Chapter 202: You Seem Eager to See Me, Momonga

Slane Theocracy.

After a soft woman's voice said "Please wait," Kyle heard nothing more from Hiyori Shiina.

She had no way of knowing whether that divine girl was still watching her or not.

But Kyle had no attention to spare for side details like that right now.

Because what Hiyori Shiina had just told her was too horrifying to swallow.

By that girl's account, the monster that had nearly wiped out their most elite unit — the Black Scripture — in a single exchange, the monster that had forced her to unleash Downfall of Castle and Country, was merely one of the upper echelon of a single faction. Not its strongest. Not even close.

In the numbers that girl had rattled off:

The vampire Shalltear Bloodfallen was Level 100, with a threat score of 54. Her direct superior, an undead named Ainz Ooal Gown, was also Level 100 — yet with the backing of assorted items, his rating climbed to a monstrous 150.

The wrinkles on Kyle's aged face twitched.

There was no question about it. Items that could inflate a person's strength at least threefold out of nothing...

As far as Kyle understood the world, only something like the [Downfall of Castle and Country] draped over her own body could do that — a World Item strong enough to rival the gods and rewrite the laws of the world itself.

And judging by the sheer combat power Shalltear had displayed back then, Ainz Ooal Gown probably held more than one such World Item in his hands.

That put him on the level of legend — of the Six Great Gods who had saved humanity, or the Eight Greed Kings who had held the world down beneath their heels...

All of it was, for now, only Hiyori Shiina's word. But the wounds Shalltear had left on her in that final counterattack were no lie.

The curse coiled through her body left no room to maneuver. Kyle could feel her life force draining away, clear as water through a cracked jar. She did not have long left.

An envoy of an outer god had descended, one who could see through everything, and that envoy was plainly hostile toward the undead faction.

As a guardian of humanity, how could she possibly sit back and watch?!

"Cough — cough..."

Kyle coughed up a mouthful of black blood and forced her failing body upright.

"Quickly... go and summon everyone in the Black Scripture."

"We must — we must move before all of this passes the point of no return!"

Meanwhile.

In the small human town closest to where Shalltear now stood, reduced to a neutral mob, Miyabi Nagumo and the others had successfully tracked down this exam's Mystery Merchant.

Just as they'd expected, this exam's Mystery Merchant was the Clockwork Wraith again.

The list of goods she hawked on the spot was quickly picked apart in detail with the [Myriad Realm Illustrated Guide].

Apart from two beginner pieces of gear thrown in as filler, and the [MC Milk] that cleared status ailments, the remaining three headline items weren't bad at all.

[Gaia Memory]: Built on the memories of Earth. Every creature, climate, and even concept that has ever existed is rendered into a Memory; transform to gain the corresponding power of that law.

[Sephira Crystal]: An origin crystal derived from the First Spirit. Usable by girls only. Upon fusion, the user gains a personal Angel, an Astral Dress, and the ability to induce Spacequakes. Lifespan is frozen; the body ceases to age.

And...

[Saint-Slaying Spear].

[Details: One of the supreme treasures of the current game world. To activate it, the user must pay the price of being completely "deleted" themselves. Once it strikes, the target is erased utterly — from soul, from data, from every trace on the timeline. Conventional resurrection methods, magic, and even revival items are all rendered useless.]

An ultimate weapon, beyond any doubt.

But what caught Miyabi Nagumo and the others' attention most was the line deliberately appended at the bottom when they scanned it with the Myriad Realm Illustrated Guide:

[Note: Within this world's framework, its power is reinforced by the laws of the world. Only the holder of another World Item may resist or match it.]

"In other words, once we're out of this world, whether this thing still has that forced-deletion effect is anyone's guess."

Miyabi Nagumo frowned, turning it over in his mind.

Going by the description of Ainz Ooal Gown, the man held World Items of his own.

And now that he knew they existed, there was no chance he'd leave them at home.

So the actual function of this [Saint-Slaying Spear] was less a weapon than a deterrent — a countermeasure to keep one of their own from being forcibly caught up in the enemy's World Item.

A one-for-one trade that might not even let the user resurrect inside this world afterward — and it still cost item points equivalent to 150 S Points to buy.

Chicken ribs, in a word.

No flavor when you eat them, but a waste to throw away.

And yet they couldn't afford to skip it.

As players who had gone this far matching wits and strength against otherworldly monsters using Black Sphere items, they understood better than anyone how terrifying high-tier gear became in a real fight.

"Tch... I hate paying sucker prices, but we'd better have it on hand."

Once the exchange was complete, Miyabi Nagumo turned to Akane Tachibana and Fūka Kiryūin beside him and began laying out tactics.

