Disclaimer: I do not own Overlord I just like it
Sorry this chapter took so long to publish...but you try working on seven stories while also attending a blind/virtual date once a week. Originally this chapter was suppose to be shorter, I'm the kind of guy who puts quality over quantity, but when I realized how it needs a certain character to be in it to live up to its preference...I had to elongate it. Thank you all and have a swell day.
I_I_I_I
By the time Brain, Brita and Hynrich made it to the action the tricorn had already fled, but little did two of the three knew the tricorn was still around having its nose stroke by the dark elf with her company.
Brain who didn't know the beast was still around but was always on his guard hopped off the caravan and slicked his way towards the trio of baffled men and woman of different sides.
"What is going on around here?" He asked the sinewy man who once had cockiness in him but now was just a statue with his arms and legs quivering. "Did you see anything big and terrifying here?"
Hearing those two words caused his eye to twitch as he smacked his lips together in confusion. He focused his attention to the person around him, maybe the white cladded armored knight or the skimpily dressed lady had answers he wanted to know, he could see them now very close together, the lady having a garrote close to the knight's neck, even his shiny cowl couldn't save him from her razor sharp weapon.
"I was doing a superb job before that beast came trotting over here! Escort me back to town—just outside so I can sneak in without you finding our base—and this man lives to fight another day!"
Brita moved past Hynrich trying not to bump her elbow into his arm when she approached Brain.
"That was really stupid but very brave thing you did there." She said. "Who taught you that move?"
"I usually learned my skills on my own but while trying to perfect Gazef's move training under Vesture Kloff Di Laufen...I figured I could learn to use the God Flash to attack and pock my enemy no matter which side they go, I'll just veer towards them with my instincts." Even when he was very confident in himself he never saw a girl smile at him the way Brita did after just explaining minor facts. 'Being more humble just keeps getting better each day.'
"Thank you for your help."
The paladin rushed past them right after he thanked them. Brain and Brita found that to be interesting so they followed him all the way past the long pond under the bridge back into the forest where dead paladins were. He closed his eyes and incanted a spell:
"Greater Strength! Greater Greater Strength! Nullification from Vile Substances Tier Three!"
The paladin could now carry two bodies each with only one hand holding a body. He carried the bodies all the way back to the cart and tossed them inside, Hynrich hiding a face afoul of seeing human carcasses so close to him.
He was intrepid to Lord Dack enough to not make a tumultaneous scene with only being in the back with two dead humans and their foetid stench, but, then, the white cladded human tossed two more dead ones with the already two dead ones making it a quaternary of things he loathed.
The paladin walked off, not even bothering to ask the man with the hood on in the back if it was okay to put two dead people in the back when he asked that very same question to the humans with bags under their eyes and messy mop hair.
"It is prudent that I take these bodies back to Fyphen, not to bury or resurrect them...they have expiated themselves helping my lord and they must be reborn to honor their sacrifice."
When he said "reborn" it was a word that could also mean resurrection if his face was the face of someone without a worry for their lives; he looked like he was holding back mourning his friends.
Needless to say the two human adventurer's were okay not only with him tagging along but also hauling his dead friends with them.
In just one day, long from how Brita was teaching Brain archery and in turn he was teaching her how to swing a sword, a sort of closeness between them drawing them closer to one another, and Hynrich seeing it unlike all their other emotions since it reminded him of him and his wife, they reached the village.
It looked pretty much the same as Re:Estrize only without that big building the king and his children resided in. Most of the towns they've traversed through were a straight path with lots of wilderness so it was burring moving down a winding gravel path all so they could make it into the entrance of town. The whole way through Brita pinched two fingers on Brain's tight shirt.
He only noticed what she were doing when the bumping stopped. His carriage pulled over giving him ample time to caress his fingers under her arm before she eased her fingers off his shirt.
"How did you know?" The paladin asked. Both of them were looking with tight lips at the building they were parked in; it seemed to be a church using "believers" money to construct it to the size of a mansion. "You've brought me to the monastery. How can I repay you?"
Brain stroked his chin before an idea came to him:
"Is there anyone here who knows anything about the Dark Typhon here?"
Behind him there was a growling sound mainly the sound a rabid direwolf makes. It was the bandit lady from back there angry she was brought all this way without being asked a single question about her guild; not to mention when someone finally asked a question it was asked to someone else.
The paladin pointed right. "If you turn there, step out of your carriage and walk nine steps you might find the guild master here. She is in her sixties so she was around when their base was operational; maybe she knows...farewell."
