The Abandoned Plains – The Glitch Zone
The world was ending. Locally, at least.
The entity wearing the skin of the World Champion was no longer a knight. It was a catastrophe. The silver armor had expanded, splitting at the seams to reveal a chaotic, swirling core of blue binary code. The cape of justice had morphed into six jagged, crystalline wings that leaked a corrupting miasma.
Ainz Ooal Gown scrambled backward through the mud. His HP was slowly regenerating, but his MP was dangerously low.
[World Enemy Detected: The Pale Paladin]
[Difficulty: Impossible]
"Impossible rating?" Ainz choked out a laugh, half-hysteria, half-undead growl. "I haven't seen that tag since the raid on the Asgard server!"
The Paladin raised a twisted hand. It didn't hold a sword anymore. It held a crack in reality.
[System: Administering Deletion.]
"Albedo! Pull aggro!" Ainz screamed, abandoning all pretense of kingly dignity. This was a raid. Dignity got you wiped.
"With pleasure!"
Albedo didn't hesitate. Despite her previous clash, she launched herself at the behemoth. Her black armor smoked as she entered the enemy's aura. The Ginnungagap—her World Item axe—glowed with anti-creation energy.
"You dare wear the face of a Supreme Being while hunting my beloved?" She shrieked, swinging for the creature's knees. "I will grind you into scrap!"
CLANG.
The Paladin caught the axe with two fingers. Not metal fingers. Fingers made of hard light.
[Item Analysis: Ginnungagap. Threat Level: Moderate.]
[Countermeasure: Disarm.]
The Paladin flicked its wrist.
There was a sickening snap.
Albedo screamed. Her arm—her dominant right arm—twisted three hundred and sixty degrees at the elbow. The bone snapped loud enough to be heard over the thunder. The World Item flew from her grasp, spinning into the mud.
"Sister!" Mare cried out.
The boy druid slammed his staff into the ground. "[Earthquake]!"
The ground shattered beneath the Paladin. But the monster simply hovered, ignoring gravity. It raised a finger toward the sobbing, one-armed succubus.
[Target: Tank. Status: Broken. Finishing Move.]
A beam of pure white light gathered at the fingertip.
Ainz saw it. He knew that animation. It wasn't a warrior skill. It was a Developer Command visualized as magic. [Delete Character].
"NO!"
Ainz didn't think. He didn't calculate. He looked at the menu. [Gate] was grayed out. The area was Dimension Locked. Teleportation was impossible.
They were trapped in a cage match with a God.
"I have to reset the instance," Ainz muttered, his mind racing at light speed. "I have to crash the local shard."
He swapped his gear. Perfect Warrior canceled. Robes returned. Staff in hand.
He didn't cast a defense spell. He cast a clock.
"[The Goal of All Life is Death]!"
Behind Ainz, the massive clock face appeared. Twelve roman numerals. The tick-tock sound echoed across the battlefield, silencing the rain.
The Paladin froze. Its AI head twitched toward Ainz.
[Threat Detected: Eclipse Class. Prioritizing Caster.]
The beam aiming at Albedo vanished. The Paladin turned its faceless helmet toward the Overlord.
"That's right," Ainz roared, spreading his arms wide, inviting the wrath of heaven. "Look at me! You want the corrupted file? Come and get it!"
Tick. (11 seconds)
The Paladin charged. It crossed fifty meters in a blink.
"Aura! Mare! Defend me!" Ainz ordered, his voice cracking. "Buy me ten seconds! Just ten seconds!"
"Y-Yes!"
Aura cracked her whip. "Breath of the Fenrir!" Her beast pets materialized—massive, legendary wolves—and threw themselves at the shining giant.
They died instantly. The Paladin didn't even swing. It simply walked through them, and they disintegrated into polygons.
Tick. (9 seconds)
"[Petit Rock Fall]! [Earth Surge]! [Woodland Prison]!" Mare cast spell after spell, erecting walls of stone and root.
The Paladin shattered them like sugar glass.
Tick. (7 seconds)
"Ainz-sama!" Albedo dragged herself from the mud. Her arm hung uselessly by a shred of skin, but she grabbed her axe with her left hand. "I won't let you—"
"Stay down!" Ainz yelled.
He stood his ground. The monster was ten meters away. He could see the code scrolling inside its chest.
"[Widen Magic: Cry of the Banshee]!" Ainz cast the trigger spell.
A wail of instant death exploded outward. Normally, this would kill everything. But the timer hadn't hit zero. It was harmless noise.
The Paladin raised its fist.
Tick. (4 seconds)
"You think you can delete us?" Ainz laughed, and for a moment, Satoru Suzuki enjoyed the absurdity of dying in a muddy field. "I am Ainz Ooal Gown! I paid for my subscription!"
The fist came down.
"[Body of Effulgent Beryl]!" Ainz recast the blunt negation.
CRUNCH.
The barrier shattered. The impact drove Ainz into the ground, shattering his ribs, cracking his spine. His HP bar turned red.
[HP: 5%]
Tick. (2 seconds)
The Paladin loomed over him. It raised both hands for a smash that would flatten the Undead King into paste.
Tick. (1 second)
"Too slow," Ainz whispered through broken teeth.
TOCK.
The clock hit twelve.
The world turned gray.
[Skill Activated.]
It wasn't just the Paladin. The air died. The rain died. The magic holding the Dimension Lock died. Even the code governing the Glitch died.
The concept of "existence" was temporarily revoked for everything within 200 meters.
