The clearing beside the World Tree had been designed for high-level magical experiments, not as an arena for a crowd. Yet Leah had cleared a space as wide as an imperial stadium, and as the setting sun poured molten gold across the tall grass, a hundred treants stepped back to the tree line. Behind them, a thousand pairs of glowing monster eyes watched from the shadow of the leaves, making the vast glade feel, strangely, like a grand theatrical stage.
More uninvited guests had arrived through the flickering spatial rift. Cocytus, a towering, four-armed insectoid warrior armored in glistening, frost-white chitin, stepped out first with a deep, deliberate tread that made the earth tremble slightly. Behind him came Aura and Mare, the dark-elf twin Floor Guardians, holding hands tightly. Aura scanned the clearing with wide, curious eyes while her exotic beasts padded softly at her heels, and Mare cowered nervously behind his wooden staff.
"Lord Ainz is... dueling a complete stranger?" Aura whispered, tilting her head.
"I-I do not understand," Mare whispered back, tugging at his tunic.
"Neither do I," Aura admitted.
Ainz had temporarily retreated into a small patch of cool shade beneath the sprawling roots of the World Tree to compose his wildly racing thoughts. Albedo had glided over to join him, her black wings folded tightly behind her back.
"My Lord," she said gently, her voice full of concern. "You seem troubled."
"I am merely... considering the opponent," Ainz replied, forcing a low, measured tone.
"She is indeed formidable," Albedo agreed, nodding seriously. "I have carefully studied her stance. She clearly favors exceptional speed and close-quarters combat."
"Yes. That was precisely my evaluation as well," Ainz said smoothly. It was not, of course, but it was immensely comforting to be given an answer.
"You have never lost a battle, my Lord," Albedo said, her expression softening into a radiant, devoted smile. "You will not lose today. And whatever path you choose, we shall follow you to the end."
Ainz looked down at her for a long, silent moment.
She truly means it, he thought, a heavy lump forming in his nonexistent throat. She genuinely believes I am completely incapable of failure. And I simply don't have the heart to tell her that I am utterly terrified inside.
"Thank you, Albedo," he said softly. "That means more to me than you could possibly know."
She bowed low, glowing with pride, before stepping back to join the other Guardians. Ainz stood alone in the cool shade for another deep breath, squared his broad skeletal shoulders, adjusted his dark velvet robe, and walked out onto the open grass.
On the opposite side of the clearing, Leah was sitting on a mossy log, tightly re-tying the laces of her leather combat boots.
"Can I ask what's running through your head right now?" Blanc asked, hovering nervously nearby.
"I'm running through my stat distribution," Leah said without looking up.
"Because you're scared?"
"Because I'm Leah," she replied, pulling the knot taut and sitting back. "Thanks to my poor eyesight, I can't hit anything accurately beyond mid-range. That means I have no choice but to close the distance immediately. If I don't, he gets to control the entire field and dictate where we fight—unless I force the tempo and take that control away from him."
"And how do you plan to take it away?" Blanc asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea yet," Leah admitted.
"That is not very comforting, Lealea!"
"I know."
"Lealea," Lyla called out from behind them. Her voice had lost its usual sharp, sarcastic edge, replaced by a strange, careful quiet. "Just... make sure you come back in one piece."
Leah looked up at her older sister. For a single heartbeat, her dry, detached gamer mask slipped, revealing something much older, tired, and sadder underneath.
"I'm not planning on losing," Leah said softly.
"That's not what I asked you," Lyla replied.
"I know."
Lyla opened her mouth as if to say something more, but closed it, gave a single firm nod, and stepped back to give her room.
Nearby, Cocytus and Sugaru had crossed paths at the edge of the viewing area.
"You are the Queen of the insects in this realm," Cocytus observed in his deep, rumbling voice. "I have not encountered a warrior of your specific physiology before."
"I am a Queen Ant," Sugaru replied politely, her mandibles folding neatly. "And you are a warrior forged of ice and frost."
