They announced it two days later, in a post titled A POLITE TEST.
Leah read it aloud in the control room, in the flat, careful voice of someone reading a weather warning.
"'Harrow's group will be walking the eastern Lieb road tomorrow at dusk, as part of a routine monster-player sweep. We encourage anyone in the region to avoid the road for a few hours. We do not expect collateral.'"
"They are being courteous," said Narberal.
"They're being legal. If they say it ahead of time, nobody can complain it was an ambush." Leah put the tray down. "It's also an invitation."
"To whom?"
"To you."
Ainz stood before the glass with his hands behind his back, in the armor of Momon. He had been standing that way for some time.
"They expect me to come," he said.
"They expect you to come, or to stay away. Either way they learn something."
"If I do not come?"
"Then Momon's a coward, or Momon's something that can't be tested, and either way the thread has a new page." Leah shrugged. "You can't win by hiding. You can only pick which way you lose."
"That is encouraging."
"I'm not trying to encourage you. I'm trying to tell you how it works."
"I will go," said Ainz.
"I thought you would."
"A warrior of Momon's reputation would not decline a challenge."
"A warrior of Momon's reputation," said Leah dryly, "doesn't exist. But sure."
"I will not die."
"I know. That's not what I'm worried about." She looked at him, and her face was not dry anymore. "They're going to die. A lot. And you're going to be the reason."
"They will respawn."
"They will. That's the problem."
He did not ask what she meant. He thought that, a little, he already knew.
***
The road at dusk was golden and very quiet.
It was the same road Ainz had walked before, the wide packed-earth way between the oaks, but it was empty now. The woman in the straw hat was gone. The boys with the swords were gone. The lute player and his goat were gone. Someone had put up a small wooden sign at the bend by the bridge, in neat hand lettering: CLOSED FOR A FEW HOURS. SORRY!
Ainz stopped before it. The Death Knights stopped behind him. Narberal, at his shoulder, tilted her head.
"There are nineteen," she said softly. "Thirteen in the trees on the left, six on the right. Two on the bridge, disguised as fishermen."
"Can you hear them?"
"I can smell the oil on their arrows." She paused. "They are very nervous."
"So am I."
"You do not look it."
"I am wearing a helmet."
The bridge ahead of them was empty, except for two men in wide hats sitting on the parapet with fishing rods. One of them looked up, very slowly, and met Ainz's eyes.
"Evening," he said.
"Good evening."
"Bit late for fishing."
"It is."
"We were told the road was closed."
"We were told it, too."
There was a pause.
"Right," said the fisherman. He drew a very long breath. Then he put down his rod, and stood, and took off his hat, and underneath it his face was thin and tired and a little sad. "Sorry about this. It's nothing personal."
"I am sure it is not."
"Harrow," said the fisherman, not loudly. "He's here."
The trees came alive.
***
It was, Ainz had to admit, very well done.
The first volley was fire arrows, a dozen from the left, aimed not at him but at the ground around his feet. They lit the dry moss in a ring, and in the same instant the six on the right loosed a long, cunning net of braided wire, weighted at the edges, that came down over the Death Knights like the lid of a pot. The bridge tilted. A mage on the bank dropped a wall of ice in the road behind them, and another dropped a wall of fire before them, and between the two walls, quietly, a third figure rose from the roadside bracken with a long black spear.
Harrow was a tall woman in a close-fitting leather coat, with grey in her hair and a face like a shut door. The black wolf's head on her chest plate was the only decoration she wore.
"Momon," she said.
"Yes."
"I'm told you're an interesting man."
"I am a merchant."
"I'm told that too." She lowered the spear. "I'm going to put the first hit on you, and I'm going to see what you do. Don't take it personally."
"I will not."
She came in fast.
He parried her thrust with the flat of his sword. She spun the spear and reversed it, and he took the second strike on his shoulder, and felt it ring off the plate. She was good. She was very good. She did not rush, and she did not overreach, and every motion carried a small, precise question: *Where do you flinch? What do you favor? How hard can you be hit?*
He answered her. He had to. The Death Knights were still struggling with the net, and the ice behind him was growing, and the arrows were beginning to sing again from both sides. He swung once, in a wide, clean arc, and Harrow dodged it by the width of a hair, and a young man behind her, who had been inching forward with a short sword, took the edge of the blade across the chest and vanished in a burst of white light.
