The gateway was waiting for them at dawn.
It stood in the middle of the Great Hall, a slow-turning disc of violet light roughly the height of a door, and it hummed faintly in a way that Ainz found deeply unsettling. He had cast gates, passed through gates, and once been dropped through a gate by a very enthusiastic Shalltear. He had never stepped into one that belonged to a different world.
The entire court had come to see him off.
Not one of the Guardians had been told to attend. Ainz had simply walked into the Great Hall to find them already assembled in perfect rows, as though a parade had been arranged in the night by a committee that had never once met. Demiurge stood with a leather folder tucked under his arm. Shalltear was sniffling into a handkerchief with a great deal of dignity. Mare held a tiny, hand-stitched pouch of what he promised were lucky seeds. Sebas stood to the side with Ainz's cloak folded over his forearm, his expression as calm as still water.
Ainz was wearing the Momon armor. It had taken him almost an hour to get everything arranged properly, because black full plate was heavy, the two greatswords had to be balanced on his back just so, and the cloak had a tendency to catch on his gauntlets. He had practiced his walk in the privacy of his chambers. He had practiced his voice. He had not practiced standing in front of his entire kingdom dressed like a tragic mercenary.
"Lord Ainz," Albedo said, stepping forward. She was smiling, which meant she was working very hard at it. "Everything within Nazarick will be exactly as you left it. I will see to that."
"I have no doubt," Ainz said. He was relieved that, from inside the helmet, no one could see his eye sockets flickering.
"You will cast [Message] every evening."
"I will."
"If anything threatens you, you will not hesitate to call for us."
"I will call for Leah first," Ainz said, because it was the practical answer. Then, because Albedo's smile had begun to tremble, he added, "And then for you."
The smile steadied.
"Narberal," Ainz said, turning.
Narberal Gamma stepped forward and bowed, her short dark hair swaying. She had been given a mage's traveling robe, a staff that she held with the grip of a woman gripping a rifle, and a very specific list of instructions. For the past three days Ainz had been repeating those instructions to her until he was sure he could recite them in his sleep, had he been capable of sleep.
"Yes, Ainz-sama."
"In the other world, you are Nabe. I am Momon. You will address me as Momon-san."
"Yes, Momon-san," Narberal said, with the precision of a soldier answering a command. The "san" came out of her mouth like a stone.
"You will not harm a human unless I direct you to."
"Understood."
"You will not look at them as though they are something on the bottom of your boot."
"I will endeavor to find a more neutral expression," Narberal said gravely.
"That would be helpful," Ainz said.
Behind them, a short, bright laugh rang out. Leah had come through the gateway to collect them, with Lyla beside her, both of them looking like people who had been awake for far too long. Blanc was not with them. A message, Leah explained, had come in at four that morning from one of her territories, and Blanc had gone running to deal with it.
"She says good luck, and she says to bring her a souvenir," Leah said. "She also said, and I'm quoting, 'Please make sure he says hi to everyone nicely.'"
"I intend to say hello nicely to everyone I encounter," Ainz said.
"That's the exact tone I was afraid of," Lyla muttered.
Leah's gaze lingered on the armor. She walked a slow circle around Ainz, and he stood very still, feeling like a statue being appraised.
"Okay," she said at last. "That is the coolest thing I've ever seen."
"Thank you," Ainz said, with a degree of satisfaction he would never admit to.
"I did say I was going to walk you through the rules, so one more." Leah's expression turned serious. She stepped closer and lowered her voice, and Ainz realized that even Narberal had gone still to listen. "Condition five. This is the big one, and it comes with the place you're going. The town is in the Kingdom of Oral. Everyone there, every local and every Vault Holder, thinks the princess is running the kingdom."
"And she is not?" Ainz asked.
Leah glanced sideways at her sister. Lyla did not look up from the clipboard she was holding.
"The princess is a very cooperative figurehead," Lyla said. "She's very good at it. She has a talent for smiling at crowds."
"I see," Ainz said slowly. "And the person who makes the decisions behind her..."
"Is not going to be mentioned," Lyla said, finally looking up. "Not by name, not by implication, not in a drunken tavern conversation, and especially not by your companion."
