"Exam commencing..."
Hearing that mechanical voice ring out of thin air, Ainz finally understood.
'So that's it. No wonder you cared so much about the handful of Intruders still alive — enough to risk your own necks over them...'
'Because the survival of those ordinary people is tied directly to this so-called exam unlock condition?'
Ainz ran the calculations at speed.
He was cautious by nature. Ever since the YGGDRASIL days he'd made it a rule to pick every scrap of intel apart before he moved.
The enemy's objective was clear now, and that eerie ability of theirs — ignoring Nazarick's barriers, slipping in and out wherever they pleased — was simply impossible to defend against.
He no longer had the luxury of time to keep dancing with Shalltear.
"Forgive me, Shalltear. I'll restore you afterward."
Ainz murmured it under his breath, then raised the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown and struck the floor with it once.
"Gargantua! Rubedo!"
With the command, the seal he had set and concealed on the Eighth Floor in advance finally broke.
The thick concealing mist tore apart and vanished.
A thunderous roar shook the air.
The entire space of the Eighth Floor trembled violently.
A vast red stone colossus, thirty meters tall, stepped out of the shadows, each stride making the ground shudder.
Gargantua. The Great Tomb of Nazarick's own strategic-class siege weapon, a pure symbol of destruction with no will of its own, and a core pillar of Nazarick's defensive system.
And on its broad crown stood a silent figure — a woman in a maid's uniform who radiated suffocating pressure. This was Rubedo. The Great Tomb's undisputed strongest in single combat.
The ultimate being that even Ainz Ooal Gown, fully equipped and playing every trump card he owned, could never defeat in a straight fight.
With those two presiding here, Shalltear might be the strongest all-around Floor Guardian, but she absolutely could not stir up trouble on this floor.
Seeing them both intact, Ainz felt his nerves settle a little.
If Nazarick's stored data for Shalltear could overwrite her state and free her from that unknown World Item's influence, everything would end well.
And if not...
Then there was nothing to be done. For Nazarick's greater interests he would harden his heart and seal her away for the time being, a protected specimen, until the day he could find a matching — or stronger — World Item to break the control.
After all, Shalltear was Peroroncino's labor of love. The creation of his dearest friend.
To Ainz, these NPCs had long weighed as much as Nazarick itself. Irreplaceable.
'As for now... there's no telling when the regular forces they mentioned will arrive. I have to resurrect Albedo and the others as fast as possible!'
He glanced up at Rubedo, who had already leapt down from the colossus to subdue Shalltear with overwhelming force, then raised a hand to open the guild's system interface and draw on internal funds for the resurrection ritual.
At that exact moment, a pale blue magical communication panel popped into being in front of him.
A message from Demiurge.
"Lord Ainz, the giant puppet that tanked one of your Super-Tier Magic spells has been reduced to a heap of scrap after I called upon the Great Tomb's resources for sustained bombardment. It can no longer move."
"However, given their strange ability to travel through mirrors and shadows, I do not believe the operator inside was dealt with so easily. In all likelihood they have already fled."
Ainz nodded slightly and replied through the panel. "Entirely predictable. Their spatial items are not to be underestimated. But destroying an artifact of theirs on par with a World Item is a considerable achievement in itself, Demiurge..."
He never finished the sentence.
The passive alarm of his high-tier detection magic screamed through his mind.
Cautious to the bone, Ainz didn't even have time to turn around. He cut the transmission on reflex and activated a skill, trying to swap his robe for Touch Me's World Champion armor to absorb the blow.
But the equipment-change bar hadn't even finished filling.
A gale-wrapped current of air was already slamming into his face.
Fūka Kiryūin — resurrected at some point without his noticing — was there, a spear wreathed in golden light in her hands, driving it straight at his chest at a terrifying speed.
'Too fast!'
In that split second of thought, Ainz meant to cancel the Touch Me armor and turn the situation around instead, taking the hit with the World Item embedded in his body, the [Momonga Orb], and blindsiding Kiryūin with it.
In his understanding, a YGGDRASIL World Item exerted absolute suppression over any lesser item.
Unless the enemy's weapon was itself World-Item class, a direct collision would destroy it on the spot.