It was astonishingly quiet.
"Down one!" shouted somebody from the trees. "Down one! Left shoulder, he's using a two-hand swing, open to the right on the follow-through!"
"Noted!" shouted someone else.
Ainz stared.
"They are *reporting,*" said Narberal, in a very small voice.
"Yes."
"While they are dying."
"Yes."
"I find that deeply unnatural," said Narberal.
He swung again.
***
The first group lasted eleven minutes.
By the end of them, Ainz had killed fourteen of the nineteen. He had not hurried. He had done it the way a careful warrior would have, in a sensible sequence, taking the mages first and the archers next, and leaving Harrow to the last. The Death Knights, freed at last from the net, had made short work of the right flank. Narberal had stood by, with her hands folded and her eyes lowered, and had cast a single small spell, a bright, flat sheet of lightning that stunned four men at once, and had then, with great restraint, done nothing else.
It was over. The road smoked quietly in the dusk. Arrows lay scattered across the moss like a spilled box of matches.
There were five left. Harrow was one of them.
"Well," she said, breathing hard. She had lost her spear. There was a long cut along her cheek, and she wiped the blood away with the back of her hand without looking at it. "That was educational."
"You may withdraw."
"I could." She looked at him with a strange, bright intensity. "Or I could die and come back."
"Why?"
"Because every time I die," said Harrow, "I know a little more about you."
She picked up a fallen shield, set her feet, and walked straight at him, and she did not try to dodge when his sword came around.
"Please stand back," said Ainz.
She did not. The blade took her, and she vanished in a burst of white light.
The four others, a little pale, looked at one another, and at the smoking road, and at the dark knights standing quietly in the dusk. Then, one after another, with a sort of rueful courtesy, they stepped forward and did the same, each in a different place, each at a different angle.
Ainz stood very still in the empty road.
It had taken less than a minute. There had been no cry and no hesitation. They had simply chosen to be struck, the way a person chooses to put down a heavy bag, and each one had taken a slightly different blow.
"Lord Ainz," said Narberal, in a very strange, small voice. "That was not a charge."
"No."
"It was a *survey.*"
"Yes," said Ainz. "That is exactly what it was."
***
They came back an hour later.
It was fully dark by then. The road was lit by the Death Knights' pale blue eyes and by a thin, cold moon. And down the road, out of the dark, came the sound of many feet, walking in step.
"They're early," said Narberal.
"They have been busy."
"How do you know?"
"I have read the thread," said Ainz.
He had. He had read it in the interval, standing in the road with Leah's little window in his hand, by the light of the moon. It had gone up while the hunters were still dying, and it had grown while they were still in their beds at the inn. A dozen of them had written it together. It was titled MOMON: FIRST ENGAGEMENT NOTES, and it ran to nine long paragraphs.
*left-shoulder two-hand swing, open to the right on the follow-through (Rin, died 3rd)*
*DK's are Provoked by loud noise, tank blocks the road, don't stack them (Eddie, died 8th)*
*Nabe does not use fire. Uses lightning. Hits flat, wide, low damage, high stun. She's holding back. (Pell)*
*no flinch on arrow hits. no flinch on fire. does not breathe in the cold. no visible breath (Harrow, noted at death)*
*he asked Harrow not to die. he SAID please. this is a person.*
That last line had been written in a different hand, with a small, odd quiver in it. Ainz had read it three times.
Now the second wave came out of the dark. They were twenty-six this time. They walked in two rows, close together, shields up. And in the middle of them walked a new figure, a small, plain man in a white robe, with a staff and a very calm face.
"A priest," said Narberal.
"Yes."
"For what?"
"For me," said Ainz.
***
It went differently the second time.
They did not scatter. They did not feint. They advanced in a tight, silent block, shields locked, and when the Death Knights tried to break the line, the front rank simply took the blow and held. The priest murmured something. A soft, cold light went out from his staff, rolling across the road like fog.
Ainz felt it pass over him.
