The Dark Warrior (15 page)

“Ahh, is this love of mine doomed, then?”

“Mm, no matter how you look at it, I’m pretty sure it was doomed from the get-go,” Ninya said, laughing as he recalled Nabe’s reactions to Lukrut’s advances.

“C’mon, man! For now I’m just gonna keep push-push-pushin’. That’s what it takes! And I mean, she’s super gorgeous! If I can get her to return even a tiny fraction of my love, I’ll be able to count myself among the winners in life.”

“She
is
extremely beautiful, but…” Dyne was half through his sentence, wearing an austere expression, when he noticed the sour look on Nfirea’s face. “Is something wrong, Nfirea?”

“Oh, nah. Er, it’s not a big deal…”

“Hmm?” Ninya’s and Lukrut’s faces broke into indecent grins. “You don’t have a thing for Nabe, do you?”

“No!” Nfirea quickly replied, practically shouting.

Peter sensed that there was something they shouldn’t discuss behind that overreaction. “Lukrut, don’t be rude. Think a little before opening your mouth.” Lukrut apologized sincerely.

Nfirea didn’t seem to know how to act in response. “No, uh, it’s not that. I’m just a little anxious. …Do you think Momon is really that popular with women?”

“Well, I dunno about looks-wise, but with that strength, there’s a good chance. And with that armor and those swords, he looks rich, too…”

“Ahhh…” Nfirea was looking slightly glummer.

Peter addressed him like an attentive big brother would, looking out for his little bro. “Did something happen?”

Nfirea opened and closed his mouth several times. Nobody intervened. There was no reason to force him to say something he didn’t want to say. But finally Nfirea made up his mind and opened his guarded mouth. “Mm, there’s someone in Carne who…I’d be upset if she fell for Momon…” Reading between the lines, the Swords of Darkness all smiled warmly.

“Okay, little guy. Let your big bro show you how it’s do—” Peter stabbed Lukrut with a fist, and there was a strange slumping sound. Keeping only the corners of their eyes on the passed-out ranger, everyone had something to say to Nfirea, who was still in shock.

In the glow of the fire, he broke into a smile.

Meanwhile…

A forehead was pierced clear through the steel helmet protecting it. The body shuddered once and then collapsed to the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut. The clatter of its metal armor echoed in the darkness.

Another man wanted to hope that someone might hear the racket and come running, but no one was crazy enough to come to a neighborhood of E-Rantel even the slum dwellers had abandoned. That’s why they were meeting their requester here in the first place.

He glared at the woman in front of him but couldn’t disguise that it was just a brave front. After watching her kill his three comrades in quick succession, his spirit was broken.

The woman whipped the stiletto she’d used to kill the others, spattering the ground with blood and restoring the blade’s cold gleam.

“Nye-he-he-he! Looks like you’re the only one left!” She revealed all her teeth in a big, carnivorous smile.

“Wh-why are you doing this?” He knew it was a stupid thing to ask, but this was all out of the blue to him.

The men were adventurer guild dropouts known simply as
workers
. Sometimes also called
dusk workers
, they would take on jobs that were borderline criminal or even actual crimes. So while there wasn’t a total lack of reasons people would have something against them, they hadn’t even done any jobs in this city yet, and they’d had no recollection of ever meeting this woman.

“Why am I doing
this
? Oh, I just thought I’d like to have you.”

He blinked a few times in confusion and asked, “What do you mean?”

“The grandson of that famous apothecary is out, so I need someone to keep watch and tell me when he gets back. You think I wanna do a pain-in-the-ass job like that myself?”

“Why not just make that as a request, then? Wasn’t that the point?” They were workers who would take on illegal jobs, so he had no idea why this woman had to kill him.

“Nah, nah, nah. Ya might betray me!”

“We don’t betray anybody as long as we get paid!”

“Oh? Well, then let’s say this: I adore killing people! It’s my love, my passion!” She laughed and added, “Oh, and torture, too!”

The man’s face screwed up in disbelief at this
thing
on which common sense had no effect. “What…the hell? Why are you so insane?!”

“Why?” The woman’s expression suddenly changed, along with the tone of her voice. Her nonsensical attitude of just a moment before vanished. “Oh, I dunno… Maybe because it used to be my job to kill people? Or because I was always compared to my brilliant big brother? Or because our parents gave all their love to him? Or because I got abused when I was weak? Or because my friend died right in front of me? Or because I screwed up, got caught, and was tortured for days? Red-hot choke pears really hurt, ya know!” There was something childish about her then, but a moment later the adult had returned, grinning. “Just kidding! Those were all lies, lies, lies! None of that ever happened to me! But who cares, anyway? Even if you knew my past, it wouldn’t change anything. Just a lot of junk happened, and here I am. But man, I’m really glad Khaj did the research for me, and I could contact you right away. It would have taken forever if I had to start from finding someone to work with!”

The woman let go of her stiletto. Pulled by gravity, the knife’s tip sank into the earth far enough that it didn’t fall over. That abnormal sharpness implied that it was made of not steel but some other metal.

“It’s orichalcum! More specifically, orichalcum-coated mythril. That’s not so common, ya know.”

The rareness of her weapon spoke to her strength. In other words, the man realized he didn’t stand a chance.

“Okay, next! If I give you too big of an injury, ya won’t be any use to me… If only Khaj would use his faith magic so no matter how much I hurt ya we could heal ya back up… I’d be able to torture you forever! Wouldn’t that be great?”

