She woke up, but she didn't really feel like getting up just yet so she ended up doing some light divination work while lying down in bed.
First and foremost, she quickly checked in on everyone in their rooms, and yep, most of them are still sleeping. She's fine.
Then, she checked on the NPCs.
Shalltear was patrolling the 2nd floor at the moment, Leviathan and Tokino were busy cuddling each other on the couch, Cocytus was talking with one of his underlings about the bodies she put there-
"Lady Vagisilious, are you the one currently divining Nazarick?" A voice pierces through her head.
Which NPC was that one… Ah, Nigredo?
She sends back, "Ah, yeah, that's me. Don't mind me."
She couldn't see Nigredo, but she assumed she nodded and didn't say anything back.
Alright, anyways, Aura and Mare were busy cleaning up the mess we caused back when we were having fun throwing spells down there. She feels a bit bad for not cleaning after themselves, but… Ah, well, the NPCs would probably be trying to tell them that they could clean it themselves.
Ulbert was apparently awake right now and talking to Demiurge on the 7th floor, and she feels the urge to spy on their conversation so she gets a bit closer.
It's a shame that everyone in the guild has anti-divination items and spells active at all times.
A voice rings through her head moments before disaster.
Ulbert Alain Odle's Anti-Divination spell activated! Activating 9th tier spell, [Vermillion Nova]!
'Ah, shi-'
Her bedroom burst into flames.
Ulbert stopped in the middle of his sentence as he felt his anti-divination spell activate.
"My lord? Has something happened?" Demiurge questioned.
"Hold on, I think Vaggy just did something stupid." He said, bring 2 fingers to his temple.
"Was that you just now?" He curiously asked.
"Nope. Not me. Really can't have been me, I'm asleep." Was her immediate reply.
He sighed.
That dumbass.
"Yeah, yeah, of course. You're fine though, right?" He asked, a bit worried that she ended up tanking a 9th tier spell to the face.
The tests they did yesterday confirmed that gear levels still work as usual, so if Vagisilious wasn't wearing her usual level 100 divine gear, the damage from his anti-divination spell had the potential to kill her, since he was decked out in his full set.
Vagisilious slowly replied, "I'm fine, but… My room isn't…"
"So, I guess we shouldn't have our anti-divination spells active?" He questioned.
She hummed, theorizing, "It might be a thing where if you know the person looking at you, it won't activate."
"Right, I guess we'll have to tell everyone about this later."
"...Yeah."
After her rude awakening, she was basically forced out of her bed by a very concerned Emily who was standing just outside her room while she slept.
And Emily was standing out there just as an excuse to slack off.
Anyhow, Emily ended up calling the other maids in to clean her room, so now she has to find somewhere else to lounge while divining the outside world, because she definitely was not going to risk being blown up twice by divining Nazarick again.
Speaking of which, yeah, that hurts. She healed it off moments later, but yikes, even with all her gear on because it's all just cloth and easily slept in, that still hurt.
So, that's how she ended up in the cafeteria with Emily, who quickly took the excuse to 'look after' her.
"So, are the other members eating somewhere else or something?" She asked as she looked around the cafeteria to see if she could find any familiar faces.
Emily shook her head, "No, apparently everyone else was smart enough to just order the food up to wherever they were."
"Ah, that makes sense," She said as her own food was served, some sort of pasta, "I guess I should do that too…"
Emily's face fell, "Oh c'mon, don't be a loner! I swear all your-" She quickly realizes she was being watched by everyone else in the cafeteria and she quickly fixes up her act, "I mean, uh, I'm sure you have thousand year plans to sort out with your- my masters, yeah? Why not just talk with them while eating?"
She hummed as she swallowed her food, "Mhm, I guess I should."
As they ate, she tried to use her divination magic at the same time, and though it slowed down her eating speed, she was able to get eyes on the village from before.
Looks like a human farming village with nothing of much interest, really. The only interesting part is the low tier angel in the middle of it.
She widened her view and found a road leading somewhere else, so she followed it for a while until she was restricted by her distance and the lack of living creatures on the road for her to connect to so she could continue further.
But if she tilted her vision enough, she could see the outlines of some small smoke that might indicate that there's another settlement out in the distance past the hills she was stuck behind, so that was nice to see.
Other than that though, she didn't really see much use in continuing so she shut down her divination and finished up her food.
"Oh yeah, that reminds me, Laur- Ah, am I supposed to call you Lady Vagisilious now?" Emily asked, tilting her head.
She shrugged, "Huh, I don't know? Maybe just in front of others, call me Lady Vagisilious and you can call me that in private."
Emily nodded, then she quietly asked, "Alright, Lady Vagisilious, can we get breaks?"
She raised an eyebrow, "Uh, you don't get breaks?"
Emily shook her head, "No, I think they just expect us to work 24/7 and enjoy it. And to be honest, I'm not enjoying it."
"Ah," She mouthed, mentally filing the note inside her head, "I'll talk to Momonga about it later, yeah?"
Emily smiled, "Thank you, uh, secondly… Can I go outside?"
"Oh, yeah, because you've been stuck here for a while. Yeah, I can do that." She immediately accepted, "Uh, but it'll have to be during your break later."
Emily accepted the deal, "Yeah, okay, I'll be excited for that! Anyways, are you going anywhere right now? Or can we gossip a bit?"
Her face turned deadly serious, "Tell me all of the gossip."
Emily's face also turned deadly serious as she continued, "Alright, so I've been keeping track of who goes into who's rooms, right, and I'm seeing so many maids enter these rooms and not coming out for hours…"
After an hour of finding out who's banging who in Nazarick, she says goodbye to Emily and continues onto the Momonga's office, which is the only office that anyone has in Nazarick mostly because Momonga's the guild leader and obviously should have an office, and she finds Momonga and Punitto just chatting about random stuff.
Momonga noticed her first as he called out, "Hey, Vaggy! How was your bed?"
"Heavenly," She simply replied, "Definitely worth the 14 years of hell."
