Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Hmm, how about harassing those Vees again?" A chimeric demon boredly suggested as he laid on a couch, throwing one of the pomegranate fruits in the air before devouring them whole as they fell in his open maw.

"We, or rather you, already did that… Oh, how about raiding the Morningstar Mansion?" A skeletal Undead suggested as he closed the book he was reading with a thud, a hint of excitement in his voice as he gave his own suggestion.

"...Ainz, Skelly, my boney bro, we both know you just want to raid whatever library you think exists in there, and I'm telling you. The only library in that golden shithole is filled with the princess's crayon drawings, albums of her childhood, and Lilshit and Lucifuck's personal sex and fetish books."

"...Adam, how in the world do you kn-"

"Don't. Fucking. Ask. Please, for my sake, I already regret looking up the shit those two fuckers love to get into."

The beastly demon, Adam, spoke with a shudder as he recalled those haunting pages, making the undead overlord walk towards him and pat him on the back sympathetically.

As Adam breathed deeply for the final time, he ate the last pomegranate in the fruit bowl before wiping his mouth.

"Alright, I ran out of ideas for what to do… Wait! Didn't that Valentino fuckwit try to make another one of those gore porn-flicks again? How about we ruin that shit?! What do you say?!" The man stood up with an excited look on his face as he placed his clenched right fist in his opened left hand. Waiting for his friend's opinion on the suggestion for an activity, which surprisingly, never came.

"...Bones? Is it that bad?" Adam was silent as he didn't hear anything from the other overlord, and looking behind him, he saw why.

The skeletal demon, Ainz, was currently standing near a faint ring of fire on the floor whose inside was abysmal black, darker than the colour of the floorboards to begin with.

"Holy shit, what's that?" Adam asked, stupefied, as he went close to it. Watching the evershifting flames of the ring of fire on the floor.

"I… do not know…" Ainz responded with worry and wonder. "These flames themselves don't give off any heat, yet I feel like there's something going on with them."

Adam could only nod absentmindedly as he watched the dark ring of flames.

Suddenly, the flames flickered out for a moment, leaving behind a glowing golden circle in its wake.

The two could only stare at the golden ring for a moment with worry as they prepared for the worst, which did arrive, but not in the way they expected.

Suddenly, within the blink of an eye, the circle moved, or rather shifted quickly towards before it expanded, twice its already massive size and most importantly, enough to fit the two.

"Ah."

That was Adam and Ainz's only response before they comically fell inside what they now know was a massive hole.

With very, very, very, girlymanly screams.

And nothing remained of the circle, which slowly shrunk before disappearing with a wisp and a fart-like sound.

In the Age of Ancients the world was unformed, shrouded by fog. A land of gray crags, Archtrees and Everlasting Dragons.

But then there was  Fire  and with fire came disparity. Heat and cold, life and death, and of course, light and dark.

Then from the dark,  They  came, and found the  Souls of Lords  within the flame.

Nito , the First of the Dead.

The  Witch of Izalith  and her Daughters of  Chaos .

Gwyn , the Lord of Sunlight, and his faithful knights.

And the  Furtive Pygmy , so easily forgotten.

With the strength of Lords, they  challenged  the Dragons.

Gwyn's mighty bolts peeled apart their stone scales.

The Witches weaved great firestorms.

Nito unleashed a miasma of death and disease.

And Seath the Scaleless betrayed his own, and the Dragons were no more.

Thus began the  Age of Fire .

But soon the flames will fade and only  Dark  will remain. Even now there are only embers, and man sees not light, but only endless nights. And amongst the living are seen, carriers of the accursed  Darksign .

Yes, indeed. The Darksign brands the  Undead . And in this land, the Undead are corralled and led to the north, where they are locked away, to await the end of the world... This is your fate.

"...Never have I ever… killed someone using a backflip?" A voice from within the cell asked his fellow cellmate, who replied with a deadpan tone.

"...And what makes you think I did that either?"

"... you're no fun, man!"

A man in a knight's armour clicked his tongue as he rolled on the floor in boredom, the other occupant of the cell. While a man in a sorcerer's adornment, only looked at him with scrunched eyebrows as another day passed in this forsaken prison cell.

