Chapter Text
Re-Estize Kingdom | Forest North of the Fortress City of E-Rantel | 24th Evening of the Middle Wind Month of the year 632 by Shurshanan Reckoning
Momonga “Ainz Ooal Gown;” Guild Mistress of Ainz Ooal Gown and the Great Tomb of Nazarick
She had thought she had known pain.
That wasn’t some cocky statement made in the middle of a dramatic fight. She had known pain her entire life. Anyone outside of an arcology knew the bitter and cloying taste of it, had it carved into flesh. Whether it was the acidic rain, starvation, the air so caustic it would cause metal to rust, or the systemic sexual, physical, and mental abuse and degradation from being a woman in such a hellscape.
All of it always amounted to the same thing.
Only the richest of the rich could afford to avoid it.
And Ainz had never been rich.
And that didn’t factor in the kind of pain felt from bones being shattered by warhammers, or from flesh carved by steel and fang alike. Virtual Reality systems had been able to replicate the sensation for over a century. Crude it might have been, but so was pain. It was such a simple sensation for the mind to process. All it took was just a tiny jolt of electricity from the headset, and all manner of pain could be inflicted upon the user.
From a mere paper scratch, to death by a thousand blades.
And Yggdrasil, with its thousands of spells and skills, and all manner of monster and hellish landscape, had been quick to implement it. That update had been she had begun playing, but the years the game had still been popular, they had implemented so many more sensations. But pain had stayed the Favorite.
Of course, they included an option in the Cash Store for Players to be able to change that setting. Not enough to turn it off completely. Apparently, that was too ‘Boring,’ and ‘defeated the purpose of the feature.’ She knew several members of the guild had ended up buying the dial to have it added to their settings menu. She did too, but that was just because she was a completionist, and permanent changes were pretty rare in the Cash Store.
But her mama hadn’t raised no bitch.
Well, she had hardly raised her…But that’s besides the point!
The point is that Momonga was no coward when it came to pain! She had kept it activated, and even occasionally took pleasure from it, believing that enduring it made her superior to the other players too weak to face that challenge.
All of this to say, she was learning something about herself tonight. She was learning that she, the Supreme Being and Guild Mistress of all of Ainz Ooal Gown and the Great Tomb of Nazarick, is a fucking idiot.
Because now she wasn’t in a videogame any more. So now the pain was actually Real, and apparently Yggdrasil’s systems didn’t have shit on real life.
Agony like nothing she had ever felt speared its way through her body like lightning, rippling out from her now missing arm. Her blood felt like it was boiling, and her mouth tasted of copper as she bit her cheek to keep herself from screaming. Beyond those sensations, she was barely able to parse together anything more than scattered thoughts as her brain scrambled. Even that was barely enough to force herself to fight the muscles spasming in her chest from her frayed nervous system, and breath.
If anyone asked her later how she was able to avoid Shalltear’s next swipe of her lance, she didn’t know how she would answer. It was simply a blur, as instinct took over and forced her to dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge around the lethal attacks, even as her body screamed in agony.
In the haze between moves, she managed to catch a glimpse of Shalltear’s face, and she nearly cursed from the rapturous look the vampire had as she gazed at her severed arm don’t think about it don’t think about it don’t think about it laying in a pool of blue blood.
She couldn’t let her consume even a drop of her blood. That was like rule number one when fighting vampires! “Oh no you don’t!” She managed to grit out, lifting one of her remaining arms towards the severed limb. “Tier Four; Fireball!”
The flash of fire streaked away from her, leaving only ash behind and a smell reminiscent of frying electronics as the copper in her haemolymph (Why did she suddenly know that word?) was vaporized.
Shalltear looked at the now disintegrated limb for the length of a heartbeat, giving Ainz a second to shove the agony to the back of her mind, where it joined all of the other bottled feelings like Exhaustion, Rage, and mental locked box labelled “Repressed Memories.”
“Huh…?” Shalltear asked, breaking free of the blood-induced daze. Her features twisted with animalist rage as she realized that her meal had been stolen from her.
“It’s important to pay attention, Shalltear.” Ainz taunted, feeling slightly more centered after repressing the pain.
“Are you really lecturing me, Lady Ainz?!” She demanded with visible disbelief.
She smirked, her fangs stained blue. “That’s what you do with children, Shalltear. You teach them, even when they’re being naughty.”
Enraged, Shalltear used another skillpoint to attempt to repeat her attack, summoning a second Purifying Lance.
‘Shit, that really must have pissed her off for her to use it again so quickly.’ She thought, casting Greater Teleport to dodge the attack, and reemerge several dozen feet to the side. Not wasting the change in angle, she screamed “Maximize Magic: Reality Slash!”
