A heavy boot landed on a downed figure's chest with a sickening crunch.

The green body was motionless as an armored fist tore into the dead figure's head, and with a crunch, pulled the head off the dead creature's neck.

"Your boss is dead!" A booming voice overpowered the chaos of the battlefield as the heavily armored form lifted the severed head high in the air, and the sight caused the assaulting ork horde to focus their attention on the warlord who had taken down the gigantic ork warboss in single combat amidst the ruins of the outer district of a hive city.

The armored warlord made a motion for the defenders to sally out and charge while he held the decapitated head high in the air, and a wave of armored forms broke from cover and charged against the ork horde while using their heavy shields to shrug off disorganized slug-shots from the few ork shootas who were still focused enough to even notice the incoming counter-attack.

An ork with a flamethrower shook off the confusion of seeing their warboss decapitated and turned the flame-belching tube towards the charging, shielded warriors… But before the ork could unleash a torrent of flame, a large, fist-sized and feet-long bolt hit the ork in the throat and exploded, causing the green creature's head and upper torso to explode into chunks of blood and mangled meat. The flamer's fuel tank exploded from the hot shrapnel, causing the nearby orks to get showered with sticky flame that quickly reduced them from howling flame-covered shapes to quietly sizzling heaps of burnt green flesh.

The bolt-round was followed by tens of other bolts and then a storm of red laser-light as the defenders took full advantage of the ork horde's confusion and visited terrible ruin on them- And for a moment it looked as if the orks would break and flee.

However, a booming, echoing metallic roar of a 'WAAAAGH' came from the end of the ruined street alongside the dust of a crumbling building- And the disorganized orks joined the synthetic roar of a 'WAAAAGH' with their own throats, and the newfound bloodlust turned the stumbling almost-retreat into a furious counter-charge against the defenders charge.

The shambling, building-sized and ramshackle Ork Gorkanaut-walker stomped through the collapsed building's debris while roaring it's WAAGH on a loudspeaker and using it's plow-shaped 'stomach' to pave a way for the reinforcing ork horde that followed the mechanical monstrosity.

The walker noticed the shielded warriors who were charging the ork horde to meet them head-on, and the Gornakaut began firing at the warriors with its rotating gun-contraption that jammed a barrel every other second, but nonetheless laid down a withering hail of slug-shot fire like a unreliable firehose of lead.

The armored warriors slammed their shields against the ground and braced in eerie unison, blocking the chain of explosions, slugs and ricochets that were caused by the rattling chain-cannon- Yet as the smoke cleared, a few of the armored warriors had fallen and laid broken amidst the masonry while their comrades stood firm, unshaken and fearless in front of the ork horde.

"Witness your doom, monster!" The armored warlord, still holding the decapitated head of the ork warboss on the other hand, lifted his free hand towards the ramshackle walking vehicle.

The warlord made a motion of grasping his own head… and then flung his hand forwards while chanting, causing a gigantic ball of fire to launch out from his hand and impact directly in the ramshackle monstrosity's head.

The sound of a metallic, echoing 'WAAAGH' was replaced by a panicked shriek of 'AAAGH', and a small goblin-like creature fell from the Gorkanau's 'head', or rather, 'cockpit', and fell into a burning heap in front of the metal monstrosity that burst into flames- And the grot was soon followed by the rest of the thoroughly cooked crew of the mechanical monstrosity who were blown out from every possible hatch and opening of the vehicle. The walker had apparently held a sizable passenger crew in the form of now-cooked orks that had been inside the monster's stomach-plow.

The loss of the ramshackle walker was too much for the already-leaderless ork horde, and with a departing roar of frustration and challenge, the horde fled in utter disarray.

The last of the orks had not even managed to clear out of the street before the first ork fell on another in a battle to figure out which one of them would become the new warboss to replace the one that had fallen.

.

.

.

"...Phew." The armored warlord flicked the severed ork head aside and paused to contemplate. '...Well. This went as well as I hoped. I guess.'

Ainz reached to rub his face, or rather, his helmet with his gauntlet after shaking the blood of the ork off his fingers.

The defense of the world of Weissburg from the ork WAAAGH of Big Warboss Grillchukka was a bloody and time-consuming affair, but Ainz didn't mind much- The world was not directly in the invading ork armada's path and was only expected to face several raiding parties instead of a full-on mass assault, and thus the position was quite advantageous for him, and for his goal of 'not getting himself killed'.

