Albedo did not stop talking until they reached the Throne Room.
She had begun in the gateway, continued through the Sixth Floor, and carried on up the long stair of the Great Tomb with her notebook open in one hand and a pen in the other, turning pages as she walked. Ainz had been listening with half his attention, which was the most he could spare. The other half was still in a dim blue cavern, looking at a small woman in a grey coat kneeling alone in the dark.
"...and the forum is the most remarkable part," Albedo was saying. "A population of thousands, reading and arguing and correcting one another in the open, without any central authority. They have effectively built an intelligence service and do not know it."
"Mm."
"Lord Ainz, I would like to propose that we gather the Guardians."
"Now?"
"At your convenience." She smiled. It was a good smile, warm and sincere and slightly dangerous, and he felt a small, cold pang of recognition. It was the smile of someone who had found a very large idea and had not yet noticed it was pointed at him.
"Very well," said Ainz. "Assemble them in the Throne Room."
"Thank you, Lord Ainz."
"Briefly."
"Of course."
He did not think it would be brief.
***
They came in by ones and twos, and took their places before the dais.
Demiurge arrived first, in his immaculate suit, with his tail curled neatly behind him. Shalltear came a moment later, trailing a faint smell of roses, and did not so much walk as arrive. Aura and Mare slipped in through a side door, whispering. Cocytus stood in his place at the end of the line, a pale tower of frost. Sebas entered last, and bowed, and stood a little apart, with his hands folded behind him and an expression of unhurried attention.
"My lords and ladies," said Albedo. She stood to the right of the dais, with her wings half-open and her notebook held against her chest like a general's map. "Lord Ainz has graciously permitted me to report on the world of Lady Leah."
There was a rustle of attention.
"I will be brief."
"You will not," said Demiurge, pleasantly.
"I will be thorough."
"That, at least, is believable."
Ainz, on the throne, folded his bony hands and said nothing. He had learned that the best way to preside over Nazarick was to look as though he already knew what was about to be said. It was a great deal less tiring than the alternative.
"There are three points," said Albedo. "The first is a population. Leah's world holds a vast number of people called players, or Vault Holders, who are not natives of the world but visitors who enter it for recreation. They are numerous. They are, by our standards, weak. And they are, in a practical sense, very difficult to kill."
"Difficult?" said Cocytus, in a low, frosty rumble. "They are weak."
"They die, Cocytus. And then they return."
The room was quiet.
"They return at a place they have chosen. Whole and unharmed, in about the time it takes to eat lunch. They lose a portion of their accumulated strength each time, but they do not lose themselves." Albedo turned a page. "I watched ten of them die in an afternoon, and not one was frightened."
"Not one?" said Aura.
"They laughed."
Mare made a very small, bewildered noise.
"The second point is Leah-sama's dungeon," Albedo went on. "Every monster in her lairs is her subordinate, bound to her, and each returns an hour after death at no cost. Her enemies pay to fight. She pays nothing to be fought. The arrangement produces strength for her at all hours without any labor of hers."
"A farm," said Demiurge, softly.
"A very efficient one."
"And the third?"
Albedo's eyes shone.
"The third is the one I wish to propose," she said. "Lord Ainz, with your permission."
"Go on," said Ainz. He tried to sound like a man who had not already guessed.
"Nazarick already holds a version of the mechanism," said Albedo. "Our POPs spawn and respawn without cost to the treasury. They are weak, and have never been more than a first line. But Lady Leah's world shows that there is a second use for a thing that returns. If the visitors will die and return endlessly, and if every death yields some measure of experience to the one who deals it, then a Nazarick that took part in that economy would possess a source of strength with no ceiling."
She paused.
"I propose that we study it. That we capture a small number of players, examine their return, and learn whether it can be reproduced, redirected, or harvested."
The word harvested hung in the air.
Ainz felt, very distantly, something in his chest that he could not have said was fear, because fear did not live there anymore. It was only the place where fear had been, and the shape of it remained.
***
"It is an excellent proposal," said Demiurge.
Ainz turned his head.
"If I may," said the demon, with a small, graceful bow. "Lady Albedo has identified the most valuable thing in the entire world. A population that cannot be exhausted. That fights without fear and returns without cost. That, by every account, governs itself by custom alone. The possibilities for study are considerable."
"Study," said Ainz.
"Of course. We would proceed with great care." Demiurge smiled, and his glasses caught the light. "The first step would be to determine whether the return is a property of the player or of the world. If the world, then the mechanism could be located and understood. If the player, it could be extracted. A single subject, kept in controlled conditions, would answer a great many questions."
"And if it is neither?"
"Then we will have lost nothing but a small, easily replaced asset."
"Demiurge."
"Yes, Lord Ainz?"
"The asset is a person."
There was a very short pause.
"A person who returns," said Demiurge, gently. "I would not wish to presume, but I do not believe the usual considerations apply."
Ainz would have liked to say something clever. The old part of him, the part that had spent a long time in a cheap apartment dealing with other people's meetings, had a whole shelf of vague, reassuring phrases for exactly this situation. He reached for one and found that it had gone soft in his hand.