"Narberal will say nothing," Ainz said.
"I will say nothing," Narberal confirmed, in a tone that suggested the matter had been handled and the entire kingdom might as well not exist.
"If the secret gets out," Leah said, "it isn't only Lyla's plans that fall apart. A lot of people live in that kingdom, and their lives are getting better. It would be bad. Very bad."
Ainz nodded. The helmet made it feel more dramatic than he intended, as if he were swearing an oath. Perhaps he was.
"I give my word," he said.
"Good," Leah said, and her smile came back, bright and relieved. "Then let's go. You're going to love this."
Ainz glanced once at the Guardians. Mare waved. Shalltear sobbed quietly. Demiurge opened his folder, apparently to review the notes he had taken on a farewell he had expected to be longer.
Albedo bowed deeply, and for the first time in his memory, she did not say anything at all.
Ainz stepped through the gateway.
***
The first thing he noticed was the smell of grass.
The second was the sky. It was an enormous, unbroken blue, with nothing in it but a few small clouds drifting lazily east, and the sun sat low and golden over the edge of the world. There was no ceiling of stone above him, no dungeon, no gloom. He had been to the surface of the new world before, of course, but this was different. This was a place that was not his.
"Welcome to Oral," Leah said, stepping out of the gateway behind him.
They had arrived on a low hill beside a road. It was a very good road, Ainz noticed. The dirt had been packed flat and was edged with neat lines of stones, and the drainage ditches on either side had been dug with a care that made him think of surveyors. Every few hundred paces stood a small wooden marker with a number on it, the paint fresh. Beyond the road lay a patchwork of green and gold fields, worked by farmers who looked up as the strangers passed, shaded their eyes, and went back to their work without any particular alarm.
Without any particular alarm, Ainz thought. A fully armored warrior with two enormous swords and a robed woman had just appeared out of nowhere on a hill. And they were not afraid.
In the distance, perhaps twenty minutes' walk away, a town rose from the fields: stone walls, red-tiled roofs, a clocktower, and a banner snapping in the wind above the gate. The banner bore a white bird on a field of deep blue.
"That's Wegmark," Leah said. "Fair-sized town, big guild presence, lots of Vault Holders passing through. It's a good place to learn how things work. I'd walk you in myself, but," and she grimaced, "I have to get back."
"You have done more than enough," Ainz said.
"I really haven't," Leah said, and she looked, for just a moment, guilty. "I'll message you tonight. Be careful, okay? Be careful, and be nice, and don't kill anything that isn't trying to kill you."
"That is a reasonable standard."
"And please," she said, "try to have fun."
Then she was gone, and the gateway folded itself into a point of violet light and vanished. Ainz and Narberal stood alone on the road.
For a long moment neither of them spoke.
"Momon-san," Narberal said at last.
"Yes, Nabe?"
"The air here is very clean."
"It is," Ainz agreed, a little surprised. "I had not expected that."
"The sky is also very large."
"Yes."
"I find it... slightly uncomfortable," Narberal admitted.
"So do I," Ainz said. "Come. Let us find a tavern."
He started down the road, and she fell in behind him at precisely two paces' distance, her staff held across her chest.
"You may walk beside me," Ainz said.
"Is that proper?"
"Companions do that," Ainz said. "I believe."
She considered this for a long moment, then moved up to his left. Her pace matched his perfectly. Ainz tried not to think about how that was probably going to be noticed.
***
Wegmark was louder than Ainz expected.
Nazarick was a place of silence, of echoing halls and servants who spoke only when spoken to. Wegmark was the opposite. The gates stood wide open, with two guards leaning against the wall in the lazy posture of men who had seen so many travelers that none of them seemed worth the effort of standing up straight. Merchants shouted their prices, children darted between the stalls, and somewhere out of sight a man was singing very badly and with great confidence.
Ainz walked through the gate, and no one screamed.
No one bowed. No one dropped to the ground. A woman carrying a basket of eggs bumped into him, said "Sorry, love," without looking up, and kept walking. Ainz stopped dead and stared at the back of her head.
"Momon-san?" Narberal said. "Shall I eliminate her?"