Chattering on about such horrible things, the woman took out another
stiletto from under her robe. “This should work… Sorry if I miss…,” the woman apologized, sticking out her tongue. Superficially, she
was
cute, but her true tainted nature was showing.

The man turned and started to run. Behind him, the woman yelped in what sounded like feigned surprise. He didn’t stop to pay attention, just ran desperately through the darkness, employing the sense of direction he was so proud of. But he heard a jangling from behind him and the woman’s icy voice, sounding like she wasn’t even breaking a sweat: “Too slow!” And then a white-hot pain shot through his shoulder. As he realized he’d been stabbed with the stiletto, a haze washed over his brain.

Mind control…
The man fought frantically, but the haze hanging over his consciousness was stronger.

After a short time, he heard the voice of his
new friend
behind him. “Heyyy. Are you all right? The wound isn’t too deep, is it?”

“No, I’m fine.” He turned around to smile at his friend.

“Oh, good!” The girl smiled a horrifying grin back at him.

The party set out as the sun was coming up and proceeded along the road hidden in the grass.

“Carne is just a bit farther.”

Nfirea was the only one who had been to Carne before (well, Ainz had, too, but he was hiding the fact), so everyone nodded at this information. They didn’t, however, do anything else besides walk along silently. Nfirea looked like he couldn’t take it anymore.

Morale was extremely bad.
I messed up
, Ainz thought, hidden beneath his helmet. Ninya glanced over at him now and then. It bothered him, but it was his own fault, so he couldn’t say anything.

In other words, they were still feeling the aftereffects of what he’d said last night. Ninya apologized again at breakfast, so forgiving him would have ended it; he just couldn’t get out the words. He sensed that he was being petty, but he just couldn’t let it go.

I guess I have to deal with this kind of thing even as an undead…

Since becoming an undead, stronger emotions were suppressed, but weaker ones didn’t go anywhere. In other words, he was experiencing a slow-burning anger. That showed how important his old friends were to him. That part of it was a good feeling, but at the same time, he knew things couldn’t go on like they were.

He just wasn’t motivated to take the initiative and change the mood. It was a feeling that was difficult to describe; he knew he was acting like an ornery child and got annoyed at himself for being such a brat.

The only person who seemed unaffected by the bad morale was Narberal, walking next to Ainz—she was pleased as punch that Lukrut couldn’t bother her. Everyone else just kept marching silently along at a fairly fast pace until they reached a place near Carne.

“So, I was thinking… It’s such a nice view and all… Maybe we didn’t need to form ranks…” Lukrut spoke, perhaps just to say something. Next to them was the dense forest, so it was a little puzzling what he meant by “nice view.” And besides, not dropping one’s guard just because of a nice view was one of the fundamentals of escort duty, so they were right to be in ranks.

However, it was clear that this time the reason they were marching silently in ranks wasn’t the result of adventurer precaution.

“It’s important to stay on guard! Let’s keep—er, let’s hurry on to the village,” Peter said.

“Exactly! It’s crucial to keep a constant watch so we don’t get caught off guard,” Dyne said, but his expression made it clear he didn’t think that was true.

Ninya tossed out, “Plus, a dragon might fly over from super far away and suddenly attack us.”

Lukrut bit right away. “Where’d that stupid idea come from? Use your brain, Ninya—could that really happen?”

“That would never happen. The last time a dragon was in the vicinity of E-Rantel was a long time ago, but that was just some made-up folktale; it said there was a dragon who could control natural disasters. You don’t hear stories of dragon sightings nowadays. Oh, wait. There is that one about a bunch of frost dragons living in the Azerlisia Mountains. Pretty far up north, though, I think.”

So there were dragons here a long time ago? I heard from the Sunlit Scripture captives that dragons were the strongest race on the continent…

Dragons could also be counted among the most powerful races in
Yggdrasil
. They had high physical attack and defense and seemingly inexhaustible health, plus countless special abilities and spells. They were very nearly overpowered.

Among
Yggdrasil
’s monsters, named monsters, area bosses, and so on were the superpowerful World Enemies. These were balance-breaking monsters that were hard for even a legion (six teams of up to six players each) to beat.

One was the final boss of the so-so official story, Devourer of the Nine Worlds. Then there were the Eight Dragons, the Seven Sin Lords, the Ten Angels of the Sephirot, and then with the big update, “The Fall of Valkyria,” the Sixth Master Angel and the Five Transcendent Ones were added for a total of thirty-two. The fact that dragons were one of the races represented there showed that the developers must have liked them.

If dragons still exist, then I should be careful. In
Yggdrasil
, dragons’ lives don’t end… Even just one could have more power than we can even imagine.

“Hmm, would you happen to know the name of that dragon that could control natural disasters?” Ainz mumbled, not quite bold enough to jump casually into a conversation with someone he was having a fight with. But it seemed like they’d heard him fine, and Ninya whipped around to face him.

It was as if they were a couple who’d had an argument, and he was looking for any possible chance to make up. (At least, that’s how Ainz felt when he compared the situation to conversations of couples he’d seen in coffeehouses.)

Still, after Ainz spoke to him, Ninya was looking a little more cheerful, and the rest of the Swords of Darkness and Nfirea brightened up a bit, too. The only one who seemed unchanged was Narberal—or rather, there wasn’t the slightest indication that the awkward mood had registered for her at all.