Chapter 9

So Ive lost motivation, I'll go over it below but pretty much ill be finishing this story in chapter 10

In short, I enjoy reading over writing.

Once more she realized her ego had gotten too Big.

She had argued with ainz over picking the merchants, they were a small time group and they should focus on the more important villains like Hookwolf or oni lee. Those capes are known for killing multiple people in their time as villains.

Ainz had just shaken his head and explained that she wasn't prepared to face them, not without the real-life experience that something like this could give. He then added that the merchants while smaller in size still had a large impact on petty crime and the city's overall problems. Removing them would help decrease the most dangerous drugs currently on the streets, while for all their crimes, the empire at least had a certain level of quality in the products they distributed.

She didn't want to agree with him as she had grown up fearing the empire and abb, while the gangs like coil and the merchants had seemed like a joke in comparison. Yet he wasn't wrong and the idea of removing a whole group of capes was exciting, surely this would allow her to prove her powers to ainz and herself.

So as not to look foolish, she decided to start by summoning ten skeletons, ten being her max limit on low-tier summons. After ten minutes she could recast the spell and refill her ten, that time limit was why ainz had told her it was best to summon them early before a fight. Having them find cover so as to not alert any wandering people, she felt ready to enter. Quietly she had approached the front door, casting invisibility as she stepped out of the darkness. Her entrance turned out to be easy as the merchants had lacked the common sense to lock the door, possibly overconfidence or more likely they were too high to worry about it.

Disgust filled her as she surveyed the filthy merchants sprawled around the building. Most seemed lost in their own world, while a few guys and girls were clearly busy enjoying themselves. She didn't want to dwell on what they might be planning or what the noises coming from the adjacent room were. Instead, she searched for something more important, the capes. Just then, she spotted Mush making his way toward the kitchen and luckily no one had yet to look her way. Despite feeling rude, she couldn't help but identify him by the fact he was a shirtless pink-skinned four-foot man half fused with garbage. She pushed aside any sympathy for his appearance, reminding herself that he was actively hurting people.

As he rummaged through the fridge out of sight of the rest of the gang, she saw her opportunity to act. Apparently, her luck had swung back to bad because skidmark had made his way downstairs and had perfect sight of her as she decloaked when she cast the spell sleep. Panicking she sprinted for the exit, she didn't have time to think about how quickly she fucked up, instead, she focused on the exit. Not even three steps were taken before she felt something whiz by with enough force that caused her to stumble, looking back she saw the fridge had been used as a projectile and had crashed near her. She was partially dazed at how close it was to kill her, but shook it off and refocused on getting out, getting back up she started sprinting once more. But the stumble had given her enough time to think about her surroundings, partically all the thugs. Not wasting the opportunity she was able to quickly cast sleep a few more times on those she ran passed, the spell wasn't great on moving targets but with everyone half asleep they were more or less sitting ducks. Raming the front door she flew out, right on time since she could hear skidmark yelling something about getting her, she wasn't out of danger yet, so she kept running.

At that point she quickly cast [fly], thinking that the roof of a building would be safer than the street.

The first group had been easy, around five stumbled out a few seconds after she got into cover and ran into the street possibly in search of her. With a quick mental command of attack, the ten skeletons jumped up and ran toward the thugs, Even in such a dire situation, she had to hold back a giggle at the faces of the merchants. She had proudly watched the now circled group try desperately to shoot her skeletons only to fail at damaging them. It had been perfect, with a 2 v1 scenario the skeletons had no problem taking each man down. Their attempts to use melee weapons had been easily blocked and smacked away, finally as she had trained, the skeletons used the flat part of their swords to hit the thugs. In her mind each one would swipe down on the thug's back, quickly knocking them unconscious. In reality, it turns out the skeletons had no idea how to perform such a classic attack, they instead just kept hitting them until they didn't stand up. Not that they were dead or anything, just too hurt to try anymore.

The trick she had learned when using skeletons was practice, not that the skeleton learned or anything. Instead, she noticed that skeletons always spawned with her strategies ingrained as if they knew exactly what to do, the downside was that any strategies or ideas she devolved in a fight wouldn't be easy to use until she resummoned them. That is why not having actually fought people before made the takedown a bit more brutal than she wished.

Still, for her first fight, it was a perfect takedown in her mind.

But then came the second group rushing out cheering and looking ready to hurt anyone they found. Most were holding a random assortment of weapons from knives to rusted pipes, but a few of the least drugged-up members had guns, nothing automatic luckily as she didn't want to test how bulletproof she was no matter what Ainz claimed.

The cheering quickly ended when the twenty men spotted her skeletons standing over her current victims. This led to a weird standoff, she was unsure how to approach the fight and they were scared of the undead. It quickly ended with skidmark coming out and yelling for them to attack.

