Chapter 114: Sebas Takes the Blame
Momon cut off the ogre's ear with practiced efficiency and dropped it into the already-heavy hemp sack at his hip.
Severed body parts from demi-humans served as proof of achievement for the adventurers' guild. Ears, claws, scales — different creatures required different forms of evidence, and the guild maintained exacting if convoluted regulations on the subject.
Pandora's Actor rose to his feet, the black armor catching a cold glint in the dim forest light.
He surveyed the four ogre bodies at his feet. Four today, plus the goblin nest they had cleared earlier — enough to report. But not quite sufficient.
He ran quiet calculations. How to advance Darkness's rank to Adamantite as quickly as possible.
Without the achievement of defeating the vampire, the team had stayed at Mithril. To extract meaningful intelligence through the adventurer identity, advancing to Adamantite was the necessary prerequisite.
Pandora's Actor's design put him at the top tier of Nazarick's hierarchy in terms of strategic intelligence and tactical reasoning — though ordinarily he tended to apply these qualities in somewhat eccentric directions. In moments that truly demanded it, however, it was difficult to set them aside.
So Pandora made the sensible decision: complete Ainz-sama's mission by starting with rank advancement.
And lately in the adventurers' guild, one piece of news had been spreading loudly.
The Kingdom's largest underground criminal organization, Eight Fingers, had been wiped out in a single operation by the Golden Princess working alongside the Adamantite-ranked adventurer team Blue Roses.
Among Eight Fingers, the most powerful combat unit, Six Arms, had reportedly been killed in a single night by a mysterious figure working at the Golden Princess's invitation.
At this thought, the head beneath the full-face helmet shook slightly.
His original plan had been perfectly constructed.
With his intelligence he had naturally seen through Eight Fingers' true nature — not merely a criminal organization but a malignant growth feeding on the Kingdom's political system. Eliminating it would yield enormous prestige and simultaneously allow him, as Momon, to access the Kingdom's upper-tier power networks, opening any number of channels for intelligence gathering.
He had worked out the specific approach in full: first use the adventurer identity to map Eight Fingers' strongholds, then dismantle them decisively one by one, then attribute the achievement to the adventurers' guild. Advancing from Mithril to Adamantite would have been practically guaranteed.
Six Arms in particular, Eight Fingers' most powerful combat force — taking them out would have been the most conclusive possible proof of Darkness's strength.
But now it was all impossible.
Damn mysterious figure.
Pandora's internal fury burned quietly.
Who was it? Moving that fast, stealing what should have been Darkness's achievement.
He had made inquiries in the guild for days, and the information remained vague and unclear throughout.
However.
Pandora set the thought aside and turned his gaze toward the deeper forest.
It wasn't as though rank advancement absolutely had to come from hunting demi-humans like this.
These past few days of sweeping through the Tob Forest with Narberal — from goblins to ogres — had accumulated a considerable stack of completed low-level commissions. By the guild's advancement standards, the gap to Adamantite was still real, but it was no longer enormous.
What was needed now was a single achievement of sufficient weight.
Pandora raised his head, gaze passing through the layered canopy toward the forest's deeper reaches.
Two entities resided there.
The Eastern Giant and the Western Serpent.
These two names had circulated among adventurers for a long time, held in the same regard as the Wise King of the Forest — acknowledged as the Tob Forest's most powerful magical beasts.
The Wise King of the Forest, Hamusuke, had already been subdued by Ainz-sama and was accompanying Momon.
If he could deal with the other two as well, advancement would probably be settled.
"Nabe." He spoke in Momon's characteristic low, steady voice.
"Here." The battle maid emerged from the tree shadows, her long hair catching light from the gaps in the canopy.
After this stretch of time working together, Narberal had grown accustomed to this Momon's presence.
Though somewhere beneath that, she felt an instinctive displeasure at anyone impersonating Ainz-sama, this was Ainz-sama's command, and the command had to take priority.
"Where are we going next?" Narberal asked.
"The lairs of the Eastern Giant and Western Serpent." Momon said. "Taking both out should be enough for the advancement."
Narberal's brow drew in slightly. "But Ainz-sama specifically cautioned us to be careful with anything dragon-related—"
"Aura has already scouted it." Momon cut off her concern, tone certain. "That serpent is roughly the same level as Hamusuke. There won't be any surprises."
In fact, Ainz-sama had indeed been quite cautious about this.
Pandora remembered it clearly. Before his departure, Ainz-sama had specifically directed Aura to send her familiars out for repeated surveys of the forest's deeper regions.
After all, "serpent" and "dragon" were tangled together in certain legends, and the possibility of a dragon with a serpentine form couldn't be ruled out. If the dragon that had controlled Shalltear was somehow lying low in the forest, approaching without preparation would be walking into a trap.
But after the familiars had conducted repeated confirmations, the result was unambiguous: the so-called Western Serpent was merely a Naga, with no connection to dragons whatsoever. The Eastern Giant, meanwhile, was a variant of some species of giant troll — enormous in size, simple-minded.
Only then had Ainz-sama agreed to Pandora's request, permitting them to hunt these two creatures to build the team's reputation.
The question that remained, however.
Pandora fell back into thought.
Kill them, or subdue them?
Killing was the most direct approach. The heads of the Eastern Giant and Western Serpent brought back to the adventurers' guild would serve as irrefutable proof that a Mithril-ranked team had independently taken down large magical beasts. By the guild's standards, that should be sufficient for advancement.
But subduing them...
Hamusuke's example was right in front of him.
That Djungarian hamster Ainz-sama had subdued with [Despair Aura V] — frightened into rolling over — had become the signature magical beast accompanying Momon.
In Ainz-sama's eyes, Hamusuke's appearance was no matter how one viewed it indistinguishable from an enormously enlarged pet hamster.
But in this world's aesthetic, that round silver giant beast was the genuine article — "the Wise King of the Forest" — drawing gasps of astonishment wherever he appeared.
If the Darkness team added the Eastern Giant and Western Serpent on top of Hamusuke, three Wise-King-of-the-Forest-level creatures appearing simultaneously at the adventurers' guild entrance — just that visual impact alone would silence every voice of doubt.
Subdue first, then. But if they resisted, killing was acceptable.
With that settled, Pandora reached his decision.