat it, there wouldn’t have been any problem.
But the result of her cooking was just a black lump.
No matter how many times that maid cooked, the only outcome was carbonized meat.
While accepting her sincere apologies, Ainz had been satisfied with the expected result. It was the same as when he had tried to equip a great sword in his dressing room.
In Yggdrasil, a specific skill was needed in order to cook. Perhaps that was only natural, since eating and drinking gave temporary ability boosts. That maid didn’t have the skill.
In short, without the skill, try as one might, cooking would end in failure.
With the Cocytus exercise, Ainz had tried partially as an experiment to see if beings who had already been created, like Ainz and the others, could still gain new skills. If Cocytus could gain tactical and strategic knowledge, that would be evidence for the possibility that Ainz and the others could still grow. The reason he’d made Cocytus command such weak undead was simply because he figured there was more to learn from defeat.
And he was satisfied with the results. Cocytus had shown that growth was feasible.
Of course, mastering techniques and gaining knowledge were two very different things.
Ainz’s aim for the future, if he had one, was to become proficient in this world’s unique system of magic. Was magic techniques or knowledge? Ainz still wasn’t sure. But now he had tested for the knowledge case, at least.
Cocytus had taught him that growth was possible. He’d done a fine job.
Lack of growth is stagnation, plain and simple. Even if I’m counted among the strong now, someday I’ll get overtaken, Ainz thought.
Even if he had military technology from a hundred years in the future, if he stopped progressing there, he would someday fall from the position of the strongest. He might be considered strong within the neighboring countries now, but operating from the assumption that such strength would last forever would make him a fool.
“That said, though I’m happy at our child’s progress, I do worry whether his behavior is appropriate for someone who is supposed to be completely loyal to me…,” Ainz grumbled and looked up at the ceiling. “Ahh, this is so scary…”
The vestiges of the human Satoru Suzuki were shrieking in response to this newest anxiety.
Progress is change. So who could say that the guardians’ current absolute loyalty would remain the same? Even if it did, he was terrified of being judged unworthy to be the ruler of glorious Nazarick, of being branded unfit to be guild master.
“…I have to be a leader worthy of their loyalty… Will anyone give me a crash course in emperor-hood?” There was no one who’d created such a convenient school within the walls of Nazarick, that was for sure.
Ainz mulled over the issue, and two figures came to mind. They were two of the Five Worst—the Prince of Fear and the King of Hungry Prolyferum, royalty both. He seriously considered getting an education from them but in the end dismissed the idea with one word: nope. He didn’t want to be taught by either of them, not unless he was in some dire straits. “Well, I guess it’s fine… As long as I don’t make too many mistakes, I don’t imagine anyone’ll be telling me to retire anytime soon. Other than that… Oh. Bipedal sheep…?”
Ainz had already realized what their true identity must be, which was why he hadn’t asked Demiurge for a description of their appearance. He’d seen a similar monster in Yggdrasil. “Heads of a goat and a lion, tail of a snake. And then arms of a lion, feet of a goat. No doubt about it. Gotta be a khimaira.”
The khimaira in Yggdrasil stood upright on two goat legs and attacked with lion paw arms. It had two heads, a lion’s and a goat’s. It was essentially a baphomet clone, since the developers had used the same graphical data as a base.
Still, that did leave the question of why, if they were khimairas, Demiurge didn’t just say so, but Ainz already knew the answer. “In short, it might be a subspecies of khimaira. That’s it, right, Demiurge?” Ainz giggled. Then he changed his opinion of Demiurge to surprising lack of knack for naming things. “In Yggdrasil, those khimairalords and other different types were kinda… Well, but those fish khimaira looked so bizarre they were sickening. A new type of khimaira…Abellion khimaira… Maybe I should have him bring one here. Then there was…Victim.”
It looked exactly as he’d remembered it, but just one thing was bothering him. “Is that really Enochian, the language the angels are said to speak? It sounds like something else…” Since it was translated, Ainz didn’t know what language it was speaking, but he vaguely sensed something. Of course, it didn’t help that he didn’t know Enochian, either. “Well, whatever… Okay, I guess I have to get ready to head to the front.”
He rolled around one last time, reluctant to leave. And then while he was facedown, he checked something he’d noticed before. He buried his face in the bed and inhaled. Granted, he didn’t have lungs, so it was only an imitation, but for some reason he could still smell.
