The oppressor now feared his oppression. Nigun stared at what should not be possible. ‘How can this magic caster, a man of no name that I’ve ever heard, do what I have just seen him do?!’ Panic sent a tingle up and down his arms, legs, and spine. The cloaked and masked mage had clearly not even put any effort into his actions, and was as casual as if he were merely taking a stroll through the great parks of Kami Miyako.
“I don’t know how you obtained such power, caster, but in other circumstances it would be enough for me to want to recruit you to our side. But I am afraid my mission doesn’t allow for that today. Instead, I must defeat you with my most powerful weapon!” Nigun cackled, his mouth fell open in a laugh half filled with relief and half filled with mad terror at the possibility that even this might fail.
“Please permit me some small resistance.” Ainz replied and took a graceful, mocking bow to the now terrified elites.
Nigun yanked out his ice blue crystal and without a word, activated the magic within. “With this, even the most powerful are made vulnerable!” He screeched the threat in a ripped voice when he extended the crystal out from his body.
A glow fell from the sky and engulfed the caster, who was suddenly clouded, a mere shadowy outline surrounded by the light.
The screech died and laughter, slow, low, and relieved began from the blonde member of the Sunlight Scripture. “Ah hah, haha hah… hah ahhhh…”
The laughter was taken up by the remaining members of his Scripture, if less enthusiastic than his own, “I warned you! You were no match, none! Nobody can resist the magic of the divine!” Nigun screeched again, eyes wild with hope, but the shadowy figure hidden by the wall of light that rained down on him, did not fall.
‘What is… what is this? What have they done?’ Ainz wondered as he stared at his gloved hands. He didn’t need to remove them to know the difference, and yet despite himself, he couldn’t help it. With the light obscuring his view outside, it felt likely that they couldn’t see well within either. The magic which hit him neither hurt nor did any evident damage, but that did not change his sense of either relief or alarm or how they blended to confuse him to no end.
The sight of flesh on his forearm greeted his eyes. As understanding dawned, so did a peculiar twisted sense of humor. Almost as if he intended to mock the humans outside the light in which he stood, Ainz began to laugh.
“This?! This is what you’ve done?! What a joke! What a ridiculous, absurd joke! Is this what you think of as ‘damage’?!” Ainz shouted, his back arched and his gauntlet covered hands went over his gut as he stared up to the sky from whence the light came and laughed harder and harder at the ones that were trying to threaten them.
“Eee!” Nigun shrieked again and took a step back, the hand holding the crystal dropped it to fall into the soft grass where men had bled and died only moments before. It landed with the quiet sound of bending green blades and his other arm went back with his leg. ‘Run, run away while you can! While he’s still within the light!’
His companion however, had clearly lost all reason, “How dare you! How dare you strike my love! My lord! The ruler of my heart and my every hope for every day that will ever be!” her hands came up and folded into fists beneath her wildly shaking head, the weapon she held swung madly like she had a grudge against the air instead of those who had cast their magic. “Curse you! Curse you all, you vile lower life forms!” Her howl of rage split the space between them like thunder and froze the Scripture with fear for the first time in their lives.
‘So, this was their magic, a vulnerability spell, there were definitely players here, how interesting. So I’m… wait, am I human?’ Ainz wondered, ‘For all I know yet I might be an elf… I feel human, but what does an elf feel like?’ It was an uncertain question, but some degree of relief settled in his body for the present. ‘I wasn’t sure I liked being a skeleton, but… what about my levels? This spell was specifically meant to hurt heteromorphic races and had a randomized duration. How long will this last? Are the rules the same here?’ Questions ran like stampeding horses through his mind all in an instant.
Ainz raised a hand with palm out toward her as the light faded away to nothing, leaving him standing unperturbed as if nothing had ever happened. “Calm down, Albedo, it’s fine, their pathetic magic was meant to make me vulnerable, and it failed.”
“How can this be?! How?! You should be weaker!” Nigun cried out and clawed at his face in despair, he clawed at his flesh with such desperation that his nails tore at his skin and left red streaks as if a cat’s claws had raked over both cheeks, and yet he felt no pain. He felt only one thing.
Fear. The thing felt no weaker.
