Turlough had to admit to himself, it was very hard to dislike Ainz. His stigmata against past Ainz was also having trouble connecting Ainz.. to, well, Ainz.

His personality was wholly different, like he had two personalities of all a sudden.

Or he just got hit by a big ol’ rock in his tiny little baby head. He wouldn’t be surprised if that had happened, some folks really, really didn’t like Ainz. After discovering he was an apex predator in waiting… who knows what could’ve happened?

He severely doubted anything that extreme had happened, however. If he were an adult back then, he would find Ainz laughable, not big rock to the head material. And most weren’t that level of.. racist.

*bomp*

Rubbing his tusks, Turlough realized he had walked directly into the wall. Looking back at the snickering Ainz, Turlough grunted. “Your room is that one,” Turlough said, pointing at Ainz’s room and throwing the keys Zorphax had given him at Ainz’s chest at the same time.

Ainz’s posture changed in an instant, his pupils rapidly narrowing into slits in the barely half second the keys were in the air. Sticking one finger into the air, the key’s binding loop went perfectly around it.

Turning to enter his own room, Ainz spoke first. “Aren’t you forgetting something? Papers? Translations?” He more demanded than questioned.

“Papers are in the room. Translation is already cast,” Turlough responded quickly, entering his room before he could get sassed more by Ainz. Turlough just wanted to get done with his own papers. He just had to finish one last section and then he would have a rudimentary understanding of just about everything important.

——

Sitting down in the communal cafeteria I shared with my fellow misplaced ‘extra’ companions, I grabbed meat.

Then more meat, and, finally, a little bit more meat to sprinkle it off. “Only meat,” I said, chunkily, to the lunch lady eyeing me, then she began to eye some other wacky eaters instead of me.

Clearly she was a bad lunch lady.

Eyeing for a big, tall, and buff (enough) green man, I found him seated in a distant corner. Eating what appeared to be a variety of foods, trying them one out of a time. Some of his reactions were that of disgusted, but mostly it was enjoyment.

Walking towards Turlough, he looked up at me just as I sat down. The raw meat I had splattered all over my tray oozing a little blood as I plopped it down with me.

To correct my earlier statement to the lunch lady, I did in fact only eat meat, raw meat most of the time. But that was simply because nothing else quite had any amount of blood in it. Sure, I could survive without blood, but it certainly would get on my nerves.

… I couldn’t think of any vampire pun for that.

Refocusing on reality, I saw Turlough’s expression upon viewing me. Overall it was a mix of confusion, exhaustion, and… two other things I couldn’t quite tell.

Although I was adept enough at reading emotions due to being forced to understand social cues among Monks, ya’ know, the guys who were famous for being in control of their emotions. I wasn’t even close to being a master, especially with the unfamiliar ques and such of Turlough and Orks in general.

“Hello, Turlough,” I said in Common.

He took a bite of his sandwich.

“How… how did you just speak English without Translation?” He asked, clearly confused.

“Hm? Translation gave me the ability to read, just as it did for you. So I simply wrote down all the important words in English, read them aloud, too, and translated them to Common. You can think about it from there. Of course, I can’t hold a good conversation at this stage, but if you just so happen to pass over a few more translations…” I explained to the clueless Ork.

Turlough seemingly short circuited, a new phrase I had learned in the ‘phrase section’ of the papers I was given. So that nobody would take ‘hit me’ seriously. As that could go very badly for obvious reasons.

“You.. can do that?” He asked, almost ‘rebooting’ now.

These phrases are ‘the stuff’! I’d have to use that one out loud a few times, I decided quickly.

“Why wouldn’t you be?” I asked, clearly confused like him. Although not on the level of short circuited, of course. Turlough didn’t reply to that until a few, long strips of what I think was called bacon were shoved in his mouth. Chewing and swallowing at the same time, “None,” he said lamely.

“Gotta ‘think outside the box’, ‘bro’.”

I shivered.

———

Aurora was right, thought Lexus. There was no attack attempt in the long, long time Lexus slept. Which he found odd, but not particularly unwelcome.

But one thing that was extremely welcome was the fact that Zegar was stirring from his sleep. Aurora had said that now he wasn’t in the mana induced sleep he had been in (due to her efforts she said a little smugly at the time), but rather a natural one.

Lexus had been eager to wake him up, but Aurora had said that was a very, very bad idea without a ‘plan’. For some reason. Although he had asked her why, she simply bit her lip and told him he was too innocent for his own good.

Lexus didn’t think he was innocent at all. He had killed all those assassins after all, even if he did secretly pray for whatever family they may have possessed.

But he had his own family to protect, himself, although none biological. Aurora, Julia, and even the sleeping Zegar, all of them were his family. His soon to be party was included, too.

He didn’t know what he’d do if they came to harm under his watch, that’s why he trusted Aurora when she said Zegar would almost certainly come to harm if they woke him now.

