The Dark Warrior (31 page)

Even though she’d betrayed them, she was a member of the Slane Theocracy’s strongest special-ops unit, the Black Scripture, and she could count the number of
warriors
powerful enough to defeat her on her fingers. There was no way she could run from this Momon character who had no reputation and little skill.

Once she’d made her decision, the rest happened quickly. Her hesitation vanished, and having regained the cool composure befitting a top-class warrior, she leaped in close to Momon’s chest.

“Die!”

The stiletto she thrust, mobilizing all her body’s muscles, stabbed into the slit in his close helmet. Then, she twisted it. She increased pressure to reach the back of his skull and then wiggled the blade to break the nearby blood vessels so the wound would be fatal beyond a doubt.

An armored arm wrapped tightly around her body, but she paid it no mind and followed up with another attack. Responding to her desire to kill him dead, the magic power contained in her stiletto was unleashed—Lightning.

Electricity coursed through Ainz’s entire body.

Clementine’s weapon was invested with the power of Magic Accumulation. The magic was drained in one shot, but it was possible to load up all different spells over and over. One could prepare according to their specific needs, so it was a really easy power to use.

She’d stabbed to the back of his skull and left him a lightning souvenir.
He’s definitely dead.

But—

“I’m not done yet! Flow Acceleration!” Clementine accelerated, whipped out another stiletto, and stabbed that through his helmet slit as well. On top of that, she unleashed the Fireball spell it contained. She hallucinated Momon’s flesh burning up from the inside out and had the feeling she could smell the meat grilling.

Instead, her eyes widened in shock at how wrong she was.

“Hmm.
Yggdrasil
didn’t have magical weapons like that. The more you know!”

As he spoke at leisure with a stiletto still sticking out of each eye, she realized that it hadn’t been a coincidence that there wasn’t blood on the blade when she’d stabbed him earlier.

“No way! This can’t be happening! Why won’t you die?!” She’d never heard of a martial art that made the user invincible. Was there something protecting him from stabbing? Even then, how did he block the magic follow-up? Even the veteran warrior Clementine didn’t know the answer.

“?!” She was pulled in close. Their bodies bumped together, and her adventurer plates jangled.

“You want to know if you got the answer right?”

The raven-black armor—
poof
—disappeared, revealing Momon’s horrifying face. It was a skull with neither flesh nor skin. Stilettos were stabbed into both of his vacant orbits—through his mirrored shades—but he didn’t give any indication he was experiencing any pain.

That appearance rang a bell for Clementine. “An undead… An elder lich?!”

“…? Well, I sure have some questions for you, but meh. Let’s just say you’re close. And then…”

She shouldn’t have been able to read an expression from a face with no skin or flesh, but she had the feeling he was wearing a wide grin.

“So, how does it feel fighting a caster with a sword? How does it feel to not have it end with a swoop and a
shoonk
?”

“D-don’t make fun of me!” Clementine struggled violently to get away, but it was as if she were bound to him by sturdy chains, and she couldn’t.

An elder lich was certainly a mighty undead, good at using magic and so on, but it shouldn’t have much in the way of physical ability; in a comparison with Clementine, she should come out on top. But…

“Wh-why?!”

I can’t get away.

Her entire body went cold when it dawned on her that his incredible power and physical ability wasn’t due to some magical effect in his armor. The image that ran through her mind was of a butterfly caught in a spider’s web—a helpless creature.

“This was the true nature of your handicap. Basically, you weren’t an enemy I had to take seriously enough to use magic on.”

“You piece of shiiiiiiiiit!”

“Well, now that the cat’s out of the bag, let’s begin after I get these out of my way.” There was a dragging noise as the elder lich pulled a stiletto out of his head and threw it away. Clementine was still struggling as he removed the other, but it seemed even one of his hands far exceeded the strength of her entire body, and she couldn’t budge in his embrace.

Once the stilettos were gone, the sinister red flames in his empty eye sockets turned to Clementine, who was breathing irregularly as she strained against him.

“Okay, let’s begin.”

Begin what?
thought Clementine as the already intimate distance between her and the elder lich shrank even farther. In her ears was an unpleasant creaking noise.

When she realized what he was trying to do, she felt as though she’d been stabbed in the back with an icicle.

“You aren’t…? You can’t be…! Youuuuuuu!”

The noise was the shriek of her armor beginning to dent.

He’s trying to crush me against his chest.

The elder lich should have been getting squashed against the armor as well, but he must have changed his body to be more powerful somehow. It was immovable and made her think of a thick wall.

“If you were weaker—”

The elder lich took a dagger out from somewhere. The blade was black, and there were four jewels set in the hilt. “I considered ending your life with this, but I figure there’s not much difference between dying on a sword, getting snapped in half, or being crushed. You’re
dead
no matter what.”

Her whole body shuddered. Throughout his commentary, the pressure was gradually increasing. The strange weight on her chest was becoming oppressive.
Ping! Ping!
Unable to bear it, the plates of the adventurers she’d killed began popping off her armor and falling to the graveyard ground as if they were finally being interred. The first to go were the ones she had most recently acquired.

It got harder and harder to breathe.
This is awful.

She hated the arm wrapped around her back.

She blamed herself for wearing light armor in order to increase her evasion and be able to attach the adventurer plates.

Having learned that swords had no effect on the elder lich, she began beating his face with her fists, half crazed. She was hitting so hard she was hurting herself, but she wasn’t at leisure to feel the pain. Then, she drew her morning star and began frantically pounding with that, but she couldn’t do it right and only ended up wounding herself.

It was easy to imagine the fate that awaited her. The choking breaths, the weight on her chest, and her breaking armor made it crystal clear what would happen.

“Don’t struggle so much. If the position of my arm slips, it’ll end too simply. You took your time killing
them
, so I want to take my time on you, too.”

Clementine desperately continued her attacks. She tried pushing off of his head with her hand, scratching at him till her nails peeled back, biting him with her front teeth… None of it worked and the pressure continued increasing.

No matter how much she flailed, there was no escaping the jaws that were his arms. She still fought. Even as her breathing grew more difficult and her field of vision began to shrink, she fought for the chance to survive.

“
La Danse Macabre
?”

She couldn’t even spare the effort to hear that quiet remark.

There was a gurgling sound, and Ainz was splashed with vomit and filth. Something dark flashed through the red flames in his vacant orbits.

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.”

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.