Punitto hummed, "I guess I should try sleeping one of these days too then, huh?"
She nodded, "You definitely should, it's great!"
Momonga changed the topic, "Alright, anyways, we should probably talk more about how we're going to be scouting this new world."
She raised her hand a bit as she said, "I already did some divination before I got here, and all I know is that the village nearby is human, and that there's another village that I just barely couldn't see because of my distance limitations."
"Can we see the village?" Punitto asked, as she quickly activated [Soul Sight] with the combination of [Show Divination].
Momonga hummed as he watched the people go about their day, then he spotted the angel, "Ah, is that an Archangel Flame?"
Punitto nodded, "I think so, yeah. But I thought we weren't in Yggdrasil anymore? Why is there a Yggdrasil summon just standing there?"
"Maybe it's another player's summon?" Momonga theorized, hand on his chin, "Or it could just be that despite being in another world, we share the same magic system…"
Punitto hummed as he thought about it, then he turned to her, before immediately turning back to the screen, "I was just going to ask you if you knew if other players were teleported here, but then I realized you probably wouldn't know, huh…"
Her right eye twitched, "Shut up."
"So, I say that we gather everyone here in the conference room and then we make a small scouting force to see what's up." Momonga suggested, getting nods from the two of them.
"Can I be on the scouting force?" She asked.
Punitto shook his head, "No, you need to be our divination person."
Her face fell, "Can't Nubo do that? I wanna go outside…"
Punitto cut her a deal, "If you can convince Nubo to do it, you can act as the main healer out there."
She eagerly accepted, "Deal!"
"We probably want a 5 person squad for this, right?" Momonga asked, before stating, "In that case, we should probably have 1 tank, 3 damage dealers, and 1 healer. If Vaggy is the healer, can I be one of the damage dealers?"
Punitto tilted his head, "You also want to go outside?"
Momonga nodded, "I want to explore this new world and learn everything about it."
"Ah, that's fair," Punitto conceded, nodding, "Alright, then we should probably take a rogue as a scouting unit and… Hm, if you're the summoner type, maybe we need someone who can just raise hell for long enough for us to come help you if needed."
"How about Ulbert?" She suggested, "He'd probably have a bunch of fun blowing things up."
Punitto nodded, "Right. I'm not that sure about his self control, but I think having Ulbert able to get you guys out of any situation is ideal. And then the rogue can be… Hm, I think Nishikienrai is the best choice since he's the one who specced into a 100 agility build, which could come in handy."
"Then the tank…" Momonga mused, "Otanabetabeki's tank build focused on crowd control, so maybe we should bring him along so he can disable enemies so we can burst them down."
She nodded, "Right, and then I can just use my illusion magic which hopefully should be able to fool the humans so we don't have to wear disguises."
"What tier were your illusions again?" Punitto asked.
"Uh, the disguises are 9th tier." She answered.
Momonga didn't seem too confident, "Honestly, I think we should have 10th tier disguises just in case. But I don't think anyone actually got those illusion spells…"
Considering that illusions were in a similar spot to time job classes, where basically everyone over the level of 70 had a counter to them, high level illusion type classes or spells weren't very popular. So Ainz Ooal Gown didn't end up getting somebody with a dedicated illusion focused build.
She shrugged, "If that's too low, we can just eject and bring in new people."
"Then that would make that new group look far more suspicious." Momonga pointed out.
"If we just made a gate and approached someone outside of their small town boundaries, we could get some information off of the lone villager to test the waters." She suggested.
Punitto nodded, "Right, that's a good plan. And then Nubo can show his divination and we can just message you guys about things."
"Additionally, we should probably form a small backup team just in case." Momonga said, "I propose we put all of our rangers on that backup team."
"Right, that's a good idea," Punitto complimented as he furthered the backup team, "Then we can put BigStall and Coup as tanks, and then Denshosho and Yoipesuto as the healers."
"And then the rest is on standby?" She questioned.
Momonga nodded, "And then the rest is on standby."
Then, she noticed, "We're not going to use any of the NPCs?"
Punitto shook his head, "No, they're a bit too of an unknown factor to us right now, though I'm sure they're super loyal, we need to spend more time with them to know how best to use them."
She frowned, "That's a bit rude to describe them like that."
Momonga shrugged, "It is true though."
She shrugged as she conceded the argument.
"By the way," Momonga continued as he heard no counter argument, "I was planning on trying out Perfect Warrior, to use as my persona while gaining info."
Punitto thought about it for a moment, then shook his head, "No, we still have no idea what's the power level of this world. If it's higher than what we are, you'd have to spend seconds going back into your usual form, and those seconds could cost us everything."
Momonga hummed, "Hm, I guess that's true, but somehow I find that scenario unlikely, and the benefits of not revealing our entire hand is more worthwhile."
"I don't have a spell like Perfect Warrior, though." She said, "And I don't think anyone else in our group does either. If we get into a test of strength, and we turn out to be all top tier threats, and you're just sort of okay? That's a red flag."
Punitto nodded, "If we're in a scenario where we have to fight, you should probably be retreating unless it's against a nobody. But other than that, it's a fair point to make."
Momonga shrugged, "Then I'll stay as a mage, then. What's our tier limit?"
"The usual, 7th." Punitto quickly answered.
Because of things like High Tier Magic Immunity and the physical counterpart to it, basically anything below the 7th tier was worthless, because basically every heteromorphic race had access to the powerful trait, not to mention that anything below the 7th tier would do negligible amounts of damage.
Not to mention mages didn't have any reliable way to regain mana quickly in a fight, so it was usually accepted that a mage would rely on 8th or 9th tier spells, while only bringing out 10th tier spells if it was desperate, a 10th tier spell was the only thing that did what you wanted, or the enemy was just retreating and you needed to burst them down quickly.
Of course, none of that applied when she had her Mianguan on. Because with the amount of mana she restores, spamming 10th tier spells all of the time becomes a viable strategy.
Momonga nodded, "Of course."
