Chapter Forty

  ‘At my age, how can I still be such a chuunibyou?!’ Ulbert asked himself as he hovered above the beastmen city. Demiurge’s estimate turned out to be a little off. The army was on the way, but it was slower than he anticipated, meaning that either the population, or the Kingdom itself, was worse off than anyone believed. That… ‘Or there are people here they want dead? No matter.’ He shrugged it off and resumed his echoing, mocking laughter, “You spiteful worms who crawl on the ground have mocked the will of the Divine Demon for far too long! Now comes punishment! Retribution! The Game has Changed and you will no more come west into the lands of my people! I, Ulbert Alain Odle, will punish you! Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

  He couldn’t resist, with the lightning at his back and the storming clouds gathering overhead, an effect he was one hundred percent sure was Momonga… Ainz, altering the weather for him to enjoy playing himself up, he gave off an air of absolute merciless malevolence… and felt like a kid in a candy store.

  Recalling an old cartoon where the protagonist ‘conducted’ music of destruction, he played something of his world, a feature most characters had, but few ever used, their own ‘theme song’ which in Ulbert’s case was a ‘Symphony of Destruction’.

  As his hand came up, the world around the city shook, buildings began to shake with it, beastmen tumbled to the ground, his other hand came up, the shaking grew worse and buildings began to collapse inward, his arms came down in two sharp strikes, and lightning crashed from a thousand places in the sky, striking a thousand beastmen and burning them alive inside out, brightening the very day and blinding those who saw it. Wind and rain, acid and burning, falling flames continued to pound the city, and the shaking continued on, opening up the ground and swallowing beastmen whole before closing around them as if the world itself were eating them alive as they’d eaten prey before that day.

  Howls of despair followed what had been arrogant defiance, and the tide of destruction continued as Demiurge added his claws, Ainz his undead, and Pandora’s Actor imitated Bukubukuchagama and added summoned beasts that would charge undisturbed by the shaking world which kept the beastmen unable to properly flee to save themselves.

  The symphony of destruction from the four beings was overkill in the extreme, but as he brought hell down from above and up from below, Ulbert didn’t care, their lives meant nothing to him. They were too much like those he despised, so that even though they were an intelligent species, thinking, living, breathing as he… he could not care.

  Not while he was having so much fun. The smell of blood was joined by the rising cries of despair, with this city and the surrounding area’s fall, half the designated lands would fall into Ulbert’s possession. As happened each time, defiance gave way to fear, and they could watch the refugees flee outward in all directions but west, some with nothing, others with a single bag or box or nothing but their own children in their hands.

  “It is a bad time to be a beastman.” Ainz mused aloud as the cries began to diminish as the city died, “But why destroy this city completely?”

  “I want to turn this into vast natural preserves, we’re getting closer to what will be my border, and I want the barrier to be obvious. Even if I find two hundred thousand humans, no, even five hundred thousand, in the Beastman Kingdom, then I will have trouble filling up the empty lands. So? I’ll set a pattern of preserves, wild lands the beastman can’t easily get through if they ever want to come west again, and warning them not to do so… with a few monsters along the way.” Ulbert explained as the cries below were down to nothing but the groans of the dying amidst a sea of rubble, rock, and deep gashes in the ground.

  “Father, if I may?” Demiurge asked. His face beaming with almost childlike delight, Ulbert couldn’t bring himself to refuse to allow the question. Even though he knew he based Demiurge on the evil CEOs of his world, the more time he spent, the less he could deny that the NPC took after his creator. Affectionate towards his friends, vicious towards those who he deemed to be enemies of his friends, directed the right way, even his worst sadistic tendencies could serve a useful purpose.

  ‘I must do my best to be the father he expects me to be… and…’ Ulbert thought about the Draconic Queen and the time he’d spent wrapped in her arms. ‘And set the right example for him, so that he also needs to be the kind of brother any future children of mine might need.’

  “Go on, son.” Ulbert said graciously.

  “After we’ve finished erasing what needs to be erased, perhaps allow me to visit the Beastman Kingdom’s capital, I will provide a valuable lesson in person that they are not to cross your borders ever again.” Demiurge promised, he had his head slightly lowered, an unusual gesture, but the sort of thing one would expect out of a son seeking to prove himself to his father.

  “I will entrust that task to you then, my boy.” Ulbert said and clapped Demiurge on the shoulder, the demon beamed with delight.

  “I will not fail you, father!” Demiurge proclaimed and laughed very much like Ulbert had when the destruction was at its height and the symphony of destruction played out over the dying who were now the dead.