After the two overlords were sucked into that wormhole, they ended up in this abnormally worn-down prison. At first, they expected to be able to find out who was the cause behind this easily, yet, the greatest surprise awaited them.

They weren't in the normal forms that they grew to be accustomed to. Adam was no longer in his chimeric beastly form, but rather in a knight's metal armour, while Ainz was no longer in his ghastly undead form covered by divine class academic robes, instead, was adorned in what appeared to be a sorcerer's garb, but of another class entirely not his own. Yet the surprise for the two didn't end there.

Even though their current forms are much more human than their previous ones, they were most certainly not human at all, or at least, aren't anymore.

Adam was neither in his angelic form or demonic form, but with the plain four-limbed anatomy he was used to in his mortal life. And where he would have expected to at least still retain his normal height and appearance, neither was present, his height a common six foot the same as his cellmate and friend, while his body, to put it lightly, resembled a hollowed-out corpse that has mummified a little, with blue lips, greyed and blackened skin, visible muscles and hollowed out eyes. The only resemblance to his past self resided in his hair which was as shaggy and uncombed as before. But became more damp due to the nature of their current environment.

The same could be said about his friend Ainz, who, while his form was much slimmer than his, was just as corpse-like as Adam, with the man's hair underneath his sorcerer's hat being tied up in a small ponytail.

"Alright." The First Man, now turned undead, spoke up as he rolled to face Ainz, who was sitting while leaning on the wall. "What exactly do we do now? It's been… fuck, I don't even know, hours? Days? Weeks? Months? Fucking years?! And we still haven't gotten out of this cell! I thought that whatever this key I had in my pouch would do the trick, but it doesn't fucking work, and that weird ring of yours that doesn't do shit can't help us either."

The man stood up as he removed his breastplate and showed the left side of his chest, where a growth of white tissue of sorts resembling a spider's webs surrounds the entire part of his left chest side while giving off the feeling that he is being burned constantly.

"And worse than that, we still don't fucking know what this weird shit on the two of us is. Is it some sort of infection? Cancer? Curse? Or all of the above? We don't have a single bloody clue, and the only "friends" we have here are a bunch of fuckers like us outside who have all lost their fucking minds, and there's that loud stomping nearby that we don't know who the cause of is!"

Adam shouted in rage for a moment before venting his anger by punching the wall, only to yelp in pain afterward.

"Fuck! And we don't even have our sweet badass strength like before! So we're not only trapped, but we're weak and ugly as shit too!" The undead in knight armour sat back down while shaking his hurting hand.

Ainz, seeing all this, couldn't help but sigh, but not exactly disagree with the First Man either. Adam was right, they were stuck in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar bodies, and they didn't even have their previous powers to support them. The only thing the two had at the moment that could be of use in a fight, if things were to ever get to that point, were two broken straight sword hilts.

The former skeletal Overlord could admit he somehow knows a single spell that he has never heard of before, called [Soul Arrow], he couldn't get the spell to work at all. And it dawned on him that he needed a catalyst of sorts to be able to cast this strange yet lone spell in his current repertoire.

'There's something extremely wrong here. Why are we in this place? For what? And could we even get back?'

Questions upon questions piled up inside the sorcerer's mind, yet no answer revealed itself to any of them. And it infuriated him.

"Fuck, all this ranting is just making me exhausted." Adam laid on his side once again before facing the wall, his hand serving as a pillow after he removed his steel gauntlet. "Wake me up, if something changes in this shithole."

Ainz couldn't get a word in before his now fellow undead was sound asleep, his snores echoing through the cell heavily.

The sorcerer sighed for what seemed like the umpteenth time today but didn't make any move to wake the armour wearer up.

Adam was right in that they had been stuck here for a long time, the formerly skeletal undead could only keep count for two weeks before giving up, seeing that there was no point with how day seemed to be the perpetual concept in this place, at least from what he assumes to be the case from the hole in the ceiling of his prison.