The last thing he did for them was bend one of his fingers while putting it against one of his extended fingers. It looked like a P and it was a farewell gesture for a paladin.
Brain, trying to be polite but was astute enough not to mimic someone else's gesture simply jounced his boot, it hurtling in the sky, it fell to his peripheral point of view, he caught it, waved goodbye with the boot clutched in his hands.
The paladin kept waving goodbye while unloading the dead bodies from the back of the caravan and, then, Brita took the reigns, sliding in front, pushing Brain out of the driver's feet with her own rear end, and they moved happily away from the congregation.
The plaid armored paladin was now alone to follow protocol:
He dragged the bodies up the stairs, a hefty load for a not so muscular man to do, they reached the first flight and he slowly walked with his cheeks rosy red back down to carry up the other three bodies.
By the time the paladin had carried every last one of them a white cladded cleric strolled out of the congregation through the side entrance. He saw his plaid friend with his peripheral vision while darting his eyes to a pretty young girl, and saw the four bodies, his attention diverted to him now.
"Loigu...why didn't you tell me your party were all slayed?" He unfolded the tarp, red coagulation smeared inside, and looked at the face of a paladin who looked to him what a sponge looked like without water. He raised his head and stared at Loigu. "We can't waste anymore time...hurry inside."
I_I_I_I
The inside of the congregation was too embroidered for the only female they wanted/allowed inside: a poor peasant woman with long dirty brown hair wearing a blue dress where her breast area was covered in dry brown mud with one big spot. She stared at the only other person in the room, a with a red sash and lantern-esque red hat with gold trimmings along three circles. He brought her here with the faux promise he would supply her with drugs, but what he wrong for her was the chance to be a sacrifice causing her to tremble, shiver, and quiver and not just because she was a drug user. His eyes had two layers of purple with small red pupils and his chin was chiseled.
"Please...I don't want to be in here anymore. I won't tell anyone I was here...please."
Her pleas were ignored; only the opening of the church doors caused him to feel anything in his eyes, a trickle of sweat. What he saw both enraptured him and irked him: four of his paladins dead and wrapped up in tarp. They were carried two at a time by two men: a living paladin and one of his acolyte priests—and he knew they used muscle enhancement Tier three spells to help them carry those bodies.
"High Priest Elricco."
Loigu greeted. "My humblest apologies but—"
"There's no need for you to explain, I have oracular innate sight, I sensed the pain these men felt right before their demise. Foreseeing this I walked out and enlisted the help of a distraught girl who needs to be caring for others."
The peasant woman quivered all throughout her body seeing the four dead people being placed before the creepy elder priest. The young and handsome boy, in her opinion, stepped to the left while the older and a little too pink skinned for her to find him handsome stepped to the right side.
There were other white cladded knights, suddenly, appearing throughout the congregation. Some she noticed were invisible beforehand. The inside of this building was illuminating, bright and yet it was eerily creepy. It only exacerbated when the white knights were recanting in unison what the elder priest was incanting. On the left, then, the body inside seeped out a purple miasma before dissolving until only a tarp was left. That sight made her skin crawl, and in a way she wished there were things crawling over her so they could stop her from seeing the horrific event transpire.
The remaining three bodies dissolved and once they did a blinding white orb materialized before bursting into a halo. At first, it was quiet like the locations she would hide in before mashing that sweet powder and laying back against the wall, but that was only for the second she took to close her eyes after feeling disoriented from the bright light, now she could hear crying in the room.
Swaddled in one small blanket the same fabric as the tarps was a young baby making an outcry out of hunger or something she had no perceivable way of knowing.
For the first time since she met the unusual priest he showed compassion and it wasn't a ruse, he picked up the baby, tenderly, gently, and rocked it in his arms.
"The lives of others are awaiting you to fulfill your potential. Soon you will be old enough to fight back against the tyranny of that undead usurper."
He strolled towards her. She panicked. It was clear now she wanted her to take care of the newborn baby and realizing this her first instinct was to run away before she could even lay her dirt encrusted hands on it, but the doors were barricaded by four white cladded paladins.
A part of her believed she still had strength to push through them, but it was proven fallacious when the withdrawal symptoms had her scratching her own arm.
It was all painful for her and now she was handed the whiny baby.
"One of my pastors will check in on you every week to see how are 'miracle' is progressing, a new home has been revamped for you and him to live in, and most importantly—if anything bad let's say a scratch befalls him—you will be the next one to be used as a sacrifice for the rebirth of a newer, better person...and you will still be alive when we do it."
