Title: Humanoid
Rating: M
Summary: YGGDRASIL is gone; the New World beckons. When Momonga is forced to become permanently undead, he knows he must become humanoid again if he wants to retain his sanity. As a Supreme Being, this isn't a difficult task. New body, flesh-and-blood? Easy.
Just one problem. His Floor Guardians don't recognise him. And they have one mode for intruders: attack.
Tags: OP Ainz, Sane Albedo, Floor Guardian Loyalty, Albedo's last line of code never existed
Disclaimer: I don't own Overlord.
-00-
Ainz stared into the mirror and hated what he saw. He'd heard of these feelings before in other people, however he doubted they had the problem he did. All those people were still human after all, not giant skeleton monsters.
He pulled an item from his pocket and held it up to the light, pincered between two long bone fingers. It's item name appeared above it before dissipating.
[Orb of Transmutation]
This is it. This is my last chance to make things right.
It's not that being a skeleton wasn't cool. It's just wasn't right. It's not how things should be. When the clock had hit 00:00, the world shifted indescribably. In a DMMO-RPG, you always felt a little disconnected to your body, as if you're a wraith within the skin pushing outwards and controlling your avatar. When the clock hit, it was if the wraith had infused into the bones, the universe had shifted, everything becoming a little sharper, a little more permanent.
That wraith, the part of the player that was indescribably human, was literally almost consumed by the being that was Ainz Ooal Gown. Just a tiny part remained. Niggling in the back of his mind, staying his hand when he went to kill indecisively and wipe lesser beings from the face of the earth. That was what Ainz Ooal Gown wanted to do. But not him.
Not Suzuki Satoru.
For that was who he was, no matter how much he pretended otherwise. He was human, at least emotion-wise. He was not a lich. He was human, and if he didn't do something soon, even the little wiggling worm of humanity left over would be destroyed in the darkness.
For a moment, he hesitated. Could he really give this up? This freedom from the confines of a living body. Then he decided.
"[Orb of Transmutation]," he said, "Activate." He had pre-coded his desired body into the Orb.
At first, nothing happened. Ainz shook the Orb a little and felt a little trill of frustration. That should have been his first clue. Undead didn't feel frustration.
Then a bright light exploded from the Orb and washed over his giant skeleton.
Then.
Agonising pain. Pain in every pore.
The sound of two giant boulders smashing together. The world seemed to get bigger around him, the already large bed behind him becoming huge. Then he realised the world was not expanding, just that he was shrinking. The gigantic skeleton bones shrunk and morphed to a human skeleton.
His body felt as it had been set on fire as skin exploded from the bones, layer after layer, red, then pink, then finally a tanned brown. One final layer stretched over his skin like a thin layer of mucus before solidifying. Freckles over his nose and shoulders. Purely cosmetic, he thought.
When he looked at himself in the mirror, he almost didn't believe his eyes (he hadn't even had eyes before). He looked about Albedo's height, and brown, and human.
Human.
A long moment passed.
HUMAN?
Nonono. He hadn't coded the orb for human. What was he going to –
A splitting headache almost cracked his skull open. It felt like two bones were breaking out the back of his skull. He felt them tear through skin, slither like a snake past his ears, one on either side, and gnarl together at the hairline in the middle of his forehead. Antlers. A crown of antlers.
Appropriate for the ruler of Nazarick.
He realised he must have subconsciously been thinking of Albedo when he'd coded his new body. He hoped his new appendages wouldn't send Albedo into too much of a ruckus.
Either way, he was insanely glad the antlers had appeared. The guild had been made as a haven for non-human players. To change himself into a human would be a disgrace, not only to the guild's ideals, but also to the memories of his departed friends. He'd still needed a form that made him feel alive, though.
Then the effects of having a flesh-and-blood body caught up to him all at once. He suddenly felt dizzy. The room began to spin a little. His stomach made a gurgling noise. Ainz pressed a hand to his abdomen. Having been a lich for some days now, he'd forgotten what hunger felt like. Now his stomach felt like it was eating itself, searing away its own lining with acid.
He needed food. Immediately.
He realised with a jolt that the Guardians and inhabitants of the Great Tomb of Nazarick wouldn't recognise him in this form. They'd assume he was an intruder and challenge him on sight, and some were more lenient than others. If anyone, Ainz hoped it would be Sebas – at least he would give Ainz a chance to explain.
Probably.
Anyone else… Ainz felt his stomach twist at the thought of meeting Demiurge in a dark alley or hallway.
If he was going to sate his growling stomach, he would first need to prove his identity. In his defence, they'd designed Nazarick quite a few years ago and, being undead, he'd had never had a reason to take note of where the kitchens or eating places were.