Shalltear’s hateful eyes widened in shock as a tear in reality appeared in her stomach, and chaotic energy flooded out from the rip to flood into Shalltear’s body. The mana that Ainz had flooded into the spell caused the spell to tear at her insides, utterly uncaring of her armor, until she looked nearly bisected.
But she still lived, with even that sort of attack not being enough to actually kill someone like Shalltear. Instead, before Ainz could finish things with another attack, a flash of light erupted from Shalltear. Once the flash had disappeared, it was to see that the damage dealt by the attack had been completely reversed.
“Fuck!” Lady Ainz cursed. “I forgot about that!”
“Ha! Did you really forget that I could negate spells like that?” She asked, looking gleeful as she turned to gloat.
“Fucking unfair ability, really needed to be nerfed.” Ainz muttered.
“Hey, don’t say that I’m being unfair, Lady Ainz.” Shalltear mocked. “This is the power that Lord Peroroncino bestowed upon me, so maybe this is just more proof that he was stronger than you, after all.”
Rather than make her angry, or leave her disheartened, the comment only firmed her resolve to see this fight through until its end.
“He was always better than me, they all were!” She retorted, revealing the fact she had kept close to her chest since being pulled into this world. Just in case she failed, she wanted to speak that truth one last time. “But very well, if I can’t beat you with a big finishing attack, it just means I’ll have to pummel you into the dirt!” She challenged, her three remaining arms pulsing with mana as the pressure of her flaring magical might began to kick up the ash and dust around her.
Shalltear bared her fangs. “If it's a shoot out you want, then bring it!” Shalltear shouted, and once again, their spells met in the middle, shaking the very earth from the energy released.
A part of Ainz knew that she’d likely regret pushing herself as hard as she was later. If she had the opening, she’d try to down a quick healing potion to regenerate her missing limb. But from the look of things, Shalltear had realized that Ainz was trying to force that opening between spells, so she subtly changed her stance.
In a shower of blood, large bat-like wings burst through the back of Shalltear’s armor, and a veritable cloud of bats spewed forth, numerous enough to darken the sky. And they weren’t the normal small bats one would expect to find in a cave.
No, these were Elder Vampire Bats, once of Shalltear’s summons, clearly strengthened beyond normal limits by Maximize Magic. Individually they were not very strong, maybe level 15 at best. But there were a Lot of them, and from the way they started to fly between her and Shalltear, they were also serving as protective cover for any more spells.
The density of the swarm left little to no openings for a spell to make it through the defensive cover to Shalltear. And since they were individual creatures, most of her powerful attacks would not be able to get rid of the swarm, as they were typically meant for single targets. Anything stronger would take time to cast, time she didn’t have.
Clever. Very clever.
But not clever enough.
“Branching Lightning!”
A bolt of lightning burst out of her hand, and immediately arced forward into the swarm, and she watched as a single bat was struck.
The magical lightning arced around the bat’s small body. The spell she had cast wasn’t particularly strong. Like most lightning based spells in Yggdrasil, it would inflict a paralysis effect as well as some damage. If it managed to kill its victim, another bolt of electricity would arc out in an area around the corpse.
Using it in a fight against Shalltear would be suicidal. It was simply too low a level to actually get past her defenses, and the amount of damage it dealt wasn’t even worth the mana cost of casting it.
But against low level summons like these?
The bat she had struck with her spell exploded in a tiny ball of charred gore, and a halo of lightning burst forth and slammed into the nearest bats. Who then also exploded. The process continued until the entire swarm of Elder Vampire Bats were reduced to charred bits of meat on the forest floor.
Shalltear growled in response, and the blood from the summons were pulled from meaty chunks, and rose to swirl above her head, before it coated her skin in a fine layer of blood. All the cuts and burns she had previously had had disappeared beneath the bloody layer. As the wounds healed, the blood covering those injuries would flake away, leaving behind a patch of pale, unblemished skin.
But Ainz wasn’t idle during this process.
Above her head, three magical circles had formed, each facing forward. “Loose!” She cried, and activated her Greater Magical Seal.
Magical Seal was a simple spell. It allowed a caster to save a cast spell, essentially banking it for later use. While it meant the spell was cast at the cost of two spells worth of mana, it also meant that the cast spell was unaffected by any conditions placed on the caster after banking the spell.
Which meant that the spell was able to bypass Shalltear’s magical defenses against lower level magic.
The magical circles above her head flashed with light, and a barrage of magical arrows burst forth from the surface of the circles. Just under a hundred arrows streaked through the air towards Shalltear, each one trailed by an iridescent streak of light.
As Shalltear attempted to dodge the tracking arrows, Ainz activated one of her skills, “Enhance,” which upgraded the strength of an already cast spell.
So when the neutrally-charged arrows slammed into Shalltear’s back, Ainz watched as the vampire’s health bar plummeted as each of the ninety arrows pummeled her with the enhanced force of tier-ten magic.