Unfortunately, the game system's processing simply could not outrun the monstrous speed of a Fūka Kiryūin stacked with layer upon layer of buffs.
One factor was that his micro-adjustment came too late; the other was that she was flatly faster than his command could take effect.
So it was while he was still wearing Touch Me's armor that Kiryūin's spear rammed home.
And to Ainz's surprise, her strike didn't slow in the slightest.
There was a sharp crack.
Like a needle through tissue paper, the spear punched clean through the World Champion armor and struck the Momonga Orb hidden inside his body with pinpoint precision.
A detonation ripped outward.
Two World Items' power collided, and the violent shockwave blasted both of them apart.
"Ngh!"
Ainz tumbled through the air, then stabilized himself with flight magic and chanted rapidly, patching the defensive spells that had just been stripped away.
He looked up.
Fūka Kiryūin hung in the air across from him — and her spear was completely undamaged, entirely unaffected by the clash of World Items.
Ainz's spirits sank like a stone.
The confirmation he'd wanted had come, and it gave him no joy at all.
'She really does have a World Item... and one that's clearly a slaughter weapon with its offense cranked to the maximum.'
In other words, given a World Item's absolute suppression over lesser gear, this white-haired witch wouldn't even need to cast high-tier magic. With nothing but that uncanny mobility of hers, she could grind through the overwhelming majority of his defensive items until they broke.
How was he supposed to fight that?
Nearby.
Rubedo, who had been handling Shalltear with room to spare and was moments away from subduing her completely, saw the Supreme Being pushed onto the back foot.
She abandoned the task at once, tossing the half-crippled Shalltear down to Gargantua to deal with.
Her body became a bolt of lightning, hurtling straight at Fūka Kiryūin, intending to tear the blasphemer apart by the most violent means available.
Watching it happen, Ainz let out a small breath of relief.
With Rubedo — the Great Tomb's strongest duelist — engaging, even if she couldn't beat Kiryūin outright, holding the line in a stalemate shouldn't be a problem.
But to keep the enemy from using that eerie stop-time trick to ambush him again while he resurrected the Guardians...
Ainz raised his hand and summoned the super-divine artifact his dear friend Peroroncino had once given him: the [Houyi's Bow].
He drew the string to full and prepared to deal Kiryūin a crippling wound.
Truthfully, if he could, he'd rather have used his signature technique — [The Goal of All Life is Death] paired with [Grasp Heart] — and simply hit this troublesome woman with instant death.
Unfortunately, that finisher carried a hard hundred-hour cooldown after use.
Under the game's rules, no item in existence could shorten it.
Which meant his strongest instant-death skill would be useless against this slippery otherworldly witch for a long while yet.
All he could do for now was rely on numbers to wall off an enemy with high mobility, high damage, and instant-death resistance.
Worse, Shalltear was carrying resurrection items. Throwing low-tier monsters at her in a human-wave assault would just let her drain their blood and heal, vampire that she was.
The only thing he could truly rely on now were the max-level Floor Guardians.
So until every last resurrection ritual was complete, he could not afford to be interrupted again.
An arrow of light shrieked through the air.
After loosing one massive light arrow at Kiryūin as a distraction while Rubedo kept her tangled up, Ainz refused to linger in the fight.
He invoked the [Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown], vanished from where he stood, and teleported straight back to the Throne Room on the Tenth Floor.
The Great Tomb, Tenth Floor.
Seeing Ainz appear without warning, Demiurge — already waiting there — stepped forward and bowed. "Lord Ainz."
"Based on my observations just now, apart from that white-haired witch, at least two others among the testers also possess resurrection items."
Demiurge's tone turned bitter. "I had intended to keep them here. But those ninja soldiers hidden in the shadows moved far too fast; in the gap opened by Kiryūin's ambush they dragged them forcibly into the dark... This is my failure. Please punish me as you see fit."
Ainz waved a hand dismissively, cutting off the self-recrimination.
"Demiurge, it's perfectly natural that you didn't anticipate resurrection items. Even among us, not everyone carries one. There's no need to torment yourself over it."
"What matters more right now is welcoming this crowd of otherworldly examinees whose exam has apparently just officially begun."