“Lexus!” Aurora screamed from the back of the carriage, resulting in the Hero being there in a split moment, heart pumping, not even minding the carriage shaking like a leaf in a tornado for a brief moment. Sitting up from the floor of the carriage was an awakened Zegar, holding out his hands in front of him and grasping the air with them.

Turning to them, he smiled weakly. “Ah, Hero Lexus, Priestess Aurora. It’s so… wonderful to see you two safe.. and alive.” Getting up from the wooden carriage floor, he used one arm to support himself as it was hard to stand after 2 days of mana induced sleep.

“Where… how.. How long has it been?” Said the dazed Zegar, holding his head with one hand. Clear pain visible on his face.

Must be the cramps, thought Lexus before looking at the worried Aurora, waiting for her to cast Alleviate to destroy the pain. A spell did in fact come from her, a spell which didn’t change Zegar’s expression in the slightest.

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That’s odd, thought Lexus before casting a spell of his own, Purge, which cleared the target of all aliments, within limit, including pain.

Seeing as how the expression still didn’t change, Lexus became worried. “Are you feeling okay?” He asked. Zegar nodded slowly, “I’m feeling.. alright,” Zegar replied, his expression of pain dissipating like the wind. Something of a solemn resolve in his eyes.

“I just need to use the bathroom,” he finished, walking out of the carriage and beginning to walk into the forest outside the dirt road they had been traveling on for days.

Aurora locked eyes with Lexus, through means unknown, and hissed something to him, “Follow him! Don’t let him know either.”

Not daring to argue with that Aurora, lest he be called something much worse than a ‘big grump’, he took off his armor, much to his slight concern. As he wouldn’t be nearly as protected without it.

Sneaking around in it would be much harder, however. So he would simply go without it for now.

Aurora stared at him and simply muttered something as he left the carriage, following the trail not long left by Zegar. It only took him around 30 seconds to dis-armor himself, he should catch up to him in just a moment.

But he didn’t.

Lexus began to worry when he started running and still saw no sighs, besides the now heavily obfuscated trail.

Monks were known for their speed.

Lexus gave up after a minute, knowing that if Zegar wanted to run, he wouldn’t catch him. Determining the path Zegar had run in his head, he realized it was straight backwards.

To where the Bastion was.

——

After weaseling myself a Translate from Turlough again, not that he put much of a resistance up, I could decipher more about the sentence structure of this strange land. Common was incredibly simple compared to English, it seemed.

In Common if you wanted to describe words you simply put the word and used a bunch of “-“ to connect all the adjectives, there was no predetermined order of how you had to describe things nor was there a need for commas between multiple, but only in certain cases.

That was one of the ways Common was objectively more simple than English.

“But,” I said aloud for dramatic effect, “with this holy object of great knowledge I can learn everything I need to know.”

A dictionary, one of the most used objects in the world! Both mine and almost certainly this one as well. How would you even look up words otherwise? That strange device the man used to send me here can’t hope to contain such vast knowledge!

Probably.

He would most likely have to use of those computer things, as they were hooked to ‘the web’ or something. That undoubtedly meant that the computer should have a list of all words at the least. Most likely carrying all the functions of whatever the device the man owned was called as well.

Opening the dictionary I had retrieved with help from the librarian, she selected it for me because it was made specifically for people like me. It organized words by most use in common chat, then an example of it used in a sentence, many people with powers related to language had come together to make it.

Supposedly it didn’t sell very well for some odd reason, outside of ‘extra’ that is. I couldn’t see why that would be, because this was undoubtedly just a fun read, especially from the back, even if you knew the language.

Popping the front page of the book open, I read the first word.

The.

Then I flipped to the farthest page.

Floccinaucinihilipilification.

“Holy shit..” I whispered in common. Why the hell did such a long word exist?! It must specify something incredibly specific then, like the 32 and a half weeks minus the current day.

‘The act of estimating something as worthless.’

‘The seller Floccinaucinihilipilification the pawned item.’

Thats longer than just saying he estimated it as worthless! What the fuck is this language? Three letters shorter in fact. ‘Alubaba’ would be much, much better.

Flipping back to the front of the dictionary, I shivered uncontrollably. Luckily it seemed people used shorter words than that most of the time.

Deciding to get some nice, cozy reading in I slouched into my chair and grabbed the pencil and paper the librarian had kindly probably me.

In the next moment, I was channeling mana into my body as the sound of a door being kicked down alarmed me to something being very wrong. Looking towards where the middle aged librarian had wandered off too, her desk, I rushed over once I finished my buffing. Which only took a second or two, much faster than a mage or similar could channel due to it all being inside my body.

Force Blast, for example, would take a longer time.

But that wasn’t important currently, I was more concerned by a large, raging man that had entered the library. If I was still in my previous world, I would have pegged him as a Barbarian. But judging by his still increasing size, I would judge him more like.. Great Girl.