The barrage of arrows shredded the membrane of her wings, and her health dropped down to a mere quarter of what it had been at the start of the fight. The state of her mana pool was even worse, as there was the smallest sliver of blue left by this point.
Ainz had to move quickly to take advantage of the vulnerability before-
As she moved to cast her finishing spell, Ainz saw that a ball of light had begun to grow in front of Shalltear, quickly growing to match her size. The vampire’s face wasn’t that of someone who was desperate. In fact, it was a face typically worn by those about to ruthlessly crush their opponent.
The ball of light coalesced into a clone of Shalltear. The only major visible difference was the fact that this clone wore brilliant white armor instead of Shalltear’s blood red gear.
“Einherhar…” Ainz muttered, feeling resignation creep up within her. She had been hoping to end the fight before the vampire could manage to summon her ace.
While the construct didn’t have the same vulnerabilities and strength an undead would have, and it wasn’t capable of magic, it still had the Exact same gear and abilities as Shalltear. Considering Shalltear’s gear was specialized for direct combat, it meant that now there was a second level 100 combatant on the field, one that Ainz was particularly weak too.
Fuck, she had Really been hoping she could have finished the fight before things had gotten this far.
Of course, the bad news didn’t end there. A veritable flood of summoned wolves, bats, rodents of unusual size, and more appeared around both Shalltear and the Einherjar. Just as before, none of them were particularly strong, but there were enough of them to easily become a problem on their own.
Of course, she could just use another AOE spell to handle the summons, but that wouldn’t do anything to the Einherjar. And doing so would just allow Shalltear to heal herself again using their blood.
Ainz ran through her mental list of spells to try and figure out which one had the best chance of taking out all the summons while leaving the least amount of blood behind. She couldn’t cast anything too strong, otherwise she’d risk hurting herself from the size of the attacks.
The Einherjar stepped forward, its copy of the Pippete Lance held aloft in front of it, and Ainz naturally watched it with caution, waiting to see what it would do. She was a bit surprised to see that Shalltear remained standing in place as the Einherjar advanced. Why wasn’t she trying to take advantage of her numerical advantage to try and pin her down?
…Wait a second, what was Shalltear doing?!
Stab!
Pierce! Stab! Pierce!
Ainz watched in shock as one by one, Shalltear ran each of her summoned kin through with her Pipette Lance. As she pierced one, it would dissolve into a bloody mist, which seeped into her skin, visibly healing an arrow wound, slowly refilling her health bar.
There was only way that Shalltear would know to do that, considering that friendly fire was turned off in Yggdrasil. Peroroncino would have had to have written that tactic into her programming.
And the bastard hadn’t even thought to tell her! “Ooooh Peroroncino, you better wear a cup the next time I see you…” Ainz growled.
The Einherjar would have to wait, otherwise Shalltear would just heal herself back up to full.
“Branching Lightning!” Once again, a cascading wave of electricity wiped out the remaining kin, leaving just Shalltear and the Einherjar.
Even as Shalltear continued to sluggishly heal from the remaining bloody pools, the Einherjar charged her, and Ainz used her flight to launch herself into the air to create some space between herself and the construct, taking the occasional glancing blow from its lance.
“Why are you running away, Lady Ainz?” Shalltear taunted from her place on the ground, watching with amusement as her Einherjar stubbornly pursued Ainz. “What happened to all that confidence? Don’t tell me it only lasts as long as your mana pool does?”
Ainz ignored her words, and focused her attention on the Einherjar. She needed to deal with it, and fast. It still had full use of all of Shalltear’s abilities and skills. She couldn’t risk it using any of them before she was ready.
She had to destroy it, preferably with just one attack. Any extra time spent on the construct was another for Shalltear to heal herself further and prepare to rejoin the battle.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much she could do that would take out the construct. Magic wouldn’t really work, as it had all of the same magical defenses and resistances as Shalltear, so nothing in her spell list would be able to oneshot the Einherjar. Direct combat was out as well. Even if she were to use something like “Perfect Warrior” which would allow her to use warrior skills and equip armor and different weapons, she knew that she wouldn’t stand a chance with her martial stats.
There was only one skill she had that could manage to kill a construct with all of Shalltear’s health in one attack.
She mentally braced herself, and slowed her flight, making it look like she was tired.
Shalltear’s Einherjar, being a construct with all the same instincts and thought processes as the original Shalltear, perceived her slowing as weakness, and lunged forward.
Ainz turned as if to try and block the attack with her staff, and missed.
-Squelch-
For a moment, all that Ainz could see was white, and her mind went blank. And then the pain registered despite her mind’s best attempts to block out the pain. If she had thought the pain of losing an arm was bad, this was somehow even worse.
She’d like to say that she handled it pretty well, considering she now had the construct’s lance lodged in her stomach up to the hilt.
