Chapter 61

King Ramposa's face was drawn and ashen. His fingers shook so much that they rattled the paper on which the words were written. 'Everything was looking up!' He thought with utter despair. Eight Fingers was broken, the heads of their leaders sat on top of pikes at the gates of the capital. A caster at hand who may have had the power to defeat the empire… now this.

He set the rattling, shaking paper down on the table, one bad thing after another had happened in the span of little more than days. "Sire, what do we do? If the Adventurer's Guild refuses to undertake any quests for any members of the royal faction, then we won't have a faction…" Marquis Raeven shuddered at the thought.

"That is bad…" Princess Renner replied, "But… my brothers, and the peasant rebellion… that is worse."

"My sons… both of them…" The King could no longer read the document put together from survivor testimony. The hated ink grew blurry through his pooling tears, while bitterness filled his voice for more reasons than one. Word of Prince Barbro's abuses and corruption spread like wildfire, even without the documented proof, the use of an Eight Finger's 'contract purchase' to pretend to abuse an adamantite ranked adventurer made it easy to draw the correct conclusion.

And all the King could do was sit in private with his few trusted advisors, and wallow in despair. "My son… Barbro… he cost me much. But I would have preferred he lived, and cost me more…" The King's head slumped, "He was wrong, you don't have to tell me that, Gazef." The King did not meet the look he knew his Head Warrior was giving him. "But he was my son, and bad as he was, I loved him. And Zanac… he would have been a good King, if only he hadn't been killed."

His hand drifted over the documents arrayed on the desk, next to the one informing him of his sons' demise and the declaration of independence for the 'Kingdom of Carne' sat reports of the places they'd taken. Several minor noble houses had been exterminated already, a number of towns, villages, and E-Rantel even surrendered without a fight.

Beside that, sat the document from the Empire, declaring their annual war.

"What can I even do?" King Ramposa asked. He was at a loss, neither Gazef nor Raeven had an answer.

His last remaining child however, did. "Father… there is only one course of action." Renner put her hand over his and looked up into his face with her loving, warm blue eyes. "My brothers..." She blinked back tears, "my brothers are gone, but the Kingdom remains. The nobles won't send an army to fight the Empire when the rebels are hanging entire houses… they can't even if they wanted to. We have to stop the rebellion from swallowing us in pieces. Master Gown is ready to declare the existence of his Kingdom and warn the Empire to steer clear. Let him do that, and then, we gather the noble houses together, all of the noble faction, and go to fight the rebels."

"Slaughtering the people of my kingdom doesn't sit well with me." Gazef remarked with a sullen look. "If they only knew the king I know…"

"But they don't." Marquis Raeven pointed out. "And there's no way they want to now, between everything that has happened with Prince Barbro, the Guild, and now this."

"I don't propose we go fight to win the battle, I propose we go to fight to win the war." Princess Renner said, and the three men looked at her, even her father's face of mourning vanished in the confusion.

As the Princess laid out her plan, the faces of her father, the Marquis, and Gazef, first turned ashen, then intrigued, and finally, as she spoke and argued as gently as she could, resigned.

"One third of Re-Estize will be lost." Her father replied at last.

"If we don't cut off the arm, the whole body will die. We can have two-thirds of our Kingdom, or none of it. And at the end, father… you know you will have to step down. A new ruler will be needed." Renner said and gently laid her hand on his arm, "Let our kingdom's great renewal be your legacy… not the things my oldest brother did… if you go out the right way… then you can spare him that shame. Please… father, let me help you." Renner wiped tears away from her eyes, and the king finally gave a somber, silent nod.

It took weeks for it to happen, the nobles were slow to heed the call at first, and village after village joined the rebellion. The 'Wolf King and Wolf Queen' ate up territory and captured noble houses were hanged from their own towers. Small engagements left more weapons and armor in the hands of the rebellion, and made the Kingdom of Carne seem unbeatable.

But the call was answered, tens of thousands of levied soldiers and household retainers, along with the heads and entire families of the noble houses, came to gather at the capital.

"Father, is it really necessary for you to go yourself?" Renner asked while her shaking hand caressed the back of his own, her eyes lingering up at him, worry filling her face.

