"[Death Knight]," Ainz said, in the low, rumbling voice appropriate for a spell, as he pointed his finger at the corpse in front of him.

The magic sputtered out.

He'd expected that, of course. He'd done it out of some slim, silly hope that rules about MP weren't as strict in the New World as they were in YGGDRASIL, and that he could maybe squeeze out one more Death Knight today if he tried his hardest. Alas, that wasn't the case. Out of magic meant out of magic.

Damn, he thought. A small city to the west of Nazarick had recently defected from the Re-Estize kingdom and declared their fealty to the Sorcerous Kingdom. They feared that Re-Estize might retaliate against them for their treachery, so Ainz had personally promised to supply them with a force of 100 Death Knights to deter any attacks by tomorrow morning. Even though he'd been raising corpses all day, he was 10 summons off from the number he needed.

He supposed that he could wait another day, but that would give the impression that he didn't keep his promises, or worse, that he was too weak to send undead guards their way. That would set a bad precedent. Then, he thought about moving some from E-Rantel that way, but it would take too long to transport them at this point, which would result in delays anyway. Especially now that he didn't have the MP to make any Gates.

He hit himself in the cranium with his bony palm. Why did he promise that village so many guards!?

He didn't like it, but he saw only one option. Reaching into his inventory, he pulled out a sparkling purple potion. This mana potion would give him enough MP to raise the rest of the army in time. He would have much preferred to save this potion for an emergency—he had a limited supply, and was certain that no pharmacist in this world could reproduce one of similar potency—but this was an emergency, when you looked at it from the right angle. The damage to his reputation would be devastating if he failed.

Ainz poured the potion into his open mouth, and awaited the familiar rush of energy that mana potions usually gave him. He felt a rush, that was certain, but it didn't feel like magical rejuvenation. Instead, it was an odd warm feeling, utterly unlike anything he had felt in this new world and yet strangely familiar. The flames in his eye sockets flickered as his vision grew blurry, and his head suddenly felt like it was filled with cotton.

"What the hell?" he said. He had only meant to think the words, but they came out before he could stop them. His sluggish brain was finally starting to recognize the feeling. "Am I… drunk?"

It all clicked. That stupid mana potion was a gag potion. Every once and a while a YGGDRASIL item, especially a consumable like a potion, would randomly turn out to have some bizarre effect as a prank. Their effects were unpredictable, but this one seemed to be making him feel absolutely hammered, and not in a fun way. It seemed to be bypassing his poison resistances too, which wasn't uncommon for these kinds of gag items.

He groaned and sat down, trying and failing to get a hold of himself. On second thought, it was a little fun; it had been a long, long time since he enjoyed an altered state of consciousness like this, and it was nice to feel a part of him unwinding from all the stress of rulership. On the other hand, he knew he wasn't going to get any work done like this. How long would this last?

He found himself unable to cling to any coherent train of thought for more than a few seconds. Instead, he just leaned back in his chair and wished it was possible for him to take a nap.

Ainz was partially shocked out of his stupor when he heard footsteps. He looked around dully until he spotted Demiurge approaching. The demon stopped at a respectful distance and bowed deeply, as usual. "I have researched the layout of this city and devised a defense strategy for the Death Knights, Lord Ainz," he said, with a hint of smug self-satisfaction. "Even if Re-Estize marched their entire army on us, they would never get a single man past the walls."

In his foggy state, Ainz couldn't muster up any kingly bravado, or think of how to phrase anything in a dignified way. "Nice," was all he could say.

"I presume the troops are ready?" Demiurge looked out over the batch of Death Knights, as if admiring their craftsmanship, but his impressed expression temporarily faulted. His lips moved rapidly, as if he were silently counting to himself. He was quiet for a long moment, but then a lightbulb went off in his mind, and his smile returned. "Brilliant as always, Lord Ainz."

"Huh?" Ainz's jaw hung slack as he scratched the side of his head in confusion.

"By limiting the number of Death Knights, you are testing my ability to adjust plans quickly to accomodate unforeseen setbacks," Demiurge said. "I will not let you down, my lord. The revised plans will be ready in time for the troop's departure."

Normally Ainz would have simply nodded, congratulated him on his insightfulness, and let the issue go. However, Ainz wasn't feeling very normal right now. He burst out into loud, hollow laughter.

Demiurge hesitated. "I'm sorry. I've gotten this wrong, haven't I?"

"Completely wrong." Ainz held his hand out towards the other, squinted, and pretended to tap Demiurge's forehead with his finger, even though there was too much distance between them. "Try again."

Deep down, Ainz knew that this was a disaster. There was a reason he'd always avoided going out for drinks with his coworkers when he was a salaryman. Whenever he was drunk, he would lose any ability to keep his words from tumbling out of his mouth, along with his ability to lie. His unfiltered honesty could destroy the relationship he had built with the residents of Nazarick, but did he care in his current state? No. Not at all. It felt good to finally say when he'd been locking up inside, including telling Demiurge he was wrong.