"No," Ainz said, very quickly. "No. That was... that was appropriate. She apologized. That is ordinary behavior."
"She was in your way."
"Yes. And she was in a hurry. And she said sorry."
"Understood," Narberal said, in the voice of a woman who had understood none of it.
Ainz turned to look at the town again, and for a moment he felt something warm and strange begin to loosen in his chest. It was not an emotion, exactly, since the passive suppression of his body was already coming for it. But it lingered long enough for him to recognize it.
Nobody is afraid of me, he thought. Nobody knows who I am.
It was the most wonderful feeling in the world.
They walked for a while, taking it all in. Ainz had never really seen a human town up close. The food stalls smelled of roasting meat and sweet bread, the jewelry vendors laid out their rings on velvet cloths, and the signs hanging above the shop doors were painted with ridiculous little pictures of boots and barrels and fish. He read every one of them.
It was while he was reading a sign advertising the lowest-priced traveling cloaks in all of Oral that Ainz noticed the notice board.
It stood at the center of the main square, a large wooden frame covered in neat sheets of paper. Most of them were the usual sort: lost cats, rental rooms, a farmer looking for hands. But three sheets in the center were printed in a precise, formal script, the sort that made Ainz's eyes slide to them as though pulled by a magnet.
He stepped closer.
REGULATION ON ESCORT AND PROCUREMENT CONTRACTS, the first sheet read, in a heading so crisply centered that it might have been ruled with a straightedge. By Order of Her Highness the Princess. Section One. Section Two. Subsection (a). Subsection (b). A table of fees. A table of penalties. A reference to Appendix C.
Ainz stood in front of it for a long time.
I have seen that formatting, he thought. I have seen it on thirty-page documents delivered to my desk. It is exactly how Demiurge's reports are laid out, and I know why, because Demiurge exchanged notebooks with someone at a farewell tea.
"Momon-san," Narberal said softly, leaning in. "Is this..."
"Do not say it," Ainz murmured.
"I was going to say 'efficient,'" Narberal said.
"...That is an acceptable word."
"The formatting is of very high quality."
"It is," Ainz said. "Let us leave it at that."
A little way off, a fruit vendor was talking cheerfully to a customer. "...and the princess dropped the market fees again this season! Third time in a year. Say what you like about nobles, but she's a clever girl."
"Clever girl," the customer agreed, picking out a pear.
Ainz said nothing, and Narberal said nothing, and they stood in front of the notice board together in a silence so loaded that a passing child looked up at them, frowned, and moved quickly on.
***
The Mercenary Guild of Wegmark occupied a long, low building near the eastern wall, and from the outside it looked like a very large barn with ambitions. Inside, it was a different matter. It was a vast hall filled with the noise of hundreds of voices, lined with benches, request boards, and counters, and thick with the smells of leather, steel, and old ale.
There was a line.
It was a long line. Ainz joined the end of it and stood with his hands folded, and Narberal stood beside him. A man in front of them was carrying an enormous axe and arguing with a friend about whether goblins counted as one monster or several if they were hit by the same fireball. A woman behind them was reading a small, battered book and eating a pastry.
Ainz held a number.
It was a small piece of wood, hand-painted with a black 47, and a girl at the door had pressed it into his palm without so much as glancing at his armor. He turned it over in his gauntlet, utterly fascinated.
"Momon-san?" Narberal asked, quietly. "We are waiting?"
"We are waiting," Ainz said, in an odd, reverent tone.
"For how long?"
"Until they call 47."
"And if we attempted to proceed ahead of the others?"
"Then we would be cutting in line."
"Is that a crime?"
"It is... rude," Ainz said. "And I find that I do not wish to be rude."
The woman with the book glanced up at that, studied his armor for a moment, then looked back down at her page. She turned a leaf. She did not look at him again. It was the best thing that had happened to Ainz in a month.
The line moved very slowly. It was nearly an hour before the counter clerk called, "Forty-seven," in the tone of a man who had said it so many times that the word had stopped meaning anything.
Ainz stepped forward. Narberal followed.
The clerk was a thin man with ink-stained fingers and a face like someone who was never going to be promoted. He did not look up from his ledger.
"Name?"