  ‘A chuunibyou, just like his old man.’ Ulbert thought with delight and then said, “Now that that’s settled, why don’t we change things up a little, and destroy this army of theirs the old fashioned way, so that they know they’re well and truly done. Do it on the ground, hand to hand, with nothing but our own bare freaking hands!” He flexed his fingers, cracking his knuckles and clinking the bladed knives on his fingers together.

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  “My friend, it would be my pleasure.” Ainz replied, “But there are a lot of them, why not bring most of Nazarick, we can leave Victim, Rubedo, and the Golems of Lemegeton to guard it for an hour, but allow the other Guardians and the Pleiades to test out their skills, it shouldn’t take that long with all of them, and it would make an adequate measure for the power of the beastman against our weaker last stand defenders.”

  “So, just like that time we had fifteen hundred raid our tomb… but instead we’re on the attack, looking like proper villains in a sight the few survivors will never forget-” Ulbert guessed.

  “And haunt their nightmares for the rest of their lives.” Ainz finished the thought.

  “I love it.” Ulbert cracked his knuckles, and the four flew on to crush the last resistance they expected to face.

  Dominic found himself grumbling quite a bit. While word had no doubt reached the Queen, other than official acknowledgement of their progress toward the capital, there had been no royal delegation beyond an honor guard to meet him.

  “Before now, she’d have ridden a horse half to death just to come kowtow to us and ask how many soldiers we were sending. I could have made her lick my boots to get a thousand spears or a single scripture… yet now we get only an escort and a notice of acknowledgement.” Dominic’s grousing did nothing to endear him to Cenna, who could only sigh and ask…

  “Did you really make the Queen lick your boots last time?”

  “No, of course not. Halfbreed or not, she had her uses and I didn’t want to entrust the lives of our soldiers to her if she had reason to hold a grudge.” Dominic answered, and Cenna confined his facepalm and groan to the realm of his mind.

  ‘How is it possible for someone to be so powerful, and so lacking in self awareness that he doesn’t realize that it’s obvious that everybody sees his contempt written all over his face?!’ The Black Scripture Captain cast a prayer to the gods which he barely paid a mind to, thanking them for ensuring Raymond was the commander of their unit.

  Dominic’s attitude wasn’t uncommon among the highest levels of the temple organizations, but Cenna found it no less frustrating. ‘How can anyone so narrow minded not squeeze themselves to death just by dreaming?’ Raymond’s unusual nature and his willingness to cooperate even with nonhumans made him an outlier in his country, but between his raw power and his unique ability to seize victory from defeat, he’d become the leader of the most powerful scripture in the country, the only one to be counted more powerful than the Holocaust Scripture, and the only one trusted by the Godkin to lead them.

  Spending as much time under him as they did, most of them shared his way of thinking to one degree or another.

  It made being around the likes of Dominic, all the more jarring.

  And all the more wearying. “Maybe if you treated her more like an ally and less like a tool, she’d be more kindly inclined to you now that they’re strong enough to stand on their own.” Cenna’s criticism earned a withering stare from Dominic.

  But it also earned something else, something far more important.

  The cardinal finally… finally…

  Shut the hell up and ceased his infernal complaining.

  And that let Cenna enjoy the fresh breeze and clear skies, and think of nothing as his horse plodded along on the poorly maintained dirt road, idly he wondered, ‘Is that whore alright? I wonder if she got herself a farm yet? Or is she still on the way to Kami Miyako? If I thought farther ahead, I’d have paid her to take the kids with her… you never think far enough ahead, Cenna… and I’m sure Raymond will give me an earful when I get back.’ He was almost looking forward to that, the ‘old man’ had the most enjoyable way of mixing rebuke and praise at the same time.

  ‘I suppose I’ll never know about that one criminal who got away… probably just the moneyman though, the way Cerebrate spoke to him. If he saw anything of the scene I left behind, he’ll probably run for the rest of his life… and that as a punishment, will do just fine.’ Cenna smiled a little, pulled out his wine skin, took a swig, and enjoyed the warmth as it settled in his belly as much as he enjoyed the warmth of the sun on his back.

  On the whole, it was a beautiful day to be alive, and it looked like there was nothing for a thousand miles that would change that.

  “Oh look… another…” Dominic stopped in mid-sentence.

  Cenna looked to where Dominic pointed, there was indeed a group of knights and men-at-arms marching along the road, but the banners they held were very different. They included the Queen’s, yes, but also one that neither Dominic nor Cenna were familiar with, and given the situation of the Draconic Kingdom, any house affiliated enough with the Queen to provide direct military support, at least enough that their banners were on the same pole, the highest levels of the Slane Theocracy and scriptures definitely knew.

  But this one, they did not.

  ‘Oh great… Something tells me the day of complaints has only just begun.’ Cenna thought and rolled his eyes, bracing himself for what he considered to be ‘inevitable.’