Ainz almost took off his helmet out of instinct as the modified Astartes helmet was quite cramped and hindered Ainz's ability to see, mostly due to the fact that he was a skeleton and thus didn't have the prerequisite 'organs' that a true Astartes would have that would have allowed him to properly use the helmet's sophisticated sensor suite. However, he stopped himself from taking the helmet off as the spell [Planar Eye], which he had cast on himself to give himself a 'third-person view' of the battlefield, showed that Lieutenant Lark of Astra Militarum had scurried out of the fortified bunker and was currently struggling to climb up the pile of ork corpses on top of which Ainz stood.

Ainz glanced at the man and jumped down from the pile of ork corpses, and landed on yet another ork corpse with a thunderous boom of armor, causing the ork corpse to let out a 'squelch' sound and turn into pink mist.

Lieutenant Lark paled a bit as he saw the landing, and quickly scrambled down to kneel in front of Ainz. "My lord, the orks have fled. Should I prepare my platoon to give chase and drive the orks from the district? Our chimera-transport is detracked, so we need to chase on foot while the cogboy- ahem, esteemed Enginseers get the vehicle moving."

"Do not worry. My comrades and I shall take care of the horde. Focus on fortifying this position for the next wave." Ainz waved his gauntlet, causing the lieutenant to breathe out in almost-hidden relief. '...Well, the [Maximize Magic: Grand Fireball] was enough to take care of that walker and the rest of the orks don't have many heavy weapons left in this hive-sector, so cleaning them up should not pose much of a challenge… At least until the next wave comes anyway. Moreover, I need Lieutenant Lark and the other guardsmen to live so that they can spread my supposed heroic image… Which hopefully spreads to the rest of the population of this world, so that if the warmaster of this crusade looks in this direction, he thinks that we're not slacking off and that the situation is in control as long as I am around.'

Ainz sighed internally as Lieutenant Lark nodded, still pale-faced, and the man struck a reverent salute at Ainz before running off to inform the rest of the guardsmen of the platoon that the guardsmen wouldn't need to take part of a suicidal (at least from their point of view) counter-attack. 'I can use the [Ring of Armor-Caster] for a dozen or so more casts for today, after that I'll have to unequip this cover-up armor so that I can actually cast spells… Equipment limitations are so annoying.'

Ainz sent a mental command to the 'armored, shielded warriors', and the Death Knights that were wearing fake sets of Astartes armor responded with a groan and charged off after the orks, with some of the camouflaged undead holding the flamberges and shields of their YGGDRASIL counterparts, and some that were supposed to be armed with greatbows were now holding 'bolters'. Or rather, Greatbows that had been transfigured to look like 'bolters' while retaining their 'functionality'. And while the Death Knights were nowhere near as fast as actual Astartes, they made up with unflinching and unyielding advance- Not to mention that Ainz doubted that any of the Imperial Guard or the PDF that made the majority of the defenders of Weissburg had ever seen an Astartes before so they likely didn't have any real point of reference.

Ainz looked up at the smog-filled sky that was lit up with explosions, anti-air cannon fire, missile streaks and occasional wrecks of shuttles and aircraft falling to the hive city and crashing against the city's void shields before falling through as slowly as glowing, inert wreckage.

The Astartes Strike Cruiser 'Nazarick' was nowhere to be seen as the thick smog prevented Ainz from seeing the spaceship that was holding position a few dozen miles above the Hive City's main spire- Or rather, the Strike Cruiser 'Lightning's Searing Fangs', which that had been taken over by Ainz and the rest of the NPC's of Nazarick and renamed to their cause.

In truth Ainz wasn't 'Ainz' either but rather, he was, had been, a box-standard office worker in Neo-Japan of 2256 who had spent pretty much all of his free time and money on a deep-dive virtual-reality game YGGDRASIL, and when the game had shut down, he had stayed logged into the game with the intention of going down with the game that had dominated most of his life… And instead of being logged out, he had found that he had woken up in his YGGDRASIL-avatar of a skeletal Overlord, and the guild-base alongside it's player-made NPC's had become 'real' in sense of being able to act outside the game's confines, speak, and act like real people.

Ainz had been called 'Momonga' at that point, as his in-game avatar of a skeletal necromancer-character had been named that way, but as soon as he found out that he had been transported into some sort of 'new world', he decided to call himself 'Ainz Ooal Gown' instead- The name of the guild in which Momonga had been in, and who had called the underground structure of Great Tomb of Nazarick it's home.

