The whole underground complex was dimly lit, with haggard guards holding the line just a few steps away from the stairway, slamming shields and stabbing spears. Convicts were assaulting the line in coordinated hit-and-run strikes, using dropped equipment and each other in every assault. Their numbers swarmed at least three dozen strong in the long hallway, outnumbering the guards almost two to one.
One coordinating attacker from the back rows took notice of Buku and shouted with a predatory grin, "Boys, looks like we've got a new lady! Remember to be gentlemen and wait your turn!"
Upon hearing what they planned to do with his wife through their cheers and roars, Ainz was filled with such rage that it took multiple emotional suppression moments to calm him down again. His arm rose on its own accord, ready to cast a lightning spell toward the criminal, but he was too late.
Buku let out a fierce snarl and charged forward, hurtling past both the guards and the current wave of attacking criminals. Her armored foot connected with brutal precision, delivering a bone-crushing kick to the leader precisely between the legs.
Ainz heard the distinct sickening crunch amid the cacophony of clashing bodies and desperate cries as the man flew about a meter up in the air and then fell to the ground, convulsing in agony and a guttural cry leaking from his lips. Without hesitation, Buku flipped with lethal grace mid-air, decapitating all the attackers between her and the line of guards with a swing of her blade.
The commotion stopped. The remaining criminals retreated, taking defensive positions, fear etched on their faces as they stared at the newcomers. The guards took the chance to regroup and send their wounded back up before taking formation behind the woman.
Buku, still worked up, took a step forward and, snarling like a beast, shouted with a voice raw and primal as it echoed off the cold stone, "Let's dance, you limp-dick pricks!"
Her challenge hung in the air for a few moments, and in that underground area, the battle shifted with a bang. Ainz, seeing the opportunity, shot a fireball right past Buku, sending it on a collision course with a group of convicts huddled together. They were rather close to Buku, so he warned her just in case as he fired. { Close your eyes. Fireball! }
Buku ignored the warning, grinning as she surveyed her prey. Her resistances were high enough not to suffer any damage from such a low-level spell, and she could cast healing spells on the off chance even if she got mild burns.
The projectile exploded upon impact, engulfing ten criminals in white-hot flames, searing and boiling sounds mixing with their agonizing cries. The air quickly filled with the stench of burned flesh and hair.
"Hold the line. We'll take care of this," Ainz ordered the guards as he walked past them with a confident stride, arming himself with another spell.
Together, he and Buku strode deeper into the prison, cutting down, burning, and electrocuting the convicts before them without mercy or hesitation. They seemed unstoppable, racking up the kill count.
As they moved forward, three cell doors sprung open simultaneously and five men suddenly attacked from within, making near-simultaneous slashes and jabs at the duo.
Their attacks, however, had no effect as the steel weapons bounced harmlessly off their targets, stopped by physical damage nullification.
"Pathetic," Buku huffed. "These animals can't even overcome our defenses."
"Wait, I sur-ghnn." The criminal tried to give up only to be cut short as Buku's singing sword found its way into his stomach. She intentionally drove the sword through the man and twisted the blade in a way that wouldn't cause instantaneous death, spilling his guts out the other side.
"Still, we should trace back and clear the cells as well," Ainz remarked.
"Can't you summon something to do that? Clearing every cell by ourselves is a bit of a waste of time if you ask me," Buku suggested. Unless somewhere in these dark halls someone powerful was hidden, killing these criminals was like mowing the grass.
'I can only personally summon undead and demons without super tier spells, and using those would be a waste and possibly dangerous here.' Ainz liked the suggestion but couldn't risk using two kinds of creatures the city guard would take offense to. But he had another idea.
Luckily, his inventory was packed with all sorts of summoning items. Some of those were a testament to the demented nature of Yggdrasil game devs to cover as many possible ideas as possible for their once-expansive player base.
"It's not a bad idea. I guess I can use this," Ainz replied, discreetly pulling a palm-sized white amulet, shaped like a bunny face, out of his inventory.
"Wait is that… talk about adding insult to injury!" Buku cackled once she saw what Ainz was about to summon.
This particular item was noted as one of the cruelest tricks experienced players could pull on complete newbies. The four beasts called upon would take anyone not knowing better by surprise; killer bunnies.