Punitto hummed, seeing the end to the conversation, "Alright, it's up to the three of us to wake everyone up now."
"You guys suck for waking us up this early…" Bakuita groggily said as he went to sit down in his chair in the conference room, making all 41.
"This is important business, alright?" Punitto said, "Anyways, we're going to be starting our scouting of this new world today, and so we made a team of 5 that'll go out to the village that's nearby, plus an extra team in case things go wrong."
So, Punitto listed out everyone who would be on a team.
Touch was a bit worried about who was on the scouting force, "Are you guys really putting Ulbert on the scouting force?"
"What? You don't trust me with scouting?" Ulbert mock-offendedly asked.
Punitto stepped in before they could begin arguing, "Ulbert's the firepower that'll buy the other 4 enough time for the backup team to come in, and then the rest of us to join the fight."
Touch hummed, "Fine, I'll trust the other 4 to keep him in check."
Ulbert's right eye twitched, but he decided to not say anything.
Then, Ulbert remembered something, "Hey Vaggy, did you tell them about this morning?"
She immediately lowered herself into her chair as she quietly answered, "...No."
Ulbert snorted as he decided to answer the question, "Alright, so Vaggy did a bit of spying on us when she woke up, and she ended up triggering my anti-divination stuff."
"What the-" Nubo began, turning to her, "Were you hurt at all?"
She purposefully looked up at the ceiling as she replied, "No, I had my gear on."
"It was Vermillion Nova." Ulbert snitched on her, "It blew up her room."
Nubo worriedly asked, "Uh, that's not going to be me when I look out for you guys, right?"
She answered that one, "I think it might work like, uh, if you know the person who's spying on you, it won't activate? But if you get spied on without knowing who it is, it will activate."
"Source?" BigStall asked.
She shrugged, "I guessed based on my feelings and instinctual knowledge about my job class."
"So you're making things up, alright," Punitto concluded, getting a mock offended look out of her, "We can test that theory out when we get there."
And so, the team of Otanabetabeki, Momonga, Ulbert, Nishikienrai, and herself gathered around as Nubo fired up his divination onto where the village was.
And so, they were just looking for a good place to teleport to in order to get information from someone in a secluded corner.
After a good minute, they found a pair of young girls playing around in the forest, so it was decided that they would teleport a bit away from them, and then they'd approach them asking for some basic information.
And so, she put human illusions on the group, the others put on gear that would hide their most inhuman features if the disguises failed, and she made a gate to about where they needed to go, and so they entered.
After setting foot in the forest, they waited for a second as Punitto sent a group message to the 5 of them so he could act as the mission control. Then Punitto confirmed Nubo wasn't blowing up, so that meant she was right on how anti-divination worked.
So, with that established, they first needed a quick check on who's doing who.
"So, if Momonga does the talking, what are we here for?" She asked the group.
Punitto messaged them, "It gives you some extra leverage because it'll make you guys look like you can't be taken advantage of. Speaking of, I just realized you'll want some fake names, so come up with them now."
"Fake names…?" She despondently asked, "...I suck at coming up with fake names…"
Ulbert shrugged, "Doesn't have to be good. I'll just go with Alain, since that sounds like a real name already."
Momonga raised his hand, "Momon."
"Seriously?" Otanabetabeki asked, "If you're going with that, I may as well go with Beta!"
Nishikienrai tilted his head, "Why are you guys messing around? This is serious stuff."
Momonga shrugged, "It's easy to remember, at least."
Nishikienrai sighed, "Fine, whatever, I'll just go with Kien."
She raised an eyebrow, "If we're just taking parts of our name, can I be Ilious?"
"No." Ulbert immediately declined, "Too hard to pronounce."
She sighed, "...Fine, what if I just use my real- well, I guess old name… Moore?"
"...I guess that works." Nishikienrai said.
And so, the tag team of Beta, Momon, Alain, Kien, and Moore set out to go meet 2 village girls.
Once they had come into view of the 2 girls, Momonga loudly announced their presence, "Ah, hello! If you two could spare a moment of your time…"
"Huh?" The older looking of the two looked over to them, "Oh, uh, who are you people?"
Momon answered, "I am Momon, and these are my traveling companions. We were traveling for a while, so we were hoping you could spare some information for us, miss…"
"Oh, my name is Enri Emmot! Nice to meet you, sir Momon!" Enri looked over to the other girl, as she quickly moved to introduce her, "Ah, and this is my sister Nemu!"
Nemu waved her hand, "Hi!"
Then Enri continued, "We're from Carne, which isn't too far from here. I'm not sure what else we can tell you, so we can just take you there instead…?"
Enri seemed to be nervous, being approached by 5 strangers, but they took no effort to make her feel more comfortable other than to not look like they were getting ready for a fight.
Momonga hummed, "Ah, that would be much appreciated. But if I could ask, what were you doing around here?"
Enri blinked for a moment before answering, "Ah, well, the Holy Kingdom completed their monthly cleaning of the forest a week ago, so we thought it was safe for Nemu to play around here as long as I was watching her."
Holy Kingdom? Dutifully noted.
Momonga put his hand up to his chin, "Holy Kingdom? I'm afraid I'm not quite sure what you're talking about."
Enri hummed as she began to walk towards a direction, which prompted us to follow her, "Well, it was only 8 years ago since the Holy Kingdom took over this village and the last kingdom it was in, so if you were traveling around back then, I guess you might've missed it?"
Momonga ran with the idea as he nodded, "Ah, yes, we were traveling for many years. I'm afraid the nature of today's world eludes us quite a bit…"
"Well, I think my dad or the village chief can tell you more about it," Enri said as they came out of the forest and Carne came into view, "Here, I'll drop off Nemu back and I can take you to the village chief?"
Momonga nodded, "Yes, would you like us to wait here, or would you allow us to follow you around?"
Enri hesitated for a moment before saying, "Um, I guess you can follow me? My house is on the way to the chief anyways."
And so, they followed.