The decision to swap names had been two-part- On one hand, Ainz intended to spread the name of Ainz Ooal Gown so that if anyone else from the guild had been transported over, they'd be able to find him… And on another hand, if any of their many enemies had been transported over, they would likely think that guild 'Ainz Ooal Gown' had been transported over to the new world in its entirety and would hesitate over taking pre-emptive action to take Ainz out.

Problem had been that the new world wasn't exactly 'player-friendly'. And in retrospect Ainz knew that he had acted quite stupidly when he had arrived to the 'new world', but at the time he hadn't known any better.

Sallying out of Nazarick to save a village that had been under an assault by knights had been a spur of a moment thing, but Ainz had decided to go ahead with it anyway, not only because Sebas Tian, Nazarick's Steward, had advised so, but also so that he could use the chance to figure out what sort of people Ainz would be dealing with outside the Tomb.

Had Ainz known what that particular sortie would lead to, he would have slapped himself silly and holed up in Nazarick until the sun died down rather than sally out, but alas, he had no spell to turn back time.

And thus, Ainz had [Gate]'d himself and Albedo into the outskirts of the besieged village, and had gone to work on culling the knights that had immediately turned to attack Ainz and Albedo.

Ainz had taken Albedo with him as the Guardian Overseer was uniquely skilled to be an unflinching bodyguard. There was also the fact that the succubus had become incredibly creepy and clingy when Ainz, or rather, 'Suzuki Satoru the YGGDRASIL player- businessman' had altered Albedo's 'backstory' during the last seconds of YGGDRASIL's existence to have Albedo love him above all else. But that was neither here nor there.

The 'Knights' who had assaulted the village had been resistant to spells up to fifth tier, giving Ainz plenty of information about what sorts of things he might have to face, and in the end a group of the 'Knights' had been severely damaged by [Chain Dragon Lightning], and some outright killed by [True Death].

Albedo, in turn, had managed to take down several of the 'Knights' in melee while only taking a few hits in return- Not that any of the knife-strikes had dealt any real damage to Albedo, as what Albedo lacked in dexterity and dodging ability, she made up in extreme ability to soak damage.

…But the problem was that the squad of ten 'Knights' had managed to radio out the happenings before being wiped out, mostly because Ainz had taken his time to experiment with his spells and as a result had prolonged the engagement needlessly.

While it had been strange to see somewhat modern weapons combined with ancient-looking armors and heraldic colors, and medieval-like huts of the villagers combined with crude cybernetics and strange mutations, it wasn't too strange for Ainz from his experiences in 'previous life'- But it had been a worrying sign nonetheless that Ainz had just chalked up to the strangeness of the new world.

In hindsight attacking a full-strength Scout Squad of Firstborn Adeptus Astartes, or Space Marines, had been a supremely stupid thing to do, especially if the attack wasn't carried out with the intention of immediately killing every single of the scouts at the same time to prevent them from reporting back through their comm-beads. Not to mention, attacking said scout squad when they were scouting out the location of a hive of Chaos cultists for a subsequent orbital drop assault, which was even worse.

Ainz cringed internally as he remembered how he had returned to Nazarick after the event while carrying a bunch of 'trinkets' that the grateful 'villagers' had offered him, alongside a map of local areas and a promise of cooperation. '...Then again, [All Appraisal Magic Item] had shown that the trinkets were potent channeling devices of the gods… At the time I thought that it was just a flavor text and I would need to use a more powerful revealing item to get the items to show their 'stats', but… haa… I was so stupid…'

Bringing an Icon of Slaanesh to Nazarick's treasury had not gone well, and that was before the villagers had flocked to Nazarick to seek refuge- Apparently their 'seers' had managed to locate Nazarick based on the items that Ainz had brought back to the guild base.

Ainz hadn't been accommodating to the villager's requests to be allowed entry and refuge in Nazarick, after which the villagers had turned insistent, then hostile, and in the end Ainz had been forced to send undead out from the first three levels of Nazarick to take care of the villagers when some of them had shed their cloaks and charged into Nazarick's First Floor as multi-limbed monstrosities, and the rest of the villagers had followed behind with rapiers, swords and pistols in hand.

The fight against the cultists had been short, one-sided and brutal and Nazarick had easily emerged victorious, but in hindsight Ainz realized that betraying the cult, from their point of view anyway, and then cutting them down to the last in a orgy of violence was not a good idea while he had their Icon in possession inside the Treasury, resulting in several eerie manifestations that could have soon become full-blown demonic infestation inside the Treasury itself.