"I am Cocytus, Guardian of the Fifth Floor of Nazarick."
"I am Sugaru, devoted servant of the Boss," she said, inclining her head. "If I may say so, your exoskeletal armor possesses a extraordinarily beautiful polish."
Cocytus froze in place, his icy breath hitching. A faint, shimmering blue glow spread across his broad shoulders. In all his time in Nazarick, no one had ever complimented the aesthetic finish of his natural armor before.
"…I thank you," he said stiffly, clearing his throat. "Your wings are... exceptionally graceful as well."
"I am deeply honored," Sugaru bowed.
"I believe," Cocytus declared after a long, thoughtful pause, "that I shall cheer for both combatants today."
Albedo glided gracefully into the center of the stadium-sized glade. She raised one black-gloved hand, her voice ringing out silky, loud, and crystal clear across the clearing:
"This is an official contest of martial prowess between the Overlord of Nazarick and the Queen of Destruction! No outside interference shall be permitted. The duel concludes only when one participant yields, or can no longer stand!"
She brought her hand down sharply.
"Begin!"
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Ainz stood like a statue, his red eye-glints locked onto Leah's white feathered wings. Fast. She has flight capabilities. She will definitely attempt to close the distance instantly.
Leah stood rooted to the turf, her gaze glued to Ainz's skeletal right hand. The magical shimmer. He's a heavy caster reliant on pre-buffs. How long do his defensive timers last?
Then, at the exact same fraction of a second, both players executed the exact same opening move: casting a high-tier defensive barrier.
A translucent silver sphere snapped into existence around Ainz. A hum of dark purple arcane force slid up around Leah's frame.
"You buffed first," Ainz noted.
"So did you," Leah countered.
"It is the optimal strategic opening."
"My thoughts exactly."
Before the words had even finished echoing, the clearing detonated with a deafening crack of thunder as both combatants moved simultaneously.
Leah stayed low to the ground, moving at incredible velocity. Flaring her white wings, she shot across the turf in a blur of motion, her [Dark Blade] raised, aiming for a singular objective: Get inside his casting range before he can establish crowd control.
Ainz flicked two bony fingers downward. A jagged wall of solid glacial ice erupted out of the earth. Leah's dark energy sword slammed directly into it, shattering the blade into harmless sparks and sending a blizzard of razor-sharp frost cascading across the grass.
"Not bad at all," Leah called out, landing heavily on her feet.
"Thank you," Ainz answered instinctively.
"Did you mean to say 'thank you' in the middle of a duel?"
"I am honestly not certain."
Ainz raised his left hand, and a swirling column of roaring flames blasted from his palm. Leah sidestepped the heat with an agile twist. A blinding bolt of lightning cracked down from the amber sky, and she inverted midair to dodge it. A ring of scorching fire sprang up directly around her boots, but she used a single hard flap of her wings to vault effortlessly over the blaze.
She is ridiculously fast, Ainz analyzed, his mind racing. Targeting her with single-target direct-damage spells is inefficient. I need to trap her in a wide-area effect.
He telegraphs everything, Leah observed, a grin spreading across her face. Every single high-tier spell requires a hand gesture first. He's immensely powerful, but his casting rhythm is entirely predictable.
As a hardcore gamer to her core, she felt a surge of familiar adrenaline.
"All right," Leah called out. "Let's see how your build handles this."
She opened her eyes wide, activating her innate ability: [Heretical Eye].
Ainz felt a sudden, sharp sensation—like a freezing claw trying to pry open the lock of his mind. Instantly, the cool green wave in his head surged forward, smoothing the mental intrusion away to nothing.
"A status-effect attempt at mental dissociation," Ainz remarked politely. "I am afraid it will not work on an undead consciousness."
"Hey, it was worth a shot!" Leah laughed.
"I certainly appreciate the tactical effort."
"Thanks!"
Watching from the tree line, Demiurge leaned toward Lyla. "They appear to be exchanging mid-combat courtesies."