Along the way, Momonga asked, "By the way, do you know of magic?"
Enri nodded, "Yeah? I have a friend in E-Rantel that knows magic and sometimes comes here for his alchemy stuff."
Alright, magic exists in this world, good to know, great job, Momonga.
Punitto messaged them, "Momonga, you're doing great, the 4 of you need to straighten up a bit to make yourselves look more confident."
Ulbert internally squawked, "What?! I'm doing perfectly fine!"
"No, I think I get it," She sent out, "We don't want to look like we have no idea what we're doing, right?"
"Exactly right." Punitto replied, "By the way, you're getting closer to the archangel flame, so be aware of that, and do note that we heard the thing about the Holy Kingdom, so you should ask for a map or something."
As they all sent their understanding, they straightened up the way they continued to follow Enri to her house.
As they were moving through the village, they noted that many of the houses were empty for some reason, and there doesn't seem to be as many people farming as there should've been for this many houses.
Then, they arrived at their destination. The blonde mother of the duo was out doing laundry, turning around as she heard their footsteps.
"Ah, Enri! Nemu! You two are back a bit early, aren't you?" Their mother asked, then she spotted the 5 of them, "Oh, who are these people?"
Enri introduced them, "Ah, these are some adventurer's that happened to stumble on me when we were playing in the forest! This is Momon and… Ah, I don't think I heard the other names?"
Momonga quickly introduced them, pointing to each one of them, "Ah, I am Momon, and these are Alain, Kien, Beta, and Moore."
Their eyes widened as their mother asked, "Alain? Oh, excuse me, my name is Alice."
Ulbert tilted his head and questioned, "Is there something wrong with my name?"
"Ah…" Alice hesitated, "Are any of you aware of the legend?"
Momonga shook his head, "No, I'm afraid not."
"You must've come from somewhere far away to not know Ulbert Alain Odle," Alice commented, then elaborating, "Well, this legend is mostly circulated around adventurer's circles, but since my husband was an adventurer once before the guild was forced to downsize, we've heard about it."
Okay.
So people knew about Ulbert's name around here.
HOW.
"Okay guys! This is salvageable! Just ask her about the legend and how it got started!" Punitto told them.
Momonga recovered the fastest, and said, "Ah, well, will you tell us what the legend was about?"
Alice nodded as she began to explain, "Ah, well, the version we know is that the Six Great Gods had some sort of mysterious item that held great power, and it belonged to the god of fire, Lord Yakedo.
So one day, while the Six Great Gods were traveling, a demon in the form of a balfolk suddenly struck at them intending to steal the item. Initially, the fight was going in the Six Great Gods' favor, as the demon known as Ulbert Alain Odle was slowly losing the fight.
But then suddenly, a malicious fairy came to Ulbert Alain Odle's aid. The exact nature of the demon and fairy's relationship isn't really clear, I think the years have made that lost, but personally I believe that it was some sort of familiar of his.
Anyhow, the tides turned against the Six Great Gods, and eventually Lord Yakedo was struck down by Ulbert Alain Odle, and the two quickly stole the item and ran off with it.
Again, this tale is commonly told in adventurer circles as a way to tell newer adventurers to know when you have to run away from a fight and to always check your surroundings so you don't get caught off guard like our Gods did in that battle."
She and Ulbert shared a look as the explanation ended.
That was when Ulbert got his World Disaster job class. She doesn't exactly remember who those chumps were, but that was definitely them.
There are other players in this world.
But still, why would those guys spread a story about the time they got their ass handed to?
Momonga was apparently wondering about that too, since he asked, "That's quite the story, but do you know why the Six Great Gods would spread a story about how they were defeated?"
Alice shrugged, "Well, I'm not sure. I know that these stories were started by one of the aids of the Six Great Gods, Subaru Rivers, so perhaps he wanted to warn the world about such dangers? And besides, Ulbert Alain Odle and his fairy familiar still had to run in the end. So it wasn't like the Six Great Gods were completely defeated…"
She and Ulbert shared another look.
They remembered about the ass whooping that they gave those guys on that day.
Yeah, those guys were absolutely lying.
"Ah…" Momonga voiced out before saying, "Is there anything further about the legend?"
Alice thought about it for a moment before replying, "Ah, I believe that the Six Great Gods tried to get the item back by rallying a group of 5,000 followers in order to attack the demon's fortress, Nazarick, but I'm not sure the specific details on it, since that one is something only historians care about. And my husband, apparently."
Okay they know about Nazarick.
Shit.
Do they know about Ainz Ooal Gown, then?
"Alright, you guys need to invite yourselves into their house and use something like [Control Amnesia] to make them forget about your name, Ulbert. Name yourself literally anything else." Punitto commanded.
She was the one who checked their surroundings, saw several people staring at them, and messaged the group, "It's not happening, we're a bit too compromised already. We just have to play this off."
Momonga was apparently a master at multitasking because at the same time he was listening to the messages, he was speaking to Alice, "Ah, then perhaps we'll ask him more about it later, if you'll introduce us?"
Alice smiled and nodded, "Of course!" Then she looked over to Ulbert, "But, and I'm sorry if this offends you or anything, but I would recommend changing your name sooner or later if you don't want to be associated with demons."
"Never mind, she's safe." Punitto called off his previous command.
Ulbert nodded and politely answered, "I'll probably take your advice, so thank you for the heads up."
Alice politely replied back, "Of course, it wasn't a problem." Then she tilted her head, "You are going to Robert's house, the head chief, right? Enri, be sure to be a good guide for Carne, okay?"
Enri dutifully nodded, "Alright, mom!"
"Thank you for your time, Miss Alice." Momonga politely thanked her as they continued on their way, following Enri.
As they passed through the village center, they saw the archangel flame that was standing guard in the center of the village.
The archangel flame didn't attack them, so the angel was probably in some sort of setting that only attacked hostile threats.
That being said, they weren't going to test that theory out in the scenario that somebody is keeping an eye on their summons, and happens to come in here with the calvary.
