Chapter 92: Demi's Surprise
The Dragon Tusk lizardmen stood frozen at the sight of something that looked like a god preparing to cast.
Nothing in their experience had produced a scene like this. The largest magical formation their tribe's most powerful priest could call up was barely half the size of a lizardman.
The surge of magical energy that seemed to make the very air tremble was entirely outside the range of what they could comprehend.
Some lizardmen's stone axes had slipped from their hands. They hadn't noticed.
Most of them simply stood where they were, their pupils reflecting a white magical formation that kept growing brighter, unable even to remember that they could run.
Only chieftain Zenberu Gugu charged forward.
His enormous feet struck the wetland with each stride, spraying mud in every direction.
He was going to break through that formation and interrupt the skeleton's casting.
Even at the cost of his own life. If there was even one chance in ten thousand, Zenberu Gugu could not stand and watch.
Demiurge didn't move from where he stood. His posture didn't shift.
He adjusted his glasses and produced two soft words.
[Return].
Zenberu's body went rigid.
His legs were still driving forward, but the direction had completely reversed.
He turned and began running back the way he had come at exactly the speed of his charge.
He never got close enough to touch Ainz.
Zenberu came to rest at the front of the Dragon Tusk formation again. The enormous right arm hung useless at his side.
He raised his head and looked at the white formation, growing brighter still. What was in his eyes now was nothing but pure despair.
The formation's light reached its peak.
[Fallen Down].
The moment the Super Tier magic fired, all sound ceased.
Like a sun rising from the ground directly beneath, everything in view was washed white.
Light poured from the center of the formation, spreading outward in every direction from Ainz, stripping color and outline from everything in its path.
The ultra-cold generated by the spell expanded instantly, consuming everything within its range without mercy.
The Dragon Tusk lizardmen didn't even have time to scream.
At the back of the formation, Zenberu Gugu's enormous body became a white silhouette the moment the light reached him, and then disappeared without a trace, as though erased.
Those at the front were gone just as completely, swallowed and annihilated by the pure white light.
The overwhelming effect lasted perhaps seven seconds. It felt many times that length.
When the white light finally faded, a strange resonance remained in the air, as though the world itself were responding to the force that had just moved through it.
Updrafts of cold rose and carried ash into several thin, slowly spinning columns.
As the extreme cold dissipated, a distinct circle came into view, its interior entirely different from the surrounding terrain.
Within the spell's radius: undisturbed. The wetland's water still gleamed.
Beyond that boundary, everything had turned a scorched, flat white. An expanse of dead ground that stopped the eye.
In the face of the extreme cold's assault, every plant had been consumed. The reeds and aquatic growth that had been lush green moments ago were gone, root and stem alike, leaving behind only a level white of burnt earth.
Here and there across the scorched white ground, small crystallized patches still trailed wisps of smoke. These were glass formations: sand and soil that had melted under the extreme temperature and then refrozen.
The Dragon Tusk lizardmen had not left even bodies behind.
Several hundred lizardmen. Their scales, their bones, their flesh: all of it had been completely vaporized by the assault of extreme cold.
They had been erased as though they had never existed.
That, too, was within the acceptable range of outcomes.
Ainz surveyed the scorched white circle before him, finger bones tapping once against his lower jaw.
A shame to lose the material.
Several hundred lizardman bodies would have made quite a labor unit, all converted to undead.
But.
That tribe's name had been what it was.
Dragon Tusk. Who could have said with certainty that the tribe had no connection to a dragon whatsoever?
Eliminating them completely was fine.
Ainz walked toward the undead army's formation.
Albedo came forward to meet him, her golden vertical pupils moving briefly across him, confirming no injuries, before she allowed herself a small measure of relief.
"You've worked hard, Ainz-sama."
"Indeed." Ainz gave a slight nod, his gaze sweeping across the Guardians assembled there. "Let's withdraw. There's nothing left here worth staying for."
"As you command."
Demiurge adjusted his glasses. The elegant smile had never left his face.
He turned and began directing the undead army's reformation, preparing to withdraw from the wetland.
Aura rode her Fenrir wolf at the formation's lead, making one final check of the signals coming from her familiars in the surrounding forest.
All clear.
The dragon, from beginning to end, had never appeared.
*
Inside the Great Tomb of Nazarick.
Ainz pushed open his room's door. The magic lamps brightened automatically, their clean light falling across the dark stone walls and illuminating the elaborate carvings.
He walked to the bed and sat down.
Even though becoming undead had removed any actual need for sleep, when facing something taxing, that particular exhaustion rising from somewhere deep in the soul still arrived on schedule.
Ah, this is tiring.
He let out a quiet internal sigh.
The dark red light in his eye sockets had taken on a slightly richer color than usual, like two embers approaching their end.
In the end, he hadn't gathered any useful intelligence about the dragon. It hadn't appeared once since taking Shalltear.
Ainz let himself fall back onto the bed.
The soft mattress received his spine. The fine silk of the covers rustled around him.
A habit left over from his human years.
In that world, he had been nothing more than an ordinary low-level employee. Every day at work, and then dragging a tired body back to a small, cramped apartment, and falling into cheap bedding.
That one moment of release had kept the habit alive to this day.
Ainz turned over, burying his face into the pillow.
He drew a deep breath.
Strange.
He raised his head. The red light in his eye sockets flickered slightly.
Has the room's attendant changed their scent today?
He couldn't normally name what it smelled like.
But today's scent was noticeably different.
Something more natural, like the mist rising from a wetland early in the morning, mixed with the freshness of plants and earth.
Ainz's brow creased.
He pushed himself up and reached for the edge of the covers.
Pulled them back.
A white figure came into view.
Crusch was curled up beneath the covers, her white scales carrying a jade-like warm sheen in the dim lamp light.
She was wearing a thin gauze sleeping robe, prepared by someone. Her red eyes were looking up at him with great care.
"Please take pity on me, Ainz-sama."