What he did know was the location of the Throne Room, the room that held the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown. The Staff only he could wield. That was how would prove his identity. He only cursed himself for not thinking to bring the Staff with him to his chambers.
He felt a crash of emotion he thought he'd never get to feel again. Regret. He waited for the overwhelming feeling to be inhibited by his undead nature, braced himself for his emotions to be forced into shutdown, then realised. There would be no magic inhibition. It was up to him to calm himself now.
How very human.
How very weak, just like the rest of him.
He needed that staff.
-00-
Ainz didn't even attempt the hallway outside his door. That would be ludicrous. He would run into someone almost immediately, and without a solid grasp of the powers he had in this form, he wouldn't stand a chance. No matter how cute the Pleiades looked in costume, they were still a deadly force.
[Gate], he said. The fabric of reality tore before him and he stepped through.
The kaleidoscope of colours quickly solidified into the Throne Room. Orientating himself quickly, he looked up toward the giant gnarled throne, and next to it, the golden Staff hovering in the air.
Thank goodness no one had…
A door at the side of the room squeaked open ominously and one of his Guardians emerged. Seemingly noticing a living presence, and a foreign one at that, he whirled on Ainz, a look of shock passing over his face. Then his long iron tail sharpened into a point at the end.
Demiurge smiled as his eyes took on killing intent.
-00-
"Demiurge," said Aniz, "Hang on."
[Dimensional Lock], said Demiurge.
Ainz felt his heart jump to his throat. [Gate], he said frantically. Nothing happened. [Dimensional Lock] had shut down teleportation magic in the room. There was no escape now.
"I don't know how you got this far, vile intruder, but as a Floor Guardian of Nazarick it will be my honour to obliterate you." Two giant balls of fire burst to life over Demiurge's head.
Ainz felt himself sweat for the first time in days, since he'd entered Yggdrasil for the last time. "Demiurge, wait a minute."
Demiurge clicked a finger and one of the balls of flame turned searing blue. Ainz knew if that hit him he would die. Instantly. He didn't know how to shield in this body yet. He cursed himself for not feeling out his new powers before leaving his quarters.
"If you attack me, you'll regret it," said Ainz. This made Demiurge stop for a moment and chuckle.
"How quaint. You think you pose a threat to me." Demiurge's smile made Ainz shiver.
"Not because I'll attack you back!" said Ainz, "You'll regret it because you'll hate yourself after!"
Demiurge snapped his finger again and the second ball of flame turned blue. "You think I'd feel remorse for a snivelling human… or whatever you are. Go." The last word had been directed at the fireball, as it shot away from Demiurge straight for Ainz's face.
Ainz yelled out and leaped away. In perhaps the first lucky thing that had happened that day, his new body seemed to have fantastic agility. He jumped out of reach of the fireball and rolled on the ground, feeling the heat singe the back of his head. He hadn't yet pushed himself up when the other came barrelling toward him.
He threw his hands up over his head and closed his eyes. He would not scream. Miraculously, the fire curved over and around his body, as if he'd suddenly been covered with a clear dome.
The fire dissipated and Demiurge was standing shocked. Then his features twisted ferally and he screeched and leapt toward Ainz, iron tail arched over his head like a scorpion. Demiurge's hands slammed into the marble floor on either side of Ainz's body hard enough to make cracks in the floor. Purple liquid appeared on his tail tip.
Ainz knew what was going to happen. He had time to say one thing and one thing only before he died.
"I'm Momonga!" He deserved to know, though perhaps it would have been kinder to not tell him. Before either of them could stop it, the poison-tipped tail arced over Demiurges head in a flash of silver and imbedded itself in Ainz's chest.
Ainz made a choking noise as blackness descended on his vision, and he felt his life-force zap into nothingness.
-00-
Demiurge stood up from the creature he'd disposed of and wiped his hands on his trousers. "Filthy," he muttered to himself. His mind was already running through how this human-thing could have gotten this far into Nazarick.
Then something strange happened. The body started glowing. A deep black viscous glow that wavered around it, then exploded outward into the room.
It was if the lights had been cut. The room was suddenly dim and black smog wafted around the floors. Demiurge was unnerved. He'd seen this happen before – the glowing body, the hovering blackness. This was what happened when a Supreme Being died.
Demiurge tried to calm himself. Of course this thing wasn't a Supreme Being. For one, there was only Supreme Being left, and he was hard to miss, being a giant skeleton. Doubt clouded Demiurge's mind like darkness clouded the floor. If this thing somehow was a Supreme Being, that would explain how they'd gotten this far. But there was no way he would be strong enough to kill one - it would have put up more of a fight.
Demiurge cocked his head to the side. Confusion compounded confusion. He didn't understand.
That's when the screaming began.
