'But what makes something enjoyable?'
A swipe of draconic claws severed the arm and torso of the man next to Nabe as she, better, ducked out of the way.
'Is there an actual basis between different people?'
Momon, flung by the beast's tail, landed feet-first on the cave ceiling and then with a kick shot down, spearing into the dragon's back with massive blades.
'I know that brains can release chemicals that feel good of themselves, humans get addicted to actions that cause that release. Maybe that?'
The dragonlord let loose a breath of lightning, from which Nabe shielded herself magically. The pyromancer nearby was unable to do the same.
'Humans. We don't have that, lots of Nazarick doesn't even have a brain per-se.'
Nabe sent a torrent of power into the wall, collapsing it partially and pinning a wing. Meanwhile Momon ran up the creature back and flipped over its head, driving a sword into the dragon's eye.
'That's a good point. I have no idea if that is true for us then. Can the same thing happen with just magic perhaps, we are all magical creatures.'
An idiotic warrier tried to mimic Momon's move, and got eaten.
'Why would it be based on humans though?'
The wall collapsed a bit more than anticipated and Nabe rolled out of the way. The other surviving arcane castors, all two of an initial eight, were buried, but so was half the dragon.
'Well… I don't know if it would be, actually. It's just that I only know about humans.'
Momon landed neatly with a flourish and threw a blade down the dragon's throat as it tried to let out another breath.
'Why would you only… you said the overlord body was an avatar of a Dive character once?'
Nabe cast a bolt of fire that blinded the dragons other eye. The remaining warriors, who had been hiding cowardly, charged out and were immediately swept off their feet by the unburied wing, several were impaled on stalagmites as they landed.
'It is. In my old world there were only humans. No elves, undead, demons, any of that.'
Momon lept a frantic blind swipe of claw and landed closer to the dragon, Nabe manipulated local gravity to crush the rocks down harder on the dragon and pinning it. The beast let out a gurgling bellow as it tried to scream around the blade lodged deep in its throat.
'Only humans? That sounds awful.'
Momon swept his remaining sword into the dragon's neck, cutting through flesh and deep into bone.
'It was a deeply unpleasant place. Once beautiful, but they ruined it in greed and selfishness.'
Nabe conjured several beams of light that pierced through stone and scale alike. Momon pulled his sword out and swung again.
'... is that why I hate humans specifically more than any other type of being? Anything outside of Nazarick is worthless of course, but humans are the worst.'
The blade did cleave the blue-sky dragonlord's head off this time and it crashed to the ground with a spurt of blood.
'It could be? I don't think I ever read what Nishikienrai wrote for your backstory or settings.'
Nabe reversed her manipulated gravitation, allowing the one cryomancer who only had a leg trapped beneath the rubble she was standing on to, weepingly, crawl away.
'It doesn't really make much difference in the end I suppose.'
Other than Momon and Nabe, who were untouched, only seven of the initial thirty adventurers remained alive to witness the dragon's death. They emerged from their various hiding holes.
'Though in this case, these cowardly humans deserve nothing but the utmost scorn.'
Momon, piloted by Ainz, rather than doing that, very kindly asked after their health. All the better to spread his legend with. Narberal begrudgingly played the part of Nabe doing the same.
Narberal put a hand into the campfire, the mundane flames unable to actually harm her and the warmth was pleasant in the cold night. She let the fire roll over her and then disperse.
Across the way, and far too shell-shocked to notice her inhuman action, were the few survivors from the dragon fight wrapped in blankets and who were now even more properly deferential to their betters: her and Ainz.
Ainz, still dressed as Momon, stood atop a ridge against which their camp was nestled within a cleft of a hill, gazing up at the stars.
One of the subsentient beasts, the cryomancer whose leg she crushed under rocks and gravitation, turned from their focus of moments ago and proffered Nabe something that Ainz had called "a very sad excuse for a s'more," when she'd asked what the humans were making, telepathic jewellery still in place.
Narberal took the offered 'treat' because the character of Nabe would have. The idiot mage had convinced themselves that she'd saved their life in the dragon cave, and was irritatingly grateful about it.
Narberal tried to look indulgent rather than disgusted. The worm's face reddened, which Lupusregina had once told her was probably a good sign. "Means their hearts beatin' fast, excited about something." In Narberal's experience it usually meant they were about to get even more irritating.
She ate the thing rather than throttling the scrawny gift-giver by sheer force of will. 'How can a whole society subsist on filth like this. Worse than the lowest animals.'
'They certainly lack anything resembling quality.' Ainz's answering thoughts floating into her mind via the whisper chat.
The insect was speaking to her and the group again, recounting the tale of their heroic rescue at Nabe's hands as if it hadn't happened mere hours ago and also nothing at all like what was described.