"They're comparing builds," Lyla translated flatly.
"Which is precisely what I implied," Demiurge replied smoothly.
Ainz decided to change his approach. He summoned a swarm of shadowy spectral bats—a dense, flickering cloud that whirled around Leah in a disorienting, high-speed spiral. They dealt no actual damage, but were designed to obscure her vision, break her focus, and force a fatal mistake.
It nearly worked. Leah flinched as a dozen leathery wings brushed her cheeks, losing sight of the Overlord for half a second.
Focus, she commanded herself. He's a backline caster. He wants me blinded because he knows my vision is already weak. So don't rely on eyes at all.
She closed her eyes tightly.
It was a reckless, absurd thing to do in a high-level fight, causing Albedo to gasp in horror. But Leah had long since mastered relying on her other senses: the ambient hum of mana, the subtle displacement of air as a spell gathered, and the underlying tempo of a cast. And since a skeleton didn't possess a heartbeat or breath, the only rhythm left in the air was the sharp spike of his magic every time he prepared to release a spell.
Three... she counted internally. Two... One.
She leaned hard to the left. A beam of pitch-black hellfire seared past her ear, so close the heat singed the tips of her white hair.
She snapped her eyes open, grinned, and sliced through the bat swarm with a sweeping gust from her wings.
"You... you closed your eyes during an attack," Ainz said, utterly astonished.
"You cast on a fixed metronome beat," she replied.
"I... I what?"
"A rhythm. Before every major spell, you pause for the exact same quarter-second count."
Ainz raised a bony hand to the back of his skull, looking genuinely mortified.
"…I do that?" he asked, his voice dropping. "I had no idea I possessed such a habit."
"Most players don't notice their own patterns."
"Is it... terribly obvious?"
"Only if someone is specifically paying attention."
He rubbed his skull again. "Thank you for informing me."
"I really shouldn't have given away my advantage," Leah admitted.
"No," Ainz agreed. "You really shouldn't have."
In the spectator area, Albedo clenched her fists till her gauntlets creaked. "Why does Lord Ainz continue to converse so freely with the enemy?" she demanded.
"He is psychologically probing her," Demiurge explained calmly, adjusting his glasses. "Every spoken word is a calculated test."
"Of course," Albedo breathed in adoration. "Of course it is."
Leah dropped back toward the turf, weaving in a wide, sweeping arc to close the gap once more. Ainz watched her approach, realizing he needed a major defensive buffer.
He raised both gauntlets. "[Death Knight]," he commanded. "Come forth."
Out of the earth, a massive cloud of pitch-black smoke erupted. From the gloom stepped a nine-foot-tall, monstrous undead warrior encased in spiked dark plate armor, holding a massive tower shield in one hand and a jagged broadsword in the other. It slammed its shield into the dirt, standing like an immovable fortress between Leah and its master.
Leah skidded to a halt on the grass, staring up at the hulking creature.
"Now that," she remarked, "is a remarkably solid tank."
"Thank you," Ainz called out from behind the shield. He immediately winced internally. Why do I keep thanking her?! "He is one of my finest summons."
"I can tell. He's holding aggro flawlessly."
"Holding... what?"
"Aggro," Leah explained. "Threat management. You've forced me to focus entirely on him instead of targeting you directly."
"…I did not realize there was a specific term for that mechanic," Ainz admitted.
"There's an MMO term for everything if you play long enough."
On the sidelines, Lyla nudged Demiurge. "Are they literally just chatting about game design right now?"
"It is a high-level battle ritual," Demiurge insisted solemnly. "Two master strategists exchanging martial philosophy mid-combat."
"They are 100% comparing builds."
"Which is, as I stated, a strategic exchange."
The Death Knight lunged, swinging its broadsword in a terrifying horizontal arc. Leah ducked beneath the blade, the sheer wind pressure tearing leaves off nearby trees. She rolled fluidly under a follow-up shield swipe, her [Dark Blade] ringing uselessly against the heavy tower shield with a loud metallic clatter.
