Overlord, Vol. 8: The Two Leaders

Prologue

5:14
AM

Nazarick Time

A drop of water appeared at the mouth of the golden faucet, gradually swelled, and was then pulled by gravity to the bathroom floor.

There were a number of places to take a hot bath in the Great Tomb of Nazarick, and this was one of them.

In a marble bathtub big enough for multiple people sat a lone figure.

Drops of blue ran down the smooth white body.
Blue
is not poetic; it was a deliberate blue, as if they had been dyed that color.

Once the blue liquid had lapped the white porcelain form, it disobeyed gravity to go over it once again, bottom to top, not flowing, like water, so much as crawling.

“Phwah.” It tended to echo in the bathroom, so the unconsciously emitted moan reverberated loudly.

Was the sound embarrassing? A thin arm rose out of the blue liquid. There were none of the falling droplets that would normally be heard, nor ripples across the surface—due to the extremely high viscosity of the liquid.

A slender raised hand stroked the bather’s face, which was praised by many for its beauty.

“Phew…” With a sigh, the figure flopped backward but did not sink below the surface. The blue liquid gently supported the slim body. It was like lying on a soft waterbed, that sort of elasticity.

The liquid had a distinct mind.

That was proven beyond a doubt in the next moment.

The blue liquid wriggled and raised tentacles a finger or two thick. They wrapped around the body, both above and of course below the surface.

Head, chest, abdomen, arms, legs—and, of course, hips.

The liquid squirmed in satisfaction at having restrained its prey. It was actually a sapphire slime, an elite variety of slime.

The sapphire slime began to move its slender tentacles.

It slipped one of them inside a delicate area near the hips.

“—Ahh.”

Another moan. It was louder than the first, but this time there was no sign of any attempt to suppress it. All attention was focused on the sensation of the slime wriggling inside.

A murmur echoed in the bathroom.

“Ahh, it’s so damn good. I can’t even describe this feeling.”

Ainz soaked in his slime bath.

He scooped some up and let it dribble over his head. The slime, which had been diligently cleaning the area of his master’s pelvic bone around the obturator foramen, must have understood where he wanted to be cleaned next. Ainz felt it slither around his head.

“Phew, this is paradise. Just paradise.”

Ainz the undead’s body was made entirely of bones.

Since it didn’t excrete any waste products, he didn’t get oily or smelly, but that didn’t mean he didn’t need to bathe. Dust and dirt clung to him, and sometimes blood spattered onto him. He did get dirty.

And as a Japanese person, he couldn’t endure a life without bathing.

“I only took steam baths back in the other world, but… Just the idea of a real bath gets me excited. The practice of bathing must be deeply rooted in the hearts of Japanese people.”

Mimicking a relaxed exhalation, he submerged himself farther under the slime. With a slippery sensation, it made way for him.

Despite the high viscosity of the liquid, it didn’t feel strange to him.

Taking a normal bath is such a pain…

He looked down at the most troublesome part of his body—his ribs.

Washing them one by one took an awfully long time. He had experience with this, and just the thought of it made him sigh—although he wasn’t actually breathing.

And that wasn’t the only troublesome part.

His spine was the same. The protuberances got stuck on his towel, so he couldn’t just give them a quick wash. It took attention to detail.

At first, he’d been washing himself with care. But even the mentally resilient Ainz got sick of the monotonous labor. His fastest attempt still took more than thirty minutes; that was no joke, and he felt it.

The next thing he tried was getting into a bathtub full of soapy water and spinning around as if he were in a washing machine. That wasn’t as bad; he just didn’t feel like he got clean. If he didn’t use something to scrub himself, there was no sense that he’d gotten the dirt off.

So his next tactic was to procure a cleaning brush with a handle and scrub with that. That went very well.

It did get soap everywhere, but it wasn’t as if Ainz had to tidy up after himself. Tidying up was the maids’ job, and they were happy to have something to do. He basically killed two birds with one stone.

But even that brilliant plan had one problem.

He wasn’t sure if he was really getting every part of himself clean.

He was anxious that even though he thought he was scrubbing his whole body, there might have been places he missed, like how even a tooth brusher with the best intentions can get cavities.

Eventually, he arrived at this final solution of having a slime crawl around his body.

“Yeah…this really is a landmark, original method. It leaves nothing to be desired—it’s simply perfect,” he murmured as he watched the blue slime slither over the surfaces of his body.

He nodded, totally in love with the effortless method he had come up with. It might have been the most perfect plan he had devised since arriving in this world.

“It’s magnificent if I do say so myself!”

Continuing to pat himself on the back, he watched the slime moving around every nook and cranny of his body.