But still, her will wasn’t so weak as to break from a bit of pain.
She swallowed her scream, and felt the acidic bile build up in her mouth, mixing with the coppery taste of her blood. She knew she wouldn’t be able to take another hit like that. So she just had one shot.
With strength she didn’t know she had, she leaned forward, bending over the lance that was still impaled in her stomach, and wrapped her hand around the back of the construct’s neck, sinking her fingers into the artificial flesh, locking it in place.
The copy of Shalltear’s face flashed with confusion.
And Ainz lunged, sinking her fangs into the gap between the Einherjar’s white helmet and breastplate.
She pulled away, and with fading strength, kicked off the construct, and plummeted down to the ground, where she had a very painful landing. Fortunately, she had landed in such a way that the lance wasn’t dislodged. She couldn’t risk bleeding out, not when she was so close to finishing the fight.
Still, her position on the ground gave her the perfect view of the construct as it gripped at its neck in simulated pain, and the false-flesh around the neck started to darken.
“What?! But I’m immune to poison!” Shalltear shouted, looking at the construct in shock.
“Who said anything about poison?” Ainz weakly smirked from her place on the ground, even as the Einherjar’s blood stained her mouth, mixing with her own blue hemolymph to leave her fangs stained purple. It dribbled down her chin, until enough gathered, and dripped to the ashen soil beneath her.
It sizzled, and a small column of chemical steam rose from the point of impact.
“Acid…” Ainz heard Shalltear mutter in realization, as above them, holes began to appear in the neck of the construct, and quickly grew as it ate away at the simulated flesh.
After a second, it lost the fight, and it dropped to the ground, much like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“…Well whatever. It did its job.” Shalltear retorted, and she slowly walked closer to Ainz, appearing in no particular rush.
~<0>~
Shalltear Bloodfallen; Floor Guardian of the First, Second, and Third Floors of the Great Tomb of Nazarick ; Current Status: Compromised
The MP and health indicators that hovered above Lady Ainz revealed that the Supreme Being was basically out of both, with only the slightest sliver remaining in both categories.
Meanwhile, Shalltear still had half her health. And unlike the Supreme Being, she wasn’t limited by her empty mana pool.
“How much do you have left in the tank, Lady Ainz? About two tier-ten casts? You have such immense magical energy that it’s hard to tell.” She asked as she patiently walked forward. She rather liked the look of Lady Ainz laying there dying on the ground, covered in her own blood.
“Yeah, around that.” Ainz was kind enough to answer, slowly pushing herself to sit up despite the hole in her stomach, which was now openly bleeding as the lance had disappeared when her Einherjar had been killed.
A quick check of her own health told her that it would take more than two spells to kill her. Even if Lady Ainz were to use another one of her Super-Tier attacks again, Shalltear was certain she could finish Lady Ainz off before the spell could go off.
So it was with a victor’s leisure that she praised her opponent. “You were brilliant. Just as your MP is almost gone, I have none left, and I’m also nearly out of my skills.“ She tightened her grip on her Pipette Lance. All she had to do was finish her off in direct combat, then the voices would stop.
“Yep, I’d say I did pretty well. You won’t hear any arguments to the contrary from me.” Ainz agreed, sounding far too confident for someone struggling to rise to their feet.
Shalltear’s forehead twitched. But she didn’t allow Ainz’s confidence to get to her. It was obvious that her words were those of a woman who had accepted her fate. So she crossed the remaining distance between them, until she was just a few feet away from the swaying Supreme Being. Even if she were to use some surprise move, Shalltear was confident that she could move faster.
“It was a glorious fight, Lady Ainz. One truly worthy of the Leader of the Supreme Beings.” She praised, and meant it with every fiber of her being. Even the whispered voices in her head seemed impressed.
She planted the tip of her Pipette Lance in the ground, and rested her hands on the pommel. “Do you have any last words, Lady Ainz? I’ll be sure to convey them to the rest of Nazarick when I bring them your severed head as a gift.”
Despite the pain from missing a limb and the hole in her torso, Lady Ainz managed to meet her gaze without hesitation, and somehow rose to her full height, towering over Shalltear’s form by two whole feet, even as blood continued to escape from the massive hole in her stomach. “…just this. Thank you Shalltear. If it wasn’t for your relentless overconfidence, if you had fought with just a bit more caution, then this fight couldn’t have gone as well as it has.”
“…Huh?” Shalltear doubted her ears. She’d heard something outrageously strange just now.
Ainz continued talking quietly, with little regard for her. “What’s important in a one on one PvP fight is knowledge of the enemy. It can affect the planning and execution of your strategy quite a bit.”