I can't break his guard with raw physical stats, Leah calculated, springing backward. He's built like a brick wall. I have to go over him.
She spread her wings and launched straight into the air.
It was a simple, effective maneuver. The Death Knight was ground-bound, and Ainz needed a clear line of sight to cast. With the setting sun blazing directly behind her, Leah climbed high into the crimson sky, looking down at the entire glade.
I have total field vision up here, she realized, scanning the area. The Guardians, the treants, Lyla, Blanc, the Egg—everyone has backed off to a safe distance. It's just the skeleton and his summon down there.
"Sorry about this," Leah muttered to no one in particular. "This is going to be extremely loud."
She thrust her hand downward. "[Hell's Flames]!"
A cascading curtain of roaring red and orange fire rained down from the sky. The inferno swallowed the Death Knight, scorched across the grass, and surged toward Ainz. He threw up his hands, snapping a silver barrier into place. The flames split around his shield in two blazing waves before dying out against the baked earth.
When the smoke cleared, the Death Knight was still standing in the crater, slightly scorched, but completely unharmed.
"He is an undead entity," Ainz pointed out, sounding almost apologetic. "He possesses complete immunity to fire-elemental damage."
"Of course he does," Leah groaned, slapping her forehead.
"I perhaps should have mentioned that before you cast."
"You really, really should have!"
"My sincere apologies."
"Don't apologize to me! I'm the idiot who threw a fireball at a high-level skeleton warrior!"
In the crowd, Aura tilted her head in utter confusion. "Why do they keep apologizing to each other mid-fight?"
"I believe," Mare whispered timidly, "that they are simply very polite people."
"They are in the middle of a mortal duel!"
"I know..."
Leah folded her wings and swooped down fast and low, executing a secondary attack. This time, she bypassed the Death Knight entirely, sweeping behind the skeleton and kicking a massive cloud of loose dry dirt straight into Ainz's face.
It was a dirty, desperate street-fighting trick—and against an undead skeleton, completely ineffective.
"I do not possess eyeballs," Ainz remarked mildly, casually wiping dust off his dark robe.
"I know! I panicked!" Leah shouted back.
"That was unequivocally the least threatening maneuver ever attempted against me."
"I'm improvising under pressure!"
Ainz burst out laughing. He couldn't help it. The sound escaped his ribcage in a sudden, rattling burst that echoed across the quiet clearing like a tray of silver cutlery crashing onto stone.
In the spectator area, years of absolute, unquestioning reverence froze solid.
"Did... did Lord Ainz just laugh?" Shalltear stammered, her eyes wide.
"He is mocking her feeble efforts!" Albedo stated loudly, her voice trembling slightly. "It is a brilliant psychological tactic!"
"That didn't sound like mockery at all," Aura noted.
"It sounded like... genuine joy," Mare whispered softly.
Neither Albedo nor Shalltear had a single word to say to that.
"It is time to bring this to a conclusion," Ainz said, his tone softening.
He raised both arms into the air. Instantly, the temperature in the clearing plummeted below freezing.
Leah felt the shift immediately—a prickle of frost creeping along her wing feathers, and a heavy tightness settling in her chest. The golden sunset light vanished, the sun plunging below the horizon as the first cold stars glittered in a vast, dark sky.
That's a high-tier screen-wipe spell, Leah realized, her pulse hammering. If that lands, Dark Carapace will convert all that massive damage directly into MP loss, and I'll be completely drained in a single second.
She made the only logical gamer play left.
She charged straight at him.
It was the one response Ainz hadn't calculated. A flying caster should always maintain distance. But because of Leah's poor eyesight, she was only ever effective at point-blank range—and she had learned through countless raids that the safest place to stand during a massive area-of-effect spell was right next to the caster, where they couldn't detonate without hitting themselves.
She crossed the grass like a white streak, dodging under the frost. Her [Dark Blade] materialized in her grip, and suddenly she was right in front of him, close enough to count the fine cracks in his bone structure.
