Chapter 147

"My Lord… My Lord… My Lord…" Demiurge gasped out and did the unthinkable, while down on his knees and still clutching the item, he grasped the white magic robes of his King and pulled himself into them. "He's dead, isn't he? Lord Ulbert, the other Supreme Beings… they sacrificed themselves to save us?"

Ainz stiffened at the sudden outpouring of the normally unflappable Demiurge, but he did nothing to disengage himself from the Guardian, though at even one moment's pressure Ainz understood something else.

'His grip is so weak now… compared to the Guardians, I've become unbeatable… with my phylactery merged with me and my levels as they are… I might as well be the God they proclaim me to be.' Ainz thought and then set that aside to put his other hand on Demiurge's other shoulder. He didn't pull the guardian away, instead he looked down as Demiurge looked up.

'How did he make that leap…?' Ainz wondered, but the truth was, even Ainz had no idea how many of them were still alive. 'I sent an email to all of them asking for one last meeting, and only three came… it could be that they were all gone other than Herohero… and by now, who can say? Death in my world was so routine…'

Ainz choked back a sob as he imagined his friends dying, while never even knowing if they had… and Demiurge immediately picked up on the emotion of his master.

"I knew it." Demiurge hung his head, and it struck against his Master's thigh just above the knee.

"Demiurge… my boy…" Ainz said and put a hand on the dark hair of the archdevil's head and pressed back so that the demon tilted his eyes upward again.

"What happened to the other Supreme Beings… even I can't know that. But I am here… and I need you to know this… I am never going to abandon you all. I would do anything to protect you all from harm." Ainz vowed as only a father could. "I am here, and I never want to leave. Nazarick is my home, and you are not only the children of my precious friends…"

"Lord Ainz…" Demiurge began, but Ainz blew past the words and shot his own out faster.

"You're my children as well. Mine, and I never, ever want that to change." Ainz's voice became a whisper, and his own body shook as a human body wants to do when charged with great emotion.

That, no magic item can disguise and Demiurge could feel the change.

"Lord Ainz…" Demiurge began again, but stopped as Ainz disengaged himself and crouched down in front of the still kneeling archdevil.

"But some things," Ainz said softly, "even I can't control. I can't decide what I am to you, only you can do that, only you can say how loyal you are, nobody can decide your loyalties. Nobody can decide your feelings. Nobody can decide your wants, hopes, or fears, only you. Even if I could do that… I would consider it the most loathsome and vile thing I could do, and so I wouldn't do it."

Ainz swallowed hard and withdrew his hands, bringing them to the sides of his mask.

"I asked you something when we reached this place, you remember the question, don't you?" Ainz asked, holding his hands in place.

"You asked what you are to me…" Demiurge replied in a small voice. "I asked for time to answer… May I answer it now, My Lord?"

"Yes." Ainz said.

"You are The One Who Stayed with us… when we knew the world would end… you were willing to go with us to oblivion. The giver of all good things, our protector, our provider, our leader… you're like… like a father to us all." Demiurge cracked a smile, "Perhaps you should call yourself that instead of simply King. 'Allfather Ainz Ooal Gown'..."

"Does it matter what form I take?" Ainz asked.

"No." Demiurge answered decisively.

"Even now?" Ainz asked, and removed his mask to reveal his chiseled human face.

Demiurge flung himself back to land on his rear and spread his arms out to catch himself, he looked at the very face of what he was designed to hold in contempt, to despise, to loathe and torture and his mouth dropped open in disbelief.

"My- My Lord?!" Demiurge gasped out in shock.

A look of abject sorrow came over the face of his Master as heartache at what he perceived as rejection took hold. To Demiurge's utmost horror, Ainz turned his face away from the Guardian's own.

"During my first visit to the outside world, when I was with Albedo. The item they used… it shouldn't have been effective, not to this degree, but it turned me into this. I am mortal, I am human." Ainz explained.

Demiurge ran through the information he had from first hand observation and secondary material from the others, and things clicked into place.

"The others… most of them know now, don't they, My Lord. That is why you've been going out with us individually, to test our loyalty and tell us the truth alone." Demiurge guessed, and to that Ainz could only nod.

"Yes… as expected of my Demiurge… you see straight to the truth with only breadcrumbs to lead you home to it." Ainz said with a snort, "If this weren't as unbelievable as it is, and if I hadn't packed you off to other work, I'm sure you would have known well before now."

"Who doesn't, if I might ask, My Lord?" Demiurge asked.

"Out of the guardians, only Albedo and Victim. It will present no issue to Aureole Omega, given her innate humanity. Victim is designed after a human fetus, so it will be the same. The rest of the tomb will be told when Albedo is informed… depending on how that goes." Ainz still did not meet the eyes of his Guardian.

"So I am among the last to know… My Lord… why?" Demiurge asked, and though his eyes could not show emotion as a human's could, Ainz could hear the hurt in the Guardian's voice.

"Lupusregina was the first to know… she worked it out quickly," Ainz tapped his nose and rolled his eyes, "I took her advice on the order of revelation."

Demiurge didn't take long to work out what that meant.

He thought of the order of events, the Guardians he saw, whom he took with him out of the tomb and whom he sent away. Demiurge hung his head again and folded his hands in front of himself, still on his knees, he shook with self loathing. "You chose it based on who was least likely to turn on you… to most."

Ainz nodded. "You were designed with hatred for humanity because of Ulbert's own frustrations with humans… it was something I always disagreed with him on, and now here I am… a human. Forgive me, Demiurge… but it wasn't about you. It was about me." Ainz confessed, and the archdevil did not raise his eyes.

"I could never kill any of you, I knew that if even one of you rejected me, I would have to leave Nazarick. I couldn't bear that, and so I chose based on my own… fear, my own now very human emotions. Irrational, I know, but this was not some master plan… this was not supposed to happen. Even I couldn't have planned for things that were literally unknown…" Ainz faced Demiurge again and snatched the archdevil's shoulders.

"I'm sorry. Perhaps I should have told you all at once, but I couldn't bear the heartache if my children could no longer love me as they did! I wanted to draw it out as long as possible! I am the One Who Stayed, but I stayed for those I loved! What was I? If not that?!" Ainz shouted and tears began to run down his dark eyes. "Now you know it all… the truth… the truth as best I know how to tell it… so… my boy… my Demiurge… am I still…"

"The father of us all… as my father would have wanted it…" Demiurge said, and his chest heaved as he flung himself into the waiting embrace of the One Who Stayed.