"Hiyori Shiina may have leaked the fact that we exist to Ainz Ooal Gown. But since Chairman Tsukishiro's already been taken alive, and Ainz has every kind of bizarre magic under the sun, he clearly isn't short on ways to read a memory."

"The mechanics of the Black Sphere exam, and our existence along with it — he was always going to find out."

"By comparison," Nagumo went on, his voice easing, "Hiyori Shiina can hide inside the Mirror World and feed us intel and enemy positions. Calling her half a map hack wouldn't be an exaggeration."

"And she found the human faction that controlled Shalltear, on top of that."

"Anyone who can forcibly seize control of a Level 100 Shalltear is holding something like a World Item. The Theocracy has a trump card."

The corner of Nagumo's mouth curled. "If the item that controlled Shalltear still exists, and we can use it to point her straight back at her own boss — that'd be a rather nice bit of help."

With that thought, Miyabi Nagumo immediately tried to call out to Hiyori Shiina and explain his plan.

At the same time, he turned and gave Akane Tachibana her orders. "Senpai, could you summon some Dark Shadow Legion ninjas? Coordinate with Hiyori Shiina — we're going to bring the user of [Downfall of Castle and Country] over to our side directly."

And in that same window of time.

The Great Tomb of Nazarick. The Throne Room.

Ainz Ooal Gown sat upon the throne of the Supreme Being.

Not long ago, he had detected Shalltear's betrayal, and had grown certain it was the brainwashing effect of a World Item.

To get a read on this enemy hiding in the dark — and to trace the source of that abrupt, mysterious voice from earlier — Ainz had ordered Sebas to bring the strange human they'd just captured before him.

The man wore a crisply pressed suit and called himself "Tokinari Tsukishiro."

He carried himself with the polish of a politician far beyond the ordinary. But in the face of Nazarick's absolute violence, Tokinari Tsukishiro was no different from an ant on the roadside.

"Let me have a look at your memories... outsider."

Ainz raised the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown in his hand and invoked the Super-Tier Magic [Memory Manipulation].

The spell devoured MP and carried a degree of unpredictability, so Ainz hadn't intended to use it lightly. But against an unknown faction capable of controlling Shalltear, he wasn't about to be stingy with a little mana.

[Memory Manipulation] did not lay everything bare at a glance. It was more like a slow replay of the subject's lived experience.

At first, all Ainz saw was an organization called the "White Room," and a parade of cruel experiments and political infighting.

'Just internal power struggles and a training institution inside a human nation... quite a step up from my old home, honestly?'

Ainz weighed it privately, entirely unmoved.

In the real world he'd been a corporate wage slave beaten down by a black company, after all. This particular flavor of human rot was nothing new to him.

At most it confirmed one piece of intelligence: aside from YGGDRASIL, people from other worlds had crossed over too.

But that dismissiveness did not last long.

Very soon, in the long river of Tsukishiro's memories, he turned up the existence of the "Black Sphere."

'Chosen by a Black Sphere... to go save the world?'

Ainz murmured the words and kept watching.

But Tokinari Tsukishiro was not a Qualified One student. Even having read the students' collected reports, what he actually knew was severely limited.

Just as Ainz began to wonder whether this was nothing but a peripheral, expendable member — whether he'd burned precious MP for nothing —

He saw it.

He saw the Godzilla that had rampaged through the streets of Tokyo, spitting purple Atomic Breath, leveling half a city with a single blast.

He saw the boys and girls who had wielded every manner of unthinkable magic and technology to flash-freeze a beast that even Super-Tier Magic might not have punched through.

And he saw a swarm of shadow soldiers dragging that frozen Godzilla sculpture bodily into another world...

Ainz Ooal Gown's slackened attention snapped taut again.

Unfortunately, the information in Tokinari Tsukishiro's memory about that group was scant, and it ended there.

Just as Ainz, faintly disappointed, prepared to end the spell —

It happened.

His vision blurred in an instant.

The shattered ruins of Tokyo in the memory sloughed away like a mirror struck with a hammer, and the surroundings were forcibly overwritten.

He found himself standing inside a modern Japanese-style room.

At its center hovered an enormous, fathomlessly dark sphere.

There was even the faint smell in the air of tatami that had gone moldy from years without sunlight.

A storm broke loose inside Ainz Ooal Gown.

The undead's passive [Forced Calm] triggered, so no trace of fear showed in his bearing.

But after immediately sweeping the surrounding area with detection magic, Ainz was absolutely certain.

He was still seated on the throne in Nazarick.

And according to everything Tokinari Tsukishiro had lived through, the man had never once been genuinely pulled into this Black Sphere Space — which meant he could never have laid eyes on the Black Sphere itself.

