Chapter Forty-Two

  “Roh!” Stomp. “Rogh!” Stomp. “Ragh!” Stomp. The various roars were accompanied by a uniform stomping of feet shook the ground as the army of the beastmen approached. They waved their arms in the air to make themselves seem taller, tilted their chins up, bared their teeth, and for those who used weapons rather than bare claws, they crashed their weapons against their shields. True to Demiurge’s predictions, there were ample mages, not to mention crossbows and heavy field weapons such as onagers and ballistae and a number that Ainz didn’t recognize.

  “Two hundred and fifty thousand at a guess.” Ulbert suggested, “Honestly I was expecting something else, not this, at least.”

  “They probably slew some of their own to use as surplus food, father.” Demiurge suggested, “These are middle aged, mostly. But there are none very old, nor do they have a great many young in the prime warrior age.”

  “Would the beastmen do that?” Ulbert asked, and Ainz never envied his friend more.

  ‘I wonder what it’s like to not need to pretend to be all knowing all the time…’ Ainz thought, then sighed and rolled with the punch saying... “Demiurge is likely correct. But if you really do intend to rescue a large number of humans out of their ranches, it will not be enough to save their country.”

  “They are in good spirits at least, father.” Pandora’s Actor said, emphasizing his use of the word without German. “They will put up a fight.” He pointed down at the horde with a dramatic pose and tilted his hat down, his cloak fluttering in the wind he said, “And they will die!”

  The beastmen infantry were shouting taunts and urges to ‘come down and fight fairly…’

  “They are asking for it… so… let’s give it to them.” Ulbert chuckled and with that the four began to drift to the ground, as if they couldn’t believe their enemy was coming down to fight ‘fairly’ the beastmen army halted. Though in a moment that Ainz reluctantly gave them credit for, those manning the siege weapons began loading everything as soon as they stopped.

  ‘Shalltear, open the gate. Summon Nazarick…’ Ainz gave the order over message, and her answer came quickly while the beastmen leveled taunts and jeers and what could only have been rude gestures toward the four.

  But all that stopped when the vortex opened and Cocytus, Sebas, Albedo in full battle kit, Shalltear in full armor with her Spuit Lance, the Pleiades, the Nazarick Old Guarders, Aura and Mare, all filed out.

  They knelt before the Sorcerer King and Albedo raised aloft the banner of Ainz Ooal Gown.

  “Something is missing.” Ainz said at once, but he didn’t need to say more, because a moment later, Demiurge withdrew the emblem of Ulbert Alain Odle, and said…

  “May I?” He looked to Lord Ainz, and with that, Ainz grabbed the pole Albedo held so proudly and high, then tilted it down with a slow, steady pull, and attached Ulbert’s banner to the same one, right below the symbol of the guild itself. Right where it had always been. Right where it belonged.

  The beastmen, confused by the curious act, had not given the order to charge nor to fire, the tension hung like butter above a knife’s edge, ready to fall and split itself at any moment.

  “Would you give the order, Ainz?” Ulbert said with a grandiose bow and a wave toward the horde.

  Ainz shook his head, “No. This is for you, you give the order… just let me give the speech.”

  Ulbert chuckled, “Us chuunibyous have got to stick together.”

  “I suppose so.” Ainz remarked and turned to face his assembled force.

  “This is the first battle you have fought together since the great raid on the tomb, you fought well then, fight well now. The glory of Nazarick, and all the supreme beings you serve, is on the line! Fight like it, and teach them never again to come into the lands of a Supreme One!”

  The undead bashed their shields and swords together, the Guardians and the Pleiades raised up their voices as one, “For Nazarick!” They cried. “For the Supreme Beings!” They roared loud enough that the beastmen heard… but could not understand…

  Ulbert couldn’t resist, caught up in the moment, he let his voice echo over the beastmen. “I am the Demon Lord Ulbert Alain Odle, he who will be master of the Draconic Empire, sworn brother and friend of Ainz Ooal Gown, master of the Sorcerous Empire, you are in my land. Those who turn their backs and walk away within one minute… will live. Those who will not…” A wicked thought came to mind, “Will feed my humans!”