And because Adam makes it difficult to keep count of every second of every day with his, to the sorcerer's dismay, quite catchy tunes, that made the forced stay here better than what it would've been otherwise.

A few… minutes? Hours? Passed since that First-Man-turned-undead-knight fell asleep, leaving Ainz to experiment with his old spells or forcibly use the [Soul Arrow] he was bequeathed by whoever put them here. When suddenly, rumbling was heard from above the cell.

And just as suddenly abruptly, an undead, one of the same as Ainz and Adam, dropped from the hole. Yet was instead very much dead, the poor thing no longer moving. With what seemed like a blue light, glowing on top of the barely clothed corpse.

When Ainz looked up at the hole from which the cadaver fell, he was met with the form of a humanoid wearing knightly armour distinct from Adam's.

The two exchanged nary a single word or even a shake of their heads before the knight stood up and left promptly to who knows where. A roar was emitted from above afterward, signifying a danger perhaps the knight was facing and needed to focus on.

With the enigmatic figure disappearing, Ainz stood up warily before moving towards the corpse, and towards the light emitted from it. The former overlord could swear that the light seemed like a soul for sorts, or at least looked like one, from the many RPGs and other games he played along with Yggdrasil. And as soon as he touched the light, its embrace cold yet warm, a key dropped in his hand, and if he were to assume what it is, then it was their way out, the Dungeon Cell Key.

"Adam!"

As Ainz shouted the name of his sleeping cellmate, the man groggily woke up with a groan and a bit of drool from his mouth.

"Hu…huh? What's going on? …And who the fuck is this poor shit?" The man stood almost immediately as he saw the unfamiliar corpse in the middle of their cell, his hand holding the damaged straight sword hilt warily.

"Someone dropped it in here, along with the item that was on it," Ainz replied simply, showing the key in his hand, making Adam open his hollowed eyes a bit wider in surprise.

"Is that…?"

The sorcerer's lips twisted upward in an uncharacteristic grin as he answered. "Our way out. Let's leave this damned cell once and for all."

*Creeeeaaak…*

The cell door rustily moved as Adam moved first in front of Ainz, using his heavier and more powerful armour as a makeshift human shield for his weakly armoured friend.

As the two walked out of their cell, they were met with rows upon rows of similar cells to theirs, each hosting their own undead who seemed to have lost their mind.

"This is just…sad." Adam stared as he gazed pityingly at an undead similar to them with reddened eyes. It seemed to be kneeling and weeping directly in front of a wall, his voice hoarse as its screams echoed throughout its cell.

Ainz could only hum in agreement sadly. Since the two of them were transported to this… place, and in their new forms, all of his former skills and spells were now no more than mere memories, including his {Emotional Suppression} skill, which hampered his ability to feel emotion to their fullest extent.

And yet, what irony is it that the moment he could finally be rid of its constantly active state that made his life a metaphorically emotional hell, he was to be faced with such somber scenes.

The two continued onwards for a while as they were met with the sight of undead like them clad in black ruined togas. The beings merely stood around, their heads clutched in their hands, groaning constantly.

The two tried to keep their distance from one of them, yet to their misfortune, an accidental step in the wrong direction, made one of the corpses on the ground shift, disturbing one of the mindless undead before it gazed with hostility burning in the crimson lights serving as its eyes in its decayed head.

"Oh shit-!" Adam could only curse for a moment as he raised his armoured arm in the direction of the undead, which tried to punch the man, to no avail.

Ainz took advantage of the situation to bury his straight sword hilt in the chest of the undead, making the creature shudder for a moment before it finally dropped dead like the rest.

"Hah… thanks for the save, bro," Adam said with a smile on his decayed blue lips as he looked at his friend.

"No need, the fault was mine as I was the one who took accidentally got the Undead's attenti-"

Ainz shuddered as his hollowed-out eyes opened in shock for a moment.

He could feel, somehow, he could feel it when the undead took its final breath. Souls, literal souls, were somehow transferred to him.

"Uh, Ainz, are you okay?" Adam asked hesitantly as he saw his friend look weird for a moment before he turned to him, his expression somehow conveyed his feelings of stupefaction as he looked at Adam.