“The spell didn’t do what you thought it did.” Ainz answered with the magnanimity of a king. ‘My voice is still different, I wonder if I look the same?’ The other question popped into his head in an instant, but his inner guildmaster and gamer couldn’t help but come out to explain the failure. “Your ridiculous magic, if it had been used on the Warrior Captain, would have made him… something very different than himself, but you’ve misunderstood the nature of your spell, and so used it on an opponent who would never be weaker than you, no matter how many times you cast it.”
The scripture members began to wobble at their knees, then fall to the ground without a blow being struck.
“As expected of my love! To break their will without striking and to know their magic even better than they!” Albedo exclaimed with joyful reverence.
Ainz ignored the praise and raised a hand to finish them. Then… he hesitated. His humanity gave him pause, the prospect of killing his own kind, the prospect of simple murder, made his stomach roil and he felt himself go faintly green at the prospect. Still, he had to keep up the role.
“Albedo, take them and return to Nazarick. I will finish here.” Ainz ordered, the humans had a moment to gasp or squeak or squeal in terror as was their wont to do, but Albedo moved faster than eyes could see or reflexes could answer. Her cruel bardiche severed the right leg of every man in the scripture just at the back of their bended knees, sending a chorus of howls to the uncaring sky.
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Nigun’s eyes gazed to the heavens when the ‘crack’ caught his attention despite his screams.
“It seems your country was watching you… not that they saw much. Enough at least to know they should stay away from these lands from now on.” Ainz explained to the howling Nigun.
He clutched and rolled on the grass, clutching the wounded stump and staring upward, ‘If they see, won’t they come for me?! Won’t they save me! Won’t they rescue me?!’ He reached for the ephemeral hope as he saw out of the corner of his eye, the dark armored warrior woman simply tossed the wounded through a whorling ovoid shape in the air and made them disappear beyond sight.
She had just reached down and grabbed his collar when the sickening realization hit him. ‘No, they won’t come for me, because we don’t have anyone who can defeat this caster. What have we done? By all the gods, what have we done?!’ He wondered before the dark void engulfed him too.
It wasn’t until Albedo had gone and he stood alone that Ainz examined his character sheet and levels. ‘I see… so my racial levels aren’t gone but… ‘available for use’, so I can re-allocate them. That’s good. Next…’ He removed his mask and ran his hands over his face and ears, ‘Yes, definitely human.’ His hand went down to his chest and to his crotch. ‘Yes, definitely male, good to have that back at least. My ‘son’ made it.’
‘Wait… what the hell…?’ Ainz put the mask back on and focused more sharply at his stats. ‘How did I gain xp?! I’m max level, one hundred… how could I… unless…’
His inner player emerged to force a smile over his face that he couldn’t fight, ‘The level cap… the level cap is gone, or at least ‘changed’ significantly.’ The understanding that he could grow ever stronger, the dream of every player, ran through his veins like alcohol to an alcoholic. It intoxicated him so much that he had to sit down. “Did they do this? Or is that a product of this world?” He muttered the question to no one in particular. With the return of humanity came his other senses, and the full force of ‘the world’ hit him all at once.
His own horrid, polluted, ruined world of domes and smog, filthy sky and filthy ground was utterly at odds with this one. The constant smog that killed those whose cheap personal filters broke was gone. The concrete jungle of his city was replaced by the feel of soft grass, the smell of artificial chemicals was replaced by clean air, flowers, and things he was sure his world once had, but which vanished long before his time. Ainz’s eyes welled up behind the mask, “Blue Planet… if you could be here now… all of you… my precious friends… would you feel like I do now?”
He lay out on the grass, his arms and legs stretched out, certain he was alone, he removed his gauntlets and ran fingers over the little blades of green that were nothing but a memory at home. Ainz had no idea how long he enjoyed the moment, but it was probably too long, ‘They’re no doubt still waiting back in the village to find out what happened, it would be rude of me to keep them waiting.’ He took several long deep breaths while he put the gauntlet back on and ventured toward the village again.
He was seen almost immediately and a cheer erupted from within, and out came the Warrior Captain, his bulging muscles and powerful, deep set eyes were the same as Ainz recalled. ‘Undead or not undead, he is an impressive sort of man. Respectable courage, too.’
