Albedo had packed for the occasion.
It was not a large bag. It was a small, tidy leather satchel, slung across one shoulder, and it held a notebook, three pens, a ruler, a bundle of pressed paper, and a thermos of tea that Sebas had pressed into her hands at the last moment with a murmur of "in case the hospitality is lacking." She had also changed into a plain dark traveling gown, with her wings folded close and her horns hidden beneath a soft white veil.
"You look like a schoolteacher," said Ainz.
"Thank you, Lord Ainz."
"It was not entirely a compliment."
"I will treat it as one," said Albedo, and fell in a step behind him as he walked through the gateway.
The air on the other side smelled of damp earth and green leaves. They stood in a small, mossy hollow, ringed with tall ferns and old grey boulders, in the shade of a forest so thick that the morning came down through it in thin threads. Somewhere beyond the ferns, high up and far off, something enormous glowed faintly blue through the branches.
Albedo stopped.
"Not that way," said Leah.
She had been waiting by one of the boulders, in a plain brown cloak, with her wings folded and her hood pushed back. She did not look at the glow. She did not look at Ainz, either. She was looking at her own boots.
"That's the tree," she said. "I'd rather you didn't look at it for long. It's the one thing in this whole world that I really don't want anyone to find."
"I understand," said Ainz.
"I know you do. I just have to say it."
"You are in no need of apology."
"It's not an apology. It's a rule." She finally looked up, and her smile was small and a little crooked. "Eyes on the boulder, please. Both of you."
Albedo turned her head at once, with great politeness, and studied the boulder as though it were a masterpiece. Ainz did the same. It was, he thought, a very ordinary boulder.
"Good," said Leah, relieved. "This way."
She led them to the back of the hollow, where a low, round hole in the earth was half hidden under a tangle of roots. It was just wide enough for a person to crawl through. A faint, warm draft breathed out of it, and with it came the smell of dry earth and something faintly sweet, like toasted bread.
"The ants made it," said Leah. "It's the road. It runs under the forest, about forty minutes' walk. It comes out in the lair."
"The lair."
"The ant forest. The Great Woods of Lieb." She ducked under the roots. "That's what everyone else calls it. They have no idea the road exists."
"That is a very clever arrangement."
"Sugaru's idea. She said it was faster than walking."
"It is a great deal faster than walking."
"It's also a lot safer," said Leah. "Come on. Mind your head."
They went down.
It was a long, quiet walk. The tunnel was round and smooth, with a dry floor and a vaulted ceiling hung with a few pale, glowing lanterns. The walls were packed earth, strengthened with roots, and every few hundred yards a side passage branched off into the dark. Now and then they heard a faint, rhythmic clicking, like very small footsteps, and once an ant the size of a donkey passed them going the other way, with a bundle of dried leaves strapped to its back. It paused. It bowed. Then it hurried on.
"It had a hat," said Albedo, in a low voice.
"A small one."
"It was very neat."
"It's an important part of the uniform," said Leah, gravely.
***
The lair was enormous.
It was less a dungeon than an underground country, a vast cavern whose ceiling was lost in dim blue shadow and whose floor stretched away in terraced slopes and winding tunnels, lit by veins of pale fungus and clusters of glowing crystal. The walls were honeycombed with chambers. Bridges of root arced across the gaps. Somewhere in the distance, water ran in a thin, silver thread.
And everywhere, there were ants.
They moved in neat, tireless lines along the cavern walls, hauling stone and fungus and bundles of dried leaves. Some were as small as dogs. Others were as large as carts, with great black plated shells that gleamed like polished iron. They paid no attention to the visitors. They had places to be.
"They are very orderly," said Albedo, scribbling in her notebook.
"Sugaru keeps them in line."
"I merely provide structure," said a calm voice from behind.
They turned. A tall, slim woman in a neat grey coat stood a few paces away, with delicate antennae curling from her brow and a pair of folded mandibles that clicked once, politely, as she bowed.