Luckily enough Pandora's Actor had acted quickly and tossed the Icon into [Depiction of Nature And Society] before the demons could properly tear the thin veil of reality and invade Treasury, and in the end the would-be demonic infestation had been contained. At least for the moment.

Problem then was that the Astartes, who had been tasked with the extermination of the cult, had figured that Nazarick were in cahoots with the villagers due to the attack on the scout squad, and had tracked the cultist-villagers with a second team of scouts… And once the villagers had revealed Nazarick to the Astartes by unknowingly leading the scouts to the underground tomb, the space marine assault had commenced swiftly.

At the time Ainz had just learned that Pandora's Actor had acted independently to use the World-class item to contain a possible invasion inside the Treasury, and the next moment a furious assault had landed literally on top of Nazarick via drop pods, breaking through the surface-level of the tomb and disgorging several full-strength squads of Assault Marines into a brutal close-quarters melee where the Astartes blazed through the traps and undead of the first three Floors of Nazarick in an armored fury that had taken Ainz by surprise, only for the Astartes to be stopped on their tracks at the end of the Third Floor when Shalltear had stood firm to block the Astartes assault.

…And as soon as Shalltear had driven the assault back, Ainz had gotten reports of fighting on all ten floors of Nazarick at the same time, as several squads of Terminators had teleported right past the third floor and had been scattered all over the guild base.

At the time Ainz had been both surprised and angry that Nazarick's anti-teleportation field had been penetrated despite such a thing requiring a Guild Ring under normal circumstances, but in retrospect a Space Marine Strike Cruiser's archeotech 'Lightning Strike' teleportation suite was designed to penetrate even the heavy overlapping void shields of capital ships, so it was no surprise that that Nazarick's anti-teleportation field could not hold against it- But luckily the anti-teleportation field had been able to thoroughly scatter the teleporting strike teams, reducing their total combat power by a considerable amount as instead of emerging as several teams of well-coordinating Terminators, the strike teams had scattered into several singular Terminators that were struggling to not get overwhelmed by Nazarick's various defenders, appeared into traps, or in some cases into solid floor or walls with grisly results.

The teleport assault had failed after prolonged struggle, during which the Floor Guardian of the Fifth Floor of Nazarick, Cocytus, had more or less been forced to run around Nazarick and take down the Terminators one by one while the rest of the non-Floor Guardian NPC's were more or less just trying to keep the Terminators busy and prepare for another assault (Specifically after one of the Terminators, who Ainz later learned was their sergeant, managed to take down a Evil Lord of Wrath in single combat).

The eerie quiet that had followed the attacks had been quite nerve-wracking, and Ainz had sent out a series of spying-and-cloaking specialized NPC's to figure out what sort of opposition they'd face… And after some legwork, he found that he had ended up in an 'imperial' world that was currently experiencing a severe Slaaneshi cultist infestation.

Initially Ainz had tried negotiating with both the Slaaneshi faction and the imperial factions in an attempt to get some sort of temporary peace deal going with Nazarick, seeing that hiding in Nazarick alone wouldn't cut it when the marines had found them out, but the end results of those negotiations had been utterly useless- Slaaneshi faction's counter-demands involved a lot of things with the Tomb that Ainz was not comfortable with, specifically after the close call with the Icon, and the imperial faction had just opened fire once they had figured out that Ainz was from the 'great tomb'.

All in all, negotiations had not worked, and Ainz had been forced to take a more proactive stance once the Space Marine chapter's Strike Cruiser broke the planet's kármán line and began bombing the Great Tomb from the upper atmosphere.

In retrospect Ainz considered himself lucky that the cruiser had expended most of its macro-cannon ammunition on the conflict that predated Nazarick's arrival to the world, so the spacecraft was forced to come closer to use it's large laser-lance batteries as the usually-long range laser weapon suffered incredible amounts of dispersion from having to fire through atmosphere.

Still, [Gate]'ing several hundred NPC's aboard the Strike Cruiser had been a tricky affair, as much like Nazarick's anti-teleportation field interfering with the teleporter strikes, the Strike Cruiser was shielded in much similar manner and the[Gate] had ended up depositing the NPC's on the Strike Cruiser's hull… And in some cases, in the strike cruiser's hull, with grisly results in the latter cases.

At that point the state of the planet had deteriorated greatly as the Slaaneshi cult had started to conduct a massive, planet-wide wave of suicidal orgies, and as a result manifested a large wave of demons into the world… And Ainz had learned from the spying Shadow Demons and other scouts that the Imperial factions had gotten a visit from something called 'an inquisitor'.

