AN: I hope you enjoy Thank You for reading.

Disclaimer: I do not own Overlord, that all goes to Maruyama-sama


A chisel was carefully knocked with the right amount of force, every so often being delicately repositioned as to not break the process. Angles had to be perfect, the depth had to be consistent. Many hands worked on their craft, trying to even hollowly replicate the glorious sword shown to them by the gracious Ainz Ooal Gown.

Sweat beaded along the nose of the Dwarf who was working on laying runes, it followed the creases of his wrinkles in his expression as if the rivers in a landscape. Every now and then wiping away the humidity sticking to his face with his forearm as he progressed on his craft.

The dwarf's stubby hands told of hard work and many missed swings of a hammer, tales of his craft resonated through his worn down caluses. As he set down his tools and stepped back to admire his work, he noticed a small plate of engraved metal that read from top to bottom,

'Gondo Firebeard, Head Runesmith, Des.9a08762'

The Dwarf, Gondo Firebeard smiled with hardly contained passion. He had only ever wanted to chase his fantasy of crafting runes and the illustrious workshop he now operated was proof that he must have walked the path to heaven.

Gondo turned away from his trance of ambition, and locked eyes with the object which he was trying to 'runify'. It was a seemingly ordinary brick one could yank from the unplastered roads of E-Rantel. Gondo was trying to imbue lesser water and fire runes into the brick to act as both a hydrophobic surface and an always dry one.

He felt like such an accomplishment would surely help E-Rantel's road situation, as well as making sure he wasn't seen as a waste of space by the one who had saved Gondo's race's specialty, Runecraft.

Unfortunately luck seemed to be constantly frowning on Gondo, as once he managed to lay both fire and water runes, the brick would frature as if a spider web. He had to fight to keep his will from cracking in a similar manner. Gondo's mind sought solice within his memories of Feo Jura.

'I wonder how the Regency is handling the new paradigm ushered in by His Majesty.' His mind thought of the headaches that the Councillors of the Dwarven Kingdom were probably experiencing, he said a silent prayer for them before wrapping up his thoughts.

As he was collecting himself, a knock came from the door of the workshop he was in followed by a voice stating their buisness.

"Hey Gordo, its Thyrin, we need you too take a look at something." The gruff voice, Thyrin Bouldersage said from behind the still tightly shut door.

"Damn it Thyroid! I am your superior, think you could at least say my name right?!" Gondo yapped at Thyrin, not pleased by his fellow runesmith's snideness. Gondo would be lying if he said that being called 'Gordo' wasn't unpleasant to him.

"Whatever Godwyn. Hurry up though, we are serious." Thyrin said knocking on the thick door twice before appearing to leave the area.

"Damn Thyroid." Gondo grumbled. He always managed to circle back around on Gondo, tagging him with intentional mispronunciations of his name, and each time he did it to where others could hear, they would then start throwing 'Gondi' or 'Gundo' or other plays on his name.

"I guess I should go see what they want.' Gondo wasn't the best runesmith, that he knew, he was just in the luck of the draw, but that didnt stop the ever growing reverence for the great being that had saved their artform, their lifestyle from welling up inside him.

With renewed optimism by the backing of a mental image of Ainz Ooal Gown, Gondo went to see what his workshop fellows needed.


Inside a large glass bulb which was approximately 6 inches in diameter, sitting on top of some sort of flaming device, was a boiling fluid, its vapor lazily wheezed out of its opening. Inside the glass known as a round bottom flask was shredded material which was being pushed through the liquid along its convection currents. The color of the previously dried plant matter seeped into the solution, bringing it to an opaque blue.

The smooth hands which were stained by both scars of corrosive agents used as catalysts as well as alkaloids within the herbs needed for refining. The teenager, still turning into a young man had a bowl of hair seemingly covering his eyes to the same effect as a blindfold. The young man was Nfirea Bareare, and he had been starting his daily routine of potion synthesis after ever morning's breakfast, he had to research within the timeframe of lunch and dinner or else he would be...

Well he couldn't get himself distracted, he had work to do after all. He corrected his thoughts that decided to trail off in the direction of his wife, he couldn't get distracted and let his and Carne Village's savior become disappointed by any lack of progress.

The youth examined the apparatus he had become slowly accustomed to over his trial and error methods. The first reaction vessel was the round bottom flask he was boiling the herbs with, was a special solution of acids diluted in the right amount of water, just enough to pull out the plant alkaloids without having them violently react with each other and making waste instead of product. After this first reaction was done he needed to funnel the plant matter through a seive and run the now blue liquid into another flask. To then be reacted with an equal amount of a base to neutralize its PH.

Such a complex system was just one of the boons granted to him by Ainz. From the simpler yet more time consuming alchemy he needed to follow before hand, the practically finished product would've taken at least three days of processing. However, now all he needed to do was to make sure he mixed the right ratios of solutions and then the equipment did the rest for him, all that would be left is to synthesize the new Purple potion out the finished blue potion and a few other reagents. For his way of life to be transformed by slightest wave of Ainz Ooal Gowns hand, make him feel even more out of league with the undead magic caster.

"Well at least I can make these potions faster now." Nfirea tried to console his pride with those words.

Unfortunately as he was about to neutralize the acid still active within the unfinished potion, his hand slipped and he ended up pouring a bleach like substance across his left wrist. He grumbled to himself as he knew he needed to be careful when handling such agents. He rushed to his lab faucet stationed near his window. As he scrubbed away at his wrist he thought he could here shouting. Nfirea assumed that the dwarves were at it again and finished washing up.

