Pandora’s Actor, one of the three great geniuses of Nazarick, sat down at nearby table as soon as he was alone again. Next to the table there was a shelf full of books. ‘A lot can be learned about a people by what they write.’ He mused and took one up at random.

“The Beggar Prince…” He read the title and flipped through the pages inside, immediately grateful he’d taken a few hours to learn the written language of the region. ‘They have a hideous written language, like scribbled spiderwebs. The Supreme Beings had a much prettier one.’ He judged, and went through the text. The fact that misfortune and nobility were featured so prominently within it was telling as to the state of affairs. ‘Clearly it found an audience here.’ Pandora’s Actor thought and after flipping through the pages, picked up another.

He immediately regretted it. ‘Why would a human be so lustful for a lizardwoman maid?! I’m visiting a nation of perverts.’

He immediately set the book back on the shelf, and a moment later a knock prevented him from reaching for another.

“Come in!” Pandora’s Actor invited, and a beautiful young woman cracked the door and slipped within. He knew the woman immediately. ‘Princess Renner.’

She was wearing a flowing blue dress that formed a bell shape below her waist, white ruffles ran up the long sleeves and curved down under her small, supple bosom. Her hair hung loose down behind her head and bounced lightly with every step she took. When she was a few feet away, she hiked up her dress, went down to her knees, and went prostrate before him as if Pandora’s Actor were her master.

“Your Majesty, Lord Demiurge informed me of your coming. I’m ready to accept your orders, all I ask is a life with my puppy, for that, I will work to give my entire kingdom into your power.” Renner said with breathless hope. She could feel the power crackling around the monster of a being in front of her.

Though Renner had no sense for magic, she had one advantage that no talent could replicate. Supreme intellect. Lord Demiurge was unbeatable, Lord Ainz was his master. There was no way to survive but to surrender completely. ‘Father, my brothers, they’re such fools. They would fight on principle and preserve nothing at all.’ She suppressed the contempt for them that she felt rising up, lest it be mistaken in his direction if it was noticed at all.

Pandora’s Actor made a simple gesture with his hand, “Raise your head, servant.” He ordered and played his father’s part. When she obeyed, he pressed her with a question. “Who will come to me first? The nobles, or the Royals?”

“The nobles won’t at all, master. I made sure that I mocked the use of mere magic as parlor tricks and let the maids overhear that the Scripture was overrated. They already hold Gazef in contempt so they won’t give weight to his rescue. Only the Marquis Raeven, my father, and my brother Zanac are likely visitors.”

“Well done, servant, well done. Are there no nobles you want to preserve at all?” Pandora’s Actor asked, he leaned forward and removed his mask, showing a chiseled human face somewhat older than middle years, but full of dignity and with sharp, piercing eyes that threatened to look into Renner’s husk of a soul.

She felt herself pierced by the dread gaze, but there was only one answer. “None, though I don’t dislike Zanac, he is nice to my puppy. But Barbro… if you could make him suffer, I would be grateful.”

“Your oldest brother?” Pandora’s Actor asked rhetorically.

She nodded with wild, rapid eagerness. “Years ago, when I was little. Barbro insulted me, and my puppy attacked him to protect me. So he had my puppy beaten up. I. Hate. Him.” Renner hissed with her beautiful blue eyes narrowed to slits, “Make him pay, make him suffer, make him scream, bleed, and cry for mercy. No one touches my Climb, my Climb, nobody mocks my precious, precious Climb…” Renner’s hushed tones were accompanied by a body that shook with rage that had not abated even slightly with the passage of time, and it only stopped when Pandora’s Actor spoke.

“You already set him on his course to this, didn’t you, servant?” It was a rhetorical question, but she answered it.