The priest seemed to have the rest of her life played out, unless he didn't have a way to use her if she ran away or died from all the stress to her heart.
As stressful as all this was she had a small, joyous distraction from it...the baby grabbed the sleeve of her pocked shirt with its tiny hand. She gazed at it, really saw all the innocence and sin in this small thing. And, then, she unveiled the blanket exposing his bellybutton which she blew a raspberry in, just like what her father did to her.
The baby let out a laugh so honeyed, so happy...made her cry a tear of joy. But like all good things the bad showed itself with the priest raising his vial to her cheek and letting it drop inside. The inside of vial's liquids glowed glowed in a fulgurated way, like a lightning spell, before he brushed her away and let one of his paladins escort her out of the congregation, baby-in-hand.
Now that she was gone Loigu walked up beside him trying to ask about certain things.
"Is that boy really the 'one' who will help us finish this Ainz Ooal Gown once and for all?"
"He won't even grow up to stop a lesser demon even if she raises him right," the priest replied nonchalantly. "No matter...the insurgence of new possibilities against someone beyond human capabilities is what we need, and so far we're doing better at it than that old coot Fluder Paradyne."
The priests' eyes lingered on his vial as the liquid substance roiled back and forth. In his mind:
'We have completed Step Two...and now I just need to obtain one member of the Six Scriptures.'
I_I_I_I
Usually when there was a glass table between Brain and the person he was speaking to he would raise his boots up, cross his legs, and show off his armpits to that person but this time he kept his boots and legs closed and his arms down, and not just because he was talking to a fifty-something bespectacled guild master with wrinkly skin, wavy red hair, teal green eyes, a pointy nose, purple sea boots, brown-linen pants with suspenders reaching her shoulders, and a blue undershirt with a red star insignia etched on her right breast. She was very patient to listen but also slow when speaking, a woman leader opposite of a male guild master.
"I don't quite understand how the thief guild Dark Typhon is still prevalent. I was there with the very same adventurer that took them down, Perfurer, and after that I haven't heard anything about them for over twenty years."
"That may be true, but we have a reliable source, a current member, a very crazy lady, who says she works for Dark Typhon."
Finding words of what to say next was a challenge especially when he was trying to sell the woman tied in bondage with her arms behind her back squirming like a caterpillar to eat the cookies off the table.
"Stop your yammering! Put those fingers on a cookie and feed me!"
Her wailing fell on deaf ears. Brita stood up.
"If you've faced Dark Typhon before and aren't busy then take Brain there. Hynrich and I will be going."
Hynrich picked up the bandit with one hand, swiveled her around, and followed Brita to the door, however, the simple solution of just refusing to be a part of this adventure was obtruded by Brain standing up.
"Your just going to leave after coming all the way here?"
Hynrich's hand trembled with anticipation by the doorknob eager to leave, except he couldn't leave without the curly redhead whose trust he was using.
"We came out here attending to business for Carne Village, and we have everything now; bringing you here was just a requisite 'thank you'. Thank you for coming with us but we didn't need you."
Brain furrowed his eyebrows when she exasperated that to him. If he was a man with insecure emotions he might've actually cried. That said he banged the butt of his scabbard against the floor trying to keep Brita's attention on him.
"I don't plan on actually fighting this guild—I just want to have a second pair of eyes so if this guild is being run again we can leave and find someone else to finish it. Please be my second pair of eyes, Brita."
Hynrich may despise humans but he did like this Brain Unglaus's personality. He was just as eloquent with his wife during their first few encounters, and because he seemed so sure of himself...Brita squeezed her tiny chin trying to decide whether she should listen to him or Enri.
She wasn't speaking through all of this; to Hynrich it wasn't a hard decision at all. He decided to let go of his stoic demeanor and be a voice for the headstrong ranger.
"The supplies can be transported to Carne Village without us even being in the cart, Ms. Brita." Hynrich now had both male and female eyes staring at him so intensely they nearly burned his green skin shrouded in his black cloak. He mustered the strength to explain. "What I mean is...I can order the horses to travel back to Carne Village without us-and after we complete our mission I can command different animals to carry us to the village. Does that work for you?"
Her options were much more candid to her: follow the man she was starting to fawn over, who made her skin warm as caramel.
"Okay, to check. So much as one person is striding around in there...we report back to the that paladin we dropped off, let him handle it his own way, and then we go our separate ways."
Brita turned to Hynrich, nodded. That gesture was enough for him to open the door and mosey on out, first to leave, while Brita let Brain walk out before her just so she could say her good-byes to the guild master.