"When I killed the undead, I could feel it, souls, somehow were given to me."

Adam's eyes mirrored Ainz as he looked at the sorcerer in shock before confusion settled afterward.

"Wait… souls? Plural? How many exactly do you feel you… have right now?"

Ainz nodded slowly before closing his eyes for a moment, answering as he opened them again. "Twenty… twenty souls, to be exact. Though I can't feel if I have one myself or multiple like this poor fellow here."

Adam slowly nodded as he scratched his chin in thought, yet before he could pose another question to Ainz, a loud rumble was felt by the two of them.

"What in the…?" Adam looked out of the barred steel wall on the right side along with Ainz, and the sight that they saw made them gulp in hesitation and uncertainty.

Beyond the steel bars, was, to put it bluntly, a very fat and huge bipedal demon, with a small tail, two wings made simply of bone, an oversized belly and an ugly countenance for a head, with several horns on top of its head.

"... Let's not get in the way of that thing," Ainz said shortly as he looked at the huge demon that thankfully didn't notice them or didn't care that they were there.

"Agreed." Adam nodded as looking not far away on the wall, he found the decaying green corpse of an undead on the twisted steel bars, and if he were to guess who was the reason for such a gruesome death, it would be that oversized monster.

The two walked on more hesitantly as they kept throwing glances in the direction of the demon patrolling the large area separated from them.

As they kept walking, they spotted an undead, similar to the one that Ainz killed leaning on the wall, giving its back to them.

"Ainz, mind if I kill this thing? I need to know what exactly you felt when you took the souls off of that thing."

The sorcerer didn't argue with him as he simply nodded, giving Adam the chance to backstab the creature, which he took, felling the mindless undead in an instant.

Soon, the First Man's eyes widened as he could understand what Ainz was talking about, souls, the same number Ainz spoke of, were somehow transferred to him from the undead he killed.

"...You weren't kidding." Adam nodded towards his fellow undead who grimaced in thought, as the mystery regarding these souls and their use was still unknown to the two of them.

"Let's go for now, we need to get out of this place." Ainz crisply said as he eyed the demon warily, and Adam, understanding his intentions, nodded before moving up the flight the stairs with Ainz following him from behind.

The two then ended up in a middle-sized room thrice the size of their jail cell. Most of it was over flooded with water, with an entrance on the right, and another of the mindless undead sitting neck-deep in the water on the left.

Ainz, seeing an opportunity to collect these souls, stepped towards the absentminded undead, putting the creature down instantly before it could move to attack him.

His greyed eyebrows scrunched as he could feel more souls being transferred to himself, with a now new total of forty under his metaphorical belt.

The sorcerer looked at the knight and nodded, indicating that the same thing happened here, which Adam understood before moving through the short hallway followed by the other undead who got out of the deep water.

The two found themselves in a circular room with a ladder leading upwards to who knows where, and seeing no other alternative path anywhere, they began climbing upwards in hopes of finding an escape.

Chapter Text

As the pair of undead climbed up the ladder and exited the top of the large cylindrical room, they found themselves in a large courtyard with large double doors leading to another sector of the place they were in.

“Oi, what's that?” Adam pointed an armoured finger at what seemed to be a pile of ashes and bones with a sword made of two coiled blades stuck to it. A faint flame was lit where the sword met the ash pile.

The two were mystified by the random appearance of what they could only describe as a small bonfire, one wouldn't question finding outside in camps, but most certainly not in such bizarre locations like this one.

Yet, despite all that randomness of the situation, the two felt an attraction to it, as if it was calling them both towards it. And they responded to this call with hesitant steps.

When they made their way towards the bonfire, they felt a need of sorts, a need to kindle, to light the bonfire, and yet there was no wooden to throw to it or anything else of use.

But this didn't stop Ainz, who, out of instinct, despite never doing this before, place his hand over the sword, and as if the fire was a living creature, it responded to him as it roasted back to life, the flames reaching the hilt of the sword as sparks flew everywhere.

Bonfire lit.

