"Just a small favor. No problem at all," Chris said offhandedly. "After all, I burned a full 100 S Points breaking through the restriction to get into your exam ground."
"If I went home without doing anything, the whole trip would've been pointless."
"I can even tie up one or two Floor Guardians for you…"
Chris paused, tilting his head toward the trapped Ainz in the projection. "Though, going by the intel Hiyori gathered earlier, this Ainz is carrying a lot of items, isn't he? Instant-death ones, even."
"I've got [Crazy Diamond], sure, but its power is limited to 'restoration'. Physical reassembly is fine — if a soul gets erased outright, my Stand can't raise the dead."
Listening to that, Miyabi Nagumo rubbed his throbbing temples and let out a resigned sigh.
"That's already a huge help."
"Honestly, if you hadn't stepped in this time, we'd probably have crashed and burned."
"Even Kiryūin, with the [the Darkness Devil's blood] keeping her topped up, would eat that unreasonable instant-death magic and lose a life."
His eyes darkened, frustration bleeding through. "There's just no counter to it! That's why I had to go to Clockwork and trade for a [Phantom Mask]. The plan was to collect all nine in one shot, trigger Ultimate Darkness, and see if I could force an extra 'immortality' buff onto Kiryūin."
"And then I put on the Shadow Devourer General's mask… and summoned a swarm of pipsqueaks that don't even come up to my palm!"
"If Senpai Fujimaki hadn't reacted fast and looked up the mask's settings in the [Item Illustrated Guide], we'd never have come up with that dirty trick."
"Still, we got through it." Nagumo let out a cold laugh. "Now, while Ainz Ooal Gown's soul is still temporarily sealed — a few minutes at best — let's hurry up and finish this."
"Before they dig up some item that fixes it."
Chris gave a small nod and wasted no more words.
He swept a hand up, and the burly pink-and-blue Stand [Crazy Diamond] materialized out of empty air.
"Dorararara!"
As the Stand's fists swung, soft light washed over Nagumo and Kiriyama Ikuha beside him.
In the space of one breath, their wounds and their badly mangled prosthetic armor rewound to pristine, as if time itself had run backwards.
After confirming both of them were whole again, Chris suddenly asked a question.
Nagumo rolled his wrist and answered casually:
"We used it as bait right from the start — it soaked the first wave of Super-Tier Magic carpet-bombing for us. It's half-wrecked now. I dumped it in the Kingdom of Shadows."
"But we're about to enter the Tenth Floor, and the space in there is fairly tight. A mech tens of meters tall can't even move. We'll have to see later whether we can use it to smash Nazarick's main structure from the outside and finish our test that way."
"Or maybe…"
Nagumo's eyes flicked to Chris. "You could try whether Crazy Diamond can repair it too."
With that, Nagumo snapped his fingers.
A crowd of tiny Shadow Devourers surfaced from the shadows, straining as they hauled a half-ruined GANTZ pilot-type mech out of the Kingdom of Shadows.
Chris strolled over and let Crazy Diamond touch the wreck.
Light flickered at once, and the mech's parts came flying home as though crossing space itself.
Before he could marvel at the spectacle,
Kiriyama Ikuha had already raised his head, staring at the smoke-shrouded palace in the projection, and cut in flatly: "The blast fire from [Purgatory Invocation] is nearly burned out. Time we went out and pressed the advantage."
Kiriyama glanced at the Controller radar in his hand. "If nothing surprises us, once we clear the handful of Guardians left in there, this exam basically stops being dangerous…"
At some point Fūka Kiryūin had moved to the very front of the group.
She flicked her long silver-white hair back, showing not a trace of timidity for having died a moment ago.
"I already wiped them out in one pass earlier with [The World]'s Time Stop."
"Handle it right and there shouldn't be any real trouble this time. We just need to leave Ainz Ooal Gown alive — save him for after we've completely finished off the Great Tomb of Nazarick."
Nagumo nodded. "If the points end up in your hands, Kiriyama and I have no objection."
"There are plenty of monsters on the Tomb's other floors to farm anyway. Better to settle this in one go than let it drag on and invite trouble."
Seeing that, Chris lost all interest in studying the mech.
But before he took the lead onto the Tenth Floor of the Great Tomb, Chris stopped.
He reached back into his pocket, pulled out an octagonal stone carved with dragon-shaped runes, and tossed it to Kei Karuizawa behind him.
