Chapter 82: Ainz's Plan
Great Tomb of Nazarick. The Throne Room.
Magic lamp light poured down from the vaulted ceiling, filling the entire hall with a brightness like open day.
Tall stone pillars stood in rows on both sides, their surfaces carved with elaborate patterns, each line carrying an air of ancient solemnity. Light fell on the throne at the far end of the hall and set the whole chair gleaming.
Ainz Ooal Gown sat on the throne.
Before him hovered a semi-transparent management system interface. The light it cast reflected off a fleshless skull face and made the two dark red flames in the eye sockets look particularly deep.
The interface was dense with data: daily maintenance costs, servant count, the operational status of each magic trap, the energy consumption of each floor's defense systems.
Ainz's gaze came to rest on the column marked "Gold Coin Reserves."
The number was still long. At Nazarick's current rate of consumption, this stockpile was sufficient to last for a considerable time.
But Ainz was anxious.
He can't just keep the defensive traps running and let the reserves drain away like this.
He said it to himself, silently.
Demiurge had already concluded, from his last analysis, that the enemy almost certainly lacked the ability to breach Nazarick's defenses.
Those deductions about the dragon, the assessment of the enemy's upper power limit, had genuinely let some of the tension go out of Ainz's nerves.
But it couldn't be ruled out that the enemy was waiting, working to lull Nazarick into a false sense of security before striking.
YGGDRASIL gold coins served many purposes beyond simple purchasing. They covered the maintenance costs of a guild's stronghold, the summoning fees for monsters above level thirty who didn't auto-respawn, the activation medium for certain spells, the production costs for crafted items, and the revival fees for fallen NPCs, among others.
Gold was this guild's blood.
And that blood was draining away, slowly and steadily.
Ainz thought of the money he had earned at the E-Rantel Adventurers Guild.
None of that money could be recognized by Nazarick's system.
The same was true of the platinum coins Sebas had received through Lucian.
Those beautifully minted, high-quality precious metal coins were nothing but a collection of meaningless metal in the eyes of Nazarick's management system.
External gold coins couldn't directly supplement Nazarick's consumption.
Of course, the Exchange Box offered a partial solution.
The Exchange Box was a special item capable of converting objects into YGGDRASIL gold coins. After arriving in this world, Ainz had tested it. He had dropped one of Clementine's weapons into it, and the box had produced a quantity of gold coins corresponding to the item's rarity and material composition.
But using Nazarick's own items to fill the box was not something Ainz was willing to consider. He hadn't been reduced to selling off their heritage.
Every item and piece of equipment in the Great Tomb's treasury represented the labor of him and his companions.
He couldn't bring himself to sell any of it for a short-term gold fix.
Using external items, then?
Ainz worked through the possibility in his mind.
If large quantities of resources could be brought in from the Kingdom, the Empire, and the Theocracy and converted via the Exchange Box, the gold problem would be solved outright.
But Nazarick couldn't manage this. Not now.
To prevent the Guardians from being picked off one by one, all of them except Sebas, who was serving as an intelligence asset and decoy, had been pulled back inside.
Aura and Mare were no longer going out. Cocytus held the fifth floor. Demiurge had suspended his external activities.
Nazarick's reach outside its walls had shrunk considerably.
No external force meant no large-scale resource collection. No resources meant no gold supplementation through the Exchange Box. No gold meant continuing to drain the reserves defending against a possible dragon incursion.
A closed loop with no exit.
Ainz was deeply troubled.
He leaned back against the throne. The dark red light in his eye sockets flickered.
That expressionless skull face betrayed nothing. But if any of the other Supreme Beings had been present, they would have sensed the frustration that hung around him, refusing to leave.
Then Ainz remembered something.
Intelligence from Aura's familiars.
The Azerlisia Mountains ran between the Baharuth Empire and the Re-Estize Kingdom, forming a natural border. At their southern foothills spread a vast forest. North of the Tob Forest, there lay a great lake.
The lake covered roughly twenty square kilometers, its shape that of an inverted gourd, divided into an upper section and a lower. At the southern end of the lower lake, the water gave way to an expanse of mixed wetland and marsh, and throughout this broad area, countless structures were scattered.
This was the home of a demi-human race known as lizardmen.
Lizardmen.
Ainz's finger bones moved thoughtfully along his jawbone.
Based on what Aura's familiars had reported, the combat strength of these demi-humans was not high.
They lived in tribal units within the wetland, fishing and hunting, maintaining a simple social structure. Their level of civilization was far below that of the human nations.
More usefully: they were relatively isolated. Lizardmen rarely interacted with the outside world. Their range of activity was essentially confined to the wetland. They had little contact with the surrounding human villages.
Ainz's thoughts began moving quickly.
Conquer the place.
Kill all the lizardmen. Convert them into undead.
Undead required no food, no rest, no sleep. They wouldn't tire. They could conduct tireless, systematic searches of the wetland for every resource of value.
The lizardmen's accumulated possessions, the herbs and minerals present in the wetland, even usable construction materials from the structures. All of it collectible.
Then every bit of it into the Exchange Box. Converted to YGGDRASIL gold.
No expenditure of Nazarick's own power for external resource gathering. No touching the treasury's stock. Gold supplementation achieved.
The entire operation required only a single deployment: overwhelm the lizardmen with absolute force, then let the undead converted from their bodies conduct the subsequent collection work.
Clean. Efficient.
There was also a deeper strategic dimension to destroying the lizardmen.
Having absorbed something of Demiurge's habits of mind, Ainz had started picking up that tendency to look for the second and third layer beneath the obvious.
This could serve as a probe against the dragon that had controlled Shalltear.
After taking Shalltear, the dragon had gone to ground. Ainz had far too little intelligence on it. If YGGDRASIL hadn't made pure dragon an unavailable player race, he might even have suspected this cunning creature was a Player.
If Nazarick deployed to eliminate the lizardmen, what would the dragon do?
And there was one more possibility, however low the probability: what if the dragon was hiding among the lizardmen?
Ainz arranged every combination of outcomes in his mind.
If the dragon truly was concealed somewhere in the lizardmen's territory, then Nazarick at full deployment should be more than sufficient to eliminate it.
Even if the enemy's strength exceeded expectations, with all the Guardians combined, Ainz was confident he could maintain at minimum an undefeated position.
This was a situation where he could not lose.
Ainz made his decision.
He raised his hand and closed the management system interface.
Ainz turned his head.
Albedo was standing below the throne.
"Albedo."
"Yes, Ainz-sama."
Albedo's voice came back immediately.
Ainz's gaze rested on her face for a moment.
"Notify all the Guardians." He worked to let his voice carry the weight of something unquestionable. "Call a meeting."
Albedo lowered her head deeply.
"As you command, Ainz-sama."
She straightened and walked down the steps.