They passed by some fellow citizens on the way to the village chief's house, but she noticed that their eyes held some light disdain against not them, but the angel that was standing guard.
They weren't quite sure why, but it was somewhat interesting to see. And definitely something they were going to find the answer about sooner or later.
Then, as they reached their destination, Enri politely knocked on the door of the village chief's house, saying out loud, "Mr. Harold! There are some travelers wanting to speak to you!"
Within a few seconds, Harold opened his door and quickly greeted them, "Ah! Enri! It's good to see you!" He turned to the group, "And welcome to Carne, travelers! May I ask why you wanted to see me?"
After a quick introduction, Momonga answered the question, "We've been traveling around for a while with no connections to civilization, and we would like to be reacquainted with the world, so we were hoping you could hopefully provide us with some information on the country we're in."
Harold hummed as he heard the request, "Ah, I understand, the world's changed a lot in 10 years… Sure, come inside of my house, and my wife and I will tell you all about the "Holy" Kingdom."
She raised an eyebrow at the added emphasis on the word holy. Is the Holy Kingdom not a good kingdom?
"Ah, I guess I should leave now," Enri said as she turned around, "I hope we see you again- Ah, what's your team name?"
"Tell them that you don't have one." Punitto commanded, "All of you are terrible with names anyways."
And Momonga dutifully answered, "Ah, I'm afraid we don't have one, we've always just referred to ourselves as travelers."
Enri seemed disappointed, "Aw, really? You should definitely come up with one later! Anyways, goodbye!"
Waving goodbye to Enri, whom she's sure they'll never meet again, they entered the village chief's house and were introduced to Elizabeth, Harold's wife.
As they gathered around the house, with the 2 humans sitting across from Momonga who was big enough to take the entire side of the table, Momonga started the conversation, "First of all, do you happen to have a map? We haven't seen one in quite a while."
Harold nodded as Elizabeth got up and opened a drawer, taking a scroll out of it, unfurling it across the table.
The map was labeled 'Territories of the Holy Kingdom,' and the borders of the kingdom were outlined in yellow.
And apparently, this is a pretty big kingdom. It was a coastal country, and the 3 big neighbors seemed to be the Dragon Kingdom, The Argland Council State, and "The Wilderness." which just sounded like untamed lands. And there were 2 whole peninsulas on this map! How neat!
The biggest out of the 2 actual countries was the Dragon Kingdom, but the map didn't label anything about it except for their name and Capital.
Anyhow, the Holy Kingdom was divided into a few different sections, which seemed to just be where the previous countries stood which made the main districts of the Holy Kingdom. And they went through the effort of labeling every single small town as well.
And the Holy Kingdom's capital city around the bottom left of the map is named… London?
Wait a minute, that's just a British name! What the hell was a London doing here? And the cities surrounding the capital were also named after foreign cities! San Francisco, Berlin, Monrovia…
…But there weren't any Japanese names at all.
As they digested the map, Harold explained a bit about it, "So when the Holy Kingdom took over, they handed one of these maps to every single village. Carne is right there, and the next biggest city would be E-Rantel, which is where I'd suggest you'd go if you wanted more information than what I can give you."
Momonga hummed, "I see, thank you… If I may ask, do you know why the Argland Council State or the Dragon Kingdom are not a part of the Holy Kingdom?"
Harold shrugged, "I heard that the king of the Dragon Kingdom, who has lived for 100 years, is insanely strong, and is the strongest human on this planet. And I believe the Argland Council State is ruled by dragons, so maybe the Holy Kingdom is just waiting for a good opportunity. The other countries that the Holy Kingdom took over were all human ones, so of course they bent the knee to the angels quickly."
Hold on, angels?
She spoke up, "Do angels rule the Holy Kingdom, then?"
Harold nodded, "Yes, I'm not quite aware of their names, or how many angels rule us, but I do know that they're angels."
Huh? How do people not know the guys ruling over them?
"Is there any particular reason why you don't know the names of the people ruling over you?" Otanabetabeki asked, basically reading her mind.
Harold frowned, "Well, all I got from the Holy Kingdom was someone coming in to tell us that they ruled us now, and that food was going to be delivered to us by angels every week, and that we'll get a guardian angel for the village. They never told us anything about who ruled them, and all the news we get nowadays are from people who left the village sending mail back home, again by angels."
"You guys get free food?" Ulbert curiously questioned.
Harold nodded, "I say we get too much of it. Apparently, the Holy Kingdom has summoned angels doing all of the farming for us in some distant lands, so now we don't have to farm anymore."
He… Doesn't sound too happy about that for some reason. She doesn't really understand why not having to do menial labor like farming would be upsetting to him.
Momonga spotted it too, and so asked, "You don't sound quite happy about it."
Harold sighed, his eyes filled with disdain as he explained, "We've been farming for generations, and now all of a sudden we're just given free food? We're a farming village, for heaven's sake. We can't make things like they do in the big cities, so now all of our children are leaving Carne for something bigger, and we're out here just doing… Nothing. Some of us are still farming in some type of delusion that the Holy Kingdom might collapse one day and we have to keep our knowledge of farming intact, but we all know that isn't happening. We were robbed of our meaning in life, and now we're here to rot, stomachs full, but still rotting."
Ah… This is similar to when AI stole a bunch of jobs and everyone in those fields had to settle with less meaningful work, huh? She gets the sentiment, even though she personally doesn't get how not having to do hard labor anymore isn't a bad thing.
Now that she thought about it, she was lucky to be able to get that PR job back when she first started out, and avoid the death grind in that factory…
But these guys are stuck here, since at this point they're too set in their ways and don't have anything else to do.
"Would you say that your life before the Holy Kingdom was better?" Ulbert asked, seemingly on the same thought process she was.
Harold nodded, "It was harder on us, but it was more meaningful because we knew that there was a good reason to get up every morning. But at this rate, we'll just be a sentence in a history book detailing how it took some time for everyone to exit these small towns and enter into the big cities."