"Welcome to the lair, honored guests," said Sugaru. "I have prepared refreshments. I hope you will find them agreeable."
"Thank you," said Ainz.
"It is a great honor."
"The honor is mine."
"I would not wish to presume."
"Neither would I."
"They do this," said Leah. "It goes on for a while. Just let it happen."
Albedo had been studying the colony with the clear-eyed attention of a general inspecting a fortress. She tilted her head.
"Leah-sama. May I ask a question?"
"Of course."
"Which of these are yours?"
"All of them," said Leah.
"All?"
"Every single thing in here with a heartbeat." Leah waved a hand at the line of ants, the glowing walls, the far-off terraces. "The ants, the guards, the spiders in the upper chambers, the things in the pit. Every monster in every one of my main dungeons is a retainer. There's nothing in here that isn't on my books."
"I see."
"That's why it all respawns. That's why it all comes back."
"There are no wild monsters?"
"Not in here. I killed the originals years ago." She smiled faintly. "It's easier to run a place when you know who's in it."
Albedo wrote it down. She underlined the word every, twice.
"This way," said Leah, and led them through a narrow archway into a smaller chamber.
It was circular, and its walls were covered, from floor to ceiling, in sheets of smooth black glass. Each sheet glowed faintly, like the screens in Albedo's own control room, and each showed a different scene: a corridor, a cavern, a bridge over a chasm, a long, dim hall lined with pillars. In the center of the room stood a low table, with six cushions and a pot of tea.
"This is where I watch," said Leah.
"You watch," said Ainz.
"I can see through any of my retainers' eyes. It's one of the perks of the skill. But it's easier to keep track of everything if I pipe it onto the wall." She waved a hand. "Sugaru built the display. I only helped."
"I merely translated," said Sugaru.
"It's very good," said Albedo, who had gone slightly pink. "It is much better organized than ours."
"Really?"
"I will take notes."
"Please don't," said Leah. "It's embarrassing."
She waved her hand again. A section of the glass flickered, and an image resolved: a vast, torchlit cavern, and a line of small figures in bright colors, moving cautiously along a path.
"Okay," she said. "That's the first group."
***
They were four: a swordsman, a mage, an archer and a very small girl in an oversized hat, who carried a staff taller than herself.
They were young, Ainz thought, or at least they moved like it, with the careful, delighted air of people on holiday. The swordsman held his blade out in front of him as though he were afraid it might go off. The mage kept stopping to look at the glowing fungus. The archer kept stopping to look at the mage.
"They look like a picnic," said Ainz.
"They're regulars. A bunch of friends who come on weekends." Leah poured tea. "They're not really here to fight. They just like the scenery."
"Are they in danger?"
"Oh, definitely," said Leah, cheerfully. "I'm going to kill them in about ninety seconds."
"Leah."
"It's fine. They love it."
On the glass, the swordsman rounded a corner and stopped.
A wall of ants, black and gleaming and each the size of a horse, stood across the path. They did not move. They did not threaten. They simply waited, antennae twitching.
"Um," said the swordsman. "Hello?"
One of the ants lunged.
It was over very quickly. There was a flash of black, a scream that was mostly laughter, and a column of pale light. Then the swordsman was gone, and the mage was running, and the archer had turned back for her friend and had been taken in the shoulder by a second ant. The small girl in the oversized hat stood perfectly still, staff raised, eyes shut tight.
"Boo!" she shouted.
The ants stared at her.
"Boo!"
They did not seem to know what to do. The smallest of them lowered its head, and gently touched her hat. She shrieked and bolted. A moment later, she too vanished in a burst of white light, and the cavern was silent.
"They all died," said Leah, brightly.
"They all died," said Ainz, in a stunned voice.
"Four for four. That's a clean sweep."
"Where are they?"
"Respawned. At the inn in the village, probably. They'll be back in an hour or so, after lunch and an argument about whose fault it was."