A pair of Shadow Demons and a group of Hanzo's had been sent to talk to said 'inquisitor', and possibly try to ply for a peace, but the end result had been predictable- The Hanzo's had gotten their heads popped like ripe melons as soon as they appeared in front of the white-bearded old man in strangely runic and heraldic void-sealed carapace armor, and the Shadow Demons had found themselves pulled out of the shadows by a eldritch, eerie coldness that smothered out the very shadows that the NPC's relied on for their stealth.

Strange larger-than-usual Astartes in silver armor had then easily decapitated the remaining Shadow Demons bar one who had managed to get away. Ainz had later realized that the demon had been allowed to escape deliberately as the Inquisitor had found out that the Nazarick had behind the 'assassination attempt' upon somehow intercepting the Shadow Demon's [Message] back to Ainz.

With the planet looking like it'd break, or give birth somehow (At the time Ainz had thought the report of the latter to be a hyperbole, but in retrospect the report by Demiurge had been very accurate), the imperial forces had pulled back… And had begun large-scale orbital bombardment that had caused most of the living material in the world to collapse into toxic sludge and vaporize as poisonous, highly oxygenated air.

Ainz had realized that the Imperial forces had opted to go for a very clear 'scorched earth' solution to both the demonic infestation and Nazarick itself, and from the records and logs that the infiltrating NPC's had managed to gather, such a thing was called 'Exterminatus' and it could even result in the very planet cracking and breaking apart.

Unwilling to let Nazarick be destroyed, yet at the same time unable to save it, Ainz had opted to order the NPC's to gather up everything and everyone from the Guild Base and further press their attack on the Strike Cruiser that had been bombarding Nazarick for the whole time, and which had managed to break the first three floors of the Tomb with repeated lance strikes.

Cocytus had been first to engage the Marines in close quarters after [Gate]ing on board the cruiser and assaulting the bridge, where the insect-like Floor Guardian had engaged with the Astartes Captain in single combat, and after a prolonged struggle, had taken the captain down with the swing of the [God-Slaying Emperor Blade]- But at the same time, Cocytus had suffered several return-blows from the Captain's master-crafted relic blade, forcing the Floor Guardian to retreat or risk getting taken down by the concentrated firepower of the remaining Astartes in the Strike Sruiser's bridge.

Meanwhile Shalltear had scattered with her [Gate] and had accidentally slammed herself into the ship's Gellar Field Generator in the process, causing the ship's anti-teleportation field to flicker out.

The momentary disruption allowed the rest of Nazarick to board the Cruiser via repeated [Gate] assaults, and in moments the entire battleforce of Nazarick was aboard the spaceship and wrecking havoc on the defenders.

However, Ainz had known that the victory would be short-lived if he hadn't acted quickly, since Nigredo's reports from Nazarick's scrying arrays had revealed that the Inquisitor's personal Grand Cruiser-class spaceship was turning around from it's usual spot and was starting to approach the besieged Strike Cruiser a couple of continents away- And Ainz had felt paranoid enough of the Inquisitor and the gray-silver colored odd Astartes to feel it justified to further press the attack on the Strike Cruiser's remaining bridge and command decks in personal capacity, and further hasten the exodus from Nazarick.

It pained Ainz greatly to leave Nazarick behind as it was the home of the memories of Ainz's friends, but between the planet-cracking bombardment that had now escalated to include deep crust-breaking missiles that split entire continents apart, and the fact that Ainz had only barely managed to [Gate] one such crust-breaking missile away before it could impact squarely on the hole that remained of the first three Floors, he didn't fancy Nazarick's chances of surviving the bombardment in long term.

…Not to mention that more and more Imperial ships had started to arrive around the doomed planet and begin to bombard it with all guns blazing.

Ainz had tasked Mare, one of the twin Floor Guardians of the Sixth Floor to keep spam-casting [Creation] around Nazarick to at least temporarily stabilize the area by recreating it every few hours and keep it from breaking apart utterly at least for a few days while the items and treasures of Nazarick were evacuated out- However that sort of anomaly would eventually draw the eyes of the imperial fleet to the area, and after that, the full-scale planetary bombardment would eventually focus on the Tomb and crack Nazarick open like an egg.