It was an exorcism. A small one, a beginner's turning, meant to disturb the unquiet dead, and it slid off him like rain off oiled leather. The priest saw it slide. He frowned. Then he did something that Ainz had not expected: he lowered his staff, took out a small glass bottle, and threw it.
It broke against the Death Knight's shield. Where the water struck, the black armor hissed, and a thin curl of grey vapor rose.
"Holy water," said Narberal, sharply.
"Yes."
"They are testing whether you are undead."
"Yes."
"Shall I..."
"No." He lifted his sword. "Let them."
The second wave died in nine minutes.
It was harder than the first. They were better, and they were prepared. They had learned the Death Knights' weakness and the shape of his swing. But they had not learned the one thing they needed, and they died, in rows, without learning it, and their last words went up in white light like sparks from a fire.
"Not undead!" cried the priest, as the blade took him. "No flinch on holy! He's either not undead or he's too strong for..."
The light took him.
Ainz stood alone in the road.
He did not, at that moment, feel much like a conqueror. He felt like a man who had solved a problem and found it was a different, harder problem in disguise.
***
They came a third time at midnight.
He knew they would. He had stopped being surprised. He had, in fact, begun to feel a kind of grim, peculiar respect. They came out of the dark quietly, in a loose column of thirty, with the priest at the center and Harrow at their head. Her cheek was healed. Her spear was new. The thread, by now, was a hundred pages long.
She stopped ten paces from him.
"You've been busy," said Ainz.
"So have you." She had a faint, tired smile. "How many of us have you killed tonight?"
"Fifty-eight."
"Fifty-nine. I counted. One of ours fell off the bridge before the second wave."
"That was not me."
"I know. I'm just counting." She looked at him with the same bright, strange intensity. "Here's what I've learned, Momon. Your swing's got a seam in it. Your companion's holding back every spell. Your knights have a weakness to loud noise. And you're not undead."
"I am a warrior."
"You are *something,*" said Harrow. "And I've got nine hundred posts of data that say so. I think I could write the whole manual by morning."
"You would be correct."
"Would I?"
"No," said Ainz.
She laughed. It was a short, tired, honest sound.
"You're not what I expected," she said.
"What did you expect?"
"A monster. Something I could kill and be done with." She lowered her spear. "You keep asking us not to die. You keep warning us. That's not what a monster does."
"I am a merchant."
"Sure you are."
She tilted her head, and for a moment, in the thin moonlight, she looked less like a hunter than like a person who had come to the end of a long argument and was not at all sure which side she was on.
"I'm done for tonight," she said. "We're all done. We came to test you, and we did. We got what we needed." She hesitated. "Thank you for the data."
"There is no need to thank me."
"There is." She turned, and raised a hand, and the column began to turn, slowly, in the dark. "Good night, Momon. I'll see you on the forum."
They went. It took them a long time. The sound of their feet faded into the oaks, and the moon slid slowly across the sky, and after a while the road was quiet again.
Ainz stood in the dark, surrounded by smoke and scattered arrows and the faint, lingering smell of holy water, with a sword in one hand that he had not needed to swing for twenty minutes.
Narberal came to his side.
"Lord Ainz," she said, very low. "They did not die the last time."
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because they have what they came for." He sheathed the sword. "Fifty-nine deaths. Every one of them a lesson. Every lesson on the forum, in plain text, by morning."
"Then we have lost."
"No." He shook his head slowly. "We have not lost. We have been *read.*"
"Is there a difference?"
"A very great one." He looked up at the thin, cold moon. "A defeat can be answered. A reading cannot be taken back."
In his hand, the little window of black glass was still glowing. The thread had a new post, at the very top, in plain white letters. It had been written an hour ago, by a woman with a black wolf's head for an icon.
harrow: Dark Warrior engagement complete. 59 deaths, 0 kills on target. Full notes below.
harrow: for the record, I don't think he's a monster.
harrow: I think he's afraid of us.
Ainz read the line twice.
Then, very slowly, he turned the window off, and put it away, and walked back down the empty road toward the gate, with his silent knights behind him, and a small, tired mage at his side who did not say another word the whole long way.