Ainz watched the empty cavern on the glass. The ants had already resumed their work, carrying the swordsman's dropped sword, with great solemnity, to a pile of unclaimed items.
"They did not seem to mind," he said.
"They almost never do."
"They died."
"They die all the time."
"They laughed."
"Yeah," said Leah, and smiled. "That's the thing about respawning. It stops being scary after the first few times."
"Is it not costly?" said Albedo, who had been writing steadily.
"Every death costs them ten percent of their total EXP," said Leah. "Which is a lot, if they do it all day. Thirty deaths and they're under five percent of what they started with. So most of them are careful about how often they die."
"But they keep returning."
"They keep returning."
"And the ants?"
"Free," said Leah. "They don't lose anything. They just come back after an hour."
Albedo wrote down the word free and looked at it for a long time.
"Leah-sama. May I ask another question?"
"Sure."
"The ants killed those players. The ants are your subordinates. Do they... feel anything, about this?"
Leah paused.
"Not the way you might think," she said. "They're not hurting anyone. They're doing what they're built to do. But I'll tell you something, it's a good question. Sugaru, how do the ants feel about it?"
"They find it very rewarding," said Sugaru.
"Rewarding."
"They enjoy being useful, and they enjoy meeting new people." She considered. "The little ones especially enjoy the hats."
Albedo wrote down the word hats. She underlined it twice.
***
"There's a thing you ought to see," said Leah.
She had pulled a smaller pane of black glass toward her, a flat panel, about the size of a tray. It showed not a cavern but a page of text, white on grey, divided into long rows of titles and numbers.
"This is the forum," she said. "The human one. Vault Net."
"The players' forum."
"The main one. Monster players can read it. Humans have no idea there's a monster one." She scrolled. "So I read it a lot. It's the best way to know what everybody's thinking."
"What are they thinking?" said Ainz.
"Oh, lots of things."
She turned the panel toward him.
The top of the page read: THE SEVENTH CATACLYSM: LAIR DISCUSSION THREAD. Beneath it ran a long column of replies, in a hundred different voices.
IS THE HARBINGER SCRIPTED OR IS IT A REAL AI?
it's scripted. every boss follows a pattern
it's not scripted, I've seen it change tactics mid-fight
the ants WAVE. NO SCRIPT DOES THAT
it's a real AI. the devs said the NPCs were supposed to be smart
Tally's spawn chart says the ants all run on one timer. that's not a script, that's a system
Tally's wrong, Grimward cleared it in nine minutes last week. the timers aren't fixed
what if it's a player?
lol
no way. a player can't run an entire dungeon
stop, you're giving me nightmares
"They think it's an AI," said Albedo, delighted.
"Most of them."
"They believe a machine runs it."
"They believe a lot of things."
"But a few of them suspect," said Ainz.
"A few." Leah scrolled down. "Every few weeks, someone posts 'what if it's a player?' and everybody laughs. And then a week later, somebody posts it again, and a few more people stop laughing."
"That is how rumors grow."
"Yeah." She sighed. "It's getting a bit worrying."
"Why?"
"Because humans hunt monster players," said Leah. "Not just a little. Properly. If they found out there was a real person running all this, they'd stop treating it like a dungeon. They'd start treating me like a target."
"And the retinue?"
"Would be in a lot of trouble." She turned the panel back. "That's why I read the forum. It's like a weather report."
Ainz looked at the little pane of glass. It was, he reflected, a rather dizzying thing: a world of living people, arguing quietly about whether the creature they feared was alive, while the creature in question sat in a room underground, reading it over a cup of tea.
"It is a strange way to live," he said.
"You don't know the half of it."
"I believe I do," said Ainz. "I am also a creature that others have decided to understand."
Leah looked at him for a long moment.
"Yeah," she said, softly. "I figured you'd get it."
***
The second group arrived an hour later.