"Take it, Kei."
"This world's so-called 'World Items' are pretty potent. They didn't lay all their cards out in that last exchange, but the moment one shows up, it can kill you on first sight."
Chris looked at the blonde girl, his voice level. "Not worth throwing away one of your precious lives over. Have your shadow soldiers carry you to the Eighth Floor and find Hayasaka Ai — I lent her the Gravity Gun. Move together and you'll both be safer."
Kei Karuizawa accepted the [Dragon Talisman] with both hands.
The girl thought it over for a moment and offered no argument.
"Understood… Chris, please, be careful."
She held his gaze for a long beat, then let the clawed shadow soldier at her feet drag her down into the darkness, sinking into the Kingdom of Shadows.
Chris was right: her ability to handle a crisis really wasn't there yet.
And even setting the danger aside, in a brawl at this level she'd have no room to work.
Take just now — she'd actually meant to use the invisibility Verde extended to her and copy Chris, picking off targets in the chaos.
But once the fighting started, the Tenth Floor turned out to be cramped.
On top of that, casters like Demiurge and Mare fought with zero honor, endlessly slinging indiscriminate area magic and full-screen debuffs.
Without high-grade items to shore up her defense, Kei figured that by the time she finally found her opening, she'd be barely better off than the bottom-tier classmates who'd picked up vampire bloodlines and Combat Suits.
Since forcing herself to stay would produce nothing real, and might even make her a liability,
better to pull back on time, follow the plan, and go with Hayasaka Ai to farm low-value monsters on the lower floors — enough to offset what she lost by sitting the battle out.
Meanwhile.
The Great Tomb of Nazarick, Tenth Floor.
The horrific blaze touched off by [Purgatory Invocation] finally guttered out.
Of the hall's lavish gold-and-gemstone ornamentation, barely a tenth remained.
The heat had melted the priceless tapestries; only the magically reinforced structural bones of the chamber were still, more or less, intact.
Ainz Ooal Gown stood before the throne, untouched, thanks to Guardians who had shielded him without fear of death.
And in front of him.
Because Purgatory Invocation's sustained damage had blown past the threshold of his protective magic, Cocytus had braced his blades forward and taken the overwhelming bulk of the explosion on his own massive body.
Which left the warrior scorched black from head to foot, his carapace shattered across huge stretches, pale green fluid weeping from the cracks — gravely wounded.
"Cocytus, fall back and treat your injuries!"
Demiurge's eyes were heavy with concern.
His real intention was for Cocytus to return immediately to the Fifth Floor glacier he guarded.
Let the home-field ice speed his recovery — and, incidentally, use that perfectly reasonable excuse to move him out of harm's way, preserving one last thread of survival for the Great Tomb.
Unfortunately, Cocytus was a blockhead down to the marrow.
Hearing Demiurge out, the warrior merely tipped back a potion and planted his weapon into the floor with a heavy thud.
"My duty is to protect the Supreme Beings."
"I will live and die with Lord Ainz!"
The corner of Demiurge's eye twitched. Exasperated — but he let it go.
After all, judging by the methods of the unknown enemy watching their every move, the instant they showed the slightest sign of splitting up to flee, the so-called "escape route" would mean nothing.
And worst of all, Aura's World Item [Rivers and Mountains Scroll] had been ripped away by that strongest man on the other side!
The Great Tomb's remaining trump cards were stretched painfully thin. Covering a real escape would be no simple matter.
And with a blunt, stubborn temperament like Cocytus's, it would never come off.
Perhaps… Pandora's Actor was the better candidate for that mission.
Demiurge's gaze flickered.
Pandora could mimic a great many of the Supreme Beings, and with the items still stored in the Treasury to back him up,
his raw combat power was debatable — but at staying alive and getting away, he was first-rate.
And as the Tomb's treasure keeper, withdrawing with what remained of the guild's core wealth would look perfectly natural…
Before Demiurge could assemble a complete plan in his head, however,
space rippled.
Chris, together with Fūka Kiryūin and the rest, appeared once more at the entrance to the hall.
"They're here!"
For Lord Ainz!
Mare, with his girlish looks, raised the staff in his hands without hesitation.
Enormous magic converged, and a heart-stopping vortex of pitch-black death took shape at the staff's crown.
It was the strongest technique Mare could currently cast — a degraded version of the Supreme Being Ulbert's trump-card spell, [Grand Catastrophe].