This was not what she’d been expecting her to say. She didn’t understand what Lady Ainz was saying. No, that wasn’t it. It’s that she didn’t want to. Lady Ainz just hasn’t accepted her defeat yet—no, she sensed a tough will.
Not only that, she gave off the vibes of one who was about to be victorious.
“When my friend Peroroncino was making you, he told me all sorts of stuff. He couldn’t help himself, really. He was just so proud of his greatest creation. So while I know a lot about every denizen of the Great Tomb of Nazarick, I probably know the most about you. My own creation, Pandora’s Actor, is probably the only exception.” She continued to speak, causing a chill to run down Shalltear’s spine.
“You said…you didn’t know my skills…” She hesitantly repeated.
Lady Ainz laughed, and it was cruel in its amusement. “And you believed that? It was obviously a lie!” She beamed, before smirking down at her. “You keep calling me a Supreme Being, and yet you so readily believed that I knew nothing about you. I just thought you’d get cocky if I said that. And the best part is, it actually worked!” She giggled, sounding hysterical as she giggled in amusement.
Shalltear felt as if her still heart had frozen as worry swept over her at the completely different tune that Lady Ainz was singing.
“If there happens to be a next time, I’d suggest doing a bit more research before you decide to fight the Boss. Because it seems there’s a lot you don’t know about my own abilities.” Lady Ainz advised, and something in the air between them shifted.
Whatever it was, she couldn’t tell. But she could feel it was heavy, and waiting.
“So! Let me give you a freebie for being such a good sport this evening.” Lady Ainz smirked, and Shalltear took a small step back as Lady Ainz’s skin began to glow, and she stood to her full height. Shalltear couldn’t help but stumble backwards a step, as all eight of Lady Ainz’s eyes began to burn with magical might.
“Like any good boss fight, this one has a second phase.” Shalltear felt the air shift as an ability activated, and she was shocked to see Lady Ainz’s mana bar, already on its last legs, suddenly dip to empty, only for a tiny blue sliver to reappear a second later, and it only continued to fill!
~<0>~
Mare Bello Fiore; Floor Guardian of the Sixth Floor of the Great Tomb of Nazarick
A second after Cocytus let out a gasp across their psychic connection, Mare felt the change in his own mana pool.
Like any good mage, any kind of unexpected change in his mana was alarming. Immediately, he spread out his senses as far as they would go, looking for what could possibly be causing his mana to drip away from him.
But all he could sense was the fight between Lady Ainz and Shalltear. The mana pouring off of them burned on the edges of his senses like a beacon.
Figuring that if the attack wasn’t coming from around him, it may be coming from within, he mentally dove into himself, and tracked the flow of his mana in his body.
It was a bit difficult, as his mana had a tendency to blind himself whenever he gazed within, due to the sheer amount of mana coursing through his body. It’s why he rarely did so around Nazarick. Not only was the Great Tomb positively flooded with mana, it was also saturated in the mana residue of the Forty-One Supreme Beings, let alone Lady Ainz’s, which had practically soaked into every brick of the Tomb.
And as he followed the magical pathways of his body, he found that she was the one pulling on his mana, using the bonds from his oath of loyalty to access his magic.
Now, Mare knew he wasn’t the brightest of the floor guardians. That title belonged to Mister Demiurge, with Captain Albedo a close second. But he did know magic. So when he saw that Lady Ainz was using the mana of the Floor Guardians to refill her own mana pool, everything that had happened that evening suddenly made sense.
“What? What is it, Cocytus?” Demiurge asked, his voice still as tight as it had been ever since they had learned what had happened with Shalltear.
“Lady Ainz i-is using one of her titles.” Mare answered, mentally shifting the mana within his body to make it easier for Lady Ainz to access. “She’s taking our mana to replace hers!”
“Really?!” His sister asked, much less in tune with her magic than he was.
“L-look at your mana pools. She’s using ours to supplement her own.” He explained, and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the first thing that Lady Ainz had done with the mana he had given her was to create enough room to drink a healing potion. It wasn’t enough to regrow her Missing Arm, but it at least sealed the wound in her stomach.
“...DID YOU KNOW THAT THIS WAS LADY AINZ’S PLAN, ALBEDO?” Cocytus asked, his voice still very loud even through a psychic connection.
“I did. Though I am impressed she had planned the fight so far out like this.” She smugly answered, sounding oddly out of breath.
“Control yourself, Albedo. This fight isn’t over yet.” Demiurge reprimanded, his voice an odd mix of worry and relief. “Cocytus, when you consider that factor, what are the new odds?”
“Considering Shalltear’s current state, and the fact that she has already used most of her skills…Seven to Three, in favor of our Lady.” Cocytus answered, and they all breathed a sigh of relief.
