Momonga stretched out his bony hand and rubbed his skull as he thought. Could it be that after becoming an undead being who was immune to mind-affecting effects, he had become inured to scenes like this? Definitely not.
He waved his hand again, showing a scene from another part of the village.
It seemed like two knights were trying to pull a violently struggling villager off another knight. The man was pulled away, his arms were held, and he was rendered motionless where he stood. Before Momonga's eyes, the man was stabbed with a sword. The blade entered his body and exited from the other side of him. It should have been a fatal blow, but the longsword did not stop. One, two, three strikes — the knight seemed to be taking out his anger on the villager as he hacked at the man's body.
In the end, the knight kicked away the villager, who collapsed to the ground while spurting his blood into the air.
—The villager looked straight at Momonga. No, this might have just been a coincidence.
It was definitely a coincidence.
There was no way for anyone to detect the mirror's surveillance apart from anti-divination spells.
Frothy blood leaked from the villager's mouth as he tried to open his mouth. His eyes were unfocused, and Momonga could not tell where he was looking. Even so, with what may have been his dying breaths, he gasped his last words:
—Please save my daughter—
"What do you intend to do?"
Sebas seemed to have been waiting for this moment to speak.
There could only be one answer. Momonga replied coldly:
"Nothing. There is no reason, value or benefit in rescuing them."
"—Understood."
Momonga nonchalantly looked at Sebas — at the phantom image of his past guildmate.
"This… Touch Me-san…"
Just then, Momonga remembered something.
—Saving someone in trouble is common sense.
When Momonga had just started out in YGGDRASIL, hunting down characters of heteromorphic races was a common practice, and Momonga, who had chosen such a race, had been PKed countless times. Just when he was about to leave YGGDRASIL, those words, spoken by that man, had saved him.
If not for those words, Momonga would not be here.
Momonga sighed softly, and then he smiled. Now that he had recalled that memory, he had no choice but to go save them.
"I will repay that debt… besides, sooner or later, I'll have to test my fighting strength in this world."
After saying that to his absent friend, Momonga enlarged the view of the village until he saw everything. After that, he tried to pick out the surviving villagers.
"Sebas, put Nazarick on maximum alert. I will go first, and you will tell Albedo, who is standing by next door, to follow me after fully equipping herself. However, I forbid her to bring Ginnungagap. After that, prepare support units. Something might happen which results in my inability to retreat. Therefore the units sent to the village should be adept at stealth or have the ability to go invisible."
"I understand, but I wish to request the task of defending your body to be given to me."
"Then who will relay my orders? These knights are currently sacking the village, which means there might be knights near Nazarick who might attack us. Therefore, you must stay."
The image changed, and now it showed a girl sending a knight flying with a punch. The girl was leading an even younger girl as they ran away. They were probably sisters. Momonga immediately opened his inventory and withdrew the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown.
Just as the girl planned to flee, she was slashed in the back. Since time was tight, Momonga swiftly incanted the spell.
"「Gate」."
It had no limits on distance and a 0% chance of teleport mishaps.
The spell Momonga used was the most accurate and potent of such spells in YGGDRASIL.
The scene before him changed in an instant.
The fact that the opposition had not used teleport-blocking filled Momonga with relief. If he was denied the chance to rescue them, and was ambushed instead, it would have been bad.
The scene before the eyes was the same of what he had seen earlier.
Two terrified girls were in front of him.
The one who looked like the elder sister had a braid of straw-blonde hair that reached down to her breasts. Her skin, healthily tanned from working in the sun, was now deathly pale from fear, and her dark eyes were wet with tears.
The little sister — the younger girl — buried her face in her sister's waist, trembling in fright.
Momonga gazed coldly at the knight standing before the two girls.
Perhaps he was shocked by Momonga's sudden appearance, but the knight simply stared at Momonga, having apparently forgotten to swing the sword he was holding.
Momonga had grown up without knowing the touch of violence on his life. He did not think that the world in which he currently resided was a simulation, but the real thing, Even so, he did not feel the slightest bit of fear at the knight before him who held a sword.