Demiurge stiffened at the criticism, and bowed again. He thought hard, as if his life depended on it. "Are you sending a smaller group of Death Knights to prove to the people that a single Death Knight is worth far more than the average soldier?"

Ainz shook his head, almost making himself dizzy in the process. "Wrong again."

"My sincerest apologies, my lord." Demiurge stayed in his bowing position, his body so stiff that Ainz wondered if he was stuck that way. "Your unfathomable genius evades me once again. I beg you to forgive my ignorance."

"Hmm." Ainz bobbed his head noncommittally. At this point, his desire to speak his mind far outweighed the decaying verbal filters he had left. "Do you want to know why, Demiurge?"

"Yes, my lord, if it will help me better serve you."

Ainz stood up, walked over to Demiurge, and leaned over to get closer to him. If that potion had actually been booze, the guardian would have been able to smell it on his breath. "Do you really want to know? Really really?"

Demiurge suddenly looked pensive. He straightened back up. "You mean, selfishly." He nodded. "Yes, I do. Nothing fulfills me more than understanding your will. I understand that it's often best for me to be kept in the dark, but I always want to know. Of course, you should never let my childish desires get in the way of your plans."

For a brief moment, Ainz felt bad about what he was about to do to Demiurge. The least he could do was offer one last out. "Are you sure? You're reaaaaally going to hate it." His words were beginning to slur together.

"Impossible," he said, with absolute certainty. "Your plans are without flaw. Even if I don't understand it at first, I have no doubt that I will come to accept it as the superior path."

Ainz laughed again, a bit more genuinely this time. This poor bastard. Maybe breaking the truth to him would be a mercy after all; the longer he waited, the harder it would be on Demiurge. No time like the present.

"Very well." Ainz straightened back up, wobbling slightly. "The truth is that this isn't a part of any plan. I just messed up."

Judging by Demiurge's expression, that was the one answer he wasn't ready for.

"I promised that city too many Death Knights," he said, "and now I'm out of MP so I can't make them all in time. Either we send too few now and we break our promise, or we send them later and look incom… incompi…" He couldn't figure out the big word. "Stupid."

Realizing that he had dropped the potion bottle soon after drinking it, he picked it up again, just to slam it on a nearby table for effect. "What was I thinking, promising that many!? I wasn't thinking, really. I never am. I just… bumble along." He swatted his hand, knocking the potion off of the table. It fell and shattered into a thousand pieces. He stared at it in dazed silence for a moment. "Oops."

"Are you feeling well, my lord?" Demiurge asked, his mouth a tense, uneasy line.

"I feel great." He looked down at the shattered bottle. "I'm all drunk, though. I drank a gag potion because I was too stupid to check if it was real or not. See, there's me being clueless, again."

Demiurge tried to gently take Ainz by the arm. "Perhaps you should lie down…"

"I'm fine," Ainz insisted. "You're just trying to change the subject!"

He tensed up at the accusation. "Certainly not, my lord. I'm simply concerned, that potion seems to have impeded your ability to think clearly…"

"Oh, I'm thinking clearly," Ainz snapped back.

Demiurge shook at the retort. Behind his glasses, his eyes were wide with horror as he realized his verbal slip-up. How could he have insulted his master's intelligence in such a callous way? As if simple drunkenness could best the infallible mind of the Lord of Nazarick himself. Ainz's powers of persuasion were so subtly brilliant that he'd been tricked into agreeing with the ridiculous theory that Ainz was clueless, even if the implication was just in his phrasing. He bowed his head in shame. "My lord, I—"

"You're just not used to me being honest," Ainz continued. "That's not your fault, I'm the one who has been lying to you."

That confession was like honey on Ainz's nonexistent tongue. He charged ahead. "Doesn't it strike you as odd, how I ask you to explain my plans to the other guardians instead of explaining them myself?"

"I assume that is because you have been testing my ability to interpret your genius."

Ainz let out a short, forceful laugh. "No, that's not it. I ask you to explain the plans, because they're your plans!"

Demiurge shifted uncomfortably. "I don't understand…"

"Listen. Here is the pattern," Ainz said, holding up one finger. "One, I make a mistake or do something stupid." He held up another. "Two, you somehow ra… ration…. rationablize whatever stupid thing I did into a secret chess move in a big secret plan that doesn't exist." His third finger went up. "Three, you come up with a whole big scheme that actually works based on my mistake. And four—" Instead of lifting another finger, he threw his hands out to the side in exasperation— "you say it was my plan all along, even though you came up with the whole thing by yourself!"