~<0>~
Momonga Ainz Ooal Gown; Guild Mistress of Ainz Ooal Gown and the Great Tomb of Nazarick
Ainz couldn’t help but groan in relief as she felt her skill activate, feeling her energy return. She hadn’t really experimented with much related to this class of hers since being isekai’d. In the safety of her mind, she could admit that it was one of two classes of hers that she was a bit hesitant to ever activate. So much had changed, and some of the changes appeared to take the item and spell descriptions very literally.
But of her Seventy class levels, ten of those levels were dedicated to those two classes. She didn’t really know much about them, aside from what their spell descriptions were. While it was usually pretty common for a large game like Yggdrasil to have a very fleshed out forum or wikipedia page dedicated to all sorts of things like classes and races in the game, as always, Yggdrasil was a unique exception. There was almost nothing out there with information on the game outside of things like tutorials for basic builds from online streamers. Sure, there might be a few blogs or posts here and there for universal things like the World Items, but the vast majority of knowledge and secrets in the game remained as such.
Her two classes were two such secrets.
While not common by any means, a fairly consistent way to unearth a secret class or race was to fight and win against one of the World Bosses. Now obviously, the devs did not design these unlocks around expecting a single player to be able to manage that sort of feat. It required the attacking party to at least be of raid size, meaning at least six players, to even be able to initiate that kind of fight anyways. But, they did plan around different factors like the amount of damage dealt, the duration of the fight, number of landed hits, that sort of thing.
And in one particular guild fight against the Celestial Lord of the Sixth Heaven, Ainz had been the main damage dealer in their raid, and had also landed the finishing blow against the remaining ichor-stained wheel of the eldritch angelic being. As a result, her avatar had been bathed in the richest form of ichor in all of the Nine Worlds.
As she had wiped the viscous golden liquid from her face, it was to see two notifications appear in front of her face.
Goddess of Magic and Eldritch.
Eldritch was a story for another day, but the Goddess of Magic notification had been accompanied by a brief summary. By being a Sorceress, a specialized arcane caster class, and having been the one to deal over 50% of the damage against a World Boss using Arcane spells along with the finishing blow, she had surpassed the limits of mortal magic. The description of the class in her menu had read, “Only Sorceresses who have striven past the mortal bounds of magic can unlock the ability to wield the streams and rivers of magic throughout the Realms.”
Of course, at the time, she had already been level 95, so she had had to respec her character a bit to have room to level up both classes into their current level 5 forms. But the effort had been worth it, one for roleplay purposes, and the other for fights exactly like this, against such resilient opponents.
Any caution she had had about the title changing her had disappeared the second that she had realized that Shalltear and Nazarick were in danger. There was no part of herself she wasn’t willing to sacrifice if it meant protecting the legacy of her friends and family.
But still, she’d really have to do something nice for her Guardians later. It was the least she could do for the loyalty they had for her, as it was their oaths that gave her the access she needed for the ability to be worth using.
It was only possible for her to manipulate the mana of those loyal to her, after all. That was how Yggdrasil had restricted the ability so that it would not be too over powered in the game. Yggdrasil did not have a way to expedite the regeneration of mana using things like potions. So players would have to rely on skills and racial abilities to speed up regeneration. But even that would not matter in combat. In combat, mana regeneration was temporarily disabled, meaning a player was forced to be economic with their mana.
But with the Goddess of Magic class, she could get around that restriction. Using one tenth of her own mana, she could temporarily bind herself to members of the Guild, and redirect their own mana pools.
So for example, she could refill Ulbert’s mana pool by pulling from Touch Me’s, as he rarely used his own mana.
Or she could refill her own.
Like with any ability, there were restrictions on it. The first was that it could only be used once every one hundred hours. So she couldn’t really go around spamming the ability to unleash magical hell upon her enemies. But that wasn’t that much of a down side. Considering everyone in the guild had been level 100, unless they were respec’ing their character, most fights didn’t really need that sort of mana strategy. It mainly came in handy during long drawn out fights, such as the siege that Nazarick had weathered all those years ago.
The second restriction was the mana cost to activate the skill. Due to the nature of the spell, it was expensive to use. Expensive enough that even at level 100, the mana cost was a bit over 10% of her full mana pool. Not 10% of the actual mana pool, but the equivalent. Meaning that if she were level 95 and she were to use the ability, it would cost over 15%.
Nothing in her spell list came close to the cost to activate this ability of hers.
The third restriction was a few casting conditions. This one wasn’t too bad. The ability wouldn’t work if there were not any ‘allies’ or ‘followers’ nearby to pull from. Hence why she had made sure to keep her loyal guardians close to the fight.
And the fourth? Well…Ainz was actually directly to blame for the fourth restriction unfortunately. She may have gone a bit crazy with power when she had first unlocked the class. But she would just like to point out that it wasn’t completely her fault! Most of the guild had egged her on when she had told them about the class, having her fight more and more of their enemies while they would stand nearby to allow her to instantly refill her mana pool while dramatically monologing.