There was a lull inside of the room as the group digested his words.
"Sounds like they were trying to make an utopia," Punitto commented, and he was probably right about it.
Still, they needed more information, so Momonga continued the conversation with the more mundane topics like what the currency was (Not Yggdrasil currency, but still metal coins), what was the highest tier of magic they knew (7th tier?), and if there were any other sentient species other than humans (Apparently, there were, but the Holy Kingdom took them all away somewhere.)
"Thank you for everything you've told us, I believe we'll be heading for E-Rantel next, and we'll likely be leaving as soon as we meet up with another villager that we said we'd meet." Momonga said, standing up from his seat.
Harold smiled as he held out his hand for a handshake, "It was no problem, this was probably the most interesting thing that's happened since the Holy Kingdom took over anyhow."
Momonga returned the handshake, nodding as he signaled to everyone that they were leaving.
As they were leaving the house, Harold had one last thing to say, "Ah, I forgot to mention, the distance between Carne and E-Rantel is usually always full day and night cycle, do you have camping gear, or perhaps horses to shorten the distance?"
Momonga nodded, "Yes, we do. Thank you for informing us of the distance."
Harold smiled, "Then I have nothing more to say, may the Six bless you."
They said nothing more as they left.
While the five were busy talking to Alice's husband about how much he knew about the legend of Nazarick, which seemed to just boil down to that they know Ulbert was involved in something called Ainz Ooal Gown, of which they believed Ulbert was the leader of, and that the Six Great Gods and their peers attempted to raid Nazarick and failed, the rest of the guild was busy discussing about what they heard so far.
"I don't get why they don't just call it quits and move out," Herohero said, "I feel like farming isn't something that's desirable at all. Even compared to what we had in our world."
"Ehh, I kind of get it," Yoipesuto said in support of the villagers, "If my cooking job got replaced by some robots, I'd be pissed too, that was like, the one thing I was really good at."
Yamaiko nodded, "Right, there's just too much emotion we had in our jobs to just give it up so easily."
"Didn't you give up your job pretty easily, though?" Orphea pointed out, "Now your poor students don't have an elementary school teacher."
Yamaiko looked at Orphea, then she sighed, "Right. I suppose so. I guess I wasn't that invested at all…"
Orphea's eyes widened as she realized she screwed something up, "Uh- Don't take that the wrong way though! I'm sure you were a wonderful teacher, but all things have to come to an end though, right? I'm sure those kids got an equally as awesome teacher!"
"Right, right, thank you, Orphea." Yamaiko flatly replied, then changing the subject, "Ah… Anyhow, it looks like we're known in this world, hm?"
Punitto gladly took the bait, "Yeah, it's a good thing that we didn't immediately announce ourselves as Ainz Ooal Gown, and that we were lucky enough to catch this with Ulbert's name so quickly."
"I'm not part of the old guard, so do any of you happen to know who those Six Great Gods guys could be?" Pannokishi curiously asked.
"I think the only 2 people who actually remember are Ulbert and Vaggy, since they were the ones who fought them." Daijobubua replied, "Although… I think they were talking smack in the forums, weren't they?"
Coup De Grace hit the table, loudly shouting "Slane!" Everyone turned to him, "I remember now! That one guy from Slane was talking mad shit about Ulbert on the forums because of the whole world disaster thing and I was just copying and pasting 'lol stay mad' to him for like 5 replies!"
Ah, of course Coup De Grace would be doing something like that. And to remember that one guy specifically… What an odd guy.
Punitto hummed, "Alright, we need to know if Slane was here recently, so I'll ask to find out when the Six Great Gods talked about it."
As Punitto did so, they got a reply from the husband just a minute later, "600 years."
"What the- How is that possible?" Wish III confusedly asked, "We got here like, 2 days ago."
"Time dilation?" Denshosho theorized, "Maybe the whole isekai thing was staggered out, and maybe we were transported in intervals of… Well, the number I want to say is 100 years, but who knows, really. It could be every 10 years, guessing from when the Holy Kingdom took over, and the Holy Kingdom might be controlled by some other guild or players."
Right. Because the possibility of the Holy Kingdom being ruled by some players was a distinct possibility. Especially with the capital of the Holy Kingdom being directly named after London.
There were some options on what guild it could exactly be, but they didn't really have any evidence to back up any one option.
Though, the worst case scenario…
Yes, a scenario so terrible, Punitto won't even bother giving thought to it.
They could only wish for one of the lesser scenarios to come true.
As the group finished their conversation, and they turned towards the path leading to E-Rantel, Vagisilious messaged everyone, "Hey, do you guys have any summons that could like, evade detection for a while so we can line the path we're about to walk with living creatures, so that my divination can reach E-Rantel?"
While Nubo's divination had more raw range to it along with his specialty to divine inanimate things and divine multiple things at once, Vagisilious's divination had the potential to be infinite with her ability to use living creatures as jump off points for her divination, because every single class that Vagisilious chose kept being buffed throughout the lifespan of Yggdrasil, despite not even needing it.
It was stupid, it was unfair, but it was reality.
Relaying the question back to the conference room, Bellriver spoke up, "I mean, my little blood parasites haven't despawned yet, so maybe I can make a bunch of them and make like a telephone line to E-Rantel?"
Punitto nodded, "Yeah, that should be good, go ahead and gate out there and summon a bunch."
Bellriver didn't invest too heavily into his summoning capabilities, but he did pick up a few summons mostly because he could, so the 4th tier blood parasites, a small summon mostly used in the early game to debuff opponents, would be a pretty good choice.
Bellriver stood up from his seat, "Right, leave it to me!"
As Bellriver left the room, Momonga messaged Punitto, "So, are we actually going to walk the entire distance or are we just going to teleport through most of it?"
"Unfortunately, to keep a solid alibi, you need to walk the entire distance. You don't want anyone to figure out you managed to make a day's walk in 5 minutes." Punitto told him.
Ulbert immediately declared, "This sucks."