And thus, Ainz had gathered the very last of the NPC's and treasures of Nazarick, and abandoned the Great Tomb to it's fate… And immediately afterwards Ainz began purging the overtaken Strike Cruiser of its Astartes occupants in terrible fury and anger. Or, 'anger and fury' at least within the confines of what Ainz's [Emotion Suppression] allowed him to feel.

Luckily enough, at least for Ainz, the demonic incursion planetside had grown ever worse during the battle aboard the Strike Cruiser and the Inquisitor's Grand Cruiser had changed course to deliver its payload into the maw of a demonic entity that had emerged from the planet's surface.

The wound-like maw on the planet's surface was now nearly continent-wide and was gaping and grasping at the orbiting Imperial spaceships with lashing tongues and tentacles that were like cables of a lewd space elevator, and threatened to drag the caught city-sized escorts and frigates into a perverse doom.

Ainz had never felt as small and powerless as he had looked upon the battle of truly ridiculous proportions that was happening plantside while Nazarick NPC's fought, killed, died and huddled in the Strike Cruiser's command decks and drove the Astartes crew out or slew them outright.

Luckily the Floor Guardians had found out and defused the marine crew's backup plan of blowing up the Strike Cruiser via detonating it's Warp Drive when the defeat of the crew had become all but certain, but at the same time the fact that the Navigator of the ship had been among the dead Astartes was highly problematic for Nazarick's continued survival even if the ship wouldn't blow up from under them- The Navigator had killed himself instead of risking capture immediately after Ainz had teleported into the Navigator's quarters. The death of the ship's 'guide' prevented it from fleeing to Warp or using it's Warp Drive to move faster than light- At least, that was the story that the crew-serfs had provided for Ainz after being made obedient with a long series of [Charm] and [Control Amnesia].

The pink, pulsing and sharp-fanged maw of the daemon-planet had not been idle in the meanwhile, and the would-like maw had extended to a slit and had started to resemble some other hole entirely as it caught and swallowed the Inquisitor's Grand Cruiser whole, albeit in a somehow repeated and almost thrusting motion for some reason.

Ainz had seen through [Planar Eye] as the Inquisitor had personally emerged out from the Grand Cruiser's command deck to stand outside the hull and in the void, pull out a long blue-glowing rapier, and pointed it as a challenge at the maw of the planet-demon as the latter devoured the Grand Cruiser in a series of obscene blasts of white sticky substances, lashing strikes with space elevator-sized tongues, and hundreds of flaming, shrapnel-filled explosions, each of which easily dwarfed the [Nuclear Blast]'s that Ainz had used to clear blockades within the overtaken Strike Cruiser.

The warp-core of the Grand Cruiser had then detonated, ripping a continent-sized hole into the daemon planet's pulsating 'hole' and causing the planet-demon to let out a piercing, feminine shriek that echoed in the void despite lacking medium to travel… And The Great Tomb of Nazarick had crumbled alongside the maw, as at that point it had been a small patch of land like a mole in the demonic maw's corner.

Ainz had decided that they should get out immediately once he had seen that, and after he saw that the Imperial fleet was withdrawing to a distance while a gigantic battleship had appeared out of a Warp Rift, which at the time he had thought to be a massive [Gate].

…And without much ado, the imperial battleship had fired it's prow Nova Cannon into the planet's gaping hole that had been further widened by the death of the Inquisitor's Grand Cruiser, and the null-energy shot had caused an obscene explosion of bodily liquids that penetrated through the planet on both sides and caused it to crumble unto itself alongside an orgasmic shriek which echoed in the void- The combination of which had made Ainz roughly seventy-five percent certain that he was living in a fever dream, somehow.

Hundreds of millions, possibly billions of lives had been snuffed out in an instant, trillions of metric tons of warships, men and armor had been wiped out, yet the battlefleet merely reformed its ranks and began turning around to continue its silent march in the void as if it was a day like any other. It was destruction and callous calculus of life and material on a scale that Ainz, or rather, the Neo-Japanese businessman Suzuki Satoru within Ainz's skin, was unable to even comprehend as it happened before his very eyes.

However, the communications-augur of the now-overtaken Strike Cruiser had lit up with incoming communication, and as Ainz had fairly certain that he couldn't just use [Gate] to hop about on intergalactic scale, he had decided to go for subterfuge instead and plopped Pandora's Actor in front of the communications array with orders to shapeshift into the form of the slain Astartes captain and make a story of beating back Nazarick's assault.