With that, Ainz stopped wasting time.
He raised a hand and opened the guild system's resurrection interface.
One glance at the remaining gold reserves in the guild treasury gave him a headache.
He hadn't expected Kiryūin's rampage to do so much damage — more than half of the guild's stored gold had been destroyed outright.
Strictly speaking, he couldn't even afford to resurrect every Guardian once. Thanks to his own caution, though, it was at least enough for the moment.
Ainz's fingers began flying across the interface.
"While I resurrect Albedo, Cocytus and the rest — until they wake — my safety is in your hands."
He gave the order without turning his head.
Demiurge straightened his back and pressed his right hand to his chest.
"Rest assured, Lord Ainz! I, Demiurge, will guarantee it with my life!"
And yet, the loyal oath had barely left his mouth.
The shadows ringing the Throne Room suddenly churned like boiling ink.
Countless shadow ninjas with blazing crimson eyes surfaced from the darkness without warning, encircling the throne.
"You wish to die!"
Demiurge's gaze went cold.
He lifted his hand and searing black hellfire gathered in his palm, ready to burn every one of these irritating shadow soldiers to ash in a single sweep.
As the intel specialist who stayed in the rear and watched the whole board, he had already deduced these shadow soldiers' rough capabilities from the details of the fighting outside.
They possessed a degree of intelligence, and even when killed they swiftly reformed out of the shadows.
An ideal vessel for human-wave tactics, in other words.
But correspondingly, the individual strength of these creatures was pitiful. Even the strongest troll-sized shadow soldier amounted to no more than a mid-to-low tier monster around level thirty or forty.
To a Guardian like him, they couldn't so much as scratch his defenses. One simple seventh-tier area spell would clear them out.
So Demiurge hadn't devoted much attention to this cannon fodder.
His real wariness was reserved for Miyabi Nagumo and his companions, who could come crashing in through space at any second.
But that dismissal of the shadow soldiers cost him dearly.
Because his trust in Demiurge was absolute, Ainz Ooal Gown had sunk himself entirely into the resurrection operations on the system panel.
He paid no attention whatsoever to the commotion around him.
No — to be more precise.
With his innate max-level detection magic, he had of course sensed these ants.
But he believed Demiurge could crush them offhandedly, that there was no need to divide his own focus.
So he ignored them.
And so.
A batch of oddly shaped shadow-eaters, using the cover of the shadows thrown by the other dying black-clad ninjas, slipped soundlessly into the shadow behind Ainz.
The little shadow-eaters, barely bigger than rats, licked their lips greedily.
A wet, sucking sound.
A single, very soft swallow.
In the instant Ainz registered it and moved to trigger a counterspell.
The shadow he cast on the floor had already been devoured whole by several of them.
Demiurge, who had just finished unleashing his black flames, turned his head at the sight.
Before the throne, Lord Ainz's body had gone rigid.
His skeletal hand, raised toward the CONFIRM button on the resurrection panel, hung frozen in midair.
A cold premonition rose in Demiurge's chest.
"Lord Ainz...?"
No answer.
"Lord Ainz!!!"
Realizing something was badly wrong, Demiurge held nothing back.
He shed his human disguise, revealing his third-stage Hellfire true form.
At the same time he released the highest-tier trap magic he had prepared for a Nagumo ambush, turning the entire Throne Room into a sea of fire to sweep the floor clean.
Then he beat his demon wings and landed in front of Ainz.
As for the shadow-eaters that had swallowed Ainz's shadow — the moment they succeeded they had already slipped back through the shadow passage, safely home to their Kingdom of Shadows.
'I never imagined the Shadow Devourer General's shadow soldiers could actually seize an enemy's soul outright just by eating their shadow...'
'For an item that only costs thirty S Points, isn't that effect a little absurd?'
In the Mirror World.
Through a crystal reflection linked to the Throne Room on the Tenth Floor of the Great Tomb, Miyabi Nagumo took in the sight of Demiurge's impotent rage.
Ainz Ooal Gown, robbed of his shadow, stood there like a skeleton whose soul had been ripped out.
Even Nagumo couldn't hold back a quiet remark.