Skidmark having spotted her had ordered his men to charge her little army and had lined up to defend and take down. The fight should have ended pretty quickly as those without guns had got up close and started to bash in her skeletons, the skeletons for their part were fighting pretty well in their limited capacity enough that she felt confident they would win. But then a skeleton got blown away breaking against the wall, shocked she look at it only to see a second develop a glow before also being smatched.

Which got her involved, blasting magic arrows at skidmark and then switching to the thugs, trying to keep them from breaking any more. It had worked for a bit but the number of targets had overwhelmed her ability to keep them back. Slowly they had been taking one after another down, skidmark hiding whenever she tried to aim at him.

It left her here, on a roof trying to pick them off with magic arrows and desperately trying to keep them back.

Getting hit with another bullet had her reconsidering her decision not to use fireballs, only the surety that they would die kept her from doing it. This was probably another thing Ainz wanted her to learn, humans, unlike the skeleton in training were easily hurt. Just as how explosion could destroy multiple skeletons, she was sure that the same spell would kill these people. Now she was stuck unsure how to deal with any of them.

She really wished Ainz was here to help right now, not that he would as this was supposed to be her moment. Ainz had been very encouraging to her in proving herself and before now she was happy about it, now though she wished he was a bit less hands-off.

Having been reduced to four skeletons, she figured she couldn't keep hiding up here. The main reason they had was how little damage guns did on both her and them, combined with how she had them doing quick attacks and then ducking behind broken-down cars and alleys to avoid skidmarks' eyesight. But even without him directly destroying them, with skidmark targeting them, it had allowed merchants to group up on lone skeletons. With enough of them, they could easily break them with pipes and the other random weapons merchants picked up.

Taking another shot, she got another merchant in the leg. The poor girl was screaming while clutching her wound. At first, their cries of pain made her uneasy as she hadn't planned on hitting anything more than their weapons, but fear of failing and the effectiveness had her aim purposely at limbs.

While a bit more brutal than she wanted to be, it was her only way to take them down from a distance. 'Hey if the ward shadow stalker was allowed to be a hero after using regular arrows, I should be fine if I claim it's my power".

I'll need to go down there to summon more' Thinking her biggest threat was skidmark she decided to risk it and send the command for a last charge against him. At this point even if they got destroyed she would be able to summon more.

The sudden aggressively offensive attack had created a brief opening as the gang focused on stopping the charge. Using it, she jumped off the roof with the plan to use fly and find cover.

Taking a few shots from a few undistracted members had her seeking cover quickly in the form of a broken-down Chevy truck, the thing had long had its tires taken off which to her luck meant it had no gap below. Quickly glancing over, she thanked Ainz once more as she was perfectly intact, with no bleeding hole to be found. Sure the bullet hurt like shit but the costume had the defensive properties of a bulletproof vest with the benefit of full coverage. That said she wasn't ready to stand in the open, the fear of getting shot wasn't something so easy to ignore.

Those few members decided that rushing her now was the best decision. As she was planning her next move the three merchants rounded the car ready to get her, in panic, she cast invisibility and then flung herself back.

Having not seen her use the power before the three stared in confusion at the sudden vanishing act before one just ran in to see if he could hit anything. Not that it mattered as she made her way slowly around him, when she was between the three confused guys, feeling a bit more confident she pulled her staff back and then slapped the second guy. This time the attack lacked enough force, but she finally got to see how negative touch reacted to a person. A purple glow appeared on contact before the merchant stiffened and fell to the ground, his body just twitching. Ainz had warned her not to use the attack multiple times on a person as it would kill them, but that all noncapes should fall to a single touch. Reassured by that, she ignored her body back, avoiding the third's swing, she pulled herself up before quickly thrusting her staff into the man's gut. She let out a short grunt, the last member had enough time to slam her with something hard from behind. Turning around she spotted a baffled merchant looking at his broken weapon, apparently, he had used a baseball bat. Unlike her normal self, with this gear that attack had felt more like a slap on her back instead of the crippling concussion, it should have been. Irritated by it, she jammed her staff into his stomach.

Glancing over the car she spotted her last remaining skeleton circling skid mark, doing its best to keep him distracted.

Her moment of victory got quickly forgotten as the remaining merchants started shooting at her.

'I can't just rush them, not by how paranoid they currently are. Using invisibility wouldn't work as she needed five more minutes for recharge and hiding here is just going to have them all charging me.

For now, she needed something stronger that could give her cover, only one thing came to mind but she really hated summoning it. The death knight being her only mid-tier summon as ainz explained, had the downside of having an hour cool down. Its upside was that ainz was pretty sure nothing short of lung or a tank could take it down.