One thing had led to another, and Ainz had found himself, or rather Nazarick, more or less press-ganged into joining the ongoing imperial Crusade, which had been taking a detour to refuel and crush a minor chaos incursion as form of trial-by-fire for the newly-raised regiments of Imperial Guard, with several minor Astartes chapter tagging along the crusade to serve it as shock troops- And the Strike Cruiser 'Lightning's Searing Claws' of the White Scars successor-chapter of 'Storm Blades' was supposed to have been one of those minor chapters accompanying the Crusade, before it had diverted itself to answer a distress call from the now-dead planetary government.

The warmaster's glitching, low-resolution holographic image had looked at disguised and saluting Pandora's Actor up and down, then scrunched his exceedingly bushy eyebrows, but finally just shook his head and stated his demands through the projector- It looked as if the warmaster had seen something amiss in Pandora's Actor's play or salute, but the warmaster looked too tired and jaded to care. The ancient man had black bags under his eyes so deep that Ainz felt as if the warmaster had not slept for hundreds of years- In retrospect, possibly literally.

Ainz couldn't really say 'no, I'm not gonna come with you' to the orders to follow the fleet from the Crusade's warmaster either, specifically when the Strike Cruiser was likely under extra scrutiny due to Nazarick boarding it (Although Ainz ensured that from imperial point of view and in reports, the 'marines' had managed to cut down Nazarick to the last man), and so Ainz had ordered the surviving NPC's to figure out how to pilot the space-craft and have it join up with the rest of the Crusade's ships.

The rest of the NPC's would focus on interrogating the survivors of the bridge crew, cleaning up the place, and the Death Knights and other superhuman-sized NPC's would start to wear the armor of the dead Astartes as a disguise at least until the artificers pulled from the Tenth Floor of Nazarick could start manufacturing fake suits of armor that would better fit the NPC's. The rest of the NPC's then began trying to find their place aboard the ancient spaceship that was practically chock-full of religious imagery and tech that was both bizarrely advanced and utterly medieval at the same time.

Ainz had seen the expression on a couple of Homunculus maids's faces when they had found out that Ainz had taken the captain's quarters for himself (or rather, Demiurge and Albedo had all but insisted for Ainz to take it), and the maids had more or less made it their life's mission to clean up Ainz's new quarters of the dust, candle-wax, unnecessary seals that were everywhere for some reason, and thousands of years worth of grime and incense-ash that were positively caking everything in the ship.

Seeing that the spaceship was effectively stranded without a Navigator, and reviving the Astartes Navigator was too much of a risk, Ainz had asked Pandora's Actor to request a new replacement from the fleet. After some grumbling, and probably a slight nudge from the warmaster, the admiral of the fleet had agreed to send a replacement from one of the lesser frigates that would then be scuttled and left behind as there was no time to get a replacement Navigator in time from elsewhere.

The new Navigator had arrived to the Strike Cruiser under heavy guard in a shuttle, and had been sealed into the ship's Navigator's quarters with massive amount of pomp and ceremony- And luckily enough the Imperial Navigator seemed to be utterly uncaring of Nazarick's presence, or anyone other than herself, and had merely scoffed in a scornful manner when she had met up with Pandora's Actor who had been pretending to be the Astartes captain.

Moreover, Ainz had gotten the ship renamed in the process 'to honor the fallen marines', albeit in reality it was done to archive the exact opposite as he had been, and still was, quite angry with the whole situation and the fact that the battle had cost Ainz and the NPC's of Nazarick their home despite how they were outsiders to the whole conflict.

In the end, however, Ainz had been forced to more or less go along with the flow of things as the alternate was to try to fight the rest of the imperial fleet- Something that he was fairly certain would not end well, considering the difficulty they had faced when trying to partially take over just one medium-sized vessel, and the fact that the Strike Cruiser was in broadside firing arc of the massive battleship that was the flagship of the Crusade.

The fact that the lower floors of the Strike Cruiser were virtually untouched by the boarding action, much like the vast majority of the ship's serf-crew and other compartments, further solidified the decision to selectively resurrect some of the dead bridge crew and then try to [Charm] and [Control Amnesia] them in order to figure out how the ship's controls worked- Luckily enough the majority of the bridge crew were regular humans as mind-controlling Astartes had proven to be very difficult affair even with [Control Amnesia], and the massive superhuman 'men' were likely to shake off most mind-controlling effects after some time and turn on the NPC's who were herding them around, and even extended torture by Demiurge had not been enough to break the Astartes.