This calmness allowed him to make a cold, cruel decision.
Momonga reached out an empty hand and cast his spell.
"「Grasp Heart」."
This spell was one that crushed a foe's heart, and among the ten tiers of spells, it was an instant death spell of the Ninth Tier. Many of the necromantic spells which Momonga was adept with possessed instant death properties, and this was one of them.
Momonga had chosen to open with this spell because even if it was resisted, the spell would still temporarily stun his opponent.
If the spell had been resisted, his plan was to take the two girls and jump back into the still open 「Gate」. He had already planned his route of retreat since he was not sure what his opponents could do.
However, it would seem those preparations would not be necessary.
A feeling of something soft crushing beneath Momonga's fingers travelled up his arm, and the knight collapsed silently to the ground
Momonga looked down upon the fallen knight.
It would seem that even killing someone did not stir any emotions within him.
There was no guilt, fear, or confusion in his heart, which was like the surface of a calm lake. Why was it like this?
"I see… so it's not just my body, but my mind that's no longer human."
Momonga took a step forward.
The elder sister squeaked in confusion as Momonga walked past her, probably in fear at the knight's demise.
Momonga had clearly come to rescue her. However, the girl was seemingly confused by Momonga's sudden appearance and actions. What was she thinking?
Although he had his doubts, Momonga did not have time to worry about them. After verifying the wounds on the elder sister's back through her tatty old clothes, Momonga put the girls behind him, and glared at a knight who had just emerged from a nearby house.
The knight saw Momonga as well, and took a step back in fear.
"...So, you dare to chase girls, but not someone who can fight back?"
As Momonga stared down the quivering knight, he considered what spell to use next.
Momonga's opening spell was one that he particularly favored, 「Grasp Heart」. This sort of magic was Momonga's specialty. Momonga had used his innate skills to increase the chances of instant death, and his necromancy-enhancing abilities improved the effectiveness of 「Grasp Heart」 even further. However, it meant that he could not gauge the strength of that knight.
Therefore, he should use another spell against this knight, something that did not instantly kill him. This way, he could measure the strength of this world and verify his own power.
"—Since I've come all this way, I might as well run a few experiments. You shall be a test subject."
Momonga's necromancy spells were augmented, but the simple attack spells he used were not very destructive. In addition, since metal armor was weak against electrical effects in YGGDRASIL, most people enchanted their plate armor with electricity resistance. Therefore, Momonga deliberately chose to attack his foe with an electrical spell to see how much damage it would do.
Because his aim was not to kill his opposition, there was no need to enhance its effects with skills.
"「Dragon Lightning」."
A dragon-shaped bolt of white electricity crackled around Momonga's arms and shoulders. The bolt flared brightly as it instantly surged out at the knight Momonga was pointing at.
There was no way to avoid it or defend against it.
The knight who had been electrocuted by the dragon-shaped lightning bolt shone brilliantly for an instant. Miserable as his death was, it was still a beautiful sight.
The light in his eyes faded, and the knight collapsed to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The body beneath the armor was charred black and gave off a vile stench.
Momonga had been planning to follow up with another spell, but he felt silly as he noted the weakness of the knights.
"Pathetic… he died so easily…"
To Momonga, the fifth tier 「Dragon Lightning」 was a weak spell. When hunting level one hundred players, Momonga would usually cast spells of the eighth tier and higher. Magic of the fifth tier and below would almost never see use.
Now that he knew the knights were weak enough to be finished off by fifth tier magic, Momonga's tension vanished in an instant. Of course, it could be that these two knights were especially weak among their kind, but still, it was a great relief. Still, the plan to retreat with magic had not changed.
These knights might be focused on offense. In YGGDRASIL, a blow to the neck counted as a critical hit and dealt extra damage, but in the real world, it might well be fatal.
Instead of relaxing, Momonga raised his guard. It would be too foolish to die because he was careless. Next, he ought to continue testing his powers.
Momonga activated one of his skills.
"—「Create Mid Tier Undead, Death Knight」."