Nabe nodded along and made "ah" sounds and words of "oh anyone would have done the same" and "it's good so many of us survived the dreadful fight"
in all the right places. Internally listing all the various ways she would like to maim the thing and it's idiotic audience, regretting she hadn't crushed in under the rocks a little more.
Ainz's suggestions were equally entertaining and almost as vicious.
Before she gave in to temptation it winced and clutched it's still shattered leg. Narberal felt glee at its pain as the character of Nabe cooed over the injury and cast a weakened ice spell to release pain.
Subtly, she also cast a spell to knock the thing unconscious and finally shut it up.
It did, but it's fellows did not, continuing to flap words at her. She looked longingly up at where Ainz, being incapable of eating and so having made excuses, did not have to put up with the noise.
'Do you think their story is cemented by now?' She asked.
'I have no idea, probably, they seem enthralled by you. But I'll take my next turn dealing with them in the morning, just in case.'
The humans who had quieted when she looked up began speaking again. 'Good, I refuse to put up with with any more of this tonight.'
'Thank you for doing it at all. You should join me stargazing then, it's much nicer up here.'
Narberal gathered some of the warming flame of the campfire in her palm, the night's chill being pervasive, and fed it some mana to maintain it as she stood, ignoring the humans, and cast 'fly' , floating up next to where Ainz stood and hovering at eye level.
"We had ancient stories, the humans of my world," Ainz said when she arrived, "about what shapes we could see in the stars. Imagined we could see images of great heroes and beasts resplendent across the heavens. A whole mythology in starlight."
Narberal modified her makeshift lantern, the produce flame into a dancing lights and enveloped them both in what could have been soft warming fireflies of many colours.
"By the time I was born our skies were always clouded in smoke and smog, our cities too bright to ever see the stars from the earth." He turned to her, "I never understood constellations until I came to this world."
"Do you see anything up there worth a mythology?" She asked, dimming but not extinguishing her spell.
"I'm no artist. But it does take my breath away."
'You don't breathe at all, Ainz. ' She looked up herself, "our name comes from a constellation, does it not?"
"The seven sisters, yes. Themselves named after some legend I don't think I ever learned."
"We'll have to make a new one then." Narberal floated a little higher, gazing up, 'dragonslayers, perhaps?'
"As far as I know these people don't have a tradition of naming stars. We have a whole sky to fill."
A voice could be heard from below, one of the cowardly mortals calling for them. Ainz slouched slightly, "this group is very insistent, I wonder what they need now when we're finally alone?" 'And why they won't shut up about whatever it is.'
Narberal recast her fly , targeting the both of them, Ainz's resistance to magic could have stopped the effect, but he let it through. "Oh who knows, but It's sure convenient that we can't hear them just yet." She said, twisting them both up through the air, a sparkling trail of lights behind. 'Somehow they are more infuriating as worshipful incompetents.' She'd take any excuse to get away.
She halted them a few tens of thousands of feet above the ground, their ascent more rapid than most mortals could have withstood, but Momon and Nabe already had a mythology growing around them, no onlookers would have been surprised by the feat.
Ainz huffed a laugh. "This is exactly what I did the first time I saw this night sky. Took an item and flew towards the heights of it, the heart of it."
They were high enough in the heavens that the planet made up only a small part of their field of vision, and stars bespeckled all else. If they had needed breath, they would have been short of it. 'Is that when you declared that we would conquer this world?'
Aims shrugged, Momon's armour exaggerated the motion. 'Probably. I was being poetic about how much more beautiful this place was, and Demiurge was flying next to me. 'Perhaps I have come here to claim this box of jewels' or something like that.'
Narberal manipulated her spell to let the two of them twist around one another in a mutual orbit, her luminous 'fireflies' gently trailing them in a multitude of colours, so as to look upon each star in turn. They must have been a spectacular star themselves, viewed from below.
"I can understand how that happened." She noted, 'practically screaming conquest to the darling demon, but it's a good goal. You can keep these fools from ruining the skies of this world. When we conquer them all'
Ainz gazed up so as to gaze at the jewels in question, for all that they were both now backlit by stars at these heights 'I will. The people are temporary, unimportant, but this world is ours now, and it shall be kept pure. When we have claimed it properly.'
'Through a series of miracles, and far faster than is at all reasonable, knowing you.'
Ainz laughed, 'With my track record it'll be any day now.'
"Just don't work any of your magic too soon." She cautioned teasingly, 'Demiurge is really excited about the next few sections of the Grand Plan, it'll crush him to skip over them.'
Ainz laughed again and they orbited for a while, content in each other's company. 'Wouldn't want to disappoint Demiurge.'
'No, he is much cuter excited.' Narberal twirled them both and Ainz, now rotating in their shared orbit chuckled. 'I'll have to arrange for you two to have more overlapping days off.'