"You still need to come up with a new name, Ulbert." Punitto reminded them.
"This super sucks." Vagisilious said, then asking, "Can we at least bring an NPC or something? They're fun to talk to!"
Punitto denied her request, "No, we don't want to let the NPCs screw something up by accident."
Vagisilious groaned as she didn't send another message back.
And then he realizes he needs to message the backup party that they need to silently trail the group.
Yay, mission control is so fun.
Punitto held in his sigh as he messaged the backups.
As night came, they were given a few instant-tents that they had in the treasury for some bizarre reason, and were just told to 'enjoy nature.'
Half of this group doesn't sleep at night.
Momonga is undead, Ulbert's just a freak, Nishikienrai is half golem, and Otanabetabeki and her are the only sane ones.
There was a discussion on just walking through the night, but the possibility of making it to E-Rantel in the middle of the night and having to explain themselves to the night watch was an unappealing decision, so they decided to just camp it out and watch the stars.
Speaking of, the stars in this world were absolutely beautiful.
She hasn't seen any stars in years, so there was definitely that in play, but even without that, the stars were shining so brightly in a way that she's never seen before.
"Man, I'm going to hate it when we get used to the stars," Ulbert said, lying down on the grass, staring up at the stars.
She nodded in agreement, "Absolutely. I want to feel this way every time I see them."
Otanabetabeki wanted to sleep in Nazarick, so he gated back to Nazarick, meanwhile Momonga and Nishikienrai left to go speak to the backup party about things like how her little telephone wires are going, so it was just her and Ulbert holding down their little camping site in the scenario that someone is actually going to show up here.
Obviously, nobody was going to be making this journey this late at night, but it never hurts to make sure.
While looking up at the stars, she decided to ask Ulbert, "Hey, are you excited for anything in particular?"
Ulbert hummed, "I'm apparently a legend, right? I wanna see people shit their pants when they realize who I am."
She giggled, "Haha, yeah, that would be pretty cool, are you going to roleplay a bit?"
Ulbert chuckled, "A bit? I'm going to be Ulbert Alain Odle, World Disaster of the New World! We go big or we go home!"
She smiled as she looked back at the stars.
Then, reality struck their words and she frowned, "Hey, that doesn't mean you're about to blow up cities, are you?"
Ulbert paused, then he said, "Ah… Maybe, I don't know. I'm surprisingly not that opposed to the thought of mass murder for the sake of my fun, though."
"...You had a -500 karma value, right?" She asked, "Does karma actually affect us?"
Quite frankly, the idea of mass murder for the sake of fun, while still a revolting idea in her head, wasn't an unacceptable idea for her to just… Let it happen, if it was Ulbert or anyone else from the guild doing it. The possibility of karma actually affecting them could be a true thing.
Which also brings up the issue of the positive karma guys in the guild having an issue with what they find acceptable…
"Maybe," Ulbert shrugged it off, "We can figure that out later. It's not like we can figure that out just between us, since we're both evil anyways."
…Yeah, he's right.
Maybe she and Ulbert are just that type of edgy people, and karma doesn't do much of anything at all.
At the very least, she'll give them both the benefit of the doubt that they're not people who would treat other's lives as toys for fun.
After making it to E-Rantel, having a very close call with the angels outside of the city wall because they were close enough to them that it wasn't unreasonable for them to somehow detect through the illusions they had on, managing to get through customs, they finally entered the city.
And the first impressions were… Kind of dull, to be honest.
There were some vendors near the front gates trying to sell various stuff that didn't seem interesting. Mostly food, though.
There were a few angels, mostly below the 5th tier, patrolling the streets. The fact that they weren't attacking them was a good sign.
There were also a few humans just wandering about, so Momonga decided to take the initiative and walked up to one guy and asked, "Excuse me, do you happen to know if there's an Adventurer's Guild in this city?"
The guy blinked, and then he answered, "Uh, if you go straight and just look to your left while walking, you should be able to spot it. But good luck trying to find something to do there, there's basically no jobs on the board nowadays."
Momonga nodded, "Thank you."
As they walked in the direction the man told them to, she silently did some divination to see what citizens were up to. Which turned out to be some sort of early industrial revolution type work. Using big, clunky machines in order to make things like clothing, refine metals, and make a bunch of other goods.
Thankfully, she didn't spot anyone who seemed too powerful in the city. Nobody here was stronger than the angels guarding the city, so overall E-Rantel seemed to be pretty average.
This also meant that if they really wanted to, they could totally take over this city with some careful planning.
Relaying as such to the control center, Punitto just told them, "Right, that's good to know, but we're not looking for world domination though. We just need to know who's in charge of the Holy Kingdom."
With that in mind, they made their way to the adventurer's guild and looked for anyone that looked to have even the slightest semblance of authority.
Only to find the place deserted.
"Dang, I guess that guy wasn't lying when he said that there was nothing to do here," Nishikienrai commented as he moved over to the desk to read some of the paper on top of it, "Hey guys, I don't think this is a language any of us know."
As the group walked up to inspect the mystery language, they all had the same thought as they saw it, "Yeah, I don't know how to read that."
Then Momonga said, "Hm, I think I have one of those auto-translator lens in my inventory."
Oh, that thing? The one connected to google translate that the developers put it to try and strengthen the connection between foreign and native players?
The one that totally sucked?
Well, hopefully the lore works, and it'll be an accurate translation…
As Momonga put the lens up to his eye, he told the group what it was, "It looks like some sort of sign up sheet to become an adventurer."
"Well, nobody is home, though…" Ulbert pointed out.
Then, the front door opened.
Momonga quickly hid the lens and paper, while the rest of them turned around to see a white-haired man that looked like he was in his 40s.
"Ah, I didn't expect anyone to be here so early in the morning," The mystery man said, coming closer to them, "My name is Pluton Ainzach, it's nice to see somebody enter this place for the first time in a while."
