And so Act 3 comes to a close. Thank you once again for your time reading Valkyrie's Shadow!

Once upon a time, when I was much younger, Volume 10 of the Overlord LN came out, which is still one of my favorite Volumes of the series. Then more volumes came out and many interesting things that were introduced seemed to, well, get sidelined. Valkyrie's Shadow, as you may have guessed by this point, explores all this stuff going on in the background that the main novels sort of gloss over.

The first major point explored is the mysterious canon handwave of Undead + Land + ? = Profit!

Of course, we're nowhere near done with this, but it was interesting to see how the numbers played out. They are numbers such as calorie requirements, yield calculations for various crops and the founding of certain industries, but hopefully it was an enjoyable window on how things might start out when you need to bootstrap your way up with nothing but land and skeletons. Everything that has been presented (aside from the Undead), are actually real things in our world, using real numbers and projections. The problems, too, are real problems. Even with the Death Knights, you have a case of an overperforming engine wearing down and breaking parts that are not designed for that degree of stress. So...not as straightforward as people seem to think: at least of what I've seen, anyways.

As the New World is a fantasy setting, it's tempting to run off with craziness, but I figured that establishing a baseline for the fantasy elements introduced in the future would be a good start before meandering off into that territory.

Speaking of territory, the Duchy of E-Rantel is larger than most people probably think it is...though as the LNs tend to mostly focus on E-Rantel as a single city, it is understandable to think it as a small place. Based on Maruyama's statement that Re-Estize is roughly half the size of France, the Duchy of E-Rantel is probably around the size of Belgium. While Belgium is a small country by our modern day standards, it is still a lot of land to work with in the context of Overlord.

In essence, Act 1 - 3 have been exactly that: a region still mostly grounded in real political and economic systems, seen from the perspective of a character whose level and low tech, low magic culture still puts her in the realm of the mundane. It's also the baseline of how Nazarick begins to integrate elements of itself into the New World, in order to create the foundations of the Sorcerous Kingdom.

Where are we in the canon timeline?

The days starting things up in Warden's Vale happens in the second week after the end of Volume 9. Many will have already noticed that the last chapter of Act 3 is the meeting between Pandora's Actor and Ainz Ooal Gown in Volume 10, which is a month after the end of Volume 9. The POV is flipped, though. Does this make me a hack? Probably. Momonga has now come out of his month long seclusion and will be up to his antics abroad.

Two Harvests? Wut?

According to the canon narrative, the Empire holds its annual confrontation with the Kingdom in order to mess with 'the harvest', tying up manpower and being a general pain in the butt. Yet, we also know that it never snows in E-Rantel, even in winter. It gets cold enough that the trees drop their leaves, but it never freezes...which means that the growing season for the area around E-Rantel is somewhere around 9 to 11 months, which is a hell of a long time. Most grains take ~3-4 months to grow, some are even faster than that. Most non-tropical fruit take less than 5 months to grow and fully ripen. Warden's Vale is up at a higher elevation, so their growing season is a bit shorter, but it's still more than long enough to get two harvests in.

How Large is Warden's Vale?

FFN hates pictures, so readers here don't get the map :|

The valley portion of Warden's Vale is roughly 45km x 20km, stretching lengthwise from south to north. The whole of the barony which, map-wise, includes the area around the valley, is roughly(the borders aren't straight) 60km x 40km. As Shalltear says, it is much larger than she thought it would be. The total amount of land development in the barony, including the harbour village and the fields that are being cleared in this volume, is about 1% of the total land area of Ludmila's demesne. It's a literal wilderness, save for a couple of patches.

Where are all these spells from?

As Maruyama has pulled probably 98% of tier magic from D20, I followed his lead on that.

For example, every single one of the spells that Nonna cast on the unfortunate Windflower Scripture member are spells she should be capable of casting:

Ray of Enfeeblement is Tier 1 Arcane, of the Necromancy School

Bestow Curse is Tier 3 Divine/Tier 4 Arcane, of the Necromancy School

Exhaustion is Tier 3 Arcane, of the Necromancy School

Dessicate is Tier 2 Divine/Tier 2 Arcane, of the Necromancy School

Wrack is Tier 3 Divine/Tier 4 Arcane, of the Necromancy School

Hold Species(Hold Person in D20) is Tier 2 Divine/Tier 3 Arcane, of the Enchantment School

Depending on the POV, there will be a lot of spells flying around in the future, so expect more stuff like this.

