Chapter 143: Vol 16 Epilogue

Ainz's eyes were greeted by the view of a frozen fortress and his feet were greeted by the lack of friction between his smooth skeletal feet and the shards of ice crystals that littered the floor. He almost slipped but managed to catch himself using [Fly], thank goodness no one was there to witness him almost blunder.

A second teleport brought him straight to the cell the woman they had captured was kept.

"Welcome, Ainz-sama"

"W-welcome. Ainz-sama"

"Mmmppphh!"

Three voices greeted him at the same time, though the third one continued on for quite a while.

Now that he's had a good look at the woman, he realized that he had mistaken her for a human when her features match that of a Half-Elf, thank goodness he didn't say it out loud while he was confused.

Ainz surveyed the room and eventually noticed that Neuronist had been fidgeting for a while.

"Neuronist, is something the matter?"

"Ah yes, Ainz-sama. We just realized that I don't seem to be able to cleanly scalp this woman with my tools so my conventional methods won't work on her."

"I see, this woman may hold precious information so I will authorize you to use any weapon you see fit from the treasury to complete your tasks."

"MMMMMMMMMMPPPPHHHHH!"

"S-silence, [Sandman's Sa—"

"Please wait! Mare-sama, I do need her conscious for now. Ainz-sama, I'm grateful for your offer, but there is something I can still try without using your precious items."

"Hoooh? What is it?"

"I'm afraid it is quite unpleasant to describe oh-ho-ho-ho, also quite unpleasant to witness. So, I must ask Ainz-sama to just wait for my results in your chambers."

Ainz hesitated for a moment, if Neuronist had a technique he didn't know of, he would want to know. But, on second thought, it's Neuronist—so he probably didn't want to know.

"Very well then, thank you for your hard work," Ainz said and teleported to find Albedo.

♦ ♦ ♦

"A-are you sure t-that will work?"

"Oh dear Mare-sama, rest assured that I will try my best to earn my reward from Ainz-sama. Isn't that what we all want?"

"Y-yes."

Neuronist approached her victim. Conventional torture methods don't seem to work on her, so she tried to resort to using her [Neuron Probe] skill instead. However, without clean access to her brain via scalping, that was difficult.

Difficult, but not impossible.

Neuronist had experience with human and Elven biology, so she figured that a Half-Elf must be somewhere in between.

A shared feature between the two species was the fact that you could access their brain through certain orifices, e.g. the eyes, the nose, and the ears. Given this prisoner's durability would render the eye path inaccessible since regeneration around her tendrils could cause her harm, Neuronist decided to try her ears first.

"Mmmmphhhhhh, mmmmmmmmm"

"Oh deary please, this won't hurt a bit, I promise~"

She gripped the tip of a needle, one plucked from the furs of a Spear Needle Lord, with her tendrils and let it loose inside her victim's ear.

There was some resistance, but soon—

—pop

She used two more needles to create more incision points.

pop

pop

And used a fourth to create a hole wide enough in her eardrums for her tendrils to pass through.

The thinnest point of her tendril squirmed around her cochlea, but found it to be confusing to navigate through especially with her victim thrashing around on the table.

Neuronist pulled out as the holes she punctured was starting to close up and she hadn't found success through this path.

"MMMFFFFFhhhhmmm, Ffffffmmmm"

"Oh quit crying, it wasn't that bad."

All that was left was her nose.

Neuronist stuck several of her tendrils up her victim's right nostril and—

"Achhooooo~"

A powerful gust of air created by the sneeze hit the weakest part of Neuronist's tendrils, severing multiple as she fell back with an "aaaaghhhh!!!"

"FFFFmmm? Mmmfffffuffffffuffffufffu!"

"Oh now you've done it, now you've got me mad you wretch!"

Playtime was over.

With both of her easy options eliminated and one of the tougher options (her mouth) eliminated too due to the fact she could bite her, Neuronist had to resort to the hard way. The long around.

She slipped her thickest, longest tentacle into the dragon-scale armor specifically designed for it and stuffed her olfactory organs with cotton balls as she prepared to trudge through the arduous journey ahead.

...

...

...

"Mmmm? MMMMMPPPPPHHHH? MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!"

...

...

...

"[Neuron Probe]!"

"MMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmm..."

...

"mmmhmmmm..."

...

"euuuuuuuhhhhhhnnnnnngggggg..."

Aha, gottem again

Actual Epilogue

Albedo, having finished greeting her master who had just returned from the Elven Country in the Frozen Prison, returned to her master's quarters and resumed her work.

Her workload had increased with the destruction of the Kingdom and its vast territories placed under their control. However, Albedo possessed a talent for internal administration, so it wasn't a problem that she had to rack her brain over. As a result of a majority of the cities being razed to the ground, the distressing problems—their occupation policy in particular—had also been reduced to ashes.

For that reason, Albedo was using a large part of her brain's resources to review the creation of a manual they could use in the occupation policies for each of the various countries when they would eventually be placed under their rule in the future.

While it might be possible to scale the one they used in E-Rantel to the level of nations, it was not difficult to imagine kinks forming in the process of broadening the scale and scope of it. In the end, it was better to just apply the methods for administrating a city to the cities and the ones for administrating a state to the states from the beginning to avoid mistakes in the distant future.

Of course, she didn't believe that they could apply those policies as they were in every country. If the races were different, then the cultures and other elements would also differ greatly. Still, they should be able to use them as a broad framework nevertheless.