“There’s a floral scent… Are they perfuming my bed? Is this just what rich people’s beds are like? If so, that’s pretty awesome… I wonder if I should nitpick about stuff like this when I pretend to be a rich person… Hmm…”
3
The power to detect danger. For thieves and others with detection abilities, this was one of the most important skills, and it did exactly what it sounded like.
There were two ways to detect danger. One was sensing a threat immediately without deduction or examination, and the other was accomplished by using deduction based on experience and examination. If a “bad feeling” was an example of the former, then reading slight changes in the environment—a faint smell or noise—was an example of the latter.
The latter was sometimes strengthened without even trying by going to battle or traveling solo. It was experience that came of placing oneself near danger.
And in most cases, creatures like lizardmen were better at it than humans. It was a biological ability that stemmed from their keen sense organs and cruel environment. Humans got to sleep in a safe place away from monsters, but in the lizardmen’s habitat, the monsters were right next door.
It was especially easy for the lone wanderer Zaryusu to catch shifts in the atmosphere outdoors.
Sensing something like tension in the air, Zaryusu popped his eyes open. The familiar scenery of his room (although he’d been sleeping there for only a handful of nights) filled his field of vision. A human wouldn’t have been able to see even if they squinted in this room with no light, but it wasn’t so hard for a lizardman.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Having scanned the room to confirm that, he breathed a faint sigh of relief and shifted.
Because he was such a brilliant warrior, even though he had just been asleep, he was as awake as ever. Not only was he not groggy, but his body was ready to jump into battle at a moment’s notice. This was partly due to how lightly lizardmen slept. But Crusch, lying next to him, showed no signs of waking. She just emitted a disgruntled cry in her sleep at the loss of Zaryusu’s warmth.
Normally Crusch would have felt the change in the atmosphere and woken up as well, but it seemed like this time she couldn’t.
Zaryusu felt just a bit bad, that maybe he’d put too big a burden on her. He recalled the previous night and concluded that maybe her load had been bigger. From defeating the elder lich and everything afterward, it must have been harder on her as a female.
Personally, he wanted to let her sleep. But if he listened carefully, he could hear the sounds of lizardmen rushing around outside. Letting her sleep during an emergency might end up being more dangerous.
“Crusch, Crusch.” He shook her rather forcefully a couple of times.
“Nn, ngh…” Her tail twisted up, and right away her red eyes showed themselves. “Nn, hmnn?”
“Something’s happened.”
With
that, her eyes opened fully even though she still wanted to sleep. Zaryusu grabbed Frost Pain from its position nearby and stood up. Crusch followed a moment later.
When they went outside, they saw immediately what had caused the disturbance: a black cloud spread thickly over the village. It was clear immediately from a glance into the distance that this was no normal cloud. The rest of the sky was fair and blue.
In short, it was…
“They’re here…again?”
…a sign that their enemy had returned.
“Seems that way,” Crusch agreed.
The lizardmen of the five tribes who had fought together had also all noticed the cloud and were making a racket, but there was no sign of fear. The victory against overwhelming odds in the battle the previous day had strengthened their hearts.
Zaryusu and Crusch splashed toward the main gate at a sprint. They passed by a few lizardmen preparing for combat and reached the gate fairly quickly. Many warriors had already gathered, keeping a close watch on the outside. Zenbel was also there. Next to him was the Small Fang chief.
Zenbel raised a hand in greeting to the two loudly sloshing over and jerked his chin at the scene outside the gate. Zaryusu and Crusch stood next to him and peered beyond the gate.
On the opposite shore, on the boundary between the marsh and the forest, were ranks of skeletons.
“They’re back.”
“Yeah…,” Zaryusu replied to Zenbel and clicked his tongue.
He’d expected this, but it was too soon. Their calculation that it would take some time to recover from such a heavy loss had been completely off. He was surprised they had the power to mobilize an army this big again.
“…At least they’re probably weaker than the skeletons that elder lich summoned.” Reading between the lines, that meant that Zenbel thought these skeletons were stronger than the army from before.
Zaryusu took a close look at the skeletons, too—to see how strong they were, to see how careful the lizardmen needed to be against them. The enemies were certainly all skeletons, but they were definitely different from last time.
The Lizardman Heroes Page 20