Obviously the two acted a just a little differently, but I was sure he carried the same aspects of Great Girl, perhaps more if his obvious rage was taken into account. Maybe not as he appeared to be a rookie, however-

I wasn’t going to fight him anyway. Scoop the librarian up and stay far away was what my logical mind was telling me. And I had no particular reason not to follow it.

Oddly enough there wasn’t anybody else in the library either, like it was a place nobody went. But the fact that is was empty was lucky, although I had no doubts in my mind I could carry more, 2 in each arm, even, it would not be very comfortable for the ride-ees, and it would make me defenseless.

At that point it would be better for me to simply attract the things attention out of the library.

In fact, to prevent the loss of all this knowledge..

Leaping into the most-faraway section of the library with the librarian, who had short brown hair tied into a ponytail and black.. what were they? Right, glasses. And black glasses covering her blue eyes.

Setting her down on the floor gently, she keeled and looked like she was about to throw up. Right, nobody has levels, which grant natural durability to even non-close combat classes, close combat classes getting the whole ‘super..dude’ package.

Turning to watch the Barbarian smash through several things, I hurriedly whispered to the librarian, who upon this close of an inspection appeared to be slightly younger than I first judged. “I’m going to go lead that thing outside, alright?” I said, clasping her shoulders to get her attention.

Looking up to me with her mouth still open, like a cat who forgot to close their mouth, tongue in the middle of her teeth, she spoke, “You can’t do that! Just.. wait till the thing leaves or the superheroes arrive! It should only take a minute at maximum.”

With arrow time active she talked very slowly but Translation was a wonderful thing that conveyed pure words.

I shook my head, speaking slowly so she would understand me, “I can’t do that, too much knowledge will be lost.” Rushing out before she could respond, I started to draw up my options. I could Force Blast it, sure, but then that would leave me with…

Oh. I just leveled up again, 390 experience needed and passed by 5, I’m at full mana capacity. Why not? Let’s do it. Running around its field of vision and blasting it from behind with Force Blast and waiting a moment for its titanic figure to turn around.

Once its shadow covered me, I knew I had made a severe mistake.

It was fast. Far faster than I had expected from its size and how it had moved before. Given, a dragon could walk slowly but fly faster than 10 horses combined.

Its just this guy very obviously wasn’t a dragon. Barbarian’s fist was moving faster than I could dodge, so-

Deflect, a skill that nearly all Monks possessed, even at low level. And one that every high level Monk possessed. It was a martial skill put into motion, giving it far more power than what you would have without it. Also giving it the ability to deflect things like a fireball. Which, obviously, could not be done normally.

So I simply did the martial version taught to me by Zegar, who had taken it upon himself to prepare everyone for once they got the skill.

———

“No! Not like that, Ainz,” said Zegar, grabbing my dominant hand and adjusting my arm to be less fully extended. Enough so that you could see the clear bend in my arm, but not enough whereas it would take valuable time to extend it fully.

“You have to put your arm in a place where you can bend it to any direction, not just one, so that you can aim the deflected attack if magical or long ranged. Nobody would want a Monk who shoots fireballs at their Cleric,” he reprimanded me harshly.

Mentioning the fact that I wanted to go out with a party and telling how I would not be able to protect them was what truly kicked me into action.

Carefully adjusting my arm into place after Zegar had told me to reset myself, he threw an obviously telegraphed punch at my primed and ready arm. My eyes narrowed into slits that I knew where there but could not be seen by me as the punch neared and..

Using my superior positioning, purposely given, I placed my hand under Zegar’s elbow and adjusted it so that it would fly off to the side of me.

Zegar nodded upon seeing it, taking his hand back to his side he readied it again. “Now use your non-dominant hand,” he said simply, waiting for me to prepare my left hand.

I did so, and that resulted a punch being thrown at me moments later. Once more obviously telegraphed and giving me superior positioning.

Reaching my hand out towards under his elbow I-

Failed to adjust the punch in time, it sliding to a halt centimeters from my face. I sighed dejectedly as he pulled his fist back to his side.

“It’s alright,” Zegar said, gripping my shoulder, “I failed both of my first attempts when Master Thegar was training me.”

Zegar rubbed his fingers together.

“I’ll go get us something to eat, alright?” He continued, gesturing for Ainz to follow him as he walked away. “We’ll continue after that.”

I looked up and nodded, a smile on my face. “Right!” I yelled back, running up to him.

A smile plastering my face.

———

Just barely reaching my hand, left one at that, to under the Barbarian’s elbow, I pushed up with all my strength, and a little bit of good luck mana. Hoping its fist would fly over my head.

It didn’t do that.

Instead, it went directly into the Barbarian’s face. Sending it hurdling up into the air shrinking as it did so. More than simply the force of its own blow contributing to do so.