[The First Day of Destruction, 21:05] [The Holy City of Kami Miyako]
Through the sensory enchantments of a remote metallic shell, Tsaindorcus Vaision surveyed the apocalypse.
The Platinum Dragon Lord hovered high above the burning capital. He perceived the ruined world without eyes of flesh. Magical sensors fed visual data directly across the continent to his true draconic body. Hundreds of miles away, he remained coiled tightly around the ancient guild weapon of the Eight Greed Kings deep within the floating city of Eryuentiu. Acting as the silent warden of stolen power, he watched human history burn from the dark.
The visual feed delivered a portrait of unmitigated ruin.
Incredible.
Tsaindorcus tasted profound disbelief. A cold phantom ache settled deep within his actual scaled chest.
The journey had required the highest tier of ancient incantations. He knew modern formulas like [Teleportation] were rigid and easily blocked by standard dimensional locks. His Wild Magic ignored distance and structural barriers entirely. Bypassing the spatial wards the humans had spent centuries building should have revealed a city under heavy siege. Tsaindorcus fully expected to find the vanguard of the Sorcerer Kingdom breaking their teeth against the strongest bastion of humanity.
Instead, he thought his spell had misfired. The magic seemed to deposit him into a dead reality.
Kami Miyako was once the cradle of human civilization. Protected by the legacy of the Six Great Gods, the fortress had stood inviolate for six hundred years. Now, Tsaindorcus looked down upon a sprawling ocean of crimson and viridian fire.
He saw the shattered ribs of majestic cathedrals poking through the smog. Grand libraries of ancient wisdom were reduced to glowing embers. The fortified barracks belonging to the secret scriptures had collapsed into deep craters. A toxic blanket of black smoke and pulverized bone choked the sky. It blotted out the stars entirely.
"It has gone this far," Tsaindorcus whispered. His synthesized voice echoed hollowly inside the empty helm. "The speed of this destruction defies logic."
Adjusting his altitude, the Dragon Lord guided the white-gold armor down through boiling thermal updrafts.
He recalled the intelligence reports gathered over the past week. They painted a vastly different picture. Spies had noted massive undead movements in the south. The Cardinals mobilized. Their forces to meet a conventional skeletal invasion. The capital was supposed to be completely secure.
Did those reports turn out to be a massive feint? Tsaindorcus calculated while drifting lower through the billowing smoke. Even if the Sorcerer King struck the capital directly, rendering the Slane Theocracy powerless in less than a day violates every known metric of warfare.
He actively scanned the burning ruins for high-tier mana signatures. His sweep found nothing but the lingering residue of dense negative energy. The sheer volume of necrotic magic saturating the cobblestones poisoned the air. It registered as a vile static across his mental network.
Has the Sorcerer King personally taken to the front lines once again?
That specific thought sent a very real chill down his distant spine. The memory of the undead sovereign's suffocating presence during their brief clash in the Re-Estize Kingdom remained painfully sharp. Tsaindorcus knew that creature wielded magic feeling dangerously akin to a localized black hole.
His remote shell touched down silently upon a ruined avenue.
He registered ambient heat radiating from the surrounding inferno. It was intense enough to warp mortal steel. The magic-reinforced metal of his armor remained perfectly cool. Taking a heavy step forward, his sabaton crushed a charred skeletal hand into fine gray powder.
Tsaindorcus gazed down the grand avenue. He found absolutely no sign of lingering human resistance. He heard no shouting from commanders rallying their troops. The clashing of steel was completely absent. Acoustic feedback consisted entirely of roaring fires and the wet crackle of collapsing timber.
Strangest of all, he realized the outer rings of the city were completely devoid of corpses.
The enemy had meticulously harvested the fallen.
The silence felt tactically wrong. He deduced that the timing of this offensive was far too precise.
Only yesterday, Tsaindorcus had held a highly confidential conclave with the Brightness Dragon King. Urging his reclusive kin to return to the Draconic Kingdom had been an exhausting endeavor. The Brightness Dragon King preferred to breed with humans and conduct mundane experiments. The eccentric dragon willfully ignored the rapidly shifting geopolitical landscape.
Tsaindorcus remembered the heated argument echoing in the cavernous mountain lair. He had practically begged for unity. Forging a tripartite alliance was a desperate necessity. Uniting the Council State, the Theocracy, and the remaining True Dragon Lords into an impenetrable wall was his only logical bid to check the terrifying expansion of the Sorcerer Kingdom.