Ainz noticed the difference at once. They moved like a unit, a column of ten, in matching gear, with a scout out front and two rear guards watching their backs. Their weapons were clean. Their formation was tight. When they reached the first junction, the leader raised a hand, and the whole column stopped without a word.
"These ones are different," Albedo murmured.
"Grimward," said Leah. "They're about the best-known progression guild in Hilith. They run the same dungeon over and over and optimize the route."
"They study it."
"They study everything. Their analyst's famous. She goes by Tally, and she posts spawn charts on the forum that half the region copies."
"A celebrity," said Albedo.
"Of a very specific kind," said Leah.
On the glass, the scout was crouched at the mouth of a tunnel, one hand pressed to the ground. A woman near the middle of the column, small and dark-haired, in a plain grey coat, had taken a small silver device from her belt and was holding it in her palm.
"That's her," said Leah.
"What is that?" Ainz asked.
"A stopwatch."
"A stopwatch."
"They time the respawns," said Leah. "Every time a monster dies, they write down how long it takes to come back. Then they plot the pattern."
"Why?"
"So they can predict it."
Ainz felt something cold slide down the back of his spine. It was not fear, since fear was suppressed, but it was close enough to recognize.
"And they can do this reliably?"
"Mostly. Retainers respawn at their lair on a regular timer. The ants are all on the same cycle." She shrugged. "It's one of the first things serious guilds figure out. They know they'll have about twelve minutes between waves if they hit a group in the right order."
On the screen, the column advanced. The scout signaled. The first rank moved forward in perfect unison, and the ants at the junction met them with a surge of black shell and snapping jaws.
It was a very different fight.
The guild did not scatter. It did not panic. When an ant lunged, the front rank closed around it, and a pair of mages behind them dropped a net of crackling light that pinned its legs to the stone. A second ant came in from the side and was met by a shield wall. A third was killed in three precise strikes, and Tally glanced at her palm, made a note, and said something short and clipped to the man beside her.
"Eleven point four," said Tally. Ainz read it on her lips.
"They are counting," said Albedo, quietly.
"Yeah."
"How many times have they done this?"
"Dozens. Maybe hundreds."
"And they are still alive?"
"They die sometimes. But they get better every time."
Ainz watched as the guild cleared the junction, regrouped, and moved on to the next. They did not rush. They did not take unnecessary risks. They moved like a machine with a purpose, and every time an ant died, Tally wrote something down.
At the third chamber they reached Sugaru's dais.
"Oh," said Leah, quietly. "Here we go."
The queen sat on her low seat in her neat grey coat, with her hands folded in her lap, and she rose as the guild came in, and bowed.
"Welcome," she said, in her calm, clear voice. "I do hope you are enjoying your visit."
Tally lifted her head. She looked at Sugaru. And Ainz saw her lips move, very slightly, in the manner of someone reading a line of text.
"What is she doing?" said Albedo.
"Appraisal," said Leah. "It's a skill. It shows you a target's name, their stats, their skills. Sometimes it shows you a lot."
"And Sugaru?"
"It doesn't work on her."
"Why not?"
"Her LP's so high that it doesn't show up as a number. It just comes out as a kind of..." Leah searched for the word. "A smear of color. It's really disorienting."
On the glass, Tally had lowered her head. She had frowned. She tilted her stopwatch toward the dais, as though the answer might be there, and said something in a low voice to the man at her side.
"She does not like it," said Albedo.
"No."
"She is a very careful person."
"Yeah," said Leah, and her voice was quiet. "That's what worries me."
***
They talked about it afterward, over tea.
They had taken the cushions around the low table, and Sugaru had brought out a tray of small, perfectly shaped fungus cakes, which Albedo accepted with great solemnity and ate with even greater solemnity. The glass still glowed around them, showing the quiet cavern, the slow flow of ants, and, in a far corner, a third group preparing their lunch.
"It's a stable system," said Leah. "So far. Humans keep coming. The ants keep respawning. I get EXP, they get loot, and nobody has to worry about dying forever."