'I'd like that, but not too often, just every once and a while.'
They orbited, shining, for another few moments, ignoring the almost imperceptible shouting from below.
Eventually Ainz glanced down. "Speaking of magic, something truly frantic seems to be going on down there." He commented and Narberal looked down towards the camp they had left below. Sure enough, bolts of lights were being flung about and up, dissipating far before reaching them up so very high. The campfire could now be called a bonfire and voices, unintelligible whispers at this distance even to their ears, nonetheless sounded urgent.
"Are they still wanting our attention?" 'What could possibly be so important?' She sighed, 'if this isn't something worthwhile I'm flying one of them up here and sending them down again the fast way.' "Just a few minutes alone, is that too much to ask?"
'We barely have any left to spread word of our heroism, unfortunately. But I agree with the sentiment.' Ainz, now Momon again, straightened out. "We have taken them under our wing this trip, and so it's our duty to care for them."
'This better be worth it.' She allowed gravity to take over and they both plummeted down, her flight spell still active, but dormant until they were closer to the ground.
Narberal pulled them out of the dive a few hundred feet above where the humans were still shouting for them, waving and in once case, jumping.
A large figure of platinum with four slowly orbiting weapons was standing just off to the side, looking up at them.
'Well that's the serendipity again I'm sure.' Narberal commented.
Ainz sighed, 'back to networking I suppose.'
She lowered them both back to the ground as 'Momon' greeted the old 'hero.'
The platinum dragonlord, as the figure introduced himself, unaware that in doing so he signed his death warrant, had been concerned as to rumors of what his brother had done. But the provided proof and testimony these other adventurers carried had convinced him of it, as well as of Momon and Nabe's heroism and inherent goodness.
He was saddened by the loss, but glad however, that justice had been served, and left Momon and Nabe with knowledge of his home in the old Greed Kings crashed floating island. In the hopes that such worthy and committed heroes as themselves would consult with him in the future as to the safety of this world.
'Well that was… easy.'
The what was apparently a piloted golem - 'why would he ever just offer that information?' 'Either it's a trap or he is an idiot.' - teleported away and the remaining humans looked at the pair of them with even more wonder, and several other emotions. 'Awe? Envy? The dull gaze of a mindless beast?'
"It is good to be reminded that not all the great and powerful wish the world harm." Ainz as Momon commented at the adventures who likely didn't have a single coherent thought between them.
"I know some other great and powerful man who wants to protect this treasure." 'Well, possess it anyway.' Narberal as Nabe replied to further their legend, then cast " fly" again to bring them both back up to the stars, avoiding the irritating gaze of the lower life forms below.
Solution waited at the Sorcerer Kingdoms embassy in the Bahruth empire with Pandora's Actor and one of Nazarick's unamed doppelgängers; presently appearing as Ainz and Narberal. They would trade places with the actual Lord Ainz and Narberal as Momon and Nabe for the meeting with the emperor and then travel overland back to E Rantel.
She had a simplified debrief packet from Albedo detailing the happenings in, and operations of, Nazarick which Ainz requested she gather subtly, without mentioning him, during Momon and Nabe's recent multi-day adventure, and so had also come along.
Albedo had been strange about it, muttering about Demiurge's protégé needing all the help she could get, and only winking knowingly when asked what Narberal had to do with the strange request.
Albedo had delivered however, several binders full, now carefully compartmentalised away from where she was also storing and slowly digesting a would-be-burglar of the embassy.
The door was opened by a Shadar'kai High Warden, one of Lord Ainz's guard for the day. The shadowy elf-like creatures all kneeling to the royal entry. Solution and the nameless doppelgänger did the same, Pandora's Actor, a favoured child, merely bowed deeply.
She probably could have gotten away with the same bow, but it was best to separate professional from private.
Ainz looked to Narberal-as-Nabe with an almost questioning glance. She looked fondly amused 'definitely amused,' in turn and morphed into her proper shape. Looking much the same but for uniform and hairstyle in what was apparently called the Kara Danvers refuge in audacity, a subset of the Clak Kent disguise.
Ainz has said it was a reference to something in his old world.
'Maybe Narberal had really enjoyed the mask this time and he's asking if she wanted to keep the roles going?' It would be great news if so, with her nerves going into this mission.
Lord Ainz and then the other doppelgängers switched forms as well. "It is good that you are all gathered so swiftly. Pandora's Actor, Doppel seven, join me in the office for the briefing." So saying he turned and began walking further in, looking back when he reached the door, opened by another of the Shadar'kai. "The plan worked just as I expected, and I shall now tell you of an extra development for your stories."