Hit him! she thought. One clean strike to disrupt his casting!
Ainz saw her coming with a fraction of a second to react.
She's in melee range. I could complete the spell invocation right now and end this duel instantly, Ainz thought.
He's hesitating, Leah realized. The spell is fully charged, but he isn't releasing it! Why isn't he casting?
Time seemed to freeze.
Leah's dark blade hovered a fraction of an inch from his ribs. Ainz's glowing hand held a spinning orb of black ice inches from her chest.
In that frozen moment, each saw the other clearly.
His face was an unreadable bare skull. Hers was a young woman's face—flushed, wide-eyed, and undeniably terrified.
She's scared, Ainz realized with a sudden pang. She's been just as terrified as I have this entire time.
He doesn't want to hit me, Leah realized.
Neither of them wanted to hurt the other.
It was such a simple, ridiculous realization. They had been so consumed by bluffing, posturing, and maintaining appearances that they had forgotten the most fundamental truth: they were just two gamers who didn't want anyone to die.
At the exact same instant, both of them stopped.
Leah halted her sword blade an inch from his robe. Ainz's spell fizzled away into harmless black mist, and the unnatural freezing cold lifted from the glade.
The Death Knight froze mid-swing. In the surrounding trees, a thousand monster eyes blinked in absolute silence.
"You... you pulled your strike," Ainz whispered.
"So did you," Leah breathed.
"I genuinely thought you were going to destroy me."
"I thought you were going to obliterate me!"
"I would never do such a thing!"
"Neither would I!"
They stared at each other in stunned silence.
Then, Leah did something that shocked every Floor Guardian present: she burst out laughing. It started as a tiny hiccup, turned into a snort, and devolved into helpless, breathless laughter. She doubled over, resting a hand on her knee as her dark energy blade dissolved into harmless purple sparks.
"What?" Ainz asked nervously, stepping back. "What is so amusing?"
"We were both... so completely terrified!" she gasped, wiping a tear from her eye. "We were fighting so hard just to avoid looking weak, and neither of us even wanted to be fighting in the first place!"
Ainz stood there, looking at his empty hand, and slowly let his arm drop.
"…That is... an embarrassingly accurate assessment," he confessed.
And then, with a long, rattling clatter of bones, the Overlord of Nazarick began to laugh too.
It was a rusty, unpracticed, delighted sound. The Guardians stared in absolute shock; Albedo's jaw dropped, and Demiurge actually dropped his pen onto the grass.
"Is he..." Shalltear whispered, "...actually laughing?"
"I have never heard such a sound from him," Aura breathed.
"It's..." Mare wiped his eyes, "...it sounds really nice."
Ainz extended a bony hand, and Leah, still catching her breath, took it and let him pull her upright.
"You could have won that," she said. "One spell, and I was done."
"As could you," Ainz countered. "Your blade was a breath away."
"I wasn't actually going to cut you."
"And I was not going to release the spell."
"Then why on earth did we just do all that?"
"I truly do not know," Ainz sighed. "Our subordinates were extremely insistent."
"I am so sorry."
"No, no, I am the one who should apologize," Ainz insisted. "I should have clarified my intentions immediately."
"I should have spoken up first!"
They stood together in the twilight, two terrifying entities apologizing with the flustered politeness of people who had bumped shopping carts in a grocery aisle.
On the grass, the Death Knight lowered its broadsword, looked at its master, and gave a faint, metal-grinding shrug.
Up in the stands, Sugaru and Cocytus exchanged a glance.
"A draw?" Sugaru asked.
"A draw," Cocytus agreed solemnly. "Most honorable."
Beside them, Lyla held out her open palm. With an expression of profound dignity, Demiurge reached into his coat and handed her a gold coin.
"We wagered on who would host tea," Lyla reminded him.
"I shall prepare the finest blend Nazarick has to offer," Demiurge promised smoothly.