"And no one suspects you," said Ainz.
"Not yet."
"Because they believe you are a script."
"Because they believe the Harbinger's an NPC." Leah turned her cup in her hands. "Which is true, in a way. It's a title. It's a role I play."
"I know something about that."
"I know you do."
He turned his own cup. It steamed gently, empty as always.
"I wish to compare it," he said slowly, "with what we use in Nazarick."
"Please."
"We do not have retainers. Not in the sense you do. But the Great Tomb is defended by what we call POPs." He glanced at Albedo. "Would you explain?"
"Of course, Lord Ainz." Albedo set down her cake and straightened. "POPs are monsters that spawn automatically within a designated area. They are generated by the game rather than created by us. The Supreme Beings chose where to place them, and what kinds, so that each floor would have the proper combination of defenders."
"And they respawn?"
"They do. At a cost to the system, but not to our treasury. They return after a time, as others take their place."
Leah put her cup down, very slowly.
"You have those?"
"Yes."
"For free?"
"They cost nothing but what the Supreme Beings already allocated."
"Satoru," said Leah.
"Yes?"
"You have an infinite army."
"Not infinite," said Ainz hastily. "There are limits. The POPs are weak, for the most part, and they cannot be commanded. They simply exist, in the places where we put them. The Floor Guardians are another matter."
"And the guardians can't respawn."
"No."
"But the POPs can."
"Yes."
"So you have a cheap, disposable first line that comes back on its own," said Leah, "and an irreplaceable core that can't."
"Yes. That is exactly right."
Leah stared at him for a moment. Then she began to laugh.
"What?" said Ainz.
"Nothing. I just realized we built the same thing. Totally separately. We even picked the same problem. Cheap front line, valuable back line."
"Hm."
"We just ended up with different resources."
"It would seem so."
"Lord Ainz," said Albedo.
"Yes?"
"There is something I would like to ask Leah-sama."
"Please."
"Is there an equivalent of the Ariadne system in your world?"
Leah blinked. "The what?"
"The Ariadne system. It checks the validity of a base. It ensures that there is a path from the entrance to the heart of the dungeon, and that the structure follows certain rules. If it does not, the guild is fined."
"Oh." Leah scratched her head. "No. Nothing like that."
"Nothing?"
"There's no fine, no inspection. You can build what you want." She considered. "The closest thing is that the admins check it."
"The admins."
"They're the people who run the game. They can't change the world. They can't edit anything. But if you hold a territory, and you've got Retainer, you can make a dungeon, and they check that it's a real one." She shrugged. "It's not much of a test. I think somebody looks at a screenshot and says okay."
"That is a very light touch."
"It's a very light game," said Leah.
"And if the world needs changing?" said Albedo.
"They tell the main AI. It handles the world. The admins just push the events." Leah smiled. "It's basically like a stage manager."
"A stage manager."
"For a very large play," said Leah.
Albedo wrote down the words stage manager. She looked at them. She looked at the glass, at the ants, at the guild eating lunch in a far corner of the cavern.
"I find that I like your world very much," she said, in a small voice.
"Thanks," said Leah. "It's a good one."
***
The third group arrived after noon, and it was loud.
There were five of them, a cheerful, rowdy crew in bright, mismatched gear, and floating in the air above their heads was a small, silver orb, no bigger than an apple, that hummed faintly and turned slowly in place.
"That's a camera," Leah explained. "They're streaming. The big guy's called Kestrel. He's got about forty thousand followers, and his whole schtick is going into places everyone else is afraid of."
"Streaming."
"Broadcasting. A bunch of players watch other players play. It's a whole thing."
"And they are broadcasting this?"
"Everything," said Leah. "Every fight, every death. They call it content."
On the glass, the party had stopped at the entrance of a long hall, and a tall man with a bright red beard turned to the orb with a flourish.
"Hello, Nightowls, and welcome back to Kestrel Live!" he boomed. "I'm Kestrel, and today we're taking on the lair of the Seventh Cataclysm! Say hello, team!"
