Armed with the knowledge given by Hilma, and after using Blue Rose to apply pressure to the members of Eight Fingers leadership, it was trivial to simply ‘wait’ in the old estate.

Hilma stood shivering and shaking with fear in the corner of the room. She was hugging her belly and staring up at the towering Ainz, her teeth chattered, “They’ll be here! I promise they’ll be here! I swear! I swear! I told them the ones responsible for it were operating out of this place as a further way to thumb your noses at Eight Fingers. The anger on their faces, it was beyond raw… everyone worth anything will come here… please… please believe me, I wouldn’t lie, I wouldn’t!”

Ainz tapped the flat of one sword on his right shoulder, “How did you convince them that you were right?”

Hilma’s already drawn, pale face went tighter, her lower lip trembled, and Lupusregina crinkled her nose. “Awww, she peed herself.”

“I’m sorry! I’m just! I told them that one of my brothel girls had gotten close to one of them that got a little too talkative, promised that she would be free once he and his buddies took over Eight Fingers operations for themselves… is… is that okay?” Hilma felt her knees wobble.

“Yes, that’s believable.” Ainz said and walked away from the terrorized woman who seemed to want to join with the corner she pressed herself against. He walked to the head of a long table and sat down, without being asked, Lupusregina approached and stood behind his right shoulder.

She sniffed the air a few times, “They’re coming, lots of them, I can’t tell how many, but they’re angry, blood hungry.”

Hilma shot her eyes over toward the red haired woman she knew as Lupu. ‘Superior senses… is that a talent? Or is she not human at all, but only looks like it?’ Hilma’s guts ached and a lancing pain from raw terror shot through her body, ‘I know I didn’t lie, I did what I was told, I’ll be fine fine fine fine fine… just tell the truth, be faithful and hope I’m not punished…’ Her beautiful face, despite being healed, was quite gaunt from the frequent vomiting after meals. She knew she was already losing weight, and that she didn’t have that much that she could lose in the first place.

‘I’m like the waif girls that decide to starve themselves in my brothels… but I don’t want to die… not really, not like them…’ Hilma told herself when the footsteps and shouting drew closer.

“Search everywhere! Make sure nothing in the building is left unexposed! Find them!” The rough voice called out.

‘Zero… if he’s come himself, then the rest are certainly here as well.’ Hilma shivered. That was an unpleasant concept, in other times she would fear being exposed for betraying them, ‘Especially Zero.’

Now?

Now she felt only a great swell of pity for her interdepartmental rivals.

“Very well, you’ve proven your worth.” Ainz said, and the gate opened between them. “Go and tell Demiurge you are to be rewarded.”

Hilma’s eyes were out of his view thanks to the portal, but she knew that her eyes shone like the sun. “Master! Thank you, Master!” Hilma said and scurried on swift little steps through the portal, desperate for the sensations of bliss that were her reward for destroying her comrades.

“In here!” Ainz shouted over the cacophony of noise, his voice carried, and then was picked up and the call that the perpetrators were located, was carried all over the manor house.

The pounding feet came on, drawn like ants to a pile of sugar where Ainz was waiting. ‘The others should be in place around the manor, if no call has gone out about my servants, then nobody here is worth noting in terms of their detection skills.’

The first to enter was a monster of manhood. His muscles larger than those of Gazef Stronoff, animal tattoos over his body that even a novice caster would have recognized as there for magical purposes, and a bald head to boot. Ainz laughed.

Whatever reaction those who came into the room were expecting with their faces of wrath, mockery, or arrogance, for Ainz to laugh was the last on the list.

“What’s so funny there, tin man?” The bald figure Ainz recognized from Hilma’s description as ‘Zero’ asked.

“I was just thinking, you look a lot like some childish chuunibyou’s imagination of a cartoon villain.” When Ainz said it, the dumbfounded look on Zero made Ainz laugh even harder, so hard that his fist came down and smashed the stone table, sending a crack from one end to the other and a loud crashing noise as the hunk he snapped off, shattered against the floor. Ainz had to wave his hand several times to stop stunned words from his counterparts while he composed himself.