But even degraded, it was a top-tier destruction skill far beyond ordinary Super-Tier Magic.
More than that: with the vast experience stored in the World Item on his person to pay the cost, Mare could chain the catastrophe off several times.
Earlier, with Cocytus and Sebas Tian locked in melee at the front, he'd swallowed the impulse, afraid the area damage would catch his allies.
Now the enemy had brazenly gathered themselves into one neat cluster.
Naturally he had to dump it while he still could.
Before he got interrupted again and never got the chance at all.
Seeing it, the other Guardians moved in wordless sync to support him.
Sebas Tian held the front, guarding against a sneak attack;
Demiurge and Albedo flanked him, layering buffs onto Mare and working their skills to squeeze the space Chris's group had to maneuver, making sure the strike landed.
Unfortunately, in the face of a Time Stop that could freeze the universe, magic with a cast animation left far too wide an opening.
And Fūka Kiryūin had planned for exactly that.
The moment she stepped out of the passage, she'd already summoned her golden Stand.
"The World!"
A cool, clear woman's voice.
The world was stripped of color, reduced to absolute, gray-white stillness.
In that silent world, Fūka Kiryūin strolled forward as if wandering a garden, flashing into place directly in front of the Guardians.
Going by her experience one-shotting them on the Eighth Floor not long ago, all Kiryūin had to do was haul them into a single line.
Then loose a fully charged shot from [Skyrunner].
The instant the wind arrow burst free, it would shred this batch of Guardians to nothing.
But partway through arranging them, Kiryūin hesitated.
Their test objective this time was to destroy the Great Tomb of Nazarick.
And in this battle so far — even the spatial quakes and [Purgatory Invocation]'s self-detonation — the physical damage done to this entire magical structure had been extremely limited.
To truly demolish this hellhole, she probably did need to leave one of them alive as a cross-check against Shalltear.
Kiryūin turned it over privately.
After all, though Shalltear's alignment had been forcibly flipped by [Downfall of Castle and Country],
the item didn't genuinely alter her original personality or memories.
In other words, given Shalltear's feelings for Nazarick, there was no chance she'd casually hand over the core secret of how to destroy the Great Tomb.
And besides—
Shalltear's control currently sat with Granny Kaire of the Theocracy.
This band of otherworldly examinees and the Theocracy natives were only temporary partners.
There was no guarantee the other side wasn't nursing quiet ambitions about swallowing the Tomb's treasure alone. Not to be fully trusted.
By comparison—
Albedo, whose settings Ainz Ooal Gown had personally rewritten, leaving her with a pathological love-obsession and a hair trigger…
was, to Kiryūin's eye, far easier to work with.
Two seconds left.
Fūka Kiryūin acted without hesitation.
She dragged Albedo alone out of the Guardians' defensive line.
Then set Mare, Aura, Cocytus and the remaining Guardians into a tidy row.
In the final second of the Time Stop, she nocked her arrow again.
Blazing cyan light gathered in a frenzy along the bowstring.
"Time — resumes."
BOOM—!!!
Color came flooding back, and the storm detonated!
The wind arrow tore forward like an aurora piercing heaven and earth, spitting Mare at the head of the line first!
Then it drove on unstoppably. Aura, Cocytus and the rest never even formed the thought of reacting before the strike ripped their bodies wide open, flesh vaporizing on the spot!
But when the wind arrow reached Pandora's Actor at the very back, something went wrong.
Pandora's body was torn apart — and a second later, he reconstructed it!
He was, after all, the core Guardian of the Tomb's treasury and a creation made by Ainz Ooal Gown's own hand; naturally he carried resurrection items.
In the instant he came back from death,
Pandora stared, stunned, at his colleagues cut down before him like a field of wheat.
He didn't panic into stupidity.
Instead he immediately triggered the [Ring of Ainz Ooal Gown] on his finger and returned without a moment's hesitation to the treasure floor.
As a being whose intellect matched Demiurge's, he understood better than anyone what was most valuable to the Tomb right now.
Since the Great Tomb was beyond saving,
then he, Pandora, wouldn't mind using the mausoleum deep inside the Treasury to hand these invaders one enormous surprise.
As for Albedo, left behind by herself.
She watched her comrades die in an instant and Pandora flee, and she didn't shrink back a single step.
She raised the black greataxe her World Item [Ginnungagap] had become.
Wings spread wide, she prepared to lay down her life for Ainz Ooal Gown.