"An overkill I know, but who knows when I'll get another chance to use it." Ainz shared a chuckle and pressed the black button in the form of a rabbit's nose before sliding it into a pocket.
Four fluffy white rabbits appeared before Ainz, sniffing around innocently, cute as could be. These summons would remain active only for twenty minutes, after which the item would go on a three three-day cooldown before it could be used again. Despite their cute appearance, these level forty-five monsters, called spear needle babies, could harden their soft fur into iron-hard needles and blitz around with deadly speed to become literal balls of death, ripping and stabbing apart anyone their summoner ordered them to.
"Kill everyone who isn't a guard," Ainz ordered. The four rabbits hopped away as Buku laughed.
One entered the nearest cell, causing a surprised shout, "Is this some sort of joke?!" followed by a series of loud metallic thuds and screams.
"This should do," Ainz remarked, satisfaction evident in his voice.
As they moved forward killing the criminals, the loud thuds continued to ring throughout the dimly lit, underground halls, accompanied by a near-constant stream of screams.
Ainz mostly stayed out of Buku's way, guiding his summons with him as they tore through one-half of the convicts. His wife was becoming increasingly enthusiastic about brutally ending the lives of the convicts, especially after they found a few of the violated corpses of guards. At least no one would claim that they gave worse treatment to women than the men, as all captured guards had shared the same horrific fate, regardless of gender.
When they reached a junction where the hall split into two directions, Ainz recalled the rabbits and sent them to clear one path for them while he and Buku took the other. Despite the low risk, he wouldn't separate from her in such a place, knowing what these convicts would do to her should they gain an upper hand by some miracle. There was still the distinct possibility that someone was backing this up after all, they could have left a last resort.
"This is like clearing a dungeon in Yggdrasil, only a lot more gore," Buku commented, a hint of dark humor in her chuckling voice.
The fun was dying down as the remaining criminals cowered and tried to give up, a mercy they didn't receive from either.
"A lot of things we've done would've gotten us banned," Ainz replied in an equally light-hearted manner.
"Well…" Buku paused, her face twisting into a demonic grin. "We could finish up the whole bingo of messed up things by doing it on a pile of corpses coated in the blood of our victims."
"Ehh!?" Ainz stopped in his tracks and stared at Buku in muted horror.
"It was a joke darling. I'm not that messed up." Buku burst into laughter.
"I thought you were serious." Ainz stared at her with suspicion, half-glaring.
"Come on, I know I'm kinky, but I'm not that messed up. Got the reaction I expect out of you though." She continued to giggle.
"Right… I think we should wrap this up." Ainz decided to let her have the upper hand this time.
"Definitely, and we're staying at the high-end inn today. I need a bath to wash all this shit off. Even for the sake of an edgy joke, I don't want to be covered in blood for long."
Ainz couldn't agree more. Though he wasn't used to luxury, washing in the rivers was getting old fast. And they still had plenty of coins.
Warden Thelwater let out an exasperated sigh at the sight of yet another group of his soldiers puking his guts out at the sight of the carnage the two heroes had left in their wake. The same soldiers that had fought for their lives and had years under their belt with him.
It had taken Ainz and Buku less than an hour to clear the entire prison, and they had done so with incredible brutality. Even the stone walls, strong enough to withstand even stronger fighters, couldn't withstand their pure might as they bore the marks of their power, with cracks spider-webbing across the cold stone and even the occasional straight cleaved-off chunk or crevice.
The few convicts they found alive wished for a quicker death, a death many of the guards were only too happy to give. Instead of granting them a quick death as humans, the heroes had chosen to maim them, painfully and slowly. With crushed spines, severed limbs, heavy burns, and spilled guts as common as dead bodies, the hardened criminals were begging not to be given to the two monsters who had slaughtered their comrades with such casual ease that left a permanent scar in their minds. One had even begun sputtering gibberish.
Yet, that was the strange duality these heroes had shown. After re-emerging from the stockades with the remains of the presumed-dead guards in their grasps, Ainz and Buku stayed to help treat the wounded with the latter's tremendous Light and the former helped to prepare the deceased guards for the last rites, from identifying body parts to recovering items through strange magics. By all means, they were the very picture of noble heroes depicted in stories and legends, benevolent to those who had fought with them.
As a hardened veteran, he had long understood the harsh realities of the world, knowing that only the children and the naive could afford to stay soft. Yet even he had a hard time believing humans were capable of such things as he had witnessed today.