Auto-translate Hijinks!

We see our first active use of the NW's auto-translate with Ludmila's naming of Nonna, conferring her a name with multiple meanings: one of which Nonna recognizes, and accepts. There is also an auto-translate flub, which at least one person has noticed, where Ludmila has been exposed to foreign terminology that didn't carry across concisely due a combination of her incomplete understanding and the casual way in which it was expressed. As Nazarick's influence changes the understanding of the Sorcerous Kingdom's subjects, introducing new concepts and terminology, the more the natives of the Sorcerous Kingdom reflect this in their own speech. Needless to say, they may sound like whackjobs to those outside the Sorcerous Kingdom after a certain point, especially those Adventurers...

Character Notes

Jeeves: Jeeves is a throwback to a time where MMOs were less convenient, where they were similar to Yggdrasil in terms of user-unfriendliness. As he has introduced himself, he is a consumable summon, meant to service Players on long range expeditions, long raids or just extended periods of farming, to conveniently repair gear and sell trash drops. In the New World, however, he faces an existential crisis - one where he exists for longer than he's supposed to. He is an existence similar to a Mercenary, though he has no combat potential as a disposable vendor/repair npc. The first Jeeves is an entirely separate entity from the second Jeeves. How long will the new one last? Who knows...

Nonna: Introduced in Act 2, Nonna was the robotic/pretentious-sounding administrative aide assigned by Albedo to Warden's Vale. She gets a bunch of scenes in Act 3, where I guess she still sounds pretentious, but her character slowly gains, well, character. Such as it is. The ninth administrator is actually a pop mob from the Library of Ashurbanipal: a level 30 White Counterfeiter.

Aemilia: An ambitious young woman who decided that her parents' trade was not for her, dreaming of high society, fashion and indulging in fantasy - often to the discomfort of her mistress. After a short re-training by Tsuare and Yuri Alpha, she's sent to work for Ludmila and miraculously achieves her ambition of becoming a lady's maid. As such, she'll often get swept up in House Zahradnik's adventures and misadventures, trying to be the best lady's maid she can be. At the end of Act 3, she is a Level 3 Maid with a Karma score of 50(Neutral).

Ludmila Zahradnik: Ludmila begins to transition from her reactive role to a more active one, now that she's sorted out all of the stuff in Act 2. In Act 3, she discovers that many things don't work as she thinks they will, and even the Sorcerous Kingdom doesn't always an answer to everything. She goes from her student-like existence of paperwork, manuals and one-sided infodumps to a more practical exposure to the larger world and what actually goes into doing things. As she's still allowed plenty of time to think and rethink and try again, however, so she gains far more than she loses. A few more facets are added, such as a deeper look into her religion and the respective run-ins with various elements within it, as well as her more casual behaviour when she's out in a comfortable place. Rather than being an arbitrarily nice person, it is more that she acts within the bounds of propriety.

At the end of Act 3, she is a 3 Noble Fighter(Genius)/1 Ranger...which starts to highlight the way that people in the New World advance in levels. Rather than killing stuff for experience as a Player would in Yggdrasil, characters in the New World gain experience through, well, experience. She has not killed single thing in the last three acts, but she has done plenty of work as a noble, wrapping her head around the task of implementing the Sorcerous Kingdom's new ways, thus attributing EXP to her Noble Fighter class. She finally gains her first Ranger level with her accumulated experiences as a patrol member, as well as performing various sorts of woodscraft. Just as Climb never killed a single thing before hitting level 15, New World natives in general advance in a similar manner, performing tasks related to their classes, not limited to fighting life-threatening battles.

...and that should be it for the Act 3 ramble. The events of Act 4 should put the story in more familiar territory to Light Novel readers, with canon events happening left and right. The cast will be expanding accordingly, with the story returning to the city of E-Rantel once again.