Beside him, Akane Tachibana — in charge of evacuating the Intruders through the Mirror World — held a different opinion.
"An item's face-value price doesn't map neatly onto what it actually does..."
"Besides, that's hardly what we should be worried about right now!"
"We have to wipe out the rest of the Guardians while he's stuck AFK! Before they find some special spell or item to break Ainz out of it!"
Nagumo nodded, entirely in agreement, then asked, "Where are Kiriyama and the others?"
Akane Tachibana glanced down at the friendly markers on her Y-GUN.
"Shiina said a moment ago that they're already on their way here."
"Though aside from Kiriyama and Karuizawa, most of them went to the Eighth Floor to help Kiryuuin-senpai."
She paused, then ventured, "Or... should we wait a little longer for Chris?"
"Shiina says he's clearing the Rivers and Mountains Scroll right now. He should be done any minute."
At that, Nagumo looked up.
In the distance he could see Kiriyama Ikuha racing down the corridor, driven forward by his Combat Suit and cybernetic limbs.
Nagumo considered it for a moment, then shook his head without hesitation.
He turned and strode toward the mirror exit.
"No need. Speed wins wars, and a window like this closes fast."
"Kiriyama and I are enough to pin them down."
Seeing his mind was made up, Akane Tachibana stopped arguing.
Once she'd relayed the situation here to Hiyori Shiina, she had her own job waiting.
She still had to guide the Intruders without Combat Suits — the ones rescued from the lower floors earlier — out of the Mirror World.
After all, even a classmate turned vampire could only stay in the Mirror World for eight minutes at a stretch.
Never mind ordinary people with ordinary bodies.
And having just watched a comrade get erased, soul and all, by a single Super-Tier Magic spell from Ainz... she genuinely hadn't shaken the chill from it.
There was no question about it: with her current combat power on the front line, going up there would only make trouble for Kiryūin and Nagumo.
Rather than stay and drag them down, a liability who needed babysitting at every turn,
she'd take these surviving Intruders off the battlefield, then head back to the floors of the Great Tomb with no high-level Guardians stationed on them and farm low-score monsters.
Steady and safe. That was a contribution too.
"Demiurge... what in the world happened here?!"
"Why has Lord Ainz suddenly stopped moving?!"
Inside the Throne Room.
Pandora's Actor, summoned in a rush from the Treasury by Demiurge's emergency transmission to guard Ainz Ooal Gown's body, had barely materialized before he was demanding answers at full volume, horror written across his face.
Demiurge held his Hellfire true form, expression grim.
He explained through gritted teeth.
"From the magical detection and information readings I took just now, those rats appear to have used some special breed of ninja soldier to extract Lord Ainz's soul along with his shadow..."
"Now we must find those ninja soldiers and take Lord Ainz's soul back!"
Pandora's Actor was stunned. "How could that — Mein Gott!"
"Lord Ainz is a max-level undead! A max-level necromancer! By every rule he should have absolute resistance where the soul is concerned! And he's equipped with a World Item besides!"
"Ordinary artifacts, even Super-Tier Magic, shouldn't be able to affect him this severely!"
Demiurge drew a long breath.
"Pandora, do you still not see..."
"What if these invaders' power simply doesn't exist within our system at all?"
"The same way no amount of magic defense grants immunity to pure physical damage. Their methods run on another set of rules entirely!"
Pandora's Actor fell silent for a beat.
"Then what do we do now?"
Demiurge forced himself calm. "At the very last moment, Lord Ainz completed the resurrection process for Albedo and the others. They should awaken before long."
"Our task is to protect Lord Ainz's body at any cost until then."
Pandora's Actor nodded hard.
He immediately raised his hands and laid several layers of high-tier defensive barriers around Ainz Ooal Gown, ensuring that no shadow soldier or physical attack could easily cross them.
But he soon realized it wasn't enough.
Because the shadow beneath Ainz Ooal Gown's feet had begun, uncontrollably, to thicken and grow viscous.
That darkness was climbing upward, clearly intent on swallowing Ainz Ooal Gown's body whole and dragging it into the Kingdom of Shadows.
"How is this possible?!"