Of course one of the players they had done that too had been close to one of the developers, and had gone running to complain about those horrible heteromorph guild and their new OP ability, begging them to nerf it.
Like little bitches.
Hence, the third restriction: Instead of an instant refill, it now had a set rate of regeneration. Now, she could spend a bit more mana to increase the rate of regeneration, so it wasn’t a complete nerf. But she was still pretty pissed off when it had been announced, since it was literally targeted at her.
So it was safe to say that the player who had complained had been a favorite target of hers to player kill whenever she ran into them. She may not be the most petty person in the guild, not by far, she was still petty enough to fit in with them.
But even with all of these restrictions, it was still a very over powered ability for her to have as a level 100 sorceress. Let alone in a guild with some of the most ruthless and roleplay-dedicated players in all of Yggdrasil.
A quick glance told her that Shalltear was a bit shocked by what was happening, her gaze locked on where her “detect mana” spell would display Ainz’s mana bar above her head, so she took the opportunity to chug a quick healing potion on herself, and she felt the skin and muscle in her torso reknit itself together until the only remaining evidence of her every having a hole in her stomach was the hole torn into her robes. It wasn’t enough to heal her arm, but at least it was no longer actively bleeding.
Where was she again?
Oh right! Dramatic Supreme Being Speech™!
“Well Shalltear, shall we-” Ainz began.
“Ahhhhh!” Shalltear screeched, interrupting Ainz’s speech by launching herself forward with her Pipette Lance raised.
“-finish things?” Ainz lamely finished, already starting to dodge to the side, using the amount of mana already restored to use Greater Teleportation to appear on the far side of the clearing.
“Rude!” She playfully chided, wagging a finger in Shalltear’s direction.
“Get back here you Spider-bitch!” She growled, turning to face her with her red eyes gleaming with vile hate, before launching herself forward, crossing the distance in a blur of motion.
Ainz blocked another attack from Shalltear’s Lance with her staff, once again knocking the far heavier weapon off course so that it missed her entirely. She used the leftover energy behind Shalltear’s attack to push off from their clashing weapons, launching herself several feet backwards.
The second she landed, she used another charge of her Weaver’s Net, taking advantage of the close distance to launch the strands towards the vampire. Several managed to land, leaving viscous cuts into the exposed undead flesh of her neck and face, unprotected by her armor. The strands of razor-sharp webbing that managed to land on her armor did little against the Legendary grade armor, not even scratching the paint.
But it didn’t have to. It was still a web.
As Shalltear’s movement was restricted from the webbing now binding her to the ground, Ainz covered her in more and more of her webbing, not giving her the time to use her Godly weapon to break free. Normally, it would be impossible for her to limit a high level NPC like Shalltear, as she had immunities to many status effects that would restrict her movement.
But when combined with her little Weaver’s Net, it was enough to nullify that escape trick.
“Graaahhh!” Shalltear screeched, attempting to wrench one of her arms free, even going so far as to lean down to bite at the spider silk that flowed around her, holding her in place. As she tore out a mouthful, Ainz reinforced the webbing. Even with her now refilling mana pool, she couldn’t be too careful. Even without her mana and a bunch of her skills, there was still a decent chance that Shalltear would emerge victorious.
It would simply depend on how she handled Ainz’s next attack. She was Ainz Ooal Gown. It was time to remind Shalltear of that little fact.
“Shalltear Bloodfallen.” She intoned, raising her voice so that Shalltear would hear her over her shrieking. “You acknowledged me as the highest ruler in all of the Great Tomb of Nazarick, as the leader of the Supreme Beings. Even as you rage against me, seek to spill my blood, you know deep in your heart that that is true.” She said to her, taking a step forward, and raised her Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown above her head.
“Due to this enduring faith, I shall grant you a quick death. Now! Witness the power of the Woman you worship, Ainz Ooal Gown! Sear this sight into your very soul!”
Shalltear glared up at her fearfully, her red eyes brimming with hate. “You think you can kill me! You’ve got nothing left that could kill me in a single blow!” She accused, managing to rip an arm free.
Better make this fast then.
“You’re right Shalltear, I don’t have anything that can kill you in a single blow.” She acknowledged. Even if she were to use one of her super-tiered spells, Shalltear had the ability to instantly recover any damage dealt from a single attack.
So she just had to deal enough damage to surpass that recovery.
She sent a mental command to her staff, and it eagerly obeyed, and they were both bathed in a bright orange light that radiated from the orange gem held in the mouth of one of the golden snakes on the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown. “But you are a fool to think that that is the limit of my power.”
It was easy for many to forget that the staff wasn’t simply a focus or a decorative weapon, considering she hadn’t used it prior to the evening she was isekai’d, and she had really only used it as a spear since then.