“...Am I the only one that's still concerned?” Adam folded his arms as he looked at the fire with apprehension. While he is weirded out by the situation, he cannot help but feel a sense of safety or warmth coming from the bonfire, calling him to rest.

The sorcerer didn't give a large visible response aside from a small hum, as he sat by the fire and looked at it with scrutiny, as if hoping it would provide some answers.

Adam, though confused by his friend's actions, didn't argue as he sat by the fire as well, when suddenly, a wall of dark fog surrounded them from every side and above them all of a sudden before disappearing just a quickly, startling the two.

“What in the-?!” Ainz was the first to speak up as he looked at his surroundings, his broken sword by his side as he prepared himself for the potential ambush or anything else of the sorts.

Adam was no different as he instantly shot up to his feet, his back to Ainz's as they looked everywhere around the courtyard for the cause of the dark fog.

As moments flew by with no change to speak, the two dropped their guards as they looked confusingly at their surroundings before exchanging looks.

Ainz took the opportunity to look at the bonfire again before resting near it again. And Adam, seeing his friend do that, mirrored him in hopes of understanding his thought process.

And just as suddenly as before, the fog walls surrounded them again for a moment before disappearing once more, but this time, their hollowed eyes only widened in shock.

“Alright, why the fuck does this even happen?” Adam asked no one in particular as he stood up, eyeing the bonfire warily.

Ainz didn't respond for a moment as he hummed, his thoughts a whirlwind as he attempted to understand what was happening.

‘...this doesn't make sense, why is it that when we rest near this… campfire, fog walls appear around us for an instant? Does something happen outside of it that we aren't aware of?’

Ainz scratched his grayed skin for a moment as he mulled over any possible explanation for what was occurring, when just as suddenly, his eyes widened in realization before bolting towards the cylindrical room again.

“What the fuck!? Ainz, where are you going?!”

Adam followed the sorcerer who went down the ladder again, before moving towards the half sunken room and stopping just as suddenly.

“Alright! What in the fuck are you… do.. ing… the hell?”

Adam lost his trail of thoughts as he saw the undead that Ainz killed just recently. 

Who was very much not dead and sitting in the water cross-legged like before.

The two could only stare agape at the oblivious undead with hollowed eyes wide with shock.

“The bonfire…” Ainz muttered out slowly as he cupped his chin. “It's a respawner of sorts. Every time we rest at it, the… ‘enemies’ we kill come back to life, or perhaps they were never dead to begin with?”

Adam was silent for a moment as he folded his arms, his brain working overtime as he tried to comprehend the situation.

‘A respawner? Like in those video games? Does that mean that any enemy we face here will just come back if we rest near that bonfire? But then what's the purpose of resting there aside from making our life difficult???’

Adam clicked his tongue as he sighed. Since he existed and lived with literal supernatural creatures and was one himself at that, he thought that he has already seen everything that life has to offer.

But clearly, the universe thought otherwise and showed him that with whatever bullshit situation they found themselves in.

“Let's just go back,” Adam said as he massaged his decayed forehead. Going back up the steel ladder to drier ground.

Ainz gave the mindless undead a final look before departing as well, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion all the meanwhile.

“It's not… budging.” Adam tried to shove and pull the steel door in the corner to no avail.

Ainz sighed as he shook his head, they at first thought that Adam's key would be useful here, but just like with the cell door from before, it didn't work, and trying to wrench the door open doesn't seem to work either.

“Alright, that's enough, it seems that the large double doors are our only path forward.” Ainz sighed as he looked at the ominous massive gateway. The entire thing screamed of some area boss on the opposite side, if his gamer instincts haven't failed him yet.

Adam groaned out an affirmation as he cracked his back, going towards the double doors with Ainz, until…

“Hey Ainz, is it just me or is that fat demon we saw downstairs up there? Through that window?”

The sorcerer raised an eyebrow at Adam's words, but didn't reply with anything else as he took a few steps back with his back to the bonfire as he looked at what Adam was staring at.

And it made him want to scream while clutching his decayed head.

‘So there was a fucking boss on the other side after all! Absolutely great! Good job Suzuki! You did really well! Dammit, why couldn't I be wrong about this?! And we don't even have any proper weapons to kill that thing!’