Mind-controlling the purely human crew was another case entirely, so soon enough Ainz and the rest of the NPC's of Nazarick had quarantined the bridge- and command decks for their own use and communicated with the rest of the ship via intercoms and mind-controlled serfs, and thus ensuring that the crew en large never realized that they were no longer serving the Adeptus Astartes.

Soon afterwards the Strike Cruiser had joined the flotilla of other Strike Cruisers that were waiting in formation and were preparing to join the massive Battleship and the rest of the fleet in warp-travel.

…And on their crusade against the massive incoming ork WAAAGH.

…

Ainz sighed in the present moment as he looked around the broken streets of the hive-city.

The Death Knights who had been clad in discarded and slightly modified Astartes armor were exterminating the orks with mechanical efficiency, albeit not entirely without losses as the local ork tribe seemed to be quite fond of flamers, which incidentally was one of the biggest weaknesses of the Death Knights, even if they had the additional protection of Astartes armor '...The information we managed to glean from the ship's serfs, logs, and other records paints a grim picture… Honestly, I shouldn't complain. There was a real chance of a disaster turning into a complete and utter destruction of us all. Moreover, this crusade is just one amongst hundreds, possibly thousands similar crusades that are happening at the same time all over the galaxy- Exterminating Nazarick would likely only be worthy of a footnote in a war of this scale. Our best options are to either try to fly under the radar, or go along with the flow and try to think on our feet.'

The screaming of the orks stopped in the distance as the Death Knights finished the orks who had been lingering in the area, and Ainz turned to glance back in the direction of the platoon of Imperial Guard, all of whom were looking up in amazement at Ainz, who in retrospect realized that had struck a heroic pose on top of a pile of ork corpses and had been deep in thought while occasionally ricocheting a stray ork slug-shot or a ten or a hundred from his armor like some sort of immovable statue of unyielding might in front of a wave of withering firepower.

…Mostly because [High-Tier Physical Immunity] blocked those sorts of low-grade shots, and he had been too deep in his thoughts to realize that he was under fire.

'...Umu, this is optimal, but still, this is kind of embarrassing…' Ainz felt as [Emotion Suppression] activated upon seeing the utter amazement and borderline worship in the eyes of the human soldiers.

Still with any hope, the ork assault on the unremarkable food-production planet would soon wither down, and Ainz could stretch his legs a bit while continuing to supply reports back to the main crusade about ensuring that the food production for the neighboring planetary systems would stay safe.

In retrospect Ainz should have just shut his mental self up at that exact point.

.

.

.

Ciaphias Cain woke up to a bad premonition aboard the troop transport-frigate that was undergoing Warp travel and was heading for the world of Weissburg, which according to the warmaster's scouting reports would likely come under attack by a massive, concentrated spearhead of the ork WAAAGH, a Tyranid splinter-fleet of Hive Fleet Leviathan, and a marauding band of Renegade Astartes of the Bloody Claw.

It hadn't been Cain's idea to hop aboard the transport that had been sent as an emergency support for the soon-to-be-doomed world before a proper response fleet could be drawn away from the main battlefleet which had engaged the ork flotilla in gigantic mess of a naval battle above a dying star, but thanks to Cain's 'heroic' reputation it hadn't taken much browbeating from the warmaster to effectively checkmate Cain into a position of either taking the desperate and heroic mission of holding the strategically important food-production world from the ork hands, or risk crumbling his reputation as the 'Hero of the Imperium'.

The day wasn't truly lost, however, as the warmaster had informed Cain that a Chapter of Space Marines was already present and defending the world, so with any hope, the defense shouldn't be too difficult of an affair despite the forces that were projected to assault it.

In retrospect if Cain had known what would take place in that accursed world, he would have rather taken the ignominy and court-martial of refusing the warmaster's orders than ever set foot on the world of Weissburg, but life was rarely that easy for the supposed 'Hero of the Imperium.'

It wasn't all doom and gloom, however, as Cain's aide Jurgen had brewed a pot of Tanna tea and brought a cup for Cain as soon as he heard that Cain had woken up, and the Commissar had begun to sip the tea in quiet contemplation of his life's choices and ponderings of why exactly the God-Emperor had chosen Cain's 'career' to be His royal jester.

...After which Jurgen had informed Cain that he had gotten a message, and curtly gave Cain a data-slate that bore the distinctive seal of the Imperial Inquisition, the latter of which had caused Cain to almost spray the sipped tanna all over Jurgen.

Pilot episode. To be continued (™)

Cover image: xiaoguimist