At his side, he was sure Lupusregina was confused, but it was good to laugh anyway, and picking up on his mood, he could feel her rising excitement.

‘I don’t know what those words meant, but… I know when I’ve been insulted.’ Zero thought, and did not like it. He snarled and pointed to the left and right of himself, his finest and strongest went along the wall.

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“You’ve had your laugh, but now it’s over. There are only two of you, and a lot of us.” Zero chuckled, “I was expecting more.”

Ainz shrugged and picked up the sword that had fallen to the floor, “I am Momon. This is Lupu, we’re more than enough, either one of us by ourselves would do, but Axel ‘is’ a team after all. Plus, I’m a kind leader and wouldn’t deny her the pleasure of play when I don’t have to.”

Rumbling anger met Ainz as more thugs filtered into the room.

“You really think you can win?” Zero felt at least somewhat dumbfounded, thug or not, he was intelligent enough to run the Eight Fingers organization that spanned from the far south of Re-Estize to Arwintar itself, and the confidence of the onyx armored man and his black and white clad female companion did not make sense.

Ainz made his voice as reasonable and polite as possible, “It’s funny, someone else asked me something similar once, not that long ago, they had me outnumbered, and they too, were wrong. Though it did change things for me, they’re now all wishing they were dead. I’ll make you the same offer I made them.” Ainz held out an open hand, “Go to your knees, offer your lives to me, and I will make your deaths quick and painless. Or resist, and you will beg for death before sunrise.”

Zero frowned. “How about I make you a different offer. Drop your swords, surrender, and we’ll kill your woman there when we’re done with her.”

Ainz heard the offer, and…

He wasn’t quite sure he heard it properly.

“Could you repeat that?” Ainz asked with the utmost courtesy as he slowly rose from his seat.

“I said,” Zero repeated himself, “Drop your swords, surrender, and we’ll kill your woman when we’re done with her.”

Ainz looked down at Lupusregina, the beautiful battlemaid, clad in the clothing given to her by one of his dear friends, the girl he regarded as one of the children left in his care.

She looked up at him and cocked her head, “Momon, sir, did he just…?”

Ainz tapped the side of his helmet for a moment, then looked back over to Zero, “Just to clarify, did you offer to kill the child of my friend after you were all done raping her?”

Zero’s face became smug. “Trying to buy time, I’ll teach you true strength…” He said, and began activating his shamanic tattoos.

Ainz stood stock still, processing what he understood to be an acknowledgement of his question.

Then he lost all reason.

Zero lost sight of his opponent in an instant, but before his facial expression could even register confusion, he was falling over and did not know why. ‘What happened…?’ He wondered when he landed hard on his side and rolled onto his back. Out of the corner of one eye, he saw the onyx warrior sever the head of the undead king, Davarnoch, whose body began to dissolve before he knew he was killed. Edstrom had enough time to raise her blades, but they fell with a clatter before the first screams of horror could rise up. Lungs were just intaking breath to scream when Zero saw Lupu flash past overhead and slap Succulent’s head from off of his body, and shove her mouth into the jaw of Peshurian, and tore it away from his face along with part of the helmet.

It clattered on the stone beside Zero’s face, ‘He had perfect teeth, I didn’t know that.’ It was an absurd thought to have in the midst of the whirlwind of death, and then the pain hit him when he caught sight of the reason for his fall. Both of his legs had spun away from his body after being severed, and he toppled over onto the stone floor.

The smell of copper, fear, and fluids was thick in the air, even more so than the dwindling screams. Malmvist attempted a thrust, his red hair bounced and his mouth open to let out not a battle cry, but a childish cry of fear. The fear of one who knew it was futile.

Malmvist was right, the greatsword of the dark warrior slashed through him at the waist and sent his upper body spinning off to one side, leaving his lungs intact to let him scream while he lay dying.

