“Lord Ainz, please forgive this servant’s foolishness.” After seeing Lucien off, Nabe stood behind Ainz, who had once again conjured his steel armor.
She lowered her head deeply and asked with sincere reverence.
“That man showed nowhere near enough respect toward you.
I believe he is unworthy of becoming a friend of Nazarick, much less standing as your equal.” “That assessment is completely wrong, Nabe…
no, Narberal.” Ainz kept his gaze fixed on Lucien as he gradually walked away.
Only after his figure disappeared at a fork in the road did Ainz turn around.
“His strength alone is enough to earn Nazarick’s respect.
More importantly, he is an old acquaintance from the same homeland as me.
In a New World where we know nothing about the upper limits of power, gaining another friend is infinitely preferable to gaining another powerful enemy.” “You mean his strength is…” “Yes.
He is roughly as strong as I am.
In fact, in a one-on-one battle, I would have almost no chance of defeating him.” Nabe’s pupils contracted, disbelief clearly showing on her face.
“Therefore, you must not come into conflict with him, not even indirectly.
Do you understand?
Doing so could leave Nazarick with an extremely troublesome enemy, and it could also cost me a friend with whom I can speak openly.
You should understand the significance of what I’m telling you, Narberal Gamma.” “Yes!” Nabe snapped rigidly to attention.
“This servant understands!” “Good…
For now, don’t tell anyone else about this.
I need to return to Nazarick.
Wait for me here, keep yourself safe, and do not leave.” On a backstreet, Lucien put his cowboy hat back on.
He had originally planned to buy himself a drink, pick up some tea and cigarettes, and then head home.
However, a succession of agonized screams from somewhere in the distance caught his attention.
When he had left the tavern earlier, he had activated an eavesdropping skill after taking only a few steps, intending to hear whether Ainz would say anything else about him once he was gone.
What Ainz and Nabe said had been reassuring enough.
The problem was that Lucien had forgotten to deactivate the skill, so he ended up hearing something he probably was not meant to hear.
The screams came from a man and still had not stopped.
Mixed in with them was the continuous voice of a woman sounding almost deranged.
That made Lucien somewhat curious.
After listening carefully for a while and narrowing down the source, he realized that the sounds were not coming from some hidden room or sealed building.
They were coming from deep beneath the ground.
Several possibilities passed through his mind, but he could not determine which one was correct.
His recent conversation with Ainz had convinced him that caution was never the wrong choice.
But as a professional assassin and someone obsessed with challenging and clearing dungeon content, Lucien simply could not ignore something that carried the same mysterious allure as an unexplored dungeon.
After considering it for a moment, Lucien opened his friend list and sent a message to the only illuminated ID.
“I heard something interesting and I’m going to sneak in and investigate.
Just in case, I’m letting you know beforehand.
If I don’t contact you within two hours to confirm I’m safe, please come help me using my last known coordinates.” The reply came only a few seconds later.
“No problem.” His contingency was now in place.
Lucien activated the skill Earthshadow.
Back in the game, the skill allowed the user to become invisible and sink into the ground, entering an invulnerable state while retaining the ability to move freely at reduced speed.
In reality, however, the moment Lucien sank beneath the ground, complete darkness surrounded him and the enclosed space felt distinctly oppressive.
Following instincts that somehow felt as natural as breathing, he continued descending.
He had no way to judge his actual speed.
After roughly twenty seconds, he suddenly felt himself dropping rapidly.
The instant Lucien emerged from the earth, he activated Perfect Invisibility, an Assassin-exclusive skill capable of completely blocking the perception of anyone below level eighty.
He landed without making a sound and looked around.
This appeared to be a hidden underground fortress.
However, its entire design seemed less like a place meant to keep intruders away and more like somewhere life itself was unwelcome.
The lamps hanging from the walls on either side were constructed from bones.
Ghostly blue flames burned inside skulls, dim and eerie, stretching down the corridor ahead for an unknown distance.
Broken bones lay scattered across the floor.
The shabby stone tiles were cracked and badly deteriorated, looking as though they had nearly reached the limit of decay.
A sufficiently forceful step would probably reduce them to fragments.
There was good news, though.
Now that he was underground, the screams had become much clearer.
Lucien deactivated his eavesdropping skill and began moving forward cautiously.
After passing through the long, narrow corridor, something embedded within the wall caught his attention.
A Skeletal Dragon.
Lucien stopped and looked the enormous creature up and down.
It stood nearly forty meters tall.
The sight filled him with nostalgia.
Back when YGGDRASIL had first launched, this had been one of the game’s strongest monsters.
It possessed high attack power, high defense, and complete immunity to low-tier magic.
For players still progressing through the early stages of the game, it had once been an extremely troublesome opponent.
The game had been enormously popular at the time, and carrying paying clients through fights against these things had earned him quite a bit of money.
If this giant creature accumulated enough negative energy to begin moving and somehow reached E-Rantel, it would probably cause an extraordinary amount of destruction.
After reminiscing for several seconds, Lucien returned his attention to his surroundings.
He continued forward for several hundred meters before the environment suddenly opened up.
The chamber ahead appeared to extend for well over a kilometer in both length and width, with a ceiling roughly a hundred meters high.
Yet despite the enormous amount of open space, there were no buildings and no piles of stored goods.
That alone made the place feel strangely unnatural.
The screaming had already stopped.
As Lucien continued deeper inside, a bald old man suddenly emerged from around a distant corner.
He wore a mage’s robe long enough to brush against the ground and carried a staff set with a purple amethyst.
Even the way he walked gave off the unmistakable presence of someone powerful.
Lucien’s attention immediately locked onto the staff.
He searched through his memories of YGGDRASIL equipment, trying to recall whether he had ever seen anything like it.
However, among divine-class or legendary staves with level requirements approaching one hundred, he could not remember a single weapon with that appearance.
Which meant…
“Could it be a customized piece of equipment…?” Lucien considered the possibility.
Divine-class equipment had existed in considerable quantities, and he would normally recognize most notable pieces at a glance.
But if a player had taken one and subjected it to extensive customization, both its appearance and effects could have changed dramatically.
Something like that could easily become one of a kind.
Failing to recognize it would be perfectly normal.
“Or it could be a high-level staff native to this world…” The more Lucien thought about it, the more cautious he became.
His conversation with Ainz earlier that day had given him a great deal to think about.
Before then, he had never seriously considered how high the upper limit of this world’s combat strength might be.
Everything he had encountered so far had been so weak that he had gradually begun assuming even the strongest beings here could not amount to much.
Yet less than half an hour after that conversation ended, he had unexpectedly discovered an organization hidden deep underground.
The Skeletal Dragon he had just passed might even be connected to this old man.
Ainz’s concerns really had not been groundless.
Ainz truly had not been worrying for nothing.
As the Guildmaster of one of YGGDRASIL’s top guilds, Ainz’s extreme caution clearly came from a way of thinking that had its own merits.
“Khajiit~” A woman appeared behind the old man, walking casually with both hands clasped behind her head.
Because the elderly magic caster stood slightly hunched and did not seem capable of fully straightening his legs, the woman appeared noticeably taller than him.
She wore a large cloak, and beneath it, she appeared to have almost no conventional clothing.
Her upper and lower body were covered only by two unusual pieces of close-fitting armor made from overlapping plates.
As she walked, Lucien also noticed a pair of spike-like weapons hanging from her cloak, occasionally catching the ghostly blue light.
She appeared to be an assassin.
(To be continued.)