Which meant...

While he was probing another's memories, GANTZ had not merely evaded being traced back — it had ridden the mana link of his own [Memory Manipulation] in reverse and hacked straight into his mental world?!

That was beyond unsettling.

Ainz braced as though facing an army.

The surface of the black sphere rippled with light, and text appeared alongside a cold mechanical voice:

[Ainz Ooal Gown.]

[Or should I say... Momonga. Suzuki Satoru.]

[You seem eager to meet me?]

!!

A tremor ran through Ainz Ooal Gown's entire frame.

'Impossible! How could it possibly know my real name?!'

Terror surged up like a tide. Without his race's innate trait, he would have lost his composure outright.

'Calm. Calm down!'

'I'm still inside the Great Tomb... is this a mental-type spell invading my consciousness in reverse?'

'Or some forced summoning from a dimension even higher than a World Item?!'

Ainz gripped the Guild Staff white-knuckle tight.

He began preloading high-tier magic at once.

[Greater All-Attribute Resistance]. [Greater Magic Shield]. [Time Stop]...

Every card he could play stood ready, primed for a fight to the death.

But the moment before he moved.

The Black Sphere simply flickered once, in silence.

Snap—

Every preparation he'd made was forcibly cancelled.

The mold-scented room burst apart like foam.

Ainz Ooal Gown jolted back to himself and found the familiar splendor of the Great Tomb restored around him — except that his hands were still locked in a defensive opening stance.

He caught the concerned looks Albedo, Cocytus and the others were sending up from the foot of the stairs.

Ainz tapped the staff against the floor, feigning composure, and asked, "Demiurge. Just now... what exactly did I do?"

Demiurge pushed up his gleaming glasses and bowed slightly, respectfully, as he explained.

"Lord Ainz, when you first cast the Super-Tier Magic [Memory Manipulation] on this human, there was no issue at all."

"But after you murmured something under your breath, the flame of your soul suddenly wavered. As though... as though you had been struck by some form of mental interference magic."

At those words, Albedo's exquisite face twisted in an instant.

She rounded on Tokinari Tsukishiro, sprawled on the floor, her black wings trembling with rage behind her.

"A lowly creature like this... daring to interfere with Lord Ainz! Please hand this human over to me, Lord Ainz! I will show him the most exquisite, most agonizing torment Nazarick has to offer!"

"Stand down, Albedo. He's an insignificant small fry. Handing him to you would be no loss."

Ainz Ooal Gown lifted the staff and struck it once against the red carpet.

"But right now, we have something far more important to face."

"What happened was not mental interference from him. The existence standing behind him rode that memory link and forced its way into my mind."

"That — that's impossible!?" Albedo cried out, both hands flying to cover her mouth, disbelief written across her face. "Lord Ainz is the Supreme Being!"

Demiurge stroked his sharp chin, a glint of shrewd calculation in his eyes. "To breach Lord Ainz's mind without a sound... was it accomplished with the aid of a World Item, Lord Ainz?"

"That much I can't yet confirm. But one thing is beyond doubt..."

Ainz Ooal Gown shook his head, committing to nothing, his tone graver than it had ever been.

"From what I saw, they are a pack of lunatics who will use any means necessary to complete their objective. Because if they fail that objective, they die as well."

"To live, they have no choice but to fight."

"These 'players' — or prisoners, perhaps — are far more dangerous than any enemy we have imagined so far."

Ainz rose to his feet, looking down at the Guardians below, and set the tone.

"For now, I'm afraid we must prepare ourselves to lose Shalltear entirely."

"Lord Ainz..." Albedo dropped to one knee at once, her eyes burning with fervor. "Set your mind at ease! Even without Shalltear, I will serve as your sharpest blade and cut down every enemy who dares approach!"

Looking at these NPCs and their unwavering loyalty to him, Ainz Ooal Gown let out a quiet sigh where no one could hear it.

"If it were up to me, I wouldn't lose a single one of you."

"But to keep Shalltear's tragedy from repeating, and to guard against the enemy's schemes, defense has to come first. Shortly, I will go to the Treasury and distribute one World Item to each of you for your own protection."

"Now..."

Ainz paused sharply.

The pressure of the Undead King swept through the entire hall.

"Hear my command!"

"The Great Tomb of Nazarick will enter Level One combat alert on every floor! Seal every entrance and exit!"

"Without my permission, no one is to sortie under any circumstances!"

Seeing this, Demiurge grasped the severity of the situation as well.

He bowed his head low alongside Albedo and the rest, and their voices came as one:

"By your will, Supreme One!"

____

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