“So, you slew them, Sir Ainz?” Gazef asked, a half dejected huff left his lungs, “I am ashamed of my weakness in the face of strength like yours.”
Ainz waved it off, “They’re not dead, but they are gone, let that be enough, Warrior Captain.”
“Please, you saved my life, call me Gazef, and… if you accept nothing else from me today, accept my welcome later, come to the capital some day, and I will welcome you with open arms.” Gazef slowly extended his hand, Ainz took it, and grasped with a firm squeeze.
Gazef’s eyes went even wider, but he said nothing of what he thought. ‘Magic caster’s are supposed to be physically weak, but he feels stronger than me!’ He buried the unworthy, jealous thought, and bowed his head when the grip broke.
“I may take you up on that… Gazef, for now, farewell. I will take it as a favor if you would send some relief supplies to this village, and if there are survivors from the other places, bring them here. I promise… no one will attack this village ever again.” The words of the magic caster brought glorious and joyful smiles to the faces of the peasants who beamed bright as the sun above their heads, staring in gratitude at their unexpected savior.
“I- I believe I can arrange for that.” Gazef said, barely blinking back tears from the depth of his heart that the wish of his peasant childhood was so unexpectedly fulfilled.
Albedo was at his side again by the time the funeral was taking place. “Tell me, Albedo, what do you think of ‘humans’.”
“They are lower life forms unworthy to exist on this side of the dirt.” She spat immediately.
“I see, I see.” Ainz replied in the most sage tone he could manage. ‘Shit, I didn’t even think about that! Almost all the NPCs despise humans! This is bad, this is very bad, what if they see me this way, what if they find out?! Will their loyalty hold? Damn it! Alright, so who doesn’t expressly hate humans?! The twins, they don’t. Neither does Sebas, some are generally neutral, but others? No, others are… they… alright, the mask stays on. At least it has some deception bonuses so as long as I wear it, my change shouldn’t be obvious. But… I need to look into a way to change back as soon as possible!’
The silence stretched between them and Ainz coughed and cleared his throat to bridge the gap. A stone’s toss away, the young girl and young woman he’d saved wept over a pair of stones that marked the graves of their parents. Nor were they alone. Thirty lives had been lost, a devastating harvest of blood and death for a village that couldn’t have had more than two hundred individuals.
He fingered the wand, his heart ached as he recalled the loved ones he once had, and he struggled not to think of them, ‘Resurrection might be too much for this world, it may not be possible at all, or if it is, it must be rare.’ The notion of drawing the wrong kind of attention to himself made sweat spring to his newly restored skin. ‘I did enough, that will do.’ He told himself, but whether he really believed it or not, even he wasn’t sure.
Instead he focused on the moment, “Albedo, I understand why you might think that way, I felt the same on first sight. But as I look at them now, I think of them like…” He paused, trying to think of some favorable way to present them and hopefully temper Albedo’s contempt, ‘Like small animals? Insects with their place? No…’ Finally, with her eyes turned toward his white painted mask of jealousy, peering through the slit in her helmet, he answered her. “Like pets, or useful tools, or raw materials from which great things are made.” ‘Alright,’ Ainz thought, ‘that last part might have been too much, but I can’t unsay what is said.’
“My lord’s wisdom is beyond bounds, I will act according to your will.” She bowed her head to her master and as they turned to go, the village chief approached.
“My lord, will we see you again? We still must repay you somehow.” The old man rasped out, worn out from the strain of the day, breathing hard despite not having gone very far, his hand was outstretched to stop the departure of his rescuer.
“Yes, for now, rest assured the time will come when you can repay your debt to me, till then, live long and prosper. When I need you, I will be here again.” Ainz said, and the portal opened at his back.
The old man’s eyes bulged at the sight of the gate, ‘Such regal bearing, he must be a nobleman of some kind… if this isn’t what a king is like, I don’t know what is…’ The village chief though, kept his thoughts to himself and his awe etched on his face when he bowed at the waist.
“Thank you, my lord! We are yours whenever you need us!” He pronounced from the depths of his soul, and the regal savior inclined his head, and stepped with his companion, through the void and disappeared.