Ainz sighed and flopped back down into a chair. "You're the real brain behind Nazarick, Demiurge," he said. "You always have been. I'm just… I'm like the queen of England, or something." He meant to say he was a figurehead, but his frazzled mind couldn't remember the term.

"I'm sorry, my lord, I don't mean to question you, but this doesn't make sense!" Demiurge insisted. "Of course yours is the greatest mind here, and everything that happens is a part of your machinations! If I were Nazarick's best strategist, then how did you manage to make a vassal of the Baharuth Empire in three days when my inferior plan would have taken a month?"

"Dumb. Luck." Ainz rubbed his temples. "I only went to the Empire to advertise the adventurer's guild. Jircniv asked for vassalage out of nowhere! He blindsided me with that. I barely talked to him that day, too, so I don't know how the idea got in his head. I almost turned him down because I didn't know what a vassal state was. I still barely know what one is!"

He could practically see Demiurge's brain smoking, struggling to find some rationalization to get him out of this corner. "Is this a—"

"It's not a test," Ainz said, cutting him off. "And telling you isn't part of some plan. It's a terrible idea, really. Terrible. But I don't want to lie to you anymore." For a brief moment, Ainz seemed to sober in an instant, and he looked right into Demiurge's eyes with a regal intensity. "You trust that I'm being honest, don't you, Demiurge?"

He had never seen the guardian at such a loss for words before. At first, Ainz was worried that Demiurge would overload and reset, like an overheated computer, and carry on like this conversation never happened. Instead, Demiurge bowed his head. "I believe you, Lord Ainz."

Ainz nodded, his drunkenness returning in full force as quickly as it had left. The implications of what he had confessed to his subordinate weren't able to hit him through the thick wall of fuzziness around his mind.

"I will send the Death Knights on their way," Demiurge said, his voice stripped of confidence. "What would you like me to tell the city concerning the low numbers?"

Ainz waved his hand dismissively. "Whatever you want. You'll figure it out."

He bowed one last time and retreated from the room, his tail dragging along the ground in dejection.

Now alone with his drunkenness, two thoughts competed for Ainz's attention. The first was that he had just screwed up in a major way; if he had destroyed Demiurge's faith in him, that could cause him to betray Nazarick, and what if the news spread to the other guardians? The downfall of Nazarick could easily have started in this room. Unfortunately, this sensible thought lost the battle against his desire to lie down and see if he could fall asleep if he really, really tried. That potion seemed to bypass his poison resistance, so maybe his sleep immunity was compromised too? Worth a shot.

—

—

—

It wasn't often that Albedo ventured down to Nazarick's bar. It was a lovely establishment, and she did not judge its regulars for enjoying it one bit, but she was far too busy a woman to waste her time at any bar. Today was an exception. She'd be drawn down to this part of the 9th floor by a concerning rumor she'd heard about Demiurge. Apparently the demon had, to quote Aura, "broken," and hadn't left the bar since he send off that force of Death Knights a day ago.

Sure enough, she found him there. He sat at the bar with an uncharacteristic slump, staring into a glass of whisky as it if were a crystal ball. He didn't seem to notice when Albedo sat beside him.

"The Death Knights were transported without issue, I presume?" Albedo didn't need to ask, she already knew, but small talk with the other guardians was not her strength.

Demiurge slowly turned his head to face her. When Aura claimed that he was broken, Albedo assumed it was a childish term for him acting unusual. But now, seeing his face, she suspected that the problem was much deeper.

"Are you alright?" she asked. The words felt strange in her mouth. She'd never inquired about Demiurge's wellbeing in any serious way, though not due to a lack of caring. She simply had never seen the other guardian in such a state before. What could have brought him so low? Was it something about Ainz? She felt the urge to press the issue immediately, but held her tongue, knowing that if it were truly that important he would have gotten over himself and told her already.

Demiurge pushed the drink away from him. "No," he answered, frankly. "I've flown too close to the sun, I'm afraid." He sounded weary, as if he'd aged a dozen years in the past day.

Albedo cocked her head in confusion. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"I selfishly sought after information I wasn't supposed to know about the mind of Lord Ainz," he explained. "He warned me that I would hate knowing it. Now…" He winced. "This is what I get for ignoring the advice of a Supreme Being. I am a fool."

Albedo's eyebrows shot up. Never in her life did she imagine Demiurge would call himself a fool with such conviction. He often acknowledged that he was less intelligent than Ainz, of course, but he never put himself below the average mind like this. Was there really a truth so terrible that it could do this to him?

"What did he tell you?" Albedo asked.

He shook his head. "I will not say, as he has not given me permission to tell anyone. Besides, you are better off not knowing." She thought she heard a twinge of envy in his voice. "I couldn't stand to infect anyone else with this virus."

