Antikythera went back to his floor with nary a thought. His mind was solely focused on pushing the servos across his frame to keep moving. The announcement of his Lord to change his name had but one implication: I am now the only Ruler of Nazarick. I hold the name which glued the very beings who created all of you. Kneel.

  Antikythera could not help but respect such a bold act, and no one dared to go against it. After all, Lord Ainz is the only supreme being left. There is no one to contest him, and even if there were others, he was considered to be the leader of Ainz Ooal Gown for a good reason. He was just that strong. It is only natural for someone so great to hold the names which built Nazarick into what it is today.

  Antikythera passed the entrance to his floor and greeted the factory with casual familiarity. He had already messaged Sakai about the recent development, but he deemed it best that she hear from him directly. He entered the control tower and locked eyes with the area guardian. She bowed, "Antikythera."

  "I will break the news to you in person. I felt that it was a disrespect to Lord Ainz's greatness that I messaged you about such a big change enacted by the supreme being himself." Antikythera stood straight. "From now on, he will be known as Ainz Ooal Gown, the ruler of Nazarick. We will aspire to serve him until we rust and respect the name he has chosen."

  Sakai released herself from her bow. "What are we but an instrument to his will?" asked the hologram. "It is only natural that we follow his whims, Antikythera."

  "Yes," the automaton nodded, "but the thought of other pyers makes me curious. Are there other pyers out there?"

  "The likelihood of us being the sole group which has been transported here is quite small. Data suggests that there should be others, but my current set of potential variables is cking, and I need to gather more information for a proper conclusion," Sakai expined. She flickered out of existence and re-emerged on one of the many internal ptforms of the control tower. She moved her hand, and a holographic dispy went down to Antikythera's eye level.

  The automaton inspected the design for the scouting units with a critical eye. "Operational hours indefinite, superconductors, efficient rotors, atmosphere-based self-propulsion, spectrum cameras, atomic clock, and infrared vision." He read the traits of the machine one by one. "The size could use some work, but I suppose if this world is truly dangerous, then it is only expected that we give these things self-defensive measures. Keep the size—increase it if you must—don't add any more scouting utilities and instead arm it. We are not going to build mechanical spies. Demiurge will have that covered."

  "Of course." Sakai hastily made several changes, which instantly showed in the holographic dispy. "Increased size, melee proficiency, and digging capacity all in one, and head-mounted automatic rifles utilizing magical bullets for maximum efficiency."

  Antikythera added one st bit of tech which he deemed necessary. "Sor panels should be pced on the back of this unit, hidden away by mechanical elytra."

  Antikythera's suggestion was met with a complimentary nod from Sakai. "Should this unit's organic engine not have access to flora or fauna, it could rest in the sun to fuel itself, possibly utilizing its newly acquired digging abilities to hide underneath the ground."

  "Then I can assume that the design would be based off of a beetle, then?" Sakai peered down at him from her spot. Antikythera met her eyes and nodded in confirmation.

  "I will ensure that the scouting units will be a marvel worthy of being called Lord Amanomahitotsu's creation."

  Antikythera turned away from Sakai without replying. Calling the name of his creator and saying that their ckluster work was the same as that of Lord Amano's was simply disrespectful, though he didn't chide Sakai for it, as it was in her nature to act the way she did. She used to be the head of a company—one which designed the Antikythera unit, to be exact—so her thinking her work was the greatest and comparable to that of the supreme beings themselves was a normal occurrence.

  After all, the blueprints which Lord Amanomahitotsu used to repair his rotting frame when he was found were created by the woman whose engram produced Sakai.

  Antikythera calcuted the efficiency of the scouting unit as the production line above him came to a screeching halt. Factory tools went up to disassemble the unfinished automaton frames now that they had become stationary. It won't be long, Antikythera thought, before the factory would start building the scouting unit Sakai designed.

  Observing it wasn't Antikythera's priority at the moment, so he left the factory to do its job and headed for the hospital Lord Bukubukuchagama, Yamaiko, and Ankoro Mochi Mochi built in a corner of the factory. A magical barrier stood over the building, protecting it from the dust and other particutes the factory produced; thus, its look and aesthetic were completely different from the rest of the first floor.

  Whereas the factory Antikythera called his home was bleak, the hospital was clean, almost hopeful. Externally, this was the case, but when one stepped beyond its hallowed doors, they would see the true horror happening underneath the surface.

  Antikythera passed by a nurse with an outfit that revealed the upper parts of her chest and an arm made of steel. A cyborg—not fully mechanized, but at least a quarter of her was now blessed iron. Her arms would not rot, whereas her body would crumble over time.

  A dead body, most likely one collected from one of the deceased organic workers back at the factory, was carried deeper into the building. It headed for the basement underneath the ground floor—Aoi's domain.

  Antikythera followed after it, moving past more nurses and heading down a horrific tunnel that looked like the gaping maw of a giant beast. The strange ponds hanging from the ceiling and the road bumps on the path were strangely colored in white with yellow undertones rather than a cyclical series of bck and white stripes.

  Dried blood poputed the floor at the bottom. Antikythera knew it was tiles—the blueprints for the building said as much—but even he could not glean the true nature of the floor with how many yers of blood had built up on top of it over the years. Unhygienic for a surgeon, but Aoi wasn't one to let bacteria kill her patients. She was simply that good.

  Hospital beds surrounded by white curtains filled most of the floor. Screams echoed out from behind the fabric. Silhouettes of organics twitched and cwed for the skies, their arms outstretched as though they were begging to be freed from their suffering.

  At the center of all these sat a rge square-shaped operating room. It had gss walls, revealing all the horrors which transpired from within. But Antikythera wasn't interested in seeing some organic scream. No, what fascinated him were the tools that surrounded Aoi as she operated on an organic with surgical precision. A TV screen that could show various kinds of medical scans or the sight of an invasive camera trudging through a subject's veins, life support systems that could keep even the mortally wounded alive, and magical sers that could cut skin, heal wounds, absorb blood, and so much more.

  Standing amidst this was Aoi herself.

  Aoi exuded an unsettling presence—the kind that made people instinctively take a step back without fully understanding why. Her skin was pallid, stretched too thin over sharp cheekbones, accentuating the deep, inky shadows beneath her eyes. It was impossible to tell if the dark circles were simply from exhaustion or if they had long since become a permanent part of her. Her expression rarely shifted from an intense, unblinking gre—one that held an unsettling mixture of calcution and barely restrained madness, as if she were constantly on the precipice of some grim revetion.

  Her attire, at first gnce, was the standard surgeon’s uniform—sterile, functional, and professional. But a second look revealed the grotesque reality beneath the surface. The fabric, once a crisp, clean white or light blue, was now a chaotic canvas of dried blood, dark oil stains, and soot-bckened streaks. Some of the stains were old, faded into the fabric after too many washes, while others were fresh, still damp, clinging to her sleeves like a macabre badge of honor.

  Most disturbing of all was the occasional burst of light flickering across her figure—the erratic sparks that jumped from the exposed wiring of her cybernetic impnts. Whether it was the result of rushed modifications or sheer disregard for personal safety, her enhancements crackled and hissed with every precise movement. When she worked, those same sparks arced dangerously close to her patients, leaving the faint scent of burning flesh and seared metal in the air. And yet, Aoi never seemed to notice. If anything, the way her fingers twitched with anticipation whenever she reached for a scalpel suggested she enjoyed the chaos of it all.

  There was something deeply unnerving about her, something more than the sleepless eyes and the unpredictable energy radiating from her frame. It was the way she carried herself, like a surgeon who had long since stopped caring about the line between saving lives and experimenting on them.