"Unforgivable lower life-form! Die!"
CLANG!
Fūka Kiryūin didn't so much as change expression, lifting the [Saint-Slaying Spear] in an almost lazy block.
Looking at the woman's face, twisted with fury, she sneered:
"Albedo. Do you really think you can protect him on your own?"
She pointed off to the side. "Do you think the Ainz Ooal Gown you have now, with all of you gone, can hold off us — let alone the 'traitor' Shalltear?"
Albedo's rage didn't waver; the wings at her back beat wildly, pouring on force.
"Shut up! I believe in Lord Ainz! He is the absolute Supreme Being! And even if misfortune truly takes him, I will follow him without fail! I will never cling to life!"
"Oh?" Kiryūin raised an eyebrow.
According to the profile the Controller had given earlier, wasn't this woman Ainz Ooal Gown's most devoted simp?
What simp is genuinely willing to watch the one she loves die in front of her…
Unless she was certain he wouldn't die so easily.
Putting that together with Pandora's resurrection a moment ago, Kiryūin's lips curved into a smile.
"I see…"
"Ainz Ooal Gown is carrying a resurrection item too, isn't he?"
"You're betting that death will scrub the negative statuses off him, that he'll come back at full strength and run for it."
Kiryūin's eyes cooled. "Or… that when he dies, he can inflict some irreversible, catastrophic loss on us. Am I wrong?"
Albedo neither confirmed nor denied it.
She simply kept swinging the black battleaxe, hacking with the mindless ferocity of a beast.
Kiryūin, riding her superior mobility, slipped the blows without hurry, like a hunter toying with prey.
On the other side, Nagumo had already walked up to Ainz Ooal Gown on his throne.
He drew a Y-Gun, aimed it squarely at the immobilized Bone King, and squeezed the trigger.
Zzzt—!
Ghost-blue laser cords of energy snapped tight around him.
Nagumo turned and addressed the still-raving Albedo, and Shalltear, who was watching from the side with cold eyes:
"So you're loyal. Then… if I can send your so-called 'Lord Ainz' out of this world alive, forcibly exiled into some unknown dimension…"
"Are you still confident you can bring him back in this world?"
Albedo's motion stalled for an instant, then she sneered, clearly not buying a word of it. "Dream on! Lord Ainz wears a World Item. How could a cheap trick like yours possibly work on him?"
Nagumo couldn't keep the snort of laughter in:
"And who told you your so-called World Item rules apply to our Black Sphere's system?"
With that, he pulled the Y-Gun's trigger and started the teleport sequence.
Hmmmm—
Lock-on complete.
Several vertical lines of teleport light dropped out of nowhere onto Ainz Ooal Gown's skull and began erasing his existence from the top down, sweeping like a scanner!
That was when Albedo finally broke.
The scream tore out of her, nearly hysterical: "Stop it! What in the world are you doing?!"
Judging his goal preliminarily met, Nagumo tore the laser cords off Ainz Ooal Gown at exactly the right moment, forcibly interrupting the teleport.
Even so, the process was irreversible, and Ainz Ooal Gown was left missing most of his head, the severed bone edges as smooth as a mirror.
Nagumo turned to Albedo, whose eyes looked ready to spit fire, and spoke without hurry:
"Our goal is simple. We're here to completely destroy this so-called Great Tomb of Nazarick of yours."
"If you're willing to cooperate and hand over the method for destroying the Tomb—"
Albedo laughed coldly, her eyes brimming with scorn. "And then what?"
"Once Nazarick is gone, you'll slaughter every one of us without a second thought. Right?"
"For us, with the Great Tomb lost — what is the actual difference between dying early and dying late?!"
Her gaze turned venomous.
"Don't imagine I don't know the real purpose of this exam of yours! If you fail to destroy this place completely and clear your trial, then when the clock runs out, you examinees die too, don't you?"
"I don't believe you're kind enough to show mercy before your mission is finished… Trying to con me? Not a chance!"
Just as Albedo was probing for her opponents' soft spot,
Shalltear, silent all this while, let out a soft laugh:
"Heheh… old hag, you're not entirely stupid after all. Otherwise that idiotic face of yours really would have made me cry from frustration, arinsu."
That familiar, grating verbal tic hit her ears,
and Albedo's head whipped around. She fixed Shalltear with a murderous glare and spat: "Stupid lamprey!"