‘If they’re dead, the rest weren’t even worth bringing.’ Zero understood, and he began to try to pull himself over to his severed legs. The smell was rising, the noise was falling as the pair tore through the ranks of his finest as if there was a time limit.

His hands touched wetness that was flowing over the floor like spilled milk. Red, he rolled over onto his belly. ‘Just get to my legs, if I can push them against my body, I can mend myself and run…’

The sound of his hand slapping into the bloodsoaked stone was all he could hear clearly, the slaughter was carrying on out of view, the redheaded woman was clearly laughing, but so far away… his slaps of hand to stone as he dragged himself, that was like the crashing of waves onto the shore by comparison to their distant melee and amusement.

Malmvist’s screams were fading too, becoming groans that were becoming lesser themselves with every passing second.

Zero was counting the inches, ‘So close… so close…’

His breathing became labored, the rough stone didn’t hurt the hardened body, but the blood and the bodies that now lay scattered about were obstacles in their own right. More than once he had to stop, grab a corpse, and use his strength for the low task of casting the lump of meat away to spare himself the time to climb over it. ‘Seconds count, go! All of you! Become a shield for me! Give up your lives so I can get my legs and run!’

He silently gave the command that not a single one of them would have obeyed if there were a chance of escape. Somehow though, his warrior instincts told him that they weren’t going anywhere but to the ground.

A broad, joyful smile of the sort that had not touched Zero’s face since boyhood, found its place when his hand at last clasped his left leg. His bloody fingers closed over the blue fabric at the calf, and he rolled himself onto his back and tried to sit up.

As he grunted at the pain, he felt a violent kick to his back that sent him tumbling end over end across the stone floor, bashing his head and arms and the stumps of legs across the surface. He lost his grip on the leg, which tumbled away and fell with a wet plop into a puddle of red.

“You threatened to hurt one of my little girls… you threatened my maid… one of the children of my dear friends…” Ainz’s wrath was beyond measure, the sea of blood he had shed, was not yet enough to slake his wrath.

Lupusregina’s heart was aglow while she watched her master slam his foot down over and over again on the crumpled form of the former crime boss. Limbs were smashed into paste, and nothing was there to hold him back.

But still, despite the warmth in her heart that she was eager to both boast of and share with her sisters when she got back to Nazarick, she couldn’t help but pout.

“Momon sir, can I play with him, just a little, before we take his head?” She asked with a demure look down into the bloody floor. She shuffled her feet and kicked aside some stray intestines, her maid outfit was quite soaked with red, and her long braids were dripping as if the color was draining from her strands in liquid form.

Ainz halted, his breathing was heavy with wrath, but he stepped back. “He is yours, Lupu. Do what you want. But by dawn, take his head, we need to present it, and the rest of the leaders corpses, to the King.”

“Course!” Lupu said and pranced over to the groaning lump of ruined muscle.

“You really screwed up, huh? Oh well. More fun for me, this one’s on you!” She giggled, and took on her werewolf form, and under Zero’s gurgled protests, choking on his own blood and wishing for a death that was far too long in coming, all he could do was wait while she ate him a little bit at a time. Until true to her word, there was nothing but a head with a face frozen in a final look of terror… right as the sun began to peak over the horizon, and shine its warming light on the carnage of cooling bodies that were strewn about the estate.

“Demiurge mentioned needing documents for his pawn to use, I’ll call for him to send servants to snatch them and make copies, you can use the estate to clean yourself off before we go.” Ainz suggested, and Lupusregina gave him an eagerly bobbing nod of her head.

“Right away, Momon!” The red haired battlemaid said with the utmost happiness and made her way to the baths.

‘A productive evening, makes for a productive morning ahead.’ Ainz said before sweeping his blade out, casting aside the remaining drops of blood that stained the dark weapon. Then he cast his spell, and sent his orders to Nazarick, ready for the next phase of their plans to begin.