"Even a creature with zero magical energy should trigger the barrier's counterattack the instant it makes contact... unless they aren't living beings at all, but some kind of physical phenomenon?!"
Pandora's Actor muttered without pause, disbelief plastered across his face.
Demiurge had no time to theorize.
He spread his demon wings and dove to Ainz's side at maximum speed, meaning to haul him bodily off the contaminated ground.
And at that moment.
A blade hissed out of empty space, extending in an instant.
A Black Sphere war blade, driving straight at Demiurge's chest.
Or, more accurately, at the Ainz Ooal Gown he was reaching for.
To shield the Supreme Being from harm, Demiurge had no room to dodge.
He could only roar and take the blade with his own body.
The steel punched through his shoulder with a wet crunch.
Demiurge seized the blade backhanded and lifted his eyes, ready to counterattack the Miyabi Nagumo who was stepping out of the void.
Nagumo, naturally, wasn't afraid.
Even setting aside the Gorilla Suit, he still had the Spider-Man Bloodline fused into his body, plus the time-deceleration of [Sianweistan].
And more importantly, he wasn't fighting alone anymore.
In that brief exchange, Demiurge quickly confirmed that he couldn't gain a decisive upper hand on his own.
He pulled back without hesitation and called out to Pandora's Actor, who had already moved Ainz to a safe corner.
"Pandora! These testers wield power we don't understand — but very few of them carry gear with instant-death resistance!"
"Quickly! Take Lord Ainz's form and try it!"
Pandora's Actor caught on at once.
He triggered his exclusive ability, Super Transformation Form, mimicking Ainz Ooal Gown in an instant, hand already rising to unleash [Grasp Heart] at Nagumo.
But before he could finish the incantation.
A blast rocked him.
A specially made high-explosive shell ignored the magical barriers he had just layered onto himself and struck his shoulder dead-on.
The sheer kinetic force staggered Pandora's Actor and forcibly broke his casting.
And then.
Before he could steady himself or work out what had happened, Kiriyama Ikuha raised his Imperial Arms, and flame at thousands of degrees swallowed Pandora's Actor whole in a heartbeat.
The air sizzled and spat.
Fortunately, at that hair's-breadth moment.
The Guardians Ainz Ooal Gown had queued for resurrection had very nearly all regained consciousness.
Pillars of resurrection light flared up around the Throne Room.
Albedo, Cocytus and the rest, back at full strength and carrying a rage that could drown the world, would be joining this chaotic battlefield at any second.
Elsewhere, on the Eighth Floor of the Great Tomb.
In truth, even without the official examinees arriving later, and without support from Hayasaka Ai, Zesshi Zetsumei and the others.
A resurrected Fūka Kiryūin plus a Shalltear Bloodfallen already controlled by [Downfall of Castle and Country].
was enough to handle a mindless Gargantua and Rubedo.
Gargantua might be enormous and terrifyingly destructive.
But at the end of the day it was a siege puppet with no will of its own.
Using it to completely overwhelm a Shalltear who had come back from the dead was obviously no simple matter.
As for Rubedo — she was the Great Tomb's acknowledged strongest in single combat, someone even a fully armed Ainz couldn't guarantee a win against.
But in a war of attrition, against a Fūka Kiryūin who now had speed, unlimited recovery, and physical durability all filled in...
Rubedo held no crushing, absolute advantage.
Purely in terms of grinding it out and refusing to die, Fūka Kiryūin wasn't the least bit afraid of her.
And on top of that, Rubedo had no resistance to time stop.
The outcome was never in doubt.
After yet another silky little combo — time stop chained into [Skyrunner] —
Rubedo didn't hold out long before she went down.
And once Fūka Kiryūin had her hands free and turned back to help Shalltear.
For a Gargantua that had never been agile to begin with, it became a one-sided demolition job.
The remaining high-tier magical beasts and high-level puppets of the Eighth Floor, however.
were still fairly rough going for the ordinary main-round examinees who had just arrived hoping to farm points, at least with no one to help them.
It was in the middle of this grinding stalemate.
that Chris, having just cleared the [Rivers and Mountains Scroll] trial, finally appeared at the center of the battlefield.
Chris turned his head and swept the area with a glance.