"You're a Floor Guardian who was supposed to protect the Great Tomb, and now you've been reduced to a puppet plotting against your master. You are a disgrace to this Tomb! You bitch!"
Shalltear spread her hands, unbothered. "Betrayal? Where?"
"Right now I'm fighting to preserve Lord Ainz's life~ Compared with a fool like you who only knows how to blindly throw her life away, I'm the one who's actually useful."
This brain-dead vampire made Albedo laugh in sheer fury, and she was winding up for another round of abuse.
But Nagumo and Kiriyama Ikuha had already run out of patience.
"Time's limited."
Nagumo lifted the Y-Gun again, and the laser cords coiled once more around Ainz Ooal Gown's ruined body.
"Now — say goodbye to your master, or… stall a while and pray for a Miracle."
"You have three seconds to choose."
"Three… two…"
She stared at that teleport-blue light kindling again. Before the last second of the countdown fell,
the madness in Albedo's eyes finally collapsed into surrender.
"…I agree."
Her voice came out dry. "Fine. If sacrificing the Great Tomb buys Lord Ainz even a moment's safety, I don't mind in the slightest."
"But…"
"The Great Tomb itself is an absolute domain built by forty-one Supreme Beings, Lord Ainz among them, at the cost of everything they had."
"Destroying it at the root is flatly impossible for you, even if you bombard it with ordinary World Items!"
"However. As head of the Tomb's Guardians, I have the authority to actively shut down the defensive barriers over each floor's corresponding zone. With the barriers down, I can use my World Item [Ginnungagap] to individually break the node cores that carry each floor's concept."
Albedo's teeth ground together. "But the precondition for all of it is that I do it willingly."
"If I refuse to cooperate, believe me, there is no way you finish your mission within the time limit."
"An equal exchange." She looked Nagumo dead in the eye. "You want my help? Then you will, immediately, send Lord Ainz to Pandora in the Treasury!"
Fūka Kiryūin's brow rose. "So this is you… putting yourself up as the bargaining chip to buy Ainz Ooal Gown's safety?"
Albedo drew a deep breath and nodded hard.
"As long as Lord Ainz exists, Nazarick will never fall."
"Moving loyalty."
Chris, who had been hanging at the back of the group and watching, spoke up.
"But as proof of your end of the deal — at least let us take a look at these World Items you're talking about first."
"Relax… we've got the most authoritative inspection method there is. We won't cheat you."
Fūka Kiryūin picked up the cue smoothly and turned to Nagumo. "Go get the scepter out of Ainz Ooal Gown's hand too. We'll check them both while we're at it."
Albedo's face turned about as ugly as a face could get.
But knowing the two sides' strength wasn't remotely comparable, if she wanted to save Lord Ainz and preserve the existence of a Supreme Being, this was the only road left to her.
"Fine."
With that, she reverted the black greataxe in her hands to its original form — a short black staff.
As though casting off the last of her dignity, she threw it to Fūka Kiryūin.
Nagumo wasn't shy about it either, wrenching the guild staff with its seven-colored glow straight out of the half-headed Ainz's grip.
Kiryūin caught it, then took the [Myriad Realm Illustrated Guide] from Chris.
She aimed it at [Ginnungagap] and the [Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown] with practiced ease and pressed scan.
Beep—!
A screen of light bloomed open.
[Ginnungagap]
[Traits: Normally appears as a short black staff with a sphere floating at its tip. The World Item with the strongest destructive effect against inorganic matter, though its direct lethality against living beings is unremarkable. Its overall performance is inferior even to specialized divine-class items, yet it possesses the physical property of being absolutely immune to destruction or degradation.]
[Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown]
[Traits: Guild-exclusive weapon, equivalent in status to the source core of the Great Tomb of Nazarick. The holder may freely open or close every floor barrier, trap and teleport array; may freely enter the Treasury, the Supreme quarters and the private rooms of all NPCs; and may even rewrite the base settings of Nazarick's NPCs with a single command!]
[Construction: Seven golden serpents coil around the staff, each writhing mouth clamped over a gem of a different color. Every gem is an independent divine-class relic. The grip appears to be crystal, clear as glass, and the staff possesses the ability to auto-cast in counterattack.]
[Note: Ordinary World Items cannot destroy it. Only the pinnacle The Twenty of World Items can break this staff at the level of rules.]
[Should the staff be destroyed, the guild is declared disbanded.]
Watching from the sidelines, Albedo went cold and speechless.