But it was so much more than a mere focus.
The Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown had seven gems held within the head of the staff. The guild had spent months gaining each and every one of them, as they were each an extremely rare drop. Individually, they were powerful in their own right, granting the holder access to unique spells typically restricted to specific classes with their own casting requirements. Placed into the Guild Weapon, it had created a weapon so powerful it ranked just below a World Item in strength.
To Ainz, it is the culmination of the years spent with her friends, of the many years and memories she had made with them. It is the representation of everything her Guild had done and ever stood for.
It only felt right to use it to kill Shalltear, the greatest creation of Peroroncino.
She channeled the entirety of her refilled mana, about half of her mana pool, into the Staff, and mentally triggered the spell held within the Sun Gem, crying out “Triple Maximize Extend Vermillion Nova!”
A spark flickered into existence overhead, a brilliant red light, unnatural in its coloration. Shalltear had just enough time to look up, before the spark exploded, engulfing her in a literal column of fire.
~<0>~
As she struggled to rip herself free of Lady Ainz’s webbing, caught off guard by the fact that it worked to impede her movement at all, she stuttered to a pause when she heard Lady Ainz’s shout of “Triple Maximize Extend Vermillion Nova!”
“Fuc-”
Shalltear couldn’t even finish her resigned curse before her vision was filled with fire.
The flames were so intense that she couldn’t see beyond the combusting oxygen. Not that she was really looking around. She was a bit distracted by the literally searing pain that surpassed her defenses and resistances against high tiered magic. Faintly she could feel her flesh literally begin to dissolve from the intense heat, and she activated Time Reverse, and she felt the disintegrated flesh reknit itself together.
But the flames only continued.
In her fight with Lady Ainz, the Supreme Being had already used two different words of power repeatedly throughout their fight. Maximize, which used extra mana to boost a spell to its full potential, and Triple, which casted three spells at once with matching damage.
Lady Ainz had used one or the other with nearly every spell she had cast so far, so she had been prepared for those two Words of Power to be used to enhance her spell.
Extend was the surprise.
Most of the magic that they had used in their fight so far were one off spells, where damage was dealt when it made contact with the target. Extend would have no effect on spells like that beyond extending the duration of any applied status effects.
A spell like Vermillion Nova was different.
It called down hellfire over the target, which lasted for several seconds. It was the exact type of spell that Extend was intended for, as the length of the extension depended on the amount of mana used to cast the spell.
Before her world was engulfed with fire, she had seen half of Lady Ainz’s mana bar disappear.
As the fire rained down without end, she futilely used the remaining two charges of her Time Reverse, and then she hunched over, praying to her Creator for the pain to end. It didn’t. Instead, she watched through her now lidless eyes as her hands carbonized and dissolved into ash and bloody powder.
And still, all she could see was a brilliant red light. Was this the power of the Supreme Beings? Was this the same power her Creator wielded? And he still answered to Lady Ainz?
Was that why she felt so light as she burned alive? As if she were free of some great burden?
A tear escaped her dry eyes, which instantly evaporated from her cheek. “T-Thank you Lady Ainz Ooal Gown, Greatest of the Supreme Beings…” She struggled to mutter, before everything faded away.
~<0>~
Demiurge; Guardian of the Seventh Floor of the Great Tomb of Nazarick.
Demiurge kept his gaze locked on the fight, even as his eyes watered due to the intensity of the red column of fire, which could be felt even from thousands of feet away. He would not dare look away until he was sure Shalltear was executed. His Lady had forbidden him from intervening in the fight on her behalf, so he obeyed.
The column of fire lasted for an entire two minutes, before it petered out. If the situation was different, he would praise the Supreme Being for her power for sustaining a spell like Vermillion Nova as long as she had. But he was frozen stiff, waiting for the signal that they were allowed to approach.
Across the psychic connection fashioned between them, the Floor Guardians were standing in stunned silence, only broken by the voice of their Lady cutting in. “It is done.”
Instead of responding, he dashed forward, not even bothering to dart around trees that were in the way. Instead, he knocked them to the side with a fist, and continued on his way. He barely even noticed the way the ground changed from soil to ash and sand. His gaze was instead locked on the form of Lady Ainz, who now held Shalltear’s Pipette Lance as she stood before Shalltear’s ashes.
“My Lady.” He knelt before her, on both knees as she continued to gaze at the pile of ashes. Even still, he could feel her ever present gaze upon him, which brought him incredible comfort.
“Demiurge.” She acknowledged, turning slightly. She gestured down to the pile of ashes with the only empty hand she had left. One held her staff, and two held Shalltear’s Pipette Lance, which had dropped with her death. “Collect her ashes, and store them in an urn. Despite being mindcontrolled, she is still a Floor Guardian, and should be treated with all respect.”
“It will be done, my Lady.”