On one side, ordinary students were locked in a desperate slugging match with high-tier beasts. On the other, Kiryūin's group had dominated Gargantua from start to finish, and it was obvious the fight would be over soon.
Chris rubbed his chin and spoke casually.
"Hiyori. Give me the situation."
A moment later, Hiyori Shiina's gentle voice sounded in his ear.
"President Nagumo's group used those special shadow soldiers to seal Ainz Ooal Gown's soul and carry it off. He's stuck in an AFK state right now, unable to act."
"But before he was sealed, he still managed to resurrect every Guardian who'd been killed."
"So on President Nagumo's end, it's only him, Kiriyama-senpai and Karuizawa... and with the revived Guardians swarming them all at once, they're on the back foot."
Chris raised an eyebrow.
He turned and walked a short distance, to where Gargantua was still making a stubborn stand on the strength of its enormous defenses.
He lifted the Gravity Gun.
Took aim. Squeezed the trigger.
The blast rolled outward.
An invisible gravity wave hammered into the giant's already battered frame.
Stone shrieked, then came down in an avalanche.
Gargantua finally gave out, collapsing with a roar into a field of rubble.
The whole thing took less than five seconds.
Fūka Kiryūin, who had just been winding up a finisher to end Gargantua, froze mid-motion.
She wasn't actually angry that Chris had stolen her kill. She just put her weapon away, dropped down in front of him, and raised an eyebrow. "You got the World Item?"
Chris nodded and held up the plain, antique scroll in his hand.
"Ainz Ooal Gown's hard-locked right now, and Nagumo's crowd is setting up for the final battle in the Throne Room."
"Except every Guardian under him has apparently been resurrected, so they're short-handed and probably can't hold. Want to go together?"
Kiryūin looked back at Hayasaka Ai fighting in the distance, and at the upper-year ordinary examinees currently being chased around by magical beasts.
She tilted her pale chin at them and countered, "If we take Shalltear too, what happens to them?"
"Enough ants can bring down an elephant. And right now they're not even tigers. Leave them here and someone's going to die."
Chris thought about it for a moment.
Fair point.
So he raised the [Enma Blade] and cut space open.
Before the surrounding beasts could react, Chris reached through and hauled out Hayasaka Ai, who had already shifted into her Kamen Rider Knight form.
Under Hayasaka Ai's slightly tilted head and thoroughly baffled stare.
Chris shoved the Gravity Gun straight into her hands.
"Kiryūin and I are going down to the Tenth Floor to check on Nagumo."
Chris added, "Cleanup duty on the trash mobs over here is yours."
"Careful not to farm too many points and draw a warning from the presiding god. Forty or fifty S Points is about right."
"...Understood." Hayasaka Ai took a deep breath as she accepted it. "As long as we have enough points, I'll hand this item over to Tachibana-senpai to distribute."
With the rear organized, Chris turned to Fūka Kiryūin.
"Let's go. But let's be clear up front — I'm showing up, not working. A small assist at the critical moment, that's the ceiling."
"The presiding god is watching, after all, and points farmed don't scale kindly against exam difficulty."
"This exam's difficulty is tied to the points we farm. Rack up too many and next time's difficulty spike won't be remotely proportional to what we get out of it."
Fūka Kiryūin laughed and flicked her silver hair, unbothered. "I know you love slacking. Fine, then — enjoy your hard work as a spectator."
Chris neither confirmed nor denied it.
He swung the Enma Blade, and a deep blue passage connecting to the Tenth Floor of the Great Tomb yawned open in front of them.
And so.
When Chris stepped out of that passage onto the Tenth Floor of the Great Tomb with Kiryūin, Zesshi Zetsumei, and a Shalltear brainwashed and leashed by Downfall of Castle and Country in tow.
What met his eyes was a scene locked in deadlock.
Cocytus, katana in hand, and Sebas Tian in his dragon-man form were charging at the front like a spearhead, killing like madmen.
Demiurge had fallen back to the second line, unfurling his Hellfire Domain on the spot; together with staff-wielding Mare he kept layering weakening debuffs — earth binding, mental interference — doing everything possible to strangle the humans' mobility.