'How is that possible… that much detail?!'
Never in her life had she imagined that a plain-looking little scanning cube in these otherworlders' hands could lay the guild scepter's inner workings bare — details even she, the head Guardian, had never known.
Kiryūin took in Albedo's stricken, funeral-white expression and ignored it entirely, reaching out to close her hand around the [Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown]'s grip.
She'd intended to use that authority to disband the guild outright — or, simpler still, shut down every barrier in the Great Tomb.
Only to find, awkwardly, that once the scepter was in her hand it gave her no magical response whatsoever.
"Looks like the system hasn't reassigned usage rights yet."
Chris stood beside her, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Not something just anyone can pick up and use."
Albedo saw it and couldn't hold back a cold laugh. "Every item in the Great Tomb of Nazarick is Lord Ainz's private property. Even the World Items we Guardians carry are only 'graciously lent' to us!"
"How could you possibly use the supreme scepter that forty-one Supreme Beings poured their hearts' blood into — the one only Lord Ainz can wield? Save your energy!"
Chris shrugged, noncommittal.
But Nagumo's eyes narrowed, and he spoke up. "Since this thing is the core of the entire Great Tomb of Nazarick, and the guide says the guild disbands the moment it's destroyed…"
"Then… doesn't that mean the Nazarick structure collapses on its own the instant we break this scepter?"
Nagumo looked to Chris. "The Black Sphere's mission was to clear out the Great Tomb of Nazarick. It never actually said to demolish the whole physical building!"
Kiryūin thought about it, hefted the holy spear in her hand, and said, "We have to try destroying the scepter either way, so it works as plan A."
"But plain physical impact probably won't crack its defense. I'd have to truly release the concept-erasing power of this [Saint-Slaying Spear]…"
Hearing that,
Albedo understood in a heartbeat!
What this woman was holding had to be one of the "Twenty" the Item Illustrated Guide mentioned — the ones capable of destroying the guild weapon!
In other words, now that they knew how to destroy the core, her last remaining value as their guide was gone.
With no leverage left, these people would kill Lord Ainz without hesitating for a heartbeat!
Overwhelming panic drowned her reason.
Albedo's whole body went taut, and on instinct she began edging quietly toward Ainz Ooal Gown, ready to die if it meant teleporting him to the Treasury.
Unfortunately, there weren't many living things in that hall to begin with.
How could such a clumsy little maneuver slip past the several people who had been watching her the entire time?
"Still trying to run?"
With no other option, Albedo forcibly recalled [Ginnungagap], which Kiryūin had tossed carelessly aside.
She would spend her life to buy Ainz even one second of escape.
She refused to believe Pandora, Ainz's own son, would stand in that treasure vault and watch his father die without lifting a finger.
But.
Before Pandora could even feel the summons and answer it,
Nagumo had already pulled the Y-Gun's teleport trigger.
The blue beam came down!
And Kiriyama Ikuha, drawing on the [Sianweistan] inside him, dropped into bullet time and blinked to Albedo's flank.
A whip kick loaded with high-explosive force smashed her off her feet and sent her flying.
Fūka Kiryūin came right behind, spear rising.
Albedo wore heavy armor, and her defense ranked among the highest of the Tomb's Guardians.
But swarmed by several powerful enemies, with Shalltear knifing her in the back as well,
she didn't last more than a few seconds before her health bar was scrubbed clean.
Chris stood off to one side with Zesshi Zetsumei, who still hadn't lifted a finger, quietly watching the one-sided beating.
"Looks like destroying the guild scepter really does disband the guild. Otherwise this woman wouldn't have thrown away her life like that, getting so worked up…"
"Every thought she has is written on her face. Way too easy to read. Doesn't fit her 'wise head steward' setting at all."
"Or is this just what a woman in love looks like?"
Chris offered the commentary in a mild voice.
Zesshi Zetsumei glanced at him.
In the end she only sank into silence.
Her lips parted a fraction, but she had no idea what to say.
After all, she was ostensibly the Slane Theocracy's highest fighting power, sent to support these "heroes" — she'd even brought the Theocracy's national treasure along.
And from beginning to end she'd been standing around like a tourist, coasting through the whole show.
Besides, looking at those terrifying monsters…
The savage Shalltear, the impossibly tanky Albedo, Mare —
any one of them alone would have been a foe she'd have to risk her life against just to fight to a standstill.