It’s so adorable…

It was a malicious monster with the ability to dissolve things with acid and constricting strength enough to easily bend an iron rod, but to Ainz it was a back-washer buddy who cleaned him. In a way, he was even attached to it as a pet.

A slime bath isn’t bad, but I would like a normal soak once in a while…

The ninth level of Nazarick had many different facilities. There was even a bathhouse. It was modeled after a spa resort, a complex of different kinds of baths.

“Maybe I should check it out…”

But it wouldn’t be very fun to go alone.
In that case…

“Okay! I’ll invite the guardians. It’ll be great if we can find a time that everyone is free.”

Ainz smiled at his brilliant plan.

1

7:14
AM

Nazarick Time

Nazarick had two types of maids.

There were the combat maids, like Yuri Alpha, and then there were the regular maids with no combat ability whatsoever. The job of the latter—homunculi who were only level 1 even with race and class levels combined—was to perform all sorts of chores on the ninth and tenth levels, especially cleaning. Tidying up the rooms of their masters, the Supreme Beings, was their most important duty.

Cixous, one of those regular maids, was hurrying without quickening her steps—a special ability maids had, though it wasn’t technically a skill—toward the employee cafeteria.

There was only one reason to go to the cafeteria at this time of morning.

When she arrived, most of the other maids were already eating.

The women’s cheerful, noisy conversations overlapped and rippled through the dull, mainly white cafeteria. No single person was talking all that loudly, but when their voices mixed together, it became an incomprehensible din. That plus the sound of clinking dishes made quite a racket.

Cixous looked for her close friends.

The maids in the cafeteria were split broadly into four groups.

The first three groups were maids created by the same Supreme Being. There were forty-one of these regular maids, but it wasn’t as if each of the Supreme Beings had made one. WhiteLace, HeroHero, and Coup de Grâce had created them all.

The final group, though it might be misleading to call it a group, was made up of the maids who weren’t in the other gatherings. These were the maids who wanted to quietly eat alone, or read, or chat with people made by other Supreme Beings.

Cixous, who had arrived a little late, belonged to the latter group. She waved to the maids created by the same Supreme Being—her sisters, so to speak—and said her good mornings as she made her way to her usual table.

The usual faces were already sitting there: Foäille and Lumièlle.

Cixous’s face fell when she noticed there was no food in front of them. “Morning. Did you guys…eat already?”

“Morning. Yeah, we ate. It was really good. So creamy and fluffy… Ahh, it was great.” Foäille had a sporty look—short hair, a maid uniform she customized herself to have slightly shorter sleeves—and always wanted to fib even though she was horrible whenever she tried while constantly speaking in monotone.

The other maid, meek-faced Lumièlle, raised her eyebrows. Her blond hair gave off a mysterious light, as if there were twinkling stars inside. “Good morning. Foäille, you don’t need to eat twice, right? Please wait here. I haven’t eaten yet, so I’m going to get some food. Let’s go, Cixous.” Lumièlle stood up.

“I was just kidding! It was a joke!” Foäille hurried after her.

The familiar exchange ended, and they walked—not without asking Inclement, who was quietly reading next to them, to save their seats—to the buffet.

The first thing Cixous grabbed was crispy bacon. As part of the “floppy bacon is just wrong” faction, this was a required item for her. Next, she got soup. From “today’s special,” corn soup and onion soup, she chose the onion. Then she mounded sausage, fried potatoes, and Danish onto her plate and piled another dish to overflowing with a salad that was mainly onions. Finally, she moved toward a male servant wearing a mask.

“Um, I’ll have triple cheese, double onions, and mushrooms please.”

The male servant bowed and began frying up an omelet.

Cixous returned to her seat for the moment to put down her food. When she went back to the servant, with a cup of milk in one hand, he was just finishing up her order.

“Thank you.”

She took the perfect omelet, no burned spots, back to her seat, and her friends were just arriving, too.

“Okay, let’s eat!”

“Yum!”

“Mm-hmm.”

The three of them began to eat in silence. For an average woman, the portions were far too big, but they rapidly packed the mountains of food into their stomachs. One of their racial penalties was the need for a lot of food.

That was why, though they were good friends, they never chatted while eating.

Foäille chewed with her cheeks stuffed full, Lumièlle ate neatly with her fork doing unusually rapid laps between her plate and her mouth, and Cixous was somewhere in between.

In a surprisingly short time, the food on their plates was gone, and they were finishing off their milk.

“Ahh!”

All three of their milky exhalations overlapped. Then they exchanged glances.

“…Want to go around again?”