"Can you watch her? We'll find someone who can lock her in the bridge not too long from now...thanks."
She was now alone with the rambunctious bandit who squirmed from Hynrich's feet all the way to the table and whom opened her mouth reprehensibly trying to get a nibble of her cookies in rabid hunger.
"Look at you...no one as hungry as you can be that evil." She finally picked up one cookie, a ginger cookie with a swathe of sugar sprinkled on it, and raised it to her lips. She bit it in half with her lips before tossing the other half in the awaiting mouth of the bandit. "Mmmmm. Tastes good to share."
I_I_I_I
Brain was like any man who heard about some great place/event in a different city: he doesn't have the knowhow or directions to actually find it and instead wandered aimlessly. This wouldn't be a problem is they were looking for a museum or a shop but when it came to asking if anyone knew where a former bandit base was...they didn't know if he was an undercover adventurer trying to implicate them to the place or an actual member who was going made, fortunately, some animals never forget a place and Hynrich had the uncommon ability to ask them.
They were soon standing around a dilapidated building the width of a house, but the length of a half-hundred trees if they fell in rows of three linear to another row of three. The windows were tinted black, the roof had straight lines jagged out with pillars that had four way windows and a tricorn dark green roof, and it looked like they used to have a gate to keep people out but the gate was so peeled back it would only take one took to pry it off from the only part of it still attached. Brain didn't see anyone on the outside, ergo they were heading inside...Brita wincing over this but it didn't go against her rule to leave if there were "any signs of life".
"Hold it." Brain said right when his nose was unreservedly against the door. He lowered his hands very slowly to his waist, tightly gripped his katana, and eased into the state he felt when using his greatest move. "God Flash."
A pink apparatus showed him what would've been obscured by walls the next fifty steps: a lot of nothing.
He eased his hand from his katana's hilt all the way to behind his back where he pulled a magical item, a small ebony bell with olive dimples, out. He rattled it at the door to see if the bell would show him any hidden traps wedged between the door frame.
After not seeing any he finally opened the door. It was so dark yet it glistened like his body after a shower. They was a long gap between doors on both sides from the hall they were encompassing. Brain checked the door on the left, Hynrich looked in on the right while Brita just peered in the doorway expecting an arrow to nock out and pierce through someone's eyeball.
"Nothing over here." Brain said relatively quiet yet his voice was reverberating back to Hynrich; he confused it for yelling.
"I ain't found hide nor one damn HAIR!"
Brain and Brita had to cover their ears from how the sound screeched into their eardrums.
"Yes. I hear you; can you check those rooms up ahead while Brain and I stand back until your done? We promise to check the rooms that are ahead after your done."
Hynrich looked at her like a child being asked to do house chores who would rather be at his friends, but he obliged her walking to the other doors and checking them both—Brain and Brita having quality time they could use to talk.
"This is a very strange base...it really does seem like it was abandoned a long time ago." Brain said, Hynrich unintentionally hearing him.
"Where do you intend to go after we are done here?" Brita asked, Hynrich almost chided her for speaking so untrammeled out in the open.
"Back to Re-Estrize Kingdom, back in the fray where Ainz is sending his minions no person can win a straight-up battle against. It's time I stop hiding and face this menace once and for all."
While Hynrich was examining the transom windows, Brita was going through the drama of swelling with tears.
"Why can't you just put all this fighting behind you? Come live with me, help Carne Village as a village that lets everyone live together without the fear of war or hunger while being equal to everyone."
Brain also had a morose look, forlong and his pupils were dilating so much they seemed to oscillate to purple—if he didn't speak what was apparent in him it might destroy him.
"I lived doing what was unequivocally feasible...I couldn't have told myself that the hardest decision was what was in my hear—"
"I'm done!" Hynrich roared, intentionally trying to stop the mulling between two couples who couldn't make up their minds. "Other than some corroded axes, tattered oriented carpets and moldy falafel...there's nothing to suggest anyone has been here. Let's push on."
Hynrich walked groaningly down the hall. Brain and Brita stared, imagined, and eventually held out their hands to touch the other's fingers. What they felt was a spark, something both warm and cold and so delightful they didn't want to let go, so they walked until they reached Hynrich with his arms crossed glaring coldly at their lovey-dovey sauntering. Like they promised they looked inside the two rooms; nothing.
After that they walked all the way to the next rooms expecting to find so much as a futon or smell smoke from a burned candle.
There was none of that; it all just seemed empty.