And here they were, being crushed by Kiryūin, Nagumo and this pack of ordinary-looking high schoolers the way you'd kick a stray dog to death by the roadside…
The sheer scale of the gap left this proud godkin momentarily questioning her entire life.
By then, Albedo and Ainz Ooal Gown had both been dispatched painlessly.
Kiryūin and the rest regrouped and turned to the thorniest problem left.
Namely: who would use the [Saint-Slaying Spear] to destroy the [Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown].
Because the [Saint-Slaying Spear]'s price was brutal.
The moment its true power was released, the user would be paid out as the cost — completely deleted, erased from this world!
Even with the Black Sphere's resurrection mechanism behind them, none of them dared guarantee that a "conceptual erasure" reaching down to the underlying rules would be overridden by the Black Sphere.
The price was too steep. Obviously they couldn't gamble one of the team's core combatants on it.
As everyone frowned and turned it over,
Zesshi Zetsumei, silent throughout, suddenly lifted a hand and pointed at the grim-faced Shalltear beside them.
"If you need a sacrifice…"
"Why not have Shalltear use the spear?"
"She belongs to the Great Tomb's faction anyway. She's under our control now, but as a consumable, that's putting her to good use."
She had no intention whatsoever of keeping Shalltear and folding her into the Theocracy's forces.
As an atavistic godkin who had lived nearly two hundred years and seen her fill of political knife-fighting,
Zesshi knew better than anyone how corrupt and greedy the old men at the top of the Theocracy were.
She was genuinely grateful to the Theocracy that had taken her in and raised her.
And precisely because of that, she didn't want this pack of godlike beings developing any unnecessary greed or wariness toward it.
Sometimes, being destroyed really has very little to do with you.
It's simply that you displayed ambition you had no business displaying.
Even if Kiryūin and the others were truly broad-minded enough not to care,
letting Shalltear fall into the hands of the Theocracy's leadership would only heap pointless slaughter onto this world down the line.
"Huh?"
At that,
not only was Shalltear herself thrown,
even Kiriyama Ikuha and Nagumo blanked for a moment.
Still, the [Saint-Slaying Spear] could only be used once, and their survival hung on it — hardly something to casually hand to an outsider.
And while everyone hesitated,
since Ainz had already been teleported away, the "kill the BOSS" exam task assigned to Kiriyama Ikuha's squad was essentially ready to settle.
But Kiriyama Ikuha glanced at his Black Sphere Watch.
In this entire battle, it seemed he hadn't scraped together a single point…
So Kiriyama Ikuha looked at Nagumo and said with a wry smile:
"Since the mission's nearly done — is there anywhere left in the Tomb to rack up points fast? I can't come all this way and go home empty-handed."
Zesshi Zetsumei caught what he needed.
She turned to Shalltear at once.
"Shalltear. You won't be needing this spear."
"Now — kill yourself. And then… hand your head to this hero as payment for his services."
"What?!"
Shalltear recoiled another step in horror.
Chris wasn't especially interested in the theater.
He shook his head and gave the [Enma Blade] a casual swing.
Riiip!
A rift in space split open, leading straight into the Treasury deep within the Great Tomb.
"You all carry on."
"I'm not sure whether I'll get teleported out along with Kiriyama and the rest later. I need to go deal with the hazard in there first."
"If you really do destroy the Great Tomb and leave a level-one-hundred shapeshifting elite mob and a pile of World Items sitting around… that wouldn't be good for this world."
"Conveniently, I'm still short of breaking even on points for this exam trip…"
"Call it carrying out justice on Heaven's behalf."
——End of Chapter——
[Author's Note: I originally planned to have the Bone King's death trigger the Momonga Orb for an area-wide instant death, which would have shown off what the World Items in Kiryūin's and Chris's hands can do. But thinking it over, there's no reason the Bone King gets an information advantage while the protagonist's side doesn't, so I gave the Phantom Mask some screen time instead. I think it works out fine — after all, the soul of Suzuki Satoru inside the Bone King hasn't changed either, has it…]
____
⚡ BONUS CHAPTER GOALS
✍️ 5 REVIEWS = +1 Bonus Chapter
💎 100 POWER STONES = +1 Bonus Chapter
🔥 P@TREON (Walnut-chan): Read +40 chapters ahead and get access to over 60 exclusive stories!
🔥 New history: Zenless Zone Zero: The Retired Void Hunter — posted on The_Mikudayo