The man took a few deep breaths before marching towards the double doors, the First Man's eyebrows raised as he heard his friend mutter and curse under his breath.

“When I open these doors,” Ainz began. “Expect for us to end up in some large arena and for that giant tub of lard to come hurtling down to fight us.”

Adam was silent for a moment as he digested Ainz's words. He wanted to question why is the sorcerer saying it so nonchalantly despite knowing their current unprepared state to fight something of that measure, yet a look into Ainz's eyes, that seemed more dead than they even were, made him grow silent. As he simply nodded.

‘I’ll take a wager and say that he was in this exact situation before.’

He wanted to chuckle at the ridiculousness of the situation, but seeing the gravity of their problem, especially with how their only methods of offense being a pair of rusty broken swords. He straightened himself a bit more as Ainz slowly pushed the double doors open.

As the two went beyond the gate, they found themselves in a large room with several pillars on each side, a large double doored gate on the opposite side, and multitudes of ceramic pots surrounding the pillars.

And on top of the practically nonexistent roof, was the demon, who hasn't yet came down to attack them yet.

As Ainz followed Adam inside, the doors behind the two of them magically closed shut, startling the two for a moment as they gripped their broken swords all the more harder.

Taking caution filled steps towards the center the room as the demon was staring at them every step of the way.

As soon as the two got close towards it, the monstrous being roared before jumping. Dropping towards them with a powerful seismic force.

Adam and Ainz had to split to avoid being crushed under the demons' weight. Dust and small debris flying everywhere as the creature got back up on its legs.

Adam took advantage of the situation to try and attack the monster from behind, alas, the only thing that served to do is anger the demon, as the broken sword could only scratch it, and even then, barely make a mark.

The creature made a powerful tail sweep that threw Adam to one of the pillars, the monstrous demon then followed that up by raising its huge hammer up in the sky before smashing it against Adam, killing the First Man.

Or it would've done so, had it not been for Ainz stabbing his broken sword in between the scales of the demon’s tail, making it groan in pain before shifting focus.

Adam took advantage of the situation to get back up and attack the demon from behind, making it switch focus once more.

The two kept constantly attacking the massive monster repeatedly in this fashion, making it turn and turn again and again, and chipping away at it each time.

Alas, the monster had enough of their nonsense, and with a powerful clash of its hammer against the ground, it flew up high in the air before falling back down.

The force of the drop sent a shockwave that threw Adam and Ainz to the piles of ceramics on each side. Pained groans and moans emitted from both as the power of the shock wave plus the multitudes of splintered unloaded bricks tore at their bodies.

‘Damn it…’ Ainz attempted to crawl back up on his feet, but the pieces of the broken pots were lodged inside his shins.

‘Am I seriously going to die? Again??’ Ainz, or rather, Suzuki, clicked his tongue, annoyed yet accepting of the situation. When he first ended up in Hell, it was due to his death on Earth, his sickness sapping his very health till he was no more. Which led to him being reborn as a demon but in the form of his Yggdrasil Avatar Momonga, or as he is now known as Ainz Ooal Gown, and leading him to meeting the angel turned sinner First Man, Adam.

As he saw Adam getting pummeled by the demon’s hammer, he saw the creature then turn to him, to finish him off as well. Yet, where one would experience fear, Ainz could do nothing but simply accept the outcome as it is, the first time he died on Earth has more than just taken the edge and fear out of dying. Seeing it now as nothing more than a part of the cycle of life.

As the demon got closer, Ainz glimpsed beside him a faint red light, and turning his head to look at the source, he could see the light of a torch in the distance behind some opening, a doorway in fact.

‘Haha… we should've gone for that instead of trying to fight the bastard.’ The sorcerer laughed for a moment before groaning, the simple act tiring him out.

‘Ah well, we can't do anything about it. It was a good life, I guess.’

*Splat!*

Light and warmth.

That was all Adam could see faintly and sense in this inky blackness. In all honesty, he didn't expect to die for the third time in a row, or to even be transported somewhere and turned into an undead zombie to begin with.