Momonga quickly introduced the group, stumbling on Ulbert's name for a slight second as Ulbert got the signal and announced his new name, "Jal."
He definitely came up with that on the spot. She knows that 100% as fact.
Anyhow, after the introduction, Pluton frowned as he explained the situation, "I'm afraid that we don't have any more jobs for adventurer's like yourself… Though, I can tell that you've come from quite a distance, so perhaps you were just looking for information on what's changed since your time in the wilderness?"
Momonga gladly took the assumption as he nodded, "That's right. We've been traveling the wilderness for 10 years now, so we were hoping to be reacquainted with what's happened to the kingdom."
Pluton blinked, "How have you not learnt what happened when you were traveling through the neighboring countries? It's been quite a while, and I'm sure the entire world knows what happened to us at this point."
"I'm afraid that we were detached from practically all civilization for those 10 years, and that we only made it back here because of a powerful teleportation scroll we found in an ancient ruin." Momonga said.
Pluton stared at Momonga for a moment, then he sighed, "I suppose it doesn't really matter, then…"
Then, Pluton began to explain, "Well, about 10 years ago, angels descended down upon the Holy Kingdom, telling them that the angels have come to bring heaven down to Earth. Of course, the Holy Kingdom immediately bowed down, but they kept that a secret until 8 years ago, at which point they revealed themselves to the world, and of course, every human nation immediately bowed to them.
Because of the massive amount of land that the Holy Kingdom gained on that day, they've been slowly making whatever plans they've had become reality, one kingdom at a time. In the last 5 years, the original land of the Holy Kingdom has been subject to the most changes. And they tell us in 50 years, the entire kingdom will be living in paradise."
Momonga hummed, "And do you know if there are any rulers for this Holy Kingdom?"
Pluton slowly nodded, "Though they don't reveal themselves to the public very often, and their names are all mostly hidden by the church, their titles are very memorable."
"They call themselves the 72 Lords of Seraphim."
AN:
Yeah of course it was Seraphim, who else was it going to be?
I was thinking of making this 9k chapter a like, a 13k chapter by detailing the part that comes after that declaration, so I could drop this on the New Year, but to be honest, I'm kind of impatient, and it's been like 4 months since the beginning of this fic and only just now are we getting to who the main antagonists are.
Speaking of which, the first 2 chapters were dropped within like a month of each other. Then I dropped 4 chapters in November. Then with this chapter, I dropped 5 chapters in December.
The uploads are definitely probably fingers crossed going to slow down from here.
Anyways, next chapter is going probably going to consist of 'figuring out wtf to do with this info' and 'making teams to get info from the world' and 'filler content' so this is the part where I ask you guys a question so I can make you feel the need to comment and bump up my sweet sweet comment and review number.
Anyone you guys wanna see together? Like, in a team? NPCs included?
I've already got Vagisilious and Ulbert down to go to the Dragon Kingdom, and Leviathan and Tokino to go to the Argland Council State, and Momonga + A few people to go to the capital of the former Re-Estisize.
Anyways, each group probably gets its own chapter or two, all happening vaguely around in the same time frame, give or take a day or two. Momonga's group is probably going to be the last one to get their chapter since something big happens then.
So basically what this question boils down to is who do you wanna see more?
The first to get its own chapter will probably be Leviathan's group, mostly because Leviathan is going to be scrapping and I wanna write a fight scene because there's going to be an ungodly amount of talking for like the next 10 chapters, and I might die if I don't see someone get the life beaten out of them.
On that note, I'll probably send Peroroncino and Orphea out into the demi-human wilderness to scrap with the guys there too.
X
I should probably read up on what the heck happened in that transition from pre-industrial revolution to industrial revolution era, since that's sort of the time-frame that's happening here.
Or maybe I'll just make stuff up, idk. It's not like I haven't been doing that for the past 11 chapters.
Hm, now I just realized I surrendered myself into the genre of 'fighting without actually fighting half of the time because if they do fight, everything explodes.'
Darn, heavily regretting all of my past decisions that lead me to this moment. Oh well, at least the other 50% of the time where people do actually fight will be glorious.
X
Writing at 1:05 AM gives me that 6th sense type of feeling sometimes.
Does anyone know any other fic that does a guild vs guild? Or am I the first?
Because if I'm the first, why the heck am I the first?
This sort of reminds me of the reason why I started writing fics in the first place. I'm a fan of gamer fics, the one where there's an OC MC and they get a gamer system or whatever and become ridiculously OP, you know that type. And I thought to myself, "Hey, what if there were 2 gamers? And they fought?"
And that's how I ended up writing the absolute worst garbage I've ever seen. And basically started with my philosophy of "If I start a trend, then I won't have to write anymore because someone else will do my idea, but better!"
I think I've seen literally only 1 fic have that same sort of gamer vs gamer concept since then, and that 1 fic started before mine. (Oh wait nope I checked, I started out a whole year earlier. But that fic only went into PvP mode halfway into the fic. And that fic has like 500k words. For reference, my total word count since starting to write has only just now reached 500k words total across all of my works.)
And now here I am again, thinking to myself "Hey, what if there were 2 guilds? And they fought?"
And then I make 170k of mostly pure unadulterated late night writing with only the slightest resemblance to a plan, and again I think to myself "If I start a trend, I won't have to write anymore because someone else will do my idea, but better!"
Somehow I don't think the second time's the charm. But I can at least dream.
Hm, now that I think about it now, I must've at least read a few Overlord fics where it's an OC guild coming into the New World and meeting AOG, but I think all of them were the types where the 2 guilds became friends.
Oh well. If you happen to know any fics of that concept, let me know, so I can take some notes on what to do and what not to do.
I'll just wrap this up here and upload this before the smarter half of my brain regrets any of this. What sane author writes almost 1000+ words in their author's notes basically every chapter? It's certainly not me, because I'm not sane.
Yeah, and comment if you have any thoughts about like, any of that. Bonus points if you figure out what Seraphim is trying to do with the new world, or who in Seraphim specifically is trying to larp.