Chapter Ten

  Each village brought a little more information than before, and aside from haggling, Albedo took to ‘drawing’ little bits and pieces of what information people fed them. Some referred to him as only a gray bearded demon. Others said he had the head of a lamb, or a dog, or that he carried many knives in his hands…

  But by the time the fourth village came and went, lying well at their backs, Albedo held out her sketchpad with confidence about three things. Her finger tapped on each feature one by one.

  “We know he had goat legs because of that hoofprint. We figured that the ‘holding knives without holding them’ meant that they were on the tips of their fingers. We can say that he had a tophat and horns, the ‘circle on the front’ might be the timepiece he had on the brim. What do you say?”

  Demiurge accepted her drawing, it showed only the features they were sure of. The hat, horns, bladed gloves, and the hooves with the goat legs. Much of the rest was still too up in the air.

  “It could be. I want to believe it is. But Lord Ainz said we must be cautious… but then… I think we’ve been cautious enough that we can now visit one of the cities he went to, gather more witnesses. And then after that, if you don’t object, we can begin to pursue where exactly he went. Those might even know. But that might be hoping for too much.” He then hastily handed the sketch back to her.

  Albedo accepted it back into her hand and pulled it away, the wagon rocked back and forth underneath them, unsurprisingly, they had substantial profit from their ventures.

  ‘Not that this was the point, but it would have shamed our creators and Nazarick itself if we were ever taken advantage of on a deal!’ Demiurge reasoned, and watched the mule plod onward.

  Albedo, however, had her mind elsewhere. ‘Demiurge may say he’s following Lord Ainz’s will… but I see through him even if nobody else would. I’m sure it’s Ulbert, and if I’m sure, someone of his caliber surely recognizes it too.’ She suppressed the urge to shake her head and sigh, after multiple villages and eye witnesses, multiple descriptions of how he fought… ‘It’s true I would like a larger example of his magic, but some of what we have heard could be interpreted as his hellfire blood spell, or the summoning of hellhounds, and we don’t have any example of his supertier World Disaster magic yet. But even so? At this point are we not just delaying the inevitable to avoid the heartache of error? If they’re not here, they’re not here, there is no sense in drawing it out!’

  Albedo wanted to shout at Demiurge by now, for all their common ground and camaraderie, of all the members of Nazarick, he took his own creator’s absence the hardest.

  ‘I’m unique in that I’m glad mine is gone, I want him back only so I can kill him myself… designing me as a mere slut… Lord Ainz has no idea how much I treasure that he changed me to love only him… I suppose I could be called lucky, that I alone don’t mourn my creator’s absence.’ She tried to suppress her smile as the wagon rolled on, and she indulged herself in a fantasy she’d revisited many times.

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  ‘My creator, threatening my master, calling upon me to come to his aid to overthrow the true ruler… he would trust me, his creation, never knowing that I am bound to love only one man… the look on his face when I tear out his throat and let him fall to the floor at the feet of I and Lord Momonga, and never again to hear the guild’s name, only his true identity, Lord Momonga, master of all the world! Then he would take me, right then, right there, in the wet spreading blood of a god, I would have my first time and give him true heirs…’

  There were many variations on that daydream, but it always ended in ways that made Albedo glad she had her own private quarters. “This would be far easier if he’d simply given his name to survivors.” Albedo groused to break the silence.

  “A supreme being is under no obligation to reveal their names to these lower life forms.” Demiurge responded without looking over at his companion.

  “So you do believe it is him?” Albedo asked pointedly.

  “I would say the odds are better than seventy percent. But remember our master has still not identified the ones to brainwash Shalltear, it could just as easily be that this is a trap by our hidden enemies.” Demiurge pointed out, “They may have questioned her before leaving her where they did, and if they did so, then they would certainly know enough about the Supreme Beings to impersonate one, at least through rumors if not in person.”

  It was a fair point, ‘The things we don’t know are so much more potentially dangerous than the things we do…’ On that much, the two geniuses agreed.

  That common ground was enough to shake off Albedo’s nerves all the way to the first city liberated by the mysterious ‘Game Changer’. The evidence of his power was first seen in the landscape, scorched leaves burned in places, trees with holes and burned lines marked by acid, many branches were either gone or outright bald from a dissolving downpour, and the ground around the trees was covered in dead, blackened grass.

  The smell of fetid, rotted meat was thick in the air where countless creatures, unable to hide from the deluge, had died, and in such numbers that those who survived had not yet had enough time to gorge themselves on all the corpses.

  Beneath many a tree lay one or more such animals, making the dead and barren trees appear to be like a sea of twisted, hellish tombstones for unburied bodies.

  The walls of the city, once gray, and clean, were now streaked with black marks from whatever horror had rained down from the clouds above, the gate was still a shattered wreck, though the rubble was cleared away, the fact that the Draconic Kingdom was now ‘undermanned’ meant that there’d been little more done than moving the rubble aside and building the frame for a replacement. The shattered pieces of the outer wall however, hadn’t even had that much done yet.

  Demiurge thought back to his attack on the wall of the Holy Kingdom. The three clawed strike… ‘Just like his. There is no chance that this is a hidden enemy. It can’t be. If someone else around us had that kind of power they would have either opposed or contacted Jaldabaoth, Momon, or His Majesty. Or there would have been some whisper of power like that before now…’

  Even so.

  Even despite seeing the great ruin of the wall and the gate and the streaks of acidic downpour as they descended on the road to the city… despite it all…

  A sliver of doubt remained.

  ‘I could be wrong.’ Demiurge acknowledged, his demonic heart however, did not acknowledge what his demonic mind warned him of.

  Acknowledging the truth and knowing the truth were very different things, and so he sought more proof.

  “We should get a closer look, talk to witnesses, then perhaps we can be sure.” Demiurge said as if daring Albedo to disagree.

  She inclined her head to him. “Fine. What is one more day now?” She asked rhetorically.

  And with that, they rode not for the gate, but the outer wall.