  If they were confused before, the beastmen were filled with fury now, the very notion of being food for their food incensed them as their roars and bellows raged.

  CZ cocked her rifle, and Lupusregina Beta’s wereform took shape…

  And Lord Ulbert Alain Odle, said only…

  “Attack!”

  It was as if it were an order for both sides to act. The beastmen’s feet were thunder from below, pounding the ground, the rocks and spears of siege weapons could have been more accurate, but they added to the maelstrom, stones the size of small buildings crashed down and were batted aside like flies by a horse’s tail.

  “You dare attack my love?! My Lord?! You lower life forms!” Albedo screamed like a banshee, her voice ripping through the souls of beastmen, as her bardiche shattered their bones. The ground erupted where she struck, bearmen, lionmen, it didn’t matter, they flew away as lumps of meat and fur and bone and… debris.

  Aura rode on Hamsuke’s back, her tail lashing out and shattering heads as Aura called up more and more of her summonable pets.

  Mare on the far right wing slowed his jog as the beastmen loomed, “I-I-I have to kill you now.” He said, and pierced the ground with his staff… the world opened up and out from where he stood, a gash in the ground so deep that it was too dark to see the bottom, a plunge into the abyss that might as well have been to the core of the world itself.

  Ulbert’s claws wrought havoc, the beastmen were so slow that it was just… absurd. Their fur and flesh were like butter to a hot blade, and though by sheer numbers they could hit him… their blows were gentle raindrops and resulted in their own limbs breaking from the attempt, they fell back screaming in pain as their own desire to inflict pain, became their own agony in turn.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Ainz, for his part, reveled in reliving the old days, his skeletal hands drained the life away from those who came too close… or simply ripped through their bodies like they were not there. The wet, sticky fluid could not linger on his flawless garments, no more than it could on the magic armor worn by Pandora’s Actor who chose to disguise himself as Momon.

  Shalltear had given in to the throws of her blood frenzy, her wild glee and flashing lance were made worse by the intermittent cackles and the noise of her jaws closing on a fresh victim… and there were so many… so very… very many.

  CZ’s spellgun took the role of sniper rifle, she targeted officers, leaders in command of anyone, terror was the silent death she brought to those behind the lines as they fell with seemingly no rhyme or reason.

  Near her side, the lightning spell of Narberal Gamma ripped through a long line, burning beastmen from inside out and straight through to the end, slaying a hundred at a time and crippling more who could only die under the trampling of their comrades.

  Lupusregina however, like Solution, treated it as a sport. It was a game to see who could rend the deepest, loudest, most anguished scream from their nearest victims. Solution experimented with the dissolving of nerves while leaving the body otherwise intact until her slime found its way to the brain. While Lupusregina sought the most vulnerable and sensitive places on beastmen, and brought them to her teeth and claws, ripping out more or less flesh as she chose and devouring it before the eyes of the dying.

  Entoma however, seemed to have it in her head to savor snacks for later, her webs engulfed body after body, and she paused only to bite through them, inducing a paralysis that would make them into compliant meals later.

  Magic rained down around Sebas as he became the target of their ire, clad as he was in his formal butler’s outfit, he was an obvious target. He also pushed deep into their lines, and became a target for fireballs, magic arrows, and anything they could hurl his way.

  For all the good it did them, their magic did as much harm to their own forces as to the ground, and nothing at all to the Butler of Steel, his feet and hands exploded heads and bodies like a needle popped balloons…

  The only real luck the beastmen had was on the Nazarick Old Guarders, among the weaker defenders of Nazarick, they were exerting a fearsome toll as they advanced on the living with their enchanted weapons… but they could be hurt. Beastmen acted twenty to one, and piled on the undead to batter them into submission…

  But the tide rolled onward, from the twin flashing blades of ‘Momon’ or Demiurge’s orders for beastmen to fight each other to the death, the result was the same.

  Cocytus used two blades to cut down his foes, his slow, heavy, inexorable steps compressed broken bodies into the ground and created depressions that filled with little pools of blood and loose, floating patches of fur.

  There was never a question about the outcome.

  Not from the moment it began.