The Paladin stopped. The binary code in its chest turned gray. The "Immortal" tag on its nameplate shattered.
[System Critical Error.]
The massive entity began to crumble—not into blood, but into dust. The silence was absolute.
"Mare!" Ainz croaked, coughing up black smog. "[Gate]! Now!"
The Dimension Lock was gone, killed by the skill.
Mare, crying and shaking, pointed his staff. The purple portal swirled open.
Aura grabbed Albedo by her breastplate. Mare grabbed Ainz. They dove through the vortex just as the gray world began to regenerate.
Behind them, the dust of the Paladin began to swirl. A backup file was loading.
But they were gone.
Nazarick – 6th Floor – Amphitheater
The gate spat them out onto the sand.
"Healers! Pestonya! Where is everyone?!" Aura screamed, her voice high and shrill with panic.
Ainz lay on his back, staring at the fake stars of the 6th floor. He couldn't move. His mana was zero. His health was critical.
But he was alive.
"Ainz-sama..."
He turned his head. Albedo was crawling toward him. Her right arm was gone—severed in the battle or lost during transport. She didn't care. She dragged herself through the sand, leaving a trail of blood.
She reached him and placed her hand on his skeletal cheek.
"You..." she choked. "You stood... you protected..."
"Idiot," Ainz whispered. "I needed... a tank."
Tears flowed from her eyes—fat, hot tears that splashed onto his skull.
"I am a failure," she sobbed. "I tried to kill the shadow of a Supreme Being. I tried to hide my sin. And because of it, you nearly died."
Ainz looked at her. He saw the secret squad emerging from the gate behind her—level 80 mercenaries that weren't in the guild logs. He saw the desperation in her eyes.
He realized then. It wasn't just the "Yandere" setting.
It was the fear of abandonment.
The Entity looked like Touch Me. If Ainz had reunited with "Touch Me," Albedo believed Ainz would leave Nazarick. Leave her.
She tried to kill the "player" to keep Ainz all to herself.
"Albedo," Ainz said softly.
"Punish me," she begged, lowering her head to the sand. "Execute me. I raised a blade against your friends. I am a traitor."
Ainz closed his eyes.
If this were Yggdrasil, he would ban her. He would delete the NPC for going rogue.
But this wasn't a game. She was his family. His twisted, broken, dangerously obsessive family.
And frankly, he had bigger problems than a jealous succubus. The Admins were sending Hit Squads.
"Raise your head," Ainz commanded.
She did, trembling.
"The entity... was not Touch Me," Ainz lied—or maybe it was the truth. "It was a trap. A forgery meant to lure us."
Albedo blinked. "A... forgery?"
"You saw the code. You saw the mechanics. That was no friend of mine." Ainz forced himself to sit up, groaning as his spine knit together. "Your instincts were correct, Albedo. You smelled the fake."
He placed his hand on her uninjured shoulder.
"You did not betray me. You tried to dispose of garbage masquerading as treasure."
A light returned to Albedo's eyes. Not just relief—fanaticism.
"Then... the Squad...?"
"Keep them," Ainz said darkly. "But from now on, you do not hide them from me. We are at war with the Heavens, Albedo. If another 'friend' appears..."
He paused. He thought of the "Admin" voice. He thought of the formatting tool.
"...If they are hostile, we kill them. Regardless of whose face they wear."
Albedo let out a breath that sounded like a moan. She grabbed Ainz's hand and kissed the bone rings, smearing blood over them.
"Yes. Yes! Just us! Eternal! Just us!"
Ainz patted her head awkwardly.
Sasuga me, he thought tiredly. I just legalized her death squad to keep her from having a mental breakdown. I really am the worst.
"Someone fetch a healer," Ainz groaned aloud. "My arm fell off."
The Slane Theocracy – Military HQ
The magical shockwave of Ainz's Goal of All Life is Death didn't reach the Theocracy, but the tremor did.
In the war room, the Platinum Dragon Lord, Tsaindorcus, stared at the scrying crystal. It had shattered.
"He destroyed the sensor," the Dragon Lord murmured.
Zesshi sat on the table, playing with a knife. "So? Did the Silver Knight kill him? Or is the spooky skeleton tougher than he looks?"
"The signal from the Knight... vanished," Tsaindorcus said. "Not retreated. Erased. A massive death-magic signature spiked, and then... nothing."
The Captain of the Black Scripture went pale. "You said that Knight was a 'guardian of the system.' You said it was invincible to mortals."
"I was wrong," Tsaindorcus admitted. The words were heavy. "Ainz Ooal Gown has a weapon that can kill immortality."
The room fell silent. Even Zesshi stopped playing with her knife.
"If he can kill a System Guardian," Zesshi whispered, her eyes wide with arousal and fear, "then he can definitely kill us."
"Yes," Tsaindorcus turned to the map. "Which is why we cannot let him recover."
He slammed his claw onto the table.
"Mobilize the Scripture. Every seat. Mobilize the Sun Scripture. And contact the Argland Council State. Tell the other Dragon Lords to wake up."
"We attack now?" the Captain asked.
"We attack everything," Tsaindorcus growled. "Nazarick is wounded. We bleed them. We starve them. And while he is looking at us..."
The dragon's eyes glowed with ancient malice.
"...I will fly to the Holy Kingdom. There is a particular Item hidden there that can bypass his resistances."
"A World Item?" Zesshi asked.
"No," Tsaindorcus said. "A remnant of a player who arrived six hundred years ago. A weapon designed solely to kill the Undead."
The Solar Lance.
"Let us see if the Sorcerer King burns."