That made Albedo's curiosity burn all the brighter, but she knew it was a horrible idea to ask. Maybe later, when Demiurge had recovered somewhat, she could find out at least the general nature of the knowledge if not the unfortunate facts themselves. Still, she had to make sure of one thing. "Does this forbidden knowledge you have put Nazarick in danger?"

Suspiciously, he said nothing.

Albedo's look turned sour. "Demiurge."

He intertwined his fingers and rested his chin on them, staring into space. "My loyalties do not need to be questioned," he said.

"The fact that you speak of your loyalty first makes me question you more." She had been worried about how much trouble they would be in if Demiurge was interrogated for the information, not whether his loyalties still laid with Nazarick. This was worse than she had assumed.

"I should explain." He pushed his glasses up back into place, then glanced around, making sure that no one was listening. Thankfully, they were alone in the room at the moment. He leaned in closer and lowered his voice. "This information, if examined alone and without bias with a rational mind, leads to… unacceptable conclusions. There are inescapable implications that even I can't think of a logical way to dismiss."

Albedo's eyes narrowed. "How unacceptable?"

"It is a reason to betray Lord Ainz."

Albedo bristled at the mere string of words. Despite the context, she was tempted to pull out Ginnungagap and obliterate Demiurge right where he sat.

"Of course I would never do such a thing!" Demiurge hissed. "Obeying the Supreme Beings is our highest purpose. All of us guardians know this with every fiber of our being. I'm absolutely certain that there's some piece of knowledge that the Supreme Beings hid from us that justifies our service. I believe that's why Lord Ainz was comfortable telling me at all, he knew I would never turn on him no matter what."

The unshakable conviction in his words made her relax slightly.

"That being said, I can't count on every servant of Ainz to think the same way," he said. "And if anyone in Nazarick jumps to the wrong conclusion…"

"…it could be disastrous," Albedo finished for him.

Demiurge nodded. The rest didn't need to be said—that was why he could never tell anyone, even Albedo. A part of her wished that he would trust her loyalty enough to confide in her, but deep down she knew it wasn't worth the risk, and she couldn't blame him for his silence.

"I must confess," he continued, stirring the drink in front of him with his finger, "this revelation has not left me completely unaffected. Although my loyalty is still with him completely, I find that my enthusiasm for serving him has been lacking since that conversation."

Albedo glared at him when he said this, as if to say shame on you. By the way he kept his head bowed like a submissive dog, he must have agreed.

"Lord Ainz deserves to be surrounded by only the most eager and zealous servants," he said. "So, I'll remain here, until I can come to terms with what I now know about him."

"You know nothing about him."

Demiurge looked up in surprise. Albedo's expression was impossible to read. It was neither friendly nor scornful; serious, but not in a professional way; neutral, but far from blank.

"He's told you a secret, yes," she said, "but that doesn't mean you know anything about him. Lord Ainz is a Supreme Being, which means he is unknowable. Don't let yourself fall into baseless pride. No one could ever hope to understand the scope of his greatness, not even his closest guardians."

Perhaps she said this to help him reach the stage of acceptance sooner, but her words had a different, much more profound effect. He straightened out of his slump, and his eyes went so wide that Albedo could see his crystal eyes past the edges of his round glasses. "Could it be…?"

Suddenly, Demiurge was thrown into a fit of silent speculation. He muttered wordlessly to himself and twitched his fingers as if counting impossible numbers. His thoughts raced so quickly that veins popped on his temples. This continued for several minutes, and all the while Albedo watched patiently. Partially this was because she was curious what revelation she had accidentally inspired, but it was also because she knew any conclusion Demiurge drew with such dangerous information in his head could be a threat to Nazarick.

Finally, he calmed, and turned to her. "I cannot thank you enough, Albedo. I must confess, in the past I have secretly questioned many of the actions of our master. I am not proud of this, and of course I held my tongue out of respect. But now, the urge to ask any of those questions is gone." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, as if he had just stepped into a promising new world and was enjoying the freshness of the air. "I have my answers. Everything Lord Ainz has ever done makes sense now. At least, as much sense as it ever could."

Albedo smiled warmly, although inside, she was screaming. Why did Demiurge get to have such a revelation, while she was left in the dark? She could only hope someday that Ainz would find her worthy. Of course, that was assuming that his thoughts were at all acceptable.

"May I ask a favor, Overseer?" Demiurge asked, quickly switching gears to business.

"Of course."

"Gather all of the guardians," he said, "as well as Lord Ainz, at his earliest convenience. I need to make sure this hole in security is plugged, once and for all."

Albedo hesitated. She was still unsure about what conclusion he drew, and whether or not his loyalty was still in tact. However, denying his request would do no good. If he meant to do what was best for Nazarick, such a meeting would be a good idea. If he didn't, then she would turn it into a public execution, and make an example of him.

"It shall be done."