"Momon," Ainz said. He had rehearsed the voice, and it came out deep and rough and sufficiently grave.
"Mo-man." The clerk wrote something down.
"Momon."
"That's what I said."
"I..." Ainz paused. "...Yes."
He considered, briefly, correcting the spelling. He decided that a true adventurer would never fuss over a clerk's handwriting, and let it be.
"Vault Holder?"
"Yes."
"Sign the charter and put your thumb in the ink pot. Standard Vault Holder terms: the guild takes ten percent of any contract, no death penalty fees, no refund on lost gear, you're responsible for your own tab at the tavern."
"Understood."
"Class?"
"Warrior," Ainz said. "Heavy armor. Two-handed."
"Two-handed twice, from the look of those swords." The clerk finally glanced up, saw the armor, and gave a tired little nod that said he had seen weirder. "Fine. Next. Name?"
"I am Nabe," Narberal said.
The clerk's eyes slid from the armor to her. He took in the robe, the staff, and the neat dark hair, and Ainz watched his expression shift into something he could not quite name. It was not hostile. It was, perhaps, something worse, which was familiarity: the patronizing, slightly bored tone of a man talking to someone he had already decided was beneath his notice.
"Right. You with him?"
"I am Momon-san's companion."
"Caster, yeah? We've got a lot of those. Look, girlie, I'll make this easy for you." He tapped the ledger with a pen. "Support roles, you stay at the back, you let the real fighters deal with the nasty bits, and you don't wander off alone. You know how to write? I need the form filled out in block letters. And no staff in the hall, we've had incidents."
Ainz felt the temperature of the room change.
It was subtle. Anyone else would have missed it. But Ainz had spent weeks watching Narberal's face closely, and he saw the faint, polite smile settle onto her lips. It was the smile of a woman who had just been handed a pleasant surprise, and her fingers had tightened very slightly around her staff.
A thin crack ran along its wooden shaft.
"Girlie," Narberal repeated softly.
"That's right."
"I see." She smiled a little more. "And you believe I should be placed in the back."
"It's safer," the clerk said, bewildered by the tone of the conversation but too stubborn to retreat. "Look, no offense, I'm only trying to..."
"Nabe," Ainz said.
His voice was deep, calm, and almost gentle. The clerk looked up.
"My companion is a very capable mage," Ainz said. "She will fill out the form. She can write. She has a rather elegant hand, in fact."
"I only meant..."
"I am certain you meant no insult." Ainz leaned forward very slightly. The cloak shifted. The clerk, who had a fairly sharp survival instinct, swallowed. "And I would appreciate it if you addressed her as Miss Nabe."
There was a pause.
"...Miss Nabe," the clerk said.
"Thank you," Narberal said, and the crack in her staff stopped spreading.
The clerk pushed a form across the counter with the cautious motions of a man handing a lit torch to a bear. Narberal filled it out in a neat, upright script that would have embarrassed most of the scribes in the room. When she was done, the clerk looked at it, and then at her, and some of the color went out of his face.
"Right," he said. "Thank you, Miss Nabe. Here are your tags."
He gave them each a small brass tag on a leather cord, stamped with a number and the guild's crest. Ainz hung his around his neck over the armor. After a moment's thought, he tucked it under his collar, and then took it out again, because that seemed less suspicious.
"Welcome to the Wegmark Guild," the clerk said, and went back to his ledger.
They walked out of the hall together, past the benches and the shouting, past a man trying to sell second-hand boots from a barrel, and into the bright afternoon.
"Momon-san," Narberal said, once they were a dozen paces from the door.
"Yes?"
"I broke my staff."
"I noticed."
"I apologize."
"It is a small crack," Ainz said. "And you did not kill him."
"I did not," Narberal said, with a trace of pride. "I considered it for approximately four seconds."
"That is four seconds longer than I would have liked," Ainz said. "But it is an improvement."
"Thank you, Momon-san."
"You also did not call him a lower being."
"I did think it very loudly."
"Thoughts do not count," Ainz said. "Come. We should find lodgings."