Renner’s cruel smile seemed oddly well fitted to her radiant face, her ocean blue eyes glazed over and the smile took up only one side, her head cocked a little, and a little laugh preceded her words. “Yes, master. Barbro left a few days ago with two thousand soldiers. He’ll do what he does best… behave like a stupid brute, make everybody hate him, and then…”

“Good. Very good, servant. As promised by my servant, Demiurge, you will have a life with your puppy. It remains to be seen if that life is on the throne of Re-Estize, or a little cottage somewhere far from power. But you don’t care about which, do you?” Pandora’s Actor asked, and she violently shook her head in denial.

“If I have my Climb… I don’t care about anything else, master.” Renner replied with fanatical devotion to her dreams. “Take my kingdom, make it yours, make it ashes, make it golden, only give me my Climb as I can never have him now… and I am your servant forever.” She lowered herself again and prostrated before the magic caster who defied reality, and pressed her forehead to the top of his shoe.

As if to reassure her, she felt the wave of power crash down on her, it hit her back almost like a mountain, the entire room seemed to rumble and shake, and yet the Golden Princess felt no fear, the brief shock of pain was gone almost immediately, and the power was more like the comforting press of a weighted blanket. ‘He is a god, and this is his covenant, his promise to me.’ She understood the wordless display, and it was all she could do not to weep with joy when she was allowed to rise again and depart.

Ainz sat on the horse and looked over the walls of the capital. “Momon, is something wrong?” Lupusregina asked, tilting her head back to look up at him. His helmet was off for the moment, and that kept the radiant smile on the werewolf battlemaid.

“Nothing.” Ainz answered, but the truth was, it was still surreal. ‘So damned military… so ‘real’.’ The easiest thing to accept had been the world at large not being a miserable poisoned mess, however staring at the great high walls of the capital of Re-Estize, he could not help but be reminded of the dark shadow that was cast over everything. The ever present threat of war, destruction, and worse.

Along the way, he made a point of passing through the route taken by the former adventuring team ‘The Swords of Darkness’ and found just what he expected. A village empty of life. The houses were already inhabited by animals, the bloody dirt where Philip had been beaten to death had turned to dust, and blown away before Ainz’ coming. However, the emptiness was a stark reminder that terror ruled the lives of the peasant class.

The gray wall, which Ainz was now craning his neck back so he could see the top, with its armored soldiers patrolling and stationary soldiers on the watch, was just another element of the same thing. The converse to the abandoned village, or the burnt out husk of homes that still lingered in Carne when half the village had been exterminated.

‘This world is on the same path as mine, centuries behind, perhaps millenia, but it’s on the same road…’ He recognized what no one else could, the horrors that lay ahead. That was as unreal, as it was unthinkable. ‘If I were still undead, what would that mean to me? Nothing? Or would I think the same as I do now?’ That in and of itself was troubling, the extremes of emotion were kept under tight reign, but he still felt ‘himself’ in a strange sort of way.

“Momon?” Lupusregina asked again, her voice small and uncertain, the radiant smile replaced by the biting of her lower lip and a deceptively delicate looking hand that reached from where she sat on her high, reddish brown horse, to touch his forearm just above his hands.

He tightened his grip on the reins of his dark horse and clenched his jaw. ‘I’ve worried her. Oops.’ He turned his eyes down toward her and away from the wall, and gave her a reassuring little smile. “It’s fine, I was just thinking of something personal.”

Lupusregina removed her hand from his forearm and tapped her nose twice in rapid succession with her pointer finger, and tilted her head to give him a more pleasant smile again.

Ainz wasn’t quite sure what to make of the gesture, and eager to keep any awkwardness at bay, he gave a crisp command, “Come on, let’s go.” He then lightly tapped the spurs against the horse, and it cantered toward the gate.

The gate to the city was wide enough for twelve horses to pass abreast, however the guard at the city gate took a very practical approach to order and set up four ‘fence’ segments that took the number of entries down from a potential of twelve, to four. The wooden posts sat in holes and had long horizontal wooden poles shoved through from a front pole to a back pole, and so kept people from jumping ranks.