Just when Brain was about to give up and declare this building vacated...he saw green flutings swathed on one side while dripping from the ceiling. Although this should make his skin crawl, make the walls feel like they were closing in...he was smiling about this.
"Your smiling, you understand something, think we are not alone in here...so fuck it, let's leave and let the paladin carry this out."
Hynrich wanted to call his lord so he wanted to deter the blue haired man from proceeding any further, however, when he inclined his head millimeters to get a good look at him he noticed the man had already left the scene, and since Brita was still there it meant he couldn't call Lord Dack.
"Brain, where are you going?!" She roared. In this hallway that shout sounded like a lion roaring into a giant shofar.
"To find one living person here." He said, still echoed very loudly.
"Well wait for us than!"
Hynrich saw this as an opportunity to finally call his lord. They were chugging while he was hobbling and eventually they were far enough away, their speeds on equal footing, that he stuck his finger in his eardrum letting a frequency most of the public of this world could only hear if they were holding hands at a séance or could see through a crystal ball.
"Lord Dack. This is Hynrich calling. I just want to give you a heads up...a man and a woman I've been conversing with for the past three days are on their way to find the leader of Dark Typhon...be prepared for when they find you. Hynrich, out."
I_I_I_I
Brain didn't expect when he'd finally find someone they would seem so...frightened, stirred. These people were clearly not members of Black Typhoon. All of them wore beige nightgown looking garments whether they were man or woman and most of them had a face of someone whose job it was to clean a thicket of chimney's in a town such as this.
What was resonating with Brain was the trail of fluting green that trailed to the crowd. He got in fighting stance, tiptoed towards the people who didn't bother moving, brushed past them...when he reached the end he saw a bulbous green slime with beady pink eyes standing seven feet tall...with two people spinning around in its body.
"God Fla—"
"Don't, please!" The sound of a little girl cried.
Brain quavered hearing a voice sound so sweet and innocent in this quaint dungeon where ashes were billowing through holes in the wall. He turned his head, saw a girl barely four feet, no older than nine or ten with yellow eyes and red pupils shedding a few tears trying to muster the strength to stand up to him. She had short banged hair with one strand of hair jutting out making her look like she was wearing a tricorn.
"That slime saved us! With the help of the nice man it defeated a man who was going to kill me and Dad! Now it's using some healing powers to help restore all the sick people and safeguard us from anymore bandits."
Brain moved his katana behind his neck.
"There are still bandit's in here?"
She nodded with a little whimper akin to a puppy begging for food.
When it was clear to Brain there was still a leader to this bandit guild...he jammed his katana inside his scabbard and walked to the door he just entered from. Before he left, he turned to Brita.
"Well are you coming? I promised if there was any bandits left I'd leave to tell the paladin."
He looked so dashing to Brita the way he sauntered with his tail between his legs and his scabbard jammed almost in his pants, she also walked with stride leaving confused, nearly defenseless citizens alone.
It wasn't as if the men and women didn't have an inkling of what would make them leave poor, defenseless humans alone...and besides that they knew something about the bandit leader they didn't. Once they were gone, out from the shadows once concealed by magic disguising their shape and form with a shadowy wall kobolds and orthrus's. They were handing out medicine and food to the famished/sick people, one in particular, a glistening yellow mixed with white fur and dark eyes with purple scelera orthrus, rubbed its nose against the young girls cheek. She wasn't afraid of it and even giggled petting its ears back.
"Whose a good girl? You are! Such a kind, gentle girl."
I_I_I_I
Brain and Brita walked side-by-side together, holding hands with their fingers clutching seeing the way forward and back—
"Hey! What the?" Brain gasped completely baffled by the turn of events. How could I be so stupid? he wondered. "Where is that hulking cloak wearing friend who always seems to lurk behind us?!"
"He—He didn't say anything about leaving us?" Brita replied.
There was, suddenly, the sound of footsteps resonating through the hall. They foolishly believed it was their friend Hynrich joining them again ready to tell them how he was wandering off without thinking about them; they would be mad but at least they could understand, except who should come out of his silhouette of shadows accentuating his much more slender build than a messy brown haired, black cloak wearing with an orange opal keeping it intact in the cowl part, a linen white shirt tucked into his pants, blue jeans, and a cocksure smile that showed how much he believed he was an intimidating presence, and since Brain didn't let his guard down ever again meeting strangers since Shalltear...he crouched down putting his hand on the hilt of his scabbard.
"Welcome to my humble abode," he said with oily confidence. "My name is Dack, king of nothing."