They found a small inn near the gate, a squat building with a green door and a sign that read THE SLEEPY GOOSE. The innkeeper was a plump, cheerful woman who rented them two rooms without any questions and told them dinner was at sundown. She also informed them, with enormous pride, that the princess had personally approved the new chimney subsidies, which was why every room in Wegmark now had a decent fire.
Ainz thanked her and went upstairs.
***
The room was small and clean. It held a narrow bed, a washbasin, a wooden chair, and a window overlooking the street, where lamplighters were making their rounds in the dusk. Ainz removed the helmet at last and set it on the chair. He did not take off the rest of the armor, because it took too long to put on again.
He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at his gauntlets.
Wegmark was a strange place. He had been there for exactly six hours, and he had already been bumped into, called "love" by a stranger, and forced to wait in a line. Not one person had bowed to him. Not one had trembled.
It was wonderful, and it was terrifying. He was not sure he knew how to be a person like this.
A soft knock sounded at the door.
"Momon-san," Narberal's voice said. "Dinner is being served."
"I will be down shortly."
"Understood."
He listened to her footsteps retreat, and for a long moment sat in the warm quiet of the room. The window was open, and the sounds of the street drifted in: laughter, a cart rattling over cobblestones, a woman calling a child home to supper.
Then he cast [Message].
The connection snapped into place at once, as if she had been holding her breath.
"Lord Ainz."
"Albedo," Ainz said, in his own voice, the low, rich one that rolled out of his throat like thunder. It felt strange after a full day as Momon. "I have arrived. All is well."
"I am so very relieved." Her voice, even through the spell, was fragile for just a moment before she gathered herself. "Are you safe?"
"Quite safe."
"Did anyone threaten you?"
"No."
"Did anyone treat you with disrespect?"
Ainz thought of the woman with the eggs, and the clerk, and the fruit vendor, and the traveling-cloak sign.
"...Several people," he said carefully. "But I found it did not bother me."
There was a very long silence on the other end.
"Several," Albedo repeated, in a voice like silk drawn over a blade.
"They did not know who I was," Ainz said hastily. "It was... it was intended. It is part of why I came here. Albedo, I am in no danger."
"Forgive me, Lord Ainz." She exhaled slowly. "I am merely... adjusting to the thought."
"I understand."
"And Narberal?"
"She has behaved admirably. She broke her staff, but no one was harmed."
"She broke her staff?"
"A small crack. It will be repaired."
"I see." A pause. "And have you eaten?"
"I do not eat, Albedo."
"I know. I only wished to ask."
Ainz felt something in his chest do an odd, unsteady thing.
"And how is Nazarick?" he asked.
"Perfectly in order," Albedo said, her voice settling into its customary, polished calm. "Demiurge has delivered his first report. It is forty-one pages. Shalltear spent the morning in the garden and has been told she is permitted to feel sad for another two hours. Mare asked if you were warm enough. Aura asked whether you had been bitten by anything. Cocytus asked if you had challenged anyone to a duel."
"I have not."
"I will inform him that you have not."
"Thank you."
"Lord Ainz?"
"Yes?"
"I wished to tell you that I am proud of you."
Ainz said nothing. For a moment, he could not think of a thing to say.
"You came to the other world because you wished to be an ordinary person," Albedo said, quietly. "I did not understand, at first. But I think I am beginning to. And I only want you to know that I will keep Nazarick safe, and that you may come home whenever you wish to."
"Albedo," Ainz said.
"Yes?"
"Thank you."
"Good night, Lord Ainz."
"Good night."
The link dissolved. Ainz sat in the quiet room, with the evening air drifting through the window and the sound of the street rising and falling below. After a while he put the helmet back on, stood, and went downstairs.
Narberal was waiting at a corner table. She had ordered two bowls of stew, though only one was for her, and she had set the other in front of the empty chair across from her without comment.
"Momon-san," she said, rising. "I took the liberty."
"That was thoughtful," Ainz said, and sat.
He looked at the bowl. It steamed gently, smelling of herbs and roasted vegetables. He would not eat it, because he could not. But he put his gauntlet around it, feeling the warmth, and for a while he stayed that way, listening to the noise of the tavern.
Somewhere nearby, a man was singing again. He was still terrible.
Ainz found that he did not mind at all.