The Bloody Valkyrie

Ainz only ever visited to withdraw funds to pay for the upkeep of Nazarick so it had already been many years since he last stepped foot here.

Failing to retrieve the password from his memories, Ainz said the universal password:

“「Glory to Ainz Ooal Gown.」”

The dark door responded to this phrase, and some text appeared like floating images in water. The words which appeared were: 「Ascendit a terra in coelum iterumque descendit in terram et recipit vim superiorum et inferiorum」

(TL: “With great sagacity it doth ascend gently from Earth to Heaven. Again it doth descend to Earth, and uniteth in itself the force from things superior and things inferior.” ~Holmyard, Alchemy, p.95)

“…Tabula Smaragdina really was a perfectionist.”

Ainz couldn’t help but let this slip, getting a vague reaction from Albedo.

His mind drifted to one of the people responsible for designing Ainz Ooal Gown’s mechanisms.

Of all the small mechanisms in the Great Tomb of Nazarick, two were by his design. Abundantly sophisticated designs like this ate up a large amount of the given data quota in the Great Tomb of Nazarick, causing other players to become unable to design freely and hence caused them to protest. He took responsibility, paying for cash items to expand the amount of data.

Ainz paid serious attention to the words that surfaced. This must be a password hint, but what does it mean?

Ainz spent some time relentlessly searching for the answer hidden deeply in his mind.

Before long, Ainz finally found the door code from his deepest memories.

“It should be —— Thus thou wilt possess the glory of the brightness of the whole world, and all obscurity will fly far from thee—— right?”

Ainz who spoke looked towards Shizu as if seeking confirmation.

Shizu nodded in response to Ainz.

Other than Tabula Smaragdina, the comrade who was also responsible for designing mechanisms was the creator of the NPC Shizu. Her character settings were set to be familiar with Nazarick’s mechanism unlocking methods. Because of this, Shizu should have easily been able to decipher the earlier password hint.

But despite knowing this, Ainz still did not ask for her assistance, simply for the sake of his stubbornness of wanting to open the door with his own efforts.

Coming to this world gave life to the Great Tomb of Nazarick. That is why he wanted to be the first to leave his footprint on this ground. Just like how a person wishes to step on fresh, undisturbed snow, Ainz wished to open the door himself.

As if in response to Ainz’ wishes, the black shadow was sucked away into a single point, and before long, the original shadow was gone as if it had never been there. Only a fist-sized black sphere floated in the air.

Because the shadow covering the door had disappeared, it was possible to peer inside the opened hole. There lay a well-managed and orderly world, totally different from the places before. If an analogy is desired, the most fitting description would be similar to a museum exhibition.

The dimly lit room was very long, stretching inwards continuously.

There was a space of about five meters between the floor and ceiling. It was not designed with human height in mind, but to allow entry for non-humans. The width of the room was approximately ten meters.

The floor was closely paved with slabs emitting black light, appearing like a single enormous piece of stone. It created an atmosphere of solemn tranquility.

Both sides of the room were lined with numerous weapons, which was quite a spectacle to behold.

“Get in.”

Without waiting for the response of the other three people, Ainz walked straight into the armoury.

Greeting the trio was a range of weapons, including broadswords, great swords, estocs, flamberges, scimitars, patas, shotels, kukris, claymores, short swords, swordbreakers…

Of course, the display consisted of more than just swords. There were also one-handed axes, two-handed axes, one-handed blunt weapons, one-handed spears, bows, cross-bows…

Even after classifying the weapons, one would still lose count.

Apart from those, there were also many flashy weapons which raised the question of whether they could still be classified as weapons. Some seemed impossible to fit inside their scabbards and focused only on its appearance, etc. These types of weapons made up the majority.

Almost none of these weapons were made from common metals like iron.

There were weapons with blades made from blue crystal, pure white blades with gold patterns, black blades with engraved purple runes, even a bow with strings seemingly made out of light.

Aside from these, there were weapons that were obviously dangerous with just a glance.

A double-handed axe with blood oozing out of its edge, a huge mace where faces of agony would occasionally flash across the black metal, a spear which looked as if it were formed from entwining human hands. Such weapons were also numerous.