Yes, the thing was strong, but she was scared of it. For one it had no control over its own strength, any offensive attack by it would end with anyone it targets dead even if she told it to hold back. Maybe it could possibly grab one without crushing them, but even that wasn't likely.

But even that wasn't the worst part, when summon she had some type of mental connection, which meant she could feel its desire to kill everything around it. She shuddered at the memories, it had been scary and she thanked god Ainz didn't act even a portion murderous as that thing did as she would have long been killed.

The constant bullet impact against her protection and skid marks very colorful insults and threats helped make the decision easier.

"Summon death knight"

Out of an ooze that dripped off her staff and form took shape, at first, She could barely make out its form as the dark liquid began to shape itself. Only two red glowing eyes pierced through the darkness.

As finalized its form she could see the black, rusted black armor covering its body. The armor seemed to radiate an eerie aura. The death knight's helmet obscured its face, but she could sense its cold, menacing presence. She could hear the ominous clanking of its armor and the low hum of its sword as it prepared to kill.

"Protect me from their shots"

With her order, she could feel a hint of anger and disappointment, but the thing pulled its shield up and got in front of her, instantly she felt much safer.

Seemly the death knight's appearance had not just terrified her as the shooting stopped and the street became silent, even the profanities of skid mark had stopped, before she could take her time to summon more skeletons she felt a message connected from ainz. Worried he was going to tell her he was disappointed with her. Instead, ainz spoke with a cheery tone " very interesting, we got a lot of field data on how skeletons perform and how easy it is for them to get overwhelmed, we may need to figure out a better way to use them. But doing any more tests now is pointless, you might as well summon them and finish it" with that ainz canceled the spell.

It took her some time, but she realized ainz was being nice and giving her a hint, but what summons.' yeah she had practiced with other ones but they all were pretty bad choices. Zombies are too weak and she would get labeled a villain if they turned anyone. Bone vultures could work but would get destroyed easily and wraiths do no damage to..…fuck. She had completely forgotten about wraiths as they didn't do anything useful in her training vs ainz summons, but are perfect against people.

Low-tier summons, wraiths x10.

With them the fight completely turned around, the remaining gang members could not block the wraith as they would fly in steal their life force, and jump to the next target. Wraiths by their nature couldn't be damaged by anything these guys had unless they could start blasting fire, electricity, or some other light-based power, then nothing would work. She really felt dumb for wasting so much time using the skeletons when now she just watched member after member of the merchants dropdown. She wasn't even worried about their death as the wraith had been commanded to not fully drain the life force of anyone.

"Well fuck, those shit stains failed to do shit"

Confident now by how easy it now was, she spoke up"Give up skidmark"

"Fuck you, who the fuck do you think you are"

Not that she cared what he said, the wraiths had made their way around and attacked from behind, he seemed to take longer to drain than others. in another clever move, he decided to attack her using his fields to launch forward out of the wraiths' reach. Her skeletons shield wall braced from the impact. Apparently, the skid mark had not expected the skeleton to be able to stop him, possibly assuming the death knight would be as weak as the other skeletons.

Either from dazed or suffering a concussion, skidmark was frozen. Not taking any chances she slammed him with her staff, draining his remaining energy.

Taking deep breaths she did her best to calm her nerves, but slowly happiness bubbled inside of her' I did it, I got them'

Tried using Chat gpt. Pretty fun for short stories but can't make fanfictions, told it to make me a chapter 9, and well it's not ready for that. Does a decent grammar check on small paragraphs and helps find descriptions on the death knight, even if I needed to change things to be accurate. Tell it to make a worm x overlord fic and it's pretty funny, taylor summons ainz using the forbidden art of necromancy, or another one where ainz fought the undersider but died to Taylor's cunning. Told it to revive ainz and then started writing a story where ainz stalked Taylor to learn all her secrets.

Ok, serious note. Yeah, I have run out of my very limited creativity. In this chapter I kept just thinking, Talor just sends in wraiths and ends it, but felt it is to anti-climatic. rewrote it three times, I even had Taylor flying around blasting them, but felt wrong when she should just be hidden behind the cover. I feel guilty, but I had never really planned more than 3 chapters. I do hope I succeed in doing a helltaker, where this inspires at least one person to make a overlord x fanfic.

Now Good news, I'll try to post chapter 10 next Sunday. It should be something like chapter 7, small little scenes where I go over events. Kinda describe what the outline of the story I wrote was, I know it's not the same, but I hope it will satisfy that "what would have happened" feeling I get in stories left abandoned. I Do have a few other scenes pre-written that Ill put in there, somehow.