"We found another one!" One of the soldiers called out.
Thelwater approached the Defias thug who had survived by cowering under the bed, clenching his shirt to the point of bleeding palms. The so-called tough criminal had soiled himself and was now whimpering like a frightened child, terrified for his life. Thelwater couldn't help but feel a bit of satisfaction seeing that one of the Defias thugs, who infamously wielded fear and terror as weapons, was now on the receiving end in a bout of poetic justice likely to go down with the bards and more intense historians.
"White beast. It killed Jaylan and Porter. It…" The thug sobbed, pointing at the two disfigured corpses. "It… white demon… Light, help us all. It looked like a bunny!" Suddenly, he grabbed onto Thelwater in a futile attempt to convince him, his eyes wild with desperation, "You have to believe me!" he screamed.
"Looks like this one's lost his mind." Thelwater shook his head. Without a second thought, Thelwater kicked him down, sending the man sprawling to the ground as another guard moved to clean up the area. There was no other way to explain why this man thought his friends were killed by a white rabbit of all things.
"I saw it. I saw it! The beast did that!" The convict pointed at the dent in the wall while trembling uncontrollably, half-crying.
"Sure it did. And if you make a fuss, the beast will return to deal with you." Thelwater remarked threateningly. He wasn't above using man's delusions against him.
"N-n-no. Light forgive me. P-p-please, forgive me. I-I won't do a bad deed ever again." The man curled up while clutching his face, devolving into sobs.
"Take him to the rest," He ordered his men and moved on. After what they had done to his soldiers, he couldn't feel any sympathy for them. If anything, most received too easy of punishment by getting killed quickly. They deserved to suffer for what they had done.
The rest of the tour though the Stockades revealed pretty much the same. In the end, only fifty-four out of four hundred forty-five prisoners had been found alive. And even fewer had most body parts intact.
'Maybe I can finally get a vacation after all this mess is sorted,' he mused. With the prison nearly empty, things were bound to calm down. Even in the best-case scenario, it would take months to fill up the cells with a new set of convicts as the neverending battle with Defias Brotherhood perpetually raged on. His second-in-command could hold the fort for a couple weeks.
Thelwater soon returned to the ground level to face the two champions after the entire place was confirmed to be clean of inhabitants. He found Ainz and Buku resting with his soldiers, sharing drinks and recounting their feats of slaughter and destruction. Many wanted to hear the gruesome details, seeking some semblance of vengeance for their fallen comrades, and the two were more than happy to supply.
"You did a number down there. Good job," He stated.
"We did promise to deal with your problem, and keeping promises is important for us," Ainz replied.
"A man of his word, like me. I will see to it that you two get your due rewards, even if I have to pay it myself. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The king and his advisors need to hear about your deeds, as is befitting those of your caliber. But please, leave some details out, if His Majesty asks. The king is only ten and… would probably benefit not knowing what you did with the criminals in gruesome detail." Thelwater needed to make such a request. The young king had lived through a lot of tragedies, losing both of his parents at a very young age, but the boy simply wouldn't be ready to deal with the likes of Ainz and Buku.
What truly worried Thelwater was the possibility of the nobles and royalty snubbing the two heroes. The nation's elite were penny-pinching bastards who would rather jump through the hole of a sewing needle than pay someone their just dues as long as it didn't involve practically enslaving the individual to them. It was thanks to their corruption and foolishness that the Defias brotherhood existed in the first place, in direct opposition.
And then there was Katrana Prestor, the Royal Advisor. The woman was conniving, petty, and vengeful with an unhealthy amount of envy towards anyone who outshined her in any way, regardless of position or history. She had the king's ear, whispering poisonous thoughts in the young boy's mind constantly as she puppeteered him like a doll. A rather disturbing hope crossed Thelwater's mind that the woman would do something beyond foolish and perish at the hand of two champions, bringing the kingdom one step closer to actual ruling. If such a scenario came true, they would only be performing another service for the common folk of Stormwind. And if they just so happened to end a few noble lineages along the way, all the better.
Editing by NabeisWaifu and aidan_lo.
Proofreading by IAMTHEPLOKOKIOPO, miraculous-trash, fvvck, Malguis, Ainz-sama, I AM THE STRING CUTTER, and aidan_lo.
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