Less than twenty-four hours after that secret meeting, the proposed human anchor was erased from the map.
Tsaindorcus did not believe in coincidences.
Moving past a melted barricade, the Dragon Lord paused. Deep indentations marred the molten slag covering the street. He recognized the unmistakable footprints of towering heavy infantry. Hundreds of Death Knights had marched in perfect unison right over the human defenses.
Could he have known?
Paranoia gnawed at the edges of his ancient mind. Replaying his last confrontation with the Sorcerer King yielded disturbing theories.
Did that undead monster plant a tracker on this armor? A listening device forged from Tier Magic operating beyond the sensory ken of my Wild Magic? Did Ainz Ooal Gown overhear my discussion with the Brightness Dragon Lord and decide to shatter the strongest link in the chain before it could be forged?
"If that undead read my movements so perfectly... I am fighting a ghost," Tsaindorcus muttered to the empty street. "Troublesome. I must find a way to purify this shell thoroughly when I return to Eryuentiu."
He knew the diplomatic game was officially lost. Damage control remained his sole priority. He needed to locate the artifacts.
The Slane Theocracy possessed world-class items. These weapons of reality-bending power were left behind by the Players of six centuries ago. The most dangerous among them was the cursed dress known as [Downfall of Castle and Country].
Tsaindorcus knew the horrific capabilities of that fabric. As an item of total mental subjugation, it could rewrite the loyalties of gods and monsters alike. If the Sorcerer King secured that dress, he realized the precarious balance of the world would shatter permanently. An undead overlord wielding the power to enslave True Dragon Lords presented an apocalyptic scenario.
Arriving in Kami Miyako with a conflicted heart, Tsaindorcus had intended to negotiate. Finding the city falling changed his parameters. He had planned to demand custody of the world-class items. He would have offered the Cardinals sanctuary in the floating city in exchange for the relics. If they refused, the four spectral weapons floating behind his back would have seen use. He believed keeping the items out of Nazarick's hands fully justified theft.
Acting as a vulture picking at a freshly bleeding corpse was a role he deeply despised. Viewing himself as a protector of the realm made scavenging a bitter pill to swallow.
I did not expect the Sorcerer King to beat me to the punch.
Walking past a ruined statue of one of the Six Great Gods, Tsaindorcus watched the stone face of the ancient human deity droop like wet wax.
Perhaps it was a mistake to allow mortals to hoard such power for so long. They grew complacent. They grew arrogant.
Resentment flared hot and bright in his chest while staring at the melted idol. He was not angry at the humans. His fury belonged entirely to the origin of their false gods.
He firmly believed the power of a Player should never have touched this world. These transcendent entities from YGGDRASIL were walking pollutants. Recklessly interfering with the natural order, they arbitrarily redrew maps and exterminated native species. They brought terrible magic, poisoning the earth and warping the fundamental laws of reality.
This was the unwavering creed of Tsaindorcus Vaision.
As the self-appointed Guardian of the World, he spent his long centuries cleaning up the mess his own father had made. In the ancient past, the Dragon Emperor had cast a grand, foolish spell. Ripping the fabric of reality apart to steal World-Class Items from the dimension of the Players succeeded. Unfortunately, it dragged the filth along with the treasure.
The spell initiated a devastating cycle. Every hundred years, a new wave of dimensional pollutants washes ashore. The Six Great Gods built this nation on lies. The Eight Greed Kings nearly hunted the dragons to extinction. The Demon Gods ravaged the continent.
Now, Ainz Ooal Gown walked the earth.
Father, your boundless greed has doomed us all, Tsaindorcus thought. His internal voice carried the heavy weight of centuries of exhaustion. But I will not let this world fall to the whims of another Overlord. I will break the cycle here.
Approaching the edge of a massive plaza, the white-gold armor came to a halt.
The spectral arsenal hovering behind his back hummed. A heavy spear drifted over his right shoulder. A curved katana mirrored it on the left. A massive hammer and a greatsword vibrated with primal energy to complete the halo of floating steel. They reacted to a sharp shift in the ambient environment. Tsaindorcus realized the thick smoke here was saturated with a terrifying concentration of negative energy.
Focusing his magical sensors, Tsaindorcus pierced the necrotic interference.
Buried under layers of shattered granite and residual holy fire, he detected a faint ripple of energy pushing through the dark. He found a cluster of souls huddled deep beneath the ruined plaza.
"Life signs?"
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