The [Message] channels that connected the Guardians had suddenly been thrown open and a horrible cacophony of screams and squeals echoed through Demiurge's head. He clamped his hands over his ears and dropped to his knees. The channels wouldn't close.
"Demiurge!" came Albedo's frantic voice into his head, "What did you do! Why has Ainz-sama's lifeforce disappeared?"
Demiurge's eyes widened. Now that he checked, Albedo was right. He couldn't sense Ainz-sama anymore. Anywhere. He would have noticed sooner if not for the black smog taking his attention away from the situation.
[Message], said Demiurge, "Albedo…" his voice trailed off.
He was an intelligent being, and the pieces connected, and they connected horribly. He didn't want to believe it. He couldn't believe it. Because that would mean Ainz-sama was dead, and he had…
No.
It couldn't be. His mind refused to believe he had committed the greatest sin known to their kind.
You'll regret it because you'll hate yourself after, he had said.
No, these pieces did not connect. He would not allow him too. A piece of smoke wisped over his shoulder.
"Demiurge!" came Albedo's voice again, "What is it? What's going on?"
I am Momonga. Demiurge had hardly been listening. Surely he hadn't said that. He had to have misheard. He would not believe…
Sebas's voice came down the [Message] channel. "Demiurge, the Pleiades are shaken. What exactly is happening?"
"Demiurge!" came Aura's voice.
"Demiurge!" Shalltear.
"D-Demiurge!" Mare
Demiurge spoke. "I think you should all come to the Throne Room."
"What?" said Albdeo, "Demiurge, why?"
Demiurge took a deep breath. "I think I killed Ainz-sama."
-00-
A few minutes had passed. The Guardians had quietened and decided to convene in the Throne Room.
Demiurge jerked his head around as the Throne Room door was slammed open, revealing the silhouette of Albedo, wings flared. Her eyes tracked over the room, taking in the mist coating the floor, the dimmed lights, then landed on Demiurge.
"Demiurge, what is going on? This can't be what it looks like."
"I –"
Albedo was already brushing past Demiurge to inspect the body. At the same moment, Shalltear appeared in the doorway and began to float over the floor towards them, parasol over her shoulder.
"My my," said Shalltear on her way to the corpse, "What dreadful mist. Is this your doing, Demiurge?"
"No, I think –"
"Hey hey! Demiurge!" Aura bounced into the room, waving animatedly, "Have you found Ainz-sama yet? And what was that joke about killing him? That wasn't very funny, you know!"
Mare peeked out from behind his sister, clutching his staff. "Y-yes, I agree!"
Albedo was running several spells on the corpse. "All of you, come over here!" They all huddled around the supine figure.
[Post-Death Stat Check], said Albedo. A rectangular box sprung to life above the human-thing's head.
| ****Supreme Being**** |
| Name: Ainz Ooal Gown |
| Alias: Momonga |
| True Name: Unable to be Determined |
| Status: Deceased |
| Alignment: Extreme Evil (-500) |
| Form: Humanoid |
| Racial Level: Unable to be Determined |
| Previous Form(s): Elder Lich |
Demiurge's tail drooped to the floor. So it was true. He wondered why he felt the sudden urge to rip out his own black heart. The Guardians in the room were frozen on the spot, not understanding, reading the words over and over.
"This is Ainz-sama," said Albedo, "but in another form."
"D-deceased," said Mare, "That means Ainz-sama is… is…"
"Yes," said Aura, ever straightforward, "Ainz-sama is dead."
Shalltear turned red eyes on Demiurge. "Yes," she said sweetly, "and Demiurge killed him."
The Guardians skipped despair and denial and jumped straight to vengeance. Fangs were suddenly visible in Shalltear's mouth. She drew her weapon. Demiurge felt numb. He would die now and he would deserve it. It was only fair.
Albedo's eyes were hard as a black bardiche materialised in her hands. Demiurge wouldn't object. Sure, he hadn't known, but if he'd listened a moment longer, if he hadn't been so hasty…
He embraced the black self-loathing bubbling up in his chest. Not even death could absolve him of this. He could never be absolved of this, in this life or the next. Never. Demiurge dropped to his knees.
Aura drew her beast-tamer's whip, which set itself on fire.
Mare's voice lost its stutter. It was still soft, though. "How could you." Purple sparks shot threateningly from the tip of his staff.
Not another word was uttered. Shalltear and Albedo drew their weapons above their heads. Aura flicked her whip backwards. Mare's staff developed a purple glowing orb at it's tip.
Demiurge closed his eyes and waited. All at once, the weapons came down.
-00-
A/N: Hey everyone! Thanks for reading!
Don't worry, Ainz isn't permanently deceased. A pesky setback like death won't stop a Supreme Being. He's just taking his sweet time regenerating. He'll be back in the next chapter - very very hungry.
Reviews are greatly appreciated!