"Hello, team!" the others shouted.
"Chat's already going crazy," said a woman near the back, squinting at the orb. "Somebody says the Harbinger's AI is completely scripted. Someone else is saying it's a live mod."
"A live mod?"
"That a developer's controlling it."
Kestrel laughed, loud and booming. "Come on! A developer? In this dungeon? That's ridiculous. It's way too creative for a script. If it's anything, it's an extremely advanced NPC."
"What about the ants?"
"What about them?"
"They keep saying hello."
Kestrel blinked.
"What?"
"The ants. The big one at the entrance. It said hello to me when we came in." The woman hesitated. "I thought I was imagining it."
"They're monsters," said Kestrel, firmly. "That's just flavor text."
On the glass, one of the ants stepped out of the shadows, clicked its mandibles, and waved a single, tiny foreleg.
"See?" said Kestrel. "Cute."
In the control room, Leah had put her face in both hands.
"I told them to stop doing that," she said, in a muffled voice.
"Doing what?" said Ainz.
"Being friendly. It's making people suspicious."
"Why?"
"Because normal monsters don't wave."
Albedo, to Ainz's surprise, made a very small, choked sound that might have been a laugh.
"I find it charming," she said.
"It's a liability," Leah groaned.
"It is a charming liability."
"I'll tell Sugaru," said Leah, and did.
***
"There's one more thing," said Leah.
It was late afternoon. The streamers had gone. The guild had gone. The glass had dimmed to a soft, restful glow, and the ants had settled into their evening patterns, a slow, murmuring tide of clicking legs. Leah had stretched out on her cushion with her hands behind her head. Albedo had finally set down her pen.
"You asked me what the cost was," said Leah. "Back at the tea. I said I'd show you. I think I should explain it now."
"I am listening," said Ainz.
"It's the liege."
"Ah."
"Retainers are tied to me. They respawn at their lair about an hour after they die, and I can't summon them again for at least that long. That's the rule." She stared at the dim glass above her. "But the lord can die too. And when I die..."
She did not finish. She did not need to.
"The whole retinue dies with you," said Albedo.
"Yes."
"All of them."
"Every last one." Leah lowered her gaze. "It happened once. Not in the lair. Somewhere else, in a fight. I died, and the ants and the cats and the wolves all went with me. Then I had to sit in an empty room for an hour."
"Only an hour?"
"Sugaru comes back first, after an hour. She's a retainer with retainers of her own. Then the ants start their own timers. So it's really two hours before the colony's back to full strength."
Ainz was very still.
"And during that time," he said, "the lair is undefended."
"Yeah."
"And anyone who knew this could..."
"Yes."
"That is..." He stopped. Then, more quietly, "That is a very dangerous weakness."
"I know."
"Does anyone else know?"
"Lyla. Blanc. Sugaru. A couple of the retainers." She rolled onto her side to face him. "And you."
For a long moment he did not answer.
He was thinking about a throne room, and a banner, and forty-one names. He was thinking about a set of NPCs who could never be replaced, who stood in their halls and their floors and their gardens, each one waiting for a master who had gone. He was thinking about the one among them who had stayed.
If I fall, he thought, they have nothing.
It was a different shape of the same problem. Leah's army returned from death, and Nazarick's did not, but both stood on a single point. Remove the point, and the whole structure collapsed.
"I understand," he said at last, in a voice that sounded very far away.
"Do you?"
"Better than you might think."
Leah studied him for a moment, and her expression softened.
"Yeah," she said. "I figured you might."
On the dim glass above them, in a distant tunnel, a single small figure was crouched at the mouth of a passage, with a silver stopwatch in one hand and a pen in the other, writing something very carefully on a small white card.
Albedo saw it first.
"Lord Ainz," she said, very quietly.
He turned.
Tally had not left with the rest of Grimward. She had stayed behind, and was kneeling alone in the dark, counting.