I'll have Demiurge and Pandora's Actor look over the materials I've completed, and after that, I'll need to get Ainz-sama's approval.

If she borrowed the wisdom of those two, the model she had made would become even better.

I could make use of that girl, couldn't I?...

It was a fact that it would be faster to have her own master, who was full of wisdom and intelligence, look them over right from start—he would be able to perceive things much deeper than those two—but, there was no way she could approve of proposing something that had its problems laid clear at a glance in her position as the Guardian Overseer.

While thinking about that and other things, she tidied up her documents.

『Albedo! Report to the Frozen Prison immediately.』

The sudden [Message] made Albedo jump in surprise. She sensed a burning rage in her master's thoughts.

Once one reached a certain level range, a resistance to mind control was essential. It was obvious that depending on the time and situation, being charmed or controlled could instantaneously lead to defeat. There were no Floor Guardians who hadn't taken countermeasures against those effects.

In spite of that—although it was slight—the reason why Albedo felt panicked was because even though external psychic effects were ineffective on her, the same was not the case for the emotions gushing out from inside her.

She had been found out.

There was an affair she had been carrying out off the record from her master. Could it have been discovered?

Had Demiurge gotten wind of it and reported it to their master after all?

However, it was still in the experimental stage. She hadn't put it into full-scale operation. Would that much rage be directed at her in spite of that?

Still, that was the only thing that she could think of that would cause him to direct feelings of anger against her.

She didn't know.

Albedo hurriedly activated the ring's power and headed to the Frozen Prison.

Her master was standing in front of the cage of a Half-Elf they had captured in the Elven Country. Behind him was the Area Guardian Neuronist and the figures of Aura and Mare.

Her master's expression was no different from normal. Nonetheless, she could feel an intense fury radiating from him.

Albedo flew to the feet of her master and immediately prostrated herself before him.

"My deepest apologies!"

"...Wh-what's wrong?"

From that baffled-sounding voice, she instantly realized that the source of her master's anger was different than what she had thought. That being the case, prostrating herself had been a bad move.

But, she had been thinking about what sort of excuse to make just before she came here. Even though their master was wiser than her, she believed that with enough time spent, her plans could rival even him.

I hope I can pull this off...

"—If there is something that Ainz-sama is offended by, or has angered him within Nazarick, then it is all the fault of my—the Guardian Overseer's dissatisfactory work. I also feel bad for Tabula Smaragdina-sama. Therefore, I believe the most appropriate thing for me to do is bow like this and apologize."

"...No, you're wrong, Albedo. Let me first correct your misunderstanding. This anger is not directed at Nazarick."

A sigh of relief spilled out of Albedo. It wasn't an act, it was the real thing.

"If...that is the case...then what in the world has happened?"

"Before that, could you raise your head, or rather, stand up? I don't really like seeing you, who has done nothing wrong, prostrating yourself."

"Thank you very much, Ainz-sama."

While announcing her gratitude, Albedo stood up.

She was a little concerned about the looks of suspicion that had appeared on Aura and Mare's faces for a moment, but right now there was something more important than that.

"Then what sort of information from that prisoner of war has earned Ainz-sama's displeasure?"

She was talking about using [Control Amnesia] to collect information.

The explanation she had received was that even if her master—who had accumulated a lot of practice using it—were to search through memories spanning over a long period of time, just even just taking glances at them would take weeks of time. If he were to take a detailed look in order to obtain important information, it would require years of time, and if one were to go so far as to alter or falsify memories, it would take decades.

There might be a lot of people who would think that viewing memories was a form of interrogation where obtaining false evidence was impossible, but the information that was acquired was nothing more than what was the truth for that individual. It goes without saying that it was more than possible that even that individual had been deceived.

If you tried to get confirmation, you couldn't trust them as an information source without peering into the memories of multiple people. If you were to do that, then no matter how much time you have, it would never be enough. Ultimately, choosing a much simpler method of acquiring information was more realistic, her master had grumbled.

It was the same for modifying memories.

For example, if her master had burned a certain village to the ground and the surviving inhabitant of that village, a blasphemous and malicious man who sought power and—although it would be absolutely impossible—managed to ascend to a level high enough that they would be able to injure her master.

It's wrong to think that he could be used after they had "solved" the problem by wiping away his memory about her master being the one who burned the village. While that inhabitant of the village lived his life to seek out the power to take revenge, he would probably talk to someone about his grudge against her master. If you didn't erase everything up to till that point, a huge inconsistency would be born within that man.

Because although he wouldn't remember who had burned his village, the memory that, over a drink, he had talked about how "my village was burned down by an undead named Ainz," would still remain.

However, it appeared they had tried to use it because it was convenient to gather information even while the prisoner of war was unconscious.

"—It's Shalltear."

From those few words, she was able to guess almost everything that was to come.

"...Who is that woman affiliated with?"

"...Albedo."

"Yes!"

Albedo knelt down on one knee.

"Drop everything you're working on right now, except for those matters related to the defense of Nazarick. We are going to utterly annihilate the Theocracy immediately. This is a fight they picked with us. We will have to accept their challenge properly...Don't you agree?"

His tone was gentle. However, the emotions deep inside his voice were the complete opposite. How long had it been since he last showed this much rage?

"—Yes. I believe it is exactly as you say. I will immediately relay your orders to all of the Floor Guardians and transition to making preparations for war."

"Very well. Do it at once, Albedo. At. Once."

Albedo bowed deeply, trembling at her master's gentle tone.