30 Chapter 30: Q&A |N02|

Q&A section number two!

Skip forward a chapter for the story.

Note: If you put in a question regarding something and I didn't answer, either I somehow didn't notice it or, more likely, I deliberately chose to not answer it because the question would be a spoiler. And answering 'maybe' to an overly spoiler question might as well be 'yes'.

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Questions regarding 'love life'

Q: How big will Momonga's harem be?

A: Basically Issei 2.0: extra boobaloo. Not all of them will be in his Peerage.

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Q: Sex scenes are gross, can we have less of them?

A: Well, 'tis a DxD fic. Having a DxD fic without lemons is like having an Overlord fic without 'sasuga ainz-sama' moments. Remember that DxD is an ecchi anime/manga from a 'harem hentai with a plot'-LN.

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Q: Does Momonga have sexual desire?

A: In a wonky way. Suzuki Satorou has, 'Momonga' doesn't, but when all is combined it comes down to 'yes, but he can ignore it if it suits his goals'. A true patrician, like how a certain purple-armored red-eyed romaboo would put it. His emotion suppression won't get in the way as the ability broke partially due to repeated abuse, and also because he no longer considers physical attraction to be as shocking as he did before. This was a big point in the previous chapters and in ch 28 particularly.

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Q: Want Gasper in the harem

A: May or may not happen. After all, Suzuki Satoru put a valiant fight, but his duel with Peroroncino-plushie over [Big Boobs and Hetero Only] versus [Lolis are Justice, and Traps make it Better] ended in a draw.

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Q: Will youkai be in Ainz's harem?

A: Maybe.

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Q: Who will bear Momonga's first child?

A: Pretty sure that it's gonna be a close tie once the time comes. Good thing contraceptives are fairly advanced in DxD.

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Questions regarding characters.

Q: How long are you going to be using 'Rias's mental breakdown' joke?

A: She's starting to get used to the situation.

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Q: Yuuto and Koneko changed their minds really quickly.

A: Yes, but not fully in Koneko's case, and also I try to keep things moving at a decent pace, so spending five chapters to help Yuuto get over his crippling angery towards Holy Swords probably wouldn't be too fun to read, specifically when you can just apply Momonga-brand of insanity and see as the stains flush off alongside the rest of the mental trauma-toilet's contents.

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Q: Want Ulbert-plushie.

A: Something chuuni is already rising within Momonga, and it's not the shield hero.

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Q: Want more non-Momonga perspectives on the situation, like from the POV of Elder Lich-Riser.

A: There will be quite a few peanut galleries to gawk at the situation, but first the situation needs to happen.

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Q: Was the cat Serafall almost squashed Kuroka?

A: No, just a regular house-cat. Her time will come.

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Questions regarding gear, power, items, etc.

Q: Will Momonga learn new spells from DxD?

A: When he 'finds' sufficiently 'high-level' corpses and uses [Dark Wisdom] to get a new spell slot.

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Q: Can Momonga summon X creatures for gathering information and doing tasks for him?

A: Yes, but since the Elder Lich went off and did what he did, Momonga would feel a bit wary over summoning Shadow Demons or other now-sentient summons he normally uses. As far as he knows, the shadow demons would likely try to establish the illuminati and a dystopian surveillance state in the human world if he told them 'I need you to keep an eye out on things'. His hand was sort-of forced when it came to Angels though.

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Q: Are the summoned Angels permanent?

A: As long as Momonga doesn't re-cast the spell.

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Q: Cherubim Gatekeepers have 8 wings

A: In Overlord, they have 4 total. [Dominion Authority], a lower-level angel, has 8 wings. Moreover while in DxD number of wings is analogous to power level, that is not the case for Angels from YGGDRASIL.

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Q: Serafall thought she could 'resurrect' Momonga with just one Knight Piece? How strong is Serafall in relation to Momonga?

A: Yes, and as it is, Serafall could win against Momonga fairly easily as long as he didn't use a decent chunk of his cash items and WCI's. She would have a decent chance even if Momonga was in his YGGDRASIL 'Overlord' body, despite his skeletal body being nearly hard-counter to her 'build', but any fight between the two would be quickly joined by other Maous due to the collateral damage the two of them would cause.