The first time he died, it was from old age, surrounded by his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

The second was when he got stabbed in the back by that demonic gremlin that Lucifuck's crotchspawn keeps around.

And now, he died again. This time by that hammer wielding demonic fat tub of lard.

It wasn't fair at all. Then again, life never was completely fair to anybody. God Himself told him that before. That it will throw you multiple curveballs throughout your existence and your only course of action is to simply pull through it and move forward.

But why, why oh why, is it always because of demons? The first time he and Eve got kicked out was because of Lucifer and Lilith's petty fucking asses that tricked Eve and him in turn, leading to them to live in a world that was out to get them.

Then he died at the hands of a miserly sorry excuse of a demon and a human who served that used tampon sorry excuse of an overlord that Lucifer's whore kept around despite pretending she was all about redemption and helping people.

And now he gets killed by a demon. At least this one looked the part and had the visage of a genuine demon, not whatever Hell was saturated with.

Adam mentally sighed as the feeling of the warmth he felt expanded, overtaking his entire form. He doesn't know if he'll be given a fourth chance at life or not. But in all honesty, he feels a bit exhausted, the warmth in this abyssal darkness felt like a comfortable blanket and bed to his weary soul.

‘Maybe I'll close my eyes, just for a moment.’

“...m!”

‘Ugh…’

“...d…m!”

‘Who the hell is making all this noise?’

“Adam! Wake up!”

The knight groaned as he groggily lifted himself up with a groan. It felt like he was in a deep slumber for a long, long, long time.

“That you, Bones? Fuuuuck… I was having a dream where we fell into a hole and got sucked into another world and got turned to undead… And we got killed by a fatass demon afterwards. No offense dude, but being undead like you, even with flesh, sucks ass-”

As Adam rubbed his eyes and slowly opened them, he was indeed met with the sight of his friend who he nicknamed ‘Bones’.

Except that the man in question had more flesh on him than he was supposed to, plus was somehow as tall as Adam.

‘Did he get taller or did I get shorter?’

“Finally had enough sleep?” Ainz rhetorically raised a silver eyebrow while waiting for Adam to get back up, which the man did with sluggish movements as he looked at his body that was adorned with a suit of armor that were most definitely not his usual clothes at all.

“The fuck?” Adam turned his limbs around as he looked at both the backs of his hands and his palms incredulously. “All that shit we went through… it was actually real?! Even the fatty demon?! Then how are we alive?!?!”

Ainz sighed for a moment before motioning to where they situated; it was the chamber before the room where they faced the demon, specifically near the weird out of place source of warmth in this place.

As Adam stared at the fires of the bonfire again, he slowly muttered curiously. “That… thing, can bring us back to life?”

The sorcerer nodded as he cupped his chin while looking at it curiously. “Indeed, from what I can assume, it doesn't only serve to ‘resurrect’ any slain foe, but us as well. Though from what I deduce, I lost all of the souls I gained, though whether it be because of the process of death or the resurrection itself is a whole different matter.”

Adam blinked at Ainz's explanation as he felt it too, the sorcerer was right, he also lost those twenty souls he got. Maybe that was the price of being brought back to life, or was it something else?

“One thing's clear though, we shouldn't test it until we find out what exactly makes this thing tick,” Adam slowly stood up as he patted himself down with a sigh.

Ainz agreed with him with a nod. The man pursed his lips in thought before speaking. “Speaking of all of this, we don't need to fight the… Asylum Demon.”

Adam looked incredulously at him for a moment, both for the statement itself and the name the sorcerer gave the monster.

“Don't ask,” Ainz waved his hand. “I don't know how or why, but that was the name that immediately ran through my mind as soon as we entered that place. But it at least gives us a name for this place we're in. An Asylum of sorts for the undead, considering that there are no creatures here with the exception of that demon.”

Adam warily nodded as he was creeped out by the fact nonetheless. Many things are happening here and they can only guess and hope for the best. “Alright… What did you mean about not needing to fight that thing though? Do you have a plan?”