  [Dimensional Lock] Demiurge cast his spell, preventing the magic casters from fleeing as they no doubt intended, and rising to the sky with his demonic wings, he watched as they struggled again and again to cast the spell that would save themselves and condemn their infantry to dying alone…

  ‘Even the humans often fought to the death in the Holy Kingdom…’ To his disgust, Demiurge’s view of humans went up a notch, while his view of beastmen went down as they struggled to abandon their comrades.

  It was one thing to predict it.

  But another entirely to see it. [Attack the ones you were going to abandon] He gave the order, and the magic casters of the Beastmen Kingdom, two thousand in number, perhaps all they had, with confusion evident on faces as wildly variant as hyenamen and batmen, attacked their own side in the backs with whatever spells they could still muster… forcing the infantry to slaughter their own to the last man.

  [Fire on your own men] Demiurge gave the order to the archers and siege weapon crews… and again the massacre redoubled as beastmen were forced to slaughter beastmen, never knowing why their own side was betraying them as they were.

  The sun made its slow travels across the sky and the beastmen numbers continued to decline. Two hundred thousand. One hundred and seventy-five thousand. One hundred thousand…

  The field of green became one of red and brown as blood and dirt mingled together in a hundred thousand holes. “Enough!” Ulbert bellowed as the last huddled thousand of the beastmen rallied together, barely a few companies worth of broken, bedraggled soldiers, prepared to meet their ends with something resembling desperation, courage, or both.

  The host of Nazarick slowed and stopped as Ainz held his hands up and out in accordance with his companion’s wishes.

  Ulbert stepped forward, his hands up while Beastmen eyes darted left and right, looking for a trick or a trap that did not exist.

  “You alone may go. You are witnesses to what happened here today. How a handful destroyed you all. If ever a beastmen sets foot in the lands of the Draconic Empire or in the lands of the Sorcerous Empire, the last of your kingdom will be erased. Go, tell the other nine cities from here to the northern border, that all who live there are to flee. I will not give chase. I am satisfied with this.”

  Standing as he was amidst the broken bodies of beastmen, it was less reassuring than it might otherwise have been.

  The crouching, huddled, ruined creatures cast their eyes toward one male in their midst.

  He growled and snapped his jaws at his fellows, but stepped forward from among them.

  “How do we convince them… what assurances do we have that you speak the truth?” The tigerman asked, his whiskers were singed off, his arm was shattered, clearly bitten off, the stump bandaged and the missing part lost and trampled who knew where. Two of his teeth were missing, and his once glorious fur was reduced to a ruin of its former self, smeared with blood and mud, that he could speak plainly at all was nothing less than a miracle.

  Ulbert pointed to their rear camp. “You have wagons. Cut off the right hands or gouge out the right eyes of your friends, throw these into a wagon, and take them to all the places from here to where I’ve said. If that doesn’t convince your brethren to run, they die, I will give no more warnings.” Ulbert then crossed his arms and looked down his nose at them.

  “As for assurances. The word of Ulbert Alain Odle is stronger than adamantite. Get to work, you may take hands or eyes from this field, the carts you need to haul those remains, and what supplies you need to feed yourselves as you go. But everything else here belongs to me now. And I am a greedy, greedy Demon Lord.” He said with a laugh and spun around so that his cloak fluttered in the wind like a proper demon’s should to return to proclaim their victory.

  “It will probably take a while for them to finish, but I think we’re done.” Ulbert held out his hand to clasp Ainz’s own. “It was as much fun as it was in the old days. It smells worse, though.” He said as he wrinkled his goatish nose a little.

  “Yes, it was, and yes, it does.” Ainz chuckled until his emotional suppressor forced his sense of enjoyment down to his usual neutrality. “Settle the rest alongside your son. You should have time together, I and the rest of Nazarick will go home, and when you are ready, return and… bring your future wife with you. We can have a ‘family dinner’.”

  “That, my friend, I would take great pleasure in. Demiurge, Draudillon, and myself will be there with bells on, just as soon as we finish up what we need to here, and in the Draconic Kingdom.” Ulbert promised, and as Ainz and the rest of Nazarick departed, leaving Ulbert and Demiurge alone…

  The heart of the Archdevil Guardian sang, while across the field, broken beastmen could only weep for the fall of their nation.