Seven Years Pass
Seven years had passed since Ainz first set foot in the Ivory Tower.
"Call Greater Thunder."
A colossal bolt of lightning crashed down from the heavens and tore through the monsters in a single, annihilating sweep.
"As expected of Brother Ainz! Absolutely magnificent!"
The man gushing praise at his side was Raheim Northfold, son of the Lord of Snowfield Castle — a power closely tied to the Ivory Tower.
In the original novel Ainz had read in his previous life, Raheim was destined to grow into a relentless hunter of women, using a childhood promise as his excuse to cling to Meyrin even after they both entered Kizen. Ainz's existence had rewritten that fate.
About a year earlier, Raheim had happened to witness Ainz's power. He had trembled at that overwhelming strength, and from that moment on he had looked up to Ainz with pure, burning admiration.
Ever since, Raheim had trailed after him like a devoted shadow, heaping praise at every turn. Ainz found the constant attention a nuisance — yet every so often he still taught the young man a thing or two. As a result, Raheim had become, for all practical purposes, a member of the Ivory Tower himself, and the two of them often carried out joint missions assigned to both sides.
Ainz and Raheim approached the scorched remains of the monster settlement and began picking out any corpses still worth salvaging.
"Raheim, head back first and make the report. I'll finish the cleanup and follow."
"Understood, Brother!"
Ainz opened a Gate and sent Raheim through, then turned his gaze on the badly mangled corpses that had already lost most of their value.
"Well then. Shall we begin?"
He raised one hand almost casually.
Create Lesser Undead
Create Intermediate Undead
Create Greater Undead
Lesser Undead — Skeleton Warrior × 10
Lesser Undead — Bone Vulture × 10
Intermediate Undead — Death Knight × 4
Intermediate Undead — Elder Lich × 4
Intermediate Undead — Soul Eater × 4
Greater Undead — Eternal Death × 1
Greater Undead — Eyeball Corpse × 1
Greater Undead — Pale Rider × 2
The moment Ainz activated the skills, a tar-black liquid surged forth and swallowed the monster corpses whole.
Of course, Ainz could permanently preserve undead created through corpse-based Undead Creation — but only up to level forty when the materials were low-grade. Put another way, even a goblin's corpse, so long as a single hand remained, could yield a level-forty combatant. The problem was that every greater undead casually surpassed that ceiling.
So Ainz had taken the dark magic he had learned at the Ivory Tower after his reincarnation and developed a method of permanently preserving greater undead. By fusing multiple corpses into a single mass that the system treated as one body, their levels were combined as well.
After countless experiments, he had succeeded. Using the skill Dark Ritual Mastery, he could even permanently preserve greater undead he had pushed into the low nineties.
"That said… greater undead really do devour corpses like bottomless pits."
The level-ninety specimens in particular were forces capable of defeating Vermood single-handedly — and would still function as meaningful assets even against Nephthys Arkvold, the Death Witch who served as both Head of Kizen and supreme leader of the Dark Coalition. He wanted as many of them as he could get.
Grumbling under his breath, Ainz distributed the newly created undead among the fortresses he had raised across the region with Create Fortress, then returned to the Ivory Tower.
And so Ainz's days went by — while two young ladies of the Ivory Tower quietly adored him.
Meyrin was his stepsister, not a blood sibling. The moment she learned that the Dark Coalition permitted marriage between step-siblings, she had begun making her feelings known. Serne Aindark, the girl Vermood Aindark had adopted, was doing the same. But Ainz — who had never so much as dated anyone in either of his lives — remained completely oblivious.
Then, one ordinary day, Ainz received a summons from the Lord of the Ivory Tower and stepped into his office.
"You want me to kill Nephthys Arkvold?"
"I do. I have been watching you for a long time. With your skill, it is possible."
"I'll need some time. Information has to be gathered first — roughly a year, I would say."
"Very well. Bring me that woman's head, and the seat of Lord of the Ivory Tower is yours at once."
Ainz nodded and walked out of the office.
Like hell I will, old man. You're a dead man walking.
In front of Vermood he had pretended to accept the order. In truth, Ainz had every intention of killing Vermood — not Nephthys.
His plan was simple: somehow make contact with Nephthys Arkvold, then goad her into killing Vermood for him. He had already gathered more than enough evidence that Vermood was colluding with an organization called the Association.
Ainz could have killed Vermood himself, of course. But he wanted to trample the man's ideology — the dream of "freeing the Ivory Tower from Kizen" — into the dirt. For that, Vermood needed to die at the hands of someone from Kizen. The perception had to be absolute.
To Ainz's mild surprise, Serne had agreed with fierce enthusiasm the moment she caught even a hint of his intention to eliminate Vermood. Then again, it was hardly surprising. To Serne, Vermood was the worst kind of father — a man for whom she felt nothing beyond a bare, reluctant gratitude for having taken her in.
The remaining question was how to make contact with Nephthys.
Ainz already had a plan for that, too.
While gathering information on various fronts, he had learned that one of the Corps Commanders was colluding with the Association. Corps Commanders were the Dark Coalition's highest military assets — only seven of them existed — each commanding a vast undead army known as a Corps. They were obligated to defend specific territories of the Dark Coalition and carried heavy responsibilities, but in exchange they held legal claim to their domain's resources and enjoyed full autonomy.
That description applied to the official Corps Commanders. The one Ainz had set his sights on was unofficial.
Magnus Alban, Commander of the Fifth Corps.
Originally, the Fifth Corps was stationed in the Central Desert, tasked with protecting the major trade routes of the merchant caravans and guarding the desert's heartland. Magnus, however, had never been formally recognized. He lived in an old castle in the Washburn Mountains and performed none of a Corps Commander's duties.
Using the intelligence-specialized undead he had scattered across the land — Eyeball-type undead with exceptional detection abilities, thief-class Eternal Deaths, and others — Ainz had steadily pieced the picture together. In the process of confirming Vermood's collusion with the Association, he had also obtained hard evidence that Magnus was colluding with them as well.
He had already known from the wiki in his previous life that both Vermood and Magnus were in league with the Association. Now that he held physical proof, there was nothing left to hesitate over.
And so Ainz laid his plans: assault Magnus, kill him, and seize the Fifth Corps.
Unofficial or not, murdering a Corps Commander and leaving behind proof of his crimes would be more than enough to draw the eye of Nephthys Arkvold.
With that conviction settled, Ainz began drafting the operation in earnest.