"Yes, my daughter. I am the King. I do what needs to be done… I sacrifice what I must sacrifice for the greater good. And that means I must put myself at risk." King Ramposa said, his voice weaker than Renner had ever known it, he was clear in his determination, covering her hand with his own, he looked down at her for a long moment of reflection.

"Daughter, Renner, you were more than I knew you to be, and I regret not seeing it until your brothers were gone." King Ramposa laughed bitterly, "Not to worry though, I will make up for lost time when I come back. We'll set everything right, and restore our Kingdom to what it used to be."

"Yes, father, I can hardly wait." Renner replied, and flung her arms around him in a tight embrace. The hardness of his armor and the softness of his royal cape that hung down at his back were at odds with one another, but the warmth of his kiss to her forehead was real, clear, and utterly sincere.

Renner's pure white dress was long and flowing, and though in heels, she had to rise to her tiptoes to kiss her father's white bearded cheek. "At least take Gazef with you, father." She pointed a few feet away where Climb stood dutifully in the wings. "I have my Climb to protect me, I don't want you to go out there into danger without some assurance that you'll come home."

"Very well, Renner, very well." King Ramposa III said with an aching heart as the worry from his youngest living child for himself, warred against his worry for her. "Just assist Marquis Raeven as best you can, and I'll go end this once and for all."

"As you say, father." Renner answered and broke her tight embrace, removing herself to the side of her bodyguard.

"Protect my daughter, Climb. She is all I have left." King Ramposa said with a deep well of sorrow still roiling in his guts.

Climb immediately went down to one knee and bowed his head to swear loud enough that it echoed off the stone walls of the palace, "Majesty, no one will touch her unless they've killed me first."

"I believe you…" The King said, looking the blonde boy over, clad in the armor the Princess had scrimped and saved to give to him. Having clear eyes and a hard, handsome look about him, nearing manhood, the boy was always diligent, hardworking, loyal and devoted. 'The poor boy, in love with my daughter, but this was all he could ever do. If he'd been born a nobleman, he might have made a fine match, he might even have been a worthy king. But… it simply isn't meant to be.' King Ramposa reflected with a sense of pity for the young Climb.

"Send word to Gazef that I will bring him after all, and tell him to hurry, we're leaving soon." The King said, and then walked away without looking back.

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Emperor Jircniv sat in his private council chamber. "Is this a joke?" He asked, rolling up the document and shaking it like a stick.

"I'm afraid not, my boy." Fluder replied. "I checked it out myself, the Kingdom has ceded part of its lands to a magic caster named Ainz Ooal Gown, he is a true caster and bested a Theocracy Scripture unit some months ago."

Jircniv frowned, unrolled the document and read it again.

'To the Emperor Jircniv of Baharuth, let it be known that on this fourteenth day of the month, the Kingdom of Nazarick is named into being. Also, we enter into a state of war in support of our ally, the Kingdom of Re-Estize, and in retaliation for the military attack upon our lands by your workers on your government's order. You are advised not to march your army to the Katze plains, and to instead offer modest recompense for your offensive conduct against both kingdoms. If your army appears, we will take land and lives instead of simply coins.'

Jircniv stopped reading and crinkled the paper up and threw it hard against the floor. The blonde hair and fine features of the young emperor grew tight and his teeth ground against one another in uncharacteristic anger. "Does he really think he can do what he says?"

"I believe so, my boy." Fluder stroked his beard and approached the sovereign he'd helped to raise. "Will you give in?"

"Of course not." Jircniv shot to his feet and kicked the paper off into a corner. "Defeating a scripture is no small feet but still, even if he can kill five thousand by himself, there's nothing he can do against twenty thousand knights."

"He may have an army of his own… remember he did eliminate hundreds of workers that tried to enter his home." Fluder remarked, and Jircniv stopped to think about what the old man said.

"That is a fair point, we'll pull ten thousand from the swamp area where the frogmen live to hold in reserve, just to be sure." Jircniv said, "We still have time to prepare, and with that peasant civil war being what it is, they'll be weakened anyway. This should be the last great kick before we've knocked down the whole rotten structure of the Re-Estize Kingdom. After this, next year we should be able to start just taking up territory and purging any problematic elements."