"Lord Ainz," said Shalltear.
She had been very quiet. Too quiet. She stood with her hands clasped before her and her red eyes bright, and there was a flush on her pale cheeks that he did not like at all.
"Yes, Shalltear?"
"If I may ask a small question."
"Ask."
"The ones who return. Do they return full?"
"Full?"
"Of blood," said Shalltear, in a small, reverent voice. "If they were drained, and they came back whole, and could be drained again..."
"No," said Ainz.
"Lord Ainz, I only wished..."
"No."
"Yes, Lord Ainz."
The flush did not leave her face. It only went somewhere he could no longer see.
***
He had expected someone to object. Perhaps Sebas, or Mare, or even Cocytus, who had a stern sense of fair play. Instead the silence settled, and Ainz understood that he was looking at a room of people waiting for him to explain what was wrong with a good idea.
He could not explain it.
He could not say that he had once belonged to a place where the players had been the enemy, because they were not the enemy here. He could not say that he had seen what a few thousand clever, patient, curious people could do to a thing they wanted to understand. He had watched them take apart boss patterns, drop tables, hidden quests and entire guild strategies, with nothing but spreadsheets and time. He had been one of them. He knew exactly how a rumor became a wiki, and a wiki became a map, and a map became a plan.
And he could not say that the hardest thing about Leah's world was that these people could not be frightened into silence. They would simply die, and return, and tell everyone.
"I will say this once," said Ainz.
The room straightened.
"We are guests in that world. Lady Leah has shown us hospitality, and has trusted us with her secrets. There are things she has told us that could ruin her, and she told us because we were allies. I will not repay that by seizing her people."
"They are not her people, Lord Ainz," said Demiurge, mildly. "They are visitors."
"They are her neighbors," said Ainz. "And the ones who do not know what she is are the ones who would do the most damage if they found out. I will not have them found. I will not have them frightened. I will not have them studied." He let that sit. "No one in this room is to approach, question, capture, harm or otherwise make contact with any player without my direct order. Not for study. Not for amusement. Not as a favor to me."
He looked down the line.
"Is that understood?"
"Understood, Lord Ainz," said Albedo, and bowed.
"Understood," said Demiurge.
"Understood!" said Aura. Mare nodded vigorously.
"It shall be as you command," said Cocytus.
"Of course," said Sebas.
"Understood, Lord Ainz," said Shalltear, a beat late.
"Good."
He sat back. He felt, absurdly, as though he had won an argument, which was a feeling he had learned to distrust. The Guardians bowed again and began to disperse. Aura and Mare went out through the side door, whispering. Cocytus walked to the main doors with measured steps. Sebas lingered a moment, looking at Ainz with calm, careful eyes, and then bowed and followed.
***
Albedo stayed to the end.
She waited until the room was nearly empty, and then she came forward, and knelt before the dais with her notebook closed in her hands.
"Lord Ainz."
"Yes, Albedo?"
"I wished to say that I understand." Her voice was low and warm. "I have been too eager. I saw something wonderful and I wished to take it, and I did not think how it would look to one who sees farther. Please forgive me."
"There is nothing to forgive."
"It was a poor way to speak of Lady Leah's people."
"It was a very natural one."
"Thank you." She lifted her eyes. They were bright and sincere and a little wet, and she looked, for a moment, like exactly what she was: a very clever woman who wished desperately to be useful. "I will not approach them. I swear it."
"I know."
"I will only continue to observe."
"Observe," said Ainz, slowly.
"Through Lady Leah's own glass, as she has permitted. I will take no action. I will only learn."
It sounded reasonable. It sounded, in fact, entirely like what he had asked. And yet the old part of him, the part that had spent years reading between the lines of contracts, noticed that she had said every word of it carefully.
"Very well," he said.
"Thank you, Lord Ainz." She rose, bowed, and went out with a soft rustle of white silk.
The doors closed.
Ainz sat alone in the Throne Room, under the great banners of Ainz Ooal Gown, with forty-one empty places at his back. He folded his hands. He unfolded them. He looked at the doors where the Guardians had gone.
*I said direct order,* he thought. *No one approach, question, capture, harm or contact. No contact.*
It was a good rule. It was clear, and wide, and it left no gaps.
Somewhere, he thought, a very clever demon was already reading it for gaps.
***
Demiurge walked slowly down the long corridor, with his hands behind his back and his tail curled neatly behind him. He did not hurry. He very seldom did.
"No contact," he said quietly, to no one. "With any player."
He tilted his head, as though considering a fine point of wording.
"How very well put."
In her own chambers, Albedo set a thermos of cold tea on the desk, opened her notebook to a clean page, and wrote a heading at the top in her neatest hand: Questions that may be answered without speaking to anyone. She underlined it twice.
And at the far edge of the Great Tomb, on a quiet balcony overlooking the dark grounds, Shalltear Bloodfallen stood very still in the moonlight, and measured with her eyes the distance to the place where the gateway opened.
It was not far.
She was not going to do anything. She had promised.
She was only counting.