However, a ‘VIP’ line appeared to be an option, an underutilized line that had a sign in front of it. On the sign was painted a gold coin, and below the coin, an adamantite plate. “We could use that one, couldn’t we, Momon?” Lupusregina asked, pointing it out.

“Yes, but Axel has a reputation to maintain. So we won’t set ourselves above others.” Ainz replied, and got into line behind twenty or thirty other peasants, most of whom entered empty handed, and a few of which had cheap packs or rolls slung over their backs. The special line was short, and those who entered passed off a gold coin to a trio of guards who simply slipped it into a box, wrote down a name and amount, and let them pass.

It took some time to reach the front, and when they did, the guards, a somewhat lax group, immediately stiffened. Ainz already stood a head and a half taller than most, and his thick onyx shaded armor gave him even greater height, then atop the high black percheron, he may as well have been a giant among dwarves.

Lupusregina tried hard not to laugh, her long red hair hung down in waving braids that bounced as she cantered her horse beside her master. “Team Axel, adamantite adventurers. I am Momon, and this,” he gestured to Lupusregina at his left hand, “is my partner, Lupu.”

She shot out her hand and made a V for victory with her fore and middle fingers, and gave them a winning smile while she imagined peeling their skin.

Their mouths opened and closed without words for several seconds until Ainz asked, “Is there a problem?” As if there might have been.

“Ah, no… no! Of course not, ah, Sir Momon! Yes, at once, please enjoy the city!” The guard who obliviously blocked the way squeaked out the string of sentences in rapid succession and stood aside.

“Which way to the adventurer’s guild here, I should check in with my colleagues in Re-Estize as a courtesy at least.” Ainz asked, placing his helmet on his head again.

The guard shifted his feet and scratched his cheek with rapid, almost frantic motions as he struggled for an answer. “Ah, merchant district… not sure ‘exactly’ where but it’s probably in the square…”

“Thank you.” Ainz answered, and spurred his horse forward again.

Lupusregina did the same a hair later, and they were within. “What do you think of this city?” Ainz asked while he looked around at the squalor.

Lupusregina put her two fingers up to her nose and closed them over her nostrils. “It smells. The city needs a bath.”

It needed far more than that. Half rotted barrels sat beside the few sturdy buildings, shunted into alleys, and they were overflowing with garbage that was picked through by dirty, underfed children and adults alike. The hollow, sunken eyes of the waif thin sticks that passed for humans looked at him as if he were some strange creature, while others looked at him with envy or hatred. Others looked at him like he might have something worth stealing, but with the twin greatswords on his back and with his considerable size, those chose to give him a wide berth and withdrew into the shadows of their alleys.

“Lupu, what are your thoughts?” Ainz asked while they rounded a corner where a once intact fountain had so long ago ceased flowing that it had now become a dump for trash. Broken barrels, moldy sacks, broken bottles, and people who had either passed out drunk, died, or both were all lumped in what had held the vanished water.

Lupu watched a dagger wielding man with a cruel snarl on his pock marked patchy bearded face withdraw under her withering gaze of contempt, when he was gone, she looked up over at her lord and answered. “Carne had toys I was starting to like. This place doesn’t.”

From the smiling sadist who wanted nothing more than to see the suffering of those she actually liked, it was a withering criticism.

Ainz wasn’t about to argue with the sentiment. ‘A people in decline. They see no future for themselves and, for now at least, they’re not wrong. Still, they do have abundant human resources here.’

The city did improve as they went farther and farther into the interior. Eventually reaching the merchant district. The buildings were in far better shape, and the hurried shuffle of those eager to be out of sight gave way to people taking a more leisurely approach to life. Beards became neatly trimmed, clothing clean, the smell abated even if it didn’t vanish completely. Near the center of the merchant district there sat, true to the statement of the guard, a large fountain in the midst of an open square with intact streets around it.

A quick question from a passerby who stared openly at the adamantite plates Ainz and Lupusregina wore, and they found the adventurer’s guild.