As for Pandora's Actor and the newly awakened Albedo, they stood guard beside the soulless Ainz Ooal Gown and refused to move an inch from him.
But...
When Albedo saw Shalltear — the Great Tomb's traitor — trailing meekly behind Chris and his group as they came knocking.
her reason shattered, and the fury inside her broke loose.
"BITCH!!!"
"Unforgivable... absolutely unforgivable!!!"
She loosed a piercing shriek, spread her jet-black wings, and hurled herself forward to settle things with Shalltear once and for all — a cleansing of the house.
Meanwhile, Kiriyama Ikuha and Miyabi Nagumo were having a miserable time of it.
Their raw strength and gear were nothing to sneer at, but with that many high-tier debuffs stacked on them and multiple Guardians swarming in.
barely keeping their defensive line from collapsing was already their absolute limit.
Turning it around and winning from that position? Pure fantasy.
Just as Albedo finally lost her patience.
Nagumo, hanging on by his teeth, caught sight of Chris out of the corner of his eye, stepping through the rift in space.
He didn't hesitate. Nagumo shouted, sharp and clean.
"Chris!"
"Use the Rivers and Mountains Scroll!!!"
Chris frowned.
For a second he didn't follow.
But then he saw Kiriyama Ikuha, without a moment's pause, hurl his Imperial Arms [Purgatory Invocation] into the air.
Chris understood their intent instantly.
'They're planning to self-destruct and clear the floor?!'
Chris didn't drag his feet either.
If someone was volunteering to be the suicide truck, he was more than happy to play along.
He unfurled the plain old scroll in his hand.
An immense suction blanketed the entire hall, and just ahead of the explosion it swept Nagumo, Kiriyama Ikuha and every other friendly combatant into the inner world of the [Rivers and Mountains Scroll].
The Guardians stationed on the Tenth Floor, meanwhile, had no way out — with Ainz Ooal Gown immobilized, dutiful NPCs that they were, abandoning their master and fleeing was unthinkable.
So, facing an explosion that could unmake the world.
Mare, Pandora's Actor, Demiurge and the rest could only contract their line, all of them surging frantically toward the throne, raising barrier after barrier of magic around Ainz Ooal Gown.
"For Lord Ainz!!!"
A deafening roar tore the air apart.
The annihilating energy of the Imperial Arms' detonation flooded and ravaged every corner of the Tenth Floor. Everything vanished into a searing white glare.
Inside the painted world of the [Rivers and Mountains Scroll].
All around them lay a serene paradise of birdsong and flowers.
But at this moment, no one was in any mood to admire the view.
Through the external observation window Chris, as the holder, had opened in midair.
the group could clearly see, within the blinding firelight outside, a knot of Guardians packed tight around Ainz Ooal Gown, absorbing the shockwave with their own bodies and magic.
Even critically wounded, their shields cracking apart piece by piece, not one NPC gave half a step of ground.
Chris couldn't keep the remark to himself.
"They're the enemy... but that's real loyalty."
Shalltear, standing beside him, gave a distinctly sour snort at that.
"Heh. Loyalty? Where?"
"They're just a pack of hypocrites putting on a show. If they were truly loyal to the Supreme Being, they'd never have let Lord Ainz fall into your trap in the first place and end up like this!"
"If it were me..."
"I'd have slaughtered every last one of you the moment you invaded!"
At which point.
They all looked at Shalltear — face soured, mouth running curses, body perfectly obedient, not the faintest posture of attacking any of them.
The group exchanged glances.
And privately marveled, uneasy, at exactly how thorough a World Item's brainwashing could be.
Still, marveling was one thing.
The time left to them was running short.
Per the exam rules, if Nazarick wasn't destroyed within twenty-four hours, the only thing waiting for them was death.
And by now there was very little of that time left. Every second counted.
So after a brief silence, Miyabi Nagumo turned to Chris and spoke up. "Chris."
"I know you don't want to play sweeper in this exam, since you're guarding against the presiding god raising the difficulty."
"But giving us a little support — repairing the gear we just blew up and patching our wounds... that shouldn't count as a violation, right?"
[End of chapter]
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🔥 New history: Zenless Zone Zero: The Retired Void Hunter — posted on The_Mikudayo