Ainz nodded as he looked at Adam. “Before… dying, I saw a doorway on the corner, near the upper left side of the chamber. It's big enough to fit us but too small for the Asylum Demon. If we can get there, we wouldn't have to fight that thing at all.”

Adam widened his eyes as he thought about it. It was quite smart, with their current weapons, they'd need perfect teamwork and luck for the demon to not kill them like last time. Something the two lack in both in the current moment.

“Alright,” Adam cracked his knuckles. “No time like the present, let's do this shit.”

The demon groaned in boredom as je killed another two fools who attempted to encroach on his domain.

These undead were all the same, hollow or not. The same as that armoured fool who he killed on the roof.

The asylum demon huffed out a short laugh as he thought about the way the knight's bones made an audible crunch as he crashed inside a room below. It was a fleeting moment of fun. But it was well worth the effort, especially when killing that knight.

The demon growled as it remembered them again. The silver knights of Gwyn, who hunted him and the other demons down during the war against his race, though those two filthy armoured cretins were not of their elk, killing them was still euphoric.

Ironically, just as he was daydreaming about the recent killings, the doors to his outermost chambers were opened once again, and to his amusement, it was the two wretches again.

It seems that the two haven't gone Hollow yet if they could still use the power of the accursed Darksign.

Ah well, he'll just have to kill them again and again till they do become Hollow and die for good.

As Adam and Ainz entered through the doors again, the demon didn't waste any time and charged at them with its hammer held aloft.

The two ducked, or rather rolled, out of the way as the great hammer destroyed the ground they were just standing on.

As the two gulped at the close call they were in, they looked at each other and nodded, before running in two different directions to distract the Asylum Demon.

The demon growled menacingly as it missed its mark, turning around as it swung its hammer, felling multiple columns as they collided with the powerful weapon.

The two undead had to duck and jump to avoid the falling debris that became obstacles to their path towards the doorway.

Unfortunately for them, seeing that the two didn't intend to fight, the demon understood their plan and moved to intercept it.

By throwing its hammer in the direction of the door.

As Ainz and Adam got close to the door, they saw the demon preparing to throw the giant weapon in the direction of their only escape.

As the weapon flew through the air, Ainz and Adam bolted forwards to try and outrun the attack.

The sorcerer dashed towards the doorway before sliding on the ground, moving at a lower height as he slid right through the doorway before the iron bars were lowered from above.

The hammer finally struck the wall above the doorway, causing a cave-in of debris caused by the shattered structure.

As the dust settled, Ainz coughed as he swatted away the remaining particles, taking a few deep breaths as he grinned to himself.

“Looks like we got away, huh? …Adam?” When the sorcerer didn't hear his friend's voice, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion before shock filled his eyes.

Adam was indeed near him, but he was on the other side of the door and debris.

“Oh fuck.”

Ainz scrambled to get to the portcullis as he tried to lift it, barely doing so as the debris from the other side made it difficult to move it freely.

“Dammit! Ainz, there’s no point.” Adam bit his lip angrily as he looked at the horrendous situation they, or rather, he was now in.

“You just go and find a way for us to get out!”

“Like hell will I leave you out here!” Ainz angrily glared at him as he squeezed his hand through the steel portcullis and punched a bit of the debris so he could continue trying.

Suddenly, the rage-filled growls of the monster interrupted the two as the Asylum Demon began walking towards his hammer, and in turn, Adam.

“Dude! I’ll be fine! Remember I still have that bonfire near me so I could resurrect! I’ll try to kill the fat fuck, while you go find us a way outside or better weapons at least!”

Ainz bit his decayed lip for a moment in thought before nodding, giving Adam a few words of wisdom before walking down the flight of stairs. “Alright, just don’t try anything extreme, or stupid, or both.”

“Like hell I do either of that! …Most of the time.”

The two exchanged a grin before leaving, with Ainz going away to find a solution to their dilemma, while Adam is left to fight the Asylum Demon, who has finally retrieved his hammer.

The First Man grinned as he held his straight sword hilt in a fighting stance, akin to how one wields a dagger. “Alright you fat bastard, let’s see if you can kill me again!”