A few of the Dwarves would every now and then walk around the village, to be honest, they reminded him of himself after a long day of mixing reagents, extracting, reacting and then finally synthesizing a potion. He could tell just from how they walked about that they spent most of their time cooped up doing who knows what inside their mini-compound. Sometimes the youth would over hear bickering between them, but there was never any malice involved, just annoyance.

Nfirea got distracted by something in his field of view. His newly wed wife, Enri walked seemingly through a ray of sunshine. Her blonde hair carried the sunlight within it, shining as golden fields of wheat embracing the sun of a midsummers day. Her eyes met Nfirea's through the window, to which Enri smiled and waved, he had only managed to respond in kind with a slight raise of his hand and an awkward smile before Enri turned to face someone.

The youth looked at the angle of the sun, determining that he is good to stop his alchemy here, as dinner would be called for shortly. He changed out of the coat which helped keep the smells of his new lab where they should be, instead of following him around like cologne, he already had that after all. As Nfirea jogged in order to catch up to Enri he noticed that Enri must've been walking with Nemu, as her little figure was perched upon Enri's shoulders. While he patted down his shirt out of habit, Enri held out her hand.

"Its about time Nfi, lets go have some dinner." Enri said warmly, leading him and Nemu to the prepared food.


It had been three hours since the start of the festival that the General Affairs councilors had put into motion which they had planned for days on end. Surprisingly, the people seemed to take charge of the change to toss aside their inhibitions and actually enjoy the state-organized festival.

Though some still held out over fear of undead, Jircniv had received reports of a 75% of the population was participating, with the overwhelming majority of the non-participants being fervently religious, didn't feel like it, and, or being too weary of the undead to not think about them plotting something. Which in all honesty, was a sentiment that Jircniv could dearly echo.

As the common folk enjoyed themselves on whatever beverage or food was on hand, the Bloody Emperor was in a special room that he really didn't have a use for at the moment, one meant to talk in private about lucrative trade deals or other matters of secrecy. However, this time he had a guest, and he never would have imagined that they would connect in the way they do.

Fate seemed to be smiling on the duo who conversed animatedly with each other. Any other day Jircniv would've presumed that behind any movements were somehow enacted by the will of Ainz Ooal Gown, but for the moment, he simply relished the feeling of freedom that he hadn't felt in a long time. It was almost reinvigorating enough to make him think his hairline was pushing back forward into enemy territory, sadly though, Jircniv figured his new hair was here to stay. The Emperor of Baharuth had a question to ask the being before him.

"So why didn't you ask that Guild Master for a place to stay instead of digging a burrow?"

The quagoa Lord seemed to take a moment to think, looking straight at the ceiling before replying,

" It was simply on instinct. I supposed I was tired and I missed my home.." The end of his sentence got noticeably rocky, Jircniv had only heard Pe Riyuro's tale of his trek to Arwinter, which alone could be spun for the bards.

"I understand, I do... A being in the form of an undead had put me in checkmate before i even realized that he was playing chess instead of checkers." Jircniv shook his head slowly, pressing his thumb into the bridge of his nose.

Pe Riyuros expression seemed to grow fierce in the perspective of the Emperor, but from even the short time they known each other, Jircniv had already started to grasp the quagoa lords mannerisms. He could tell Pe Riyuo was either shocked, or maybe sad? Just because he could grasp people in a relatively short time period, that didn't mean he could read minds or that he even had a complete grasp on the Demi-Human before him.

"So he has your clan under his thumb too?" Pe Riyuro's eyes seemed to regain the glazed over look they had previously as if once again becoming aware of a dreaded reality.

Jircniv felt it hard to contain the empathy he felt for the Quagoa in front of him. Sure, the emperor may have had a rough time at it, but Jircniv couldn't recall ever wearing the same look in his own eyes. Although, he figured it was either repressed or it didn't happen, leaning on the former since he did try to avoid the mirrors during the depths of his despair out of fear of being watched through them.

The emperor couldn't say the words, so he simply nodded, his purple eyes closed and his lips stretched to a thin line.

"Why don't I order the maids to bring us some fare from the ongoing festivities as we chat?" The Bloody Emperor steered the conversation away from subjugation, it seemed like both of them had been cut of the same cloth, unfortunately it had to be by the despicable scissors of Ainz Ooal Gown. Jircniv gave directions to just gather a lot of different foods that were available.

This had been a nice surprise to Jircnv, he wasn't sure what would happen upon meeting Pe Riyuro. The thought of the quagoa being some kind of proxy used by the sorcerer king hadn't abated the Emperors conscious, for it still nagged at him, urging him to distrust the creature before him.

While he thought of in turn using a proxy to investigate into the Quagoa Lord, he remembered the guard that notified him about an incoming Quagoa when Pe Riyuro was still on his way, he thought of no reason for a secret pawn of the Sorcerer King to be so blatant about digging around. Unless that was exactly what the terrifying undead wanted him to think and do, and say...

Jircnivs heart lurched at such a possibility. Could the Quagoa before him be an unknowing puppet? Simply being pulled along the strings to make Jircniv dance to its tune? Jircniv decided confrontation was best. If the quagoa before him seemed like he knew anything, he would have to leave.