"A true new empire is about to dawn on the world." Fluder said with a voice full of wonder. "What marvelous magics it will birth, I can hardly wait to find out!" Fluder shivered with excitement as the meeting ended, and the magic caster departed the company of the Bloody Emperor.

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Ainz spun with his sword and cut straight through the towering fire elemental. Day after day, hour after hour, he kept grinding away, killing the powerful summoned monsters of his subordinates, driving his exp ever higher. When he wasn't at it himself, the recruited members of Foresight were at it with aid from Sebas, who steadily secured them victories that were impossible on their own.

However, where for them it was simply a chore to be done, but when the last summoned beast vanished and Ainz removed his helmet to wipe the sweat from his brow, he knew that for himself it was something more.

"Is something wrong, my lord?" Lupusregina asked, holding out a tray with a silver cup and a silver pitcher of cold water beside it.

"Yes." Ainz replied abruptly and took the cup from the tray to quaff down its contents. The ice cold water was deeply refreshing, 'It is soooo much easier to grind in games, you never get tired.' He teased himself a little, and when Lupusregina poured again, he drank that immediately too.

"Master… if I can help…?" The red haired battle maid suggested.

"Fine." He said, the urge to get it off his chest was such that, even knowing Lupusregina's nature, he didn't care. He set the cup down on the tray and once again she poured, sloshing cubes of ice into the cup with tiny little clacking noises as it filled.

Ainz took the cup and resumed drinking, and jabbed his sword into the sands of the arena so that the hilt was pointing straight up. "It's my humanity. I'm going to have to go out and kill a great many people. Maybe if I was still undead, I wouldn't feel anything about it, but while I'm human?" He snorted halfheartedly, knowing how limited what he was about to say, truly was. "Humans, Lupusregina, sometimes feel anxiety or distaste at the thought of killing their own kind."

Lupusregina pursed her lips, careful not to frown, she instead raised a bright red eyebrow, "I never saw any of them hesitate, master. I mean even the peasant toys out there are killing their own kind in a civil war now. And didn't we just kill a bunch of humans who invaded our home? Forgive my ignorance master, but what is the difference?"

Ainz drank more slowly, buying himself time to think of how to answer her.

"They were thieves and traitors, that's why I had the three slaves spared when CZ brought it up, they didn't want to do what they did, so they weren't wrong. But going out to the Katze Plains, I'll be essentially committing a massacre. Does that make sense?" Ainz asked, unsure if his idea of a difference was at all meaningful.

"If you say it does, it does and I just don't understand it." Lupusregina scratched her head, her yellow eyes looked up at him with reverence, "As I understand it, master. Kings do things for the greater good, or they're supposed to, if you've decided what the greater good is, and they're in the way, isn't killing them to get that way justified?"

Ainz chuckled and put a mailed hand on Lupusregina's head. He rubbed there affectionately, and she pressed her head into his palm with absolute contentment. "You may be right, Lupusregina."

'I can make it quick, do it once, and I won't have to do it twice.' Ainz told himself, and moved on to the other matter. He checked his stats to find his level.

'One hundred and fifty, plenty of skill points to allocate, but most of them need to go to warrior skills… I'll have to confess the truth to Albedo, Shalltear, and Demiurge soon. If they turn on me…' He thought, and then briefly recalling that he could have the other guardians protect him from those three, a vision came to mind with it.

'The children of my friends… slaughtering each other… no. No. No. That can 'never' be allowed to happen. I won't let them kill me, but still better that end than to see my beloved children kill one another…' Ainz resolved, then placed the now empty cup back on the tray. The threat of heartbreak was enough to drag him over to other matters.

"Back to it." Ainz said with grit in his voice, "I have to be ready for anything, in this battle, or the one beyond it, if that should come to pass."

"As you wish, master." Lupusregina said, and carried away the tray, steering clear while Ainz drew the heavy sword out of the sand again, and a summoned ice elemental appeared, towering above him, and standing as little chance as the fire elemental before it. Ainz put his helmet back on, yanking it tight, and began his attack.