Narberal's face was more blank than usual, eyes crinkled, shoulders and back flush to a wall, fingers smoothing her skirts, almost certainly morphing around the subtle roughness of the exterior fabric. 'Is she holding back laughter?' Solution stepped over to her sister, she was definitely holding in laughter, doing a good job but practically radiating amusement to Solution's eyes.
'What in the world was the extra development?'
She asked as much and Narberal's mouth twitched subtly in her version of a beaming smile. "Lord Ainz's masterful plan was more fruitful than anyone else expected. Of course, our objective with the other dragonlord was accomplished as well."
That didn't answer the question. In fact it neatly avoided it. Lord Ainz's plans always had hidden depths nobody else knew about, it wasn't unexpected. 'That doesn't explain what's got you so amused.'
This room was full of Shadar'kai. Trustworthy as a matter of course. 'Was it a Pleiades kind of unexpected something?' Those did need to be kept as quiet as possible.
Solution frowned exaggeratedly to convey that she knew something else was up. Narberal's blank expression in return was a mix of mischievous and innocent.
'What in the world had happened?'
Throughout the next several hours of court drama and meeting with the Baharuth Emperor, examination of treaties, and drafting of Baharuth's declaration of war on the council state; to be supported economically and via mercenary undead by the Sorcerer Kingdom, Ainz and especially Narberal remained subtly amused and kept looking at one another.
There was some inside joke that both of them apparently found hilarious, especially when the pieces of what were clearly Ainz's master plan came into the light but also at the strangest of non-sequitors.
'It's a good thing everyone else here sets a record for dumb blindness.' Except for Pandora's Actor, with whom she'd exchanged several confused glances over the course of the afternoon.
Then Pandora's actor seemed to come to an understanding after the other adventures, in a state of awe, described the Platinum Dragon Lords appearance and the light show that proceeded, and later followed it.
Amused-pleased-curious himself, Pandora's Actor as Momon casually sat closer to doppel-Nabe.
Wait. No, surely not. That can't possibly… what?!' Solution briefly lost coherent thought, her internal monologue a scream of joy and disbelief.
Actual Ainz and Narberal neglected to acknowledge and didn't notice that exchange respectively, or Solution's nearly frantic glaring into the side of her sister's head.
Pandora's Actor made a variety of subtle adjustments to his performance, the doppel-Nabe matching his energy and Ainz almost seemed to approve of their cutesy shenanigans, Narberal didn't acknowledge it at all but she still held herself like she was amused and fond.
'What? They can't possibly have… could it be…?"
After an actual eternity, Solution got Narberal alone somewhere without eavesdroppers.
Solution grabbed her sister by the shoulders and pressed her to the closet wall. "Is it true!" She demanded.
Narberal was the mask of innocence. "Is what true?"
"The… the-" she wasn't actually sure she could say it.
She made an incoherent noise instead and hugged Narberal.
"Sol?" She actually sounded honestly confused. Solution stepped back. 'Either Narberal has gotten an order of magnitude better at acting or I'm missing something.'
"Narberal." She began, "what's the inside joke between you and Lord Ainz?" 'Joke, hah, this is no joking matter. But if it was true…'
Her posture became sheepish, fractional slouch and head a bare degree off center. "That's… I probably shouldn't say Sol. I do want to tell you but it's best kept quiet."
'Oh. Oh fucking hell.' She hadn't missed something. 'Wow they really… by the supreme beings… Literally.'
Solution took another step back, then lunged to crush Narberal in another hug. Her sister made a sound of confusion, "wait, Sol, what do you thi-"
Solution quieted her with a firm squeeze. "Quiet. I got it, my lips are sealed."
Narberal was staring at her in bafflement. 'I'll keep your secrets Narberal but holy shit.' Solution let go and stepped back again, "I'll make sure Pandora's Actor keeps quiet too."
So saying, she left, ignoring the confused and quiet "…what?" that Narberal let out as Solution exited the closet.
Solution had been acting strange ever since the awful meeting with the gaudy insect calling itself emperor.
She was ecstatically excited about something and kept looking at Narberal or Ainz and smothering giggles.
Narberal had elected to ignore whatever it was, Solution hadn't seemed inclined to share back in the closet. 'Despite being the one to drag me in there.'
"Are you quite well, Solution?" Ainz asked after the third 'coughing fit.'
They three were walking through the city of Arwinter, escorted by a score of Shadar'kai clearing a space for them.
"Yes Lord Ainz!" She responded upbeat, "oooh, that tea-house ahead is using Nazarick-blends." She pointed to a sign which indicated as such.
"Narberal loves that kind of thing, maybe we could go and make sure they're doing it properly?" Solution continued with an unusual emphasis on her name.
'Very strange.'
It was however, also true, so she didn't mind when Ainz led them that way saying, "It's good to see you two caring so much about one another, Solution. We'll check it out."