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Q: Character X is powerful, seeing how they obliterated a mountain at one point, how is Momonga going to compare?

A: Strong AoE effects don't necessarily mean that the user is powerful in single combat. To put a MMO example, you probably wouldn't send a AoE specialized fire mage to fight a assassination-specialized rogue. Moreover, Momonga is a 'technical' type of fighter that leverages abilities, politics and vulnerabilities to win 'fights'. Likewise Momonga has quite few strong AoE abilities, although nothing to the level of DxD characters at maximum levels- and he doesn't need to have them either.

After all, the power to obliterate a mountain or a country or even a continent does you no good if you don't know where your enemy is, and if you know where he is, then he has your family as hostages, and when you move against the hostage-taker you get stabbed by your friend, who turned out to be the boss of the hostage-taker and your real enemy, and when you cried out for help from your allies you found out that they believed that you were the villain in the first place. Which is how 'Momonga' would 'fight' in optimal conditions. 'Suzuki Satoru' in turn would use a set of spells specifically tailored to counter the 'mountain-destroyer' after arranging an ambush uphill from the 'mountain-destroyer' using a puppet, and once the pupped had been destroyed and the 'mountain-destroyer's strength drained, he'd swoop in for the kill.

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Q: Momonga feels neutered/weak/pathetic/underpowered.

A: I already stated in last Q&A that unless Momonga could prepare himself and gather information, he wouldn't last long against most of the top-tiers of the DxD. The last chapters, I guess, just showed that in practise. Although Vali is not a 'top-tier', he's strong enough that he can give Momonga a pause due to his [Sacred Gear].

DxD universe is, actually, saturated with fairly powerful beings unlike the New World of Overlord. Think of it like Platinum Dragon Lord's around every corner. So Momonga is taking every precaution he can, while also trying to make sure to not make himself an easy, lone target by making alliances and taking hostages, even if the latter don't know they are being used as hostages just yet. One of the best ways of countering an intelligent enemy, after all, is to not make it your enemy in the first place, and if they become your enemy, make them not want to be your enemy.

Momonga is more than familiar with the concept of survivability onion, even more so since he knows that if he slips up and lets people know he's actually the 'supreme being', he's going to be alone and against multiple strong enemies.

In the same vein, Momonga isn't in his original 'Overlord' body, so most of his defensive abilities are heavily neutered, meaning that he has to be extra careful as while he has high health, he doesn't resist damage all that well. And the 'fragility' combined with his strong abilities means that most of the fights are very alpha-heavy and are over quickly, instead of taking five seasons and a filler arc to finish.

However, when fighting against something such as medium or high-class devils, he'd have little trouble. In terms of fighting the very top, he's not quite there.

Simply put, Momonga isn't overpowered, or underpowered, but simply powerful.

That might feel that he's 'underpowered' since Overlord fans might be used to him stomping everyone without hassle as a demigod or actual god, but that's also why I waited putting him against a 'strong enemy' for so long. Basically, I was trying to slow-boil the idea that maybe Momonga isn't the top dog right now, since I know if I front-load that idea then around half of the Overlord fans wouldn't give the story even a chance.

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Q: Ability interactions between YGGDRASIL and DxD are wonky.

A: In a way. I believe that more accurate saying would be that 'both abilities exist with each other rather than despite each other. What I mean by that is that while the DxD characters are affected by Yggdrasil magic, so are Yggdrasil characters affected by DxD magic. Indeed, I believe I already said that this wouldn't be a curbstomp fic, and there are few things that turn a fic into a curbstomp more than giving the other side complete immunity from the other side's abilities.

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Q: Supertier spells don't use Experience.

A: No, they don't, with the exception of [Wish upon a Star]. However summoning certain undead does consume experience, which is not a supertier spell, but for some reason I got a lot of messages noting this.

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Q: Are Lognius Gears DxD's equivalents to World-class items?

A: Yes, Momonga already theorized as much after his talk with Ddrag. He's also not fond of using WCI's willy-nilly, as revealing one's trump cards for minor reasons would be foolish. In addition he's worried that Ddraig can read his mind if he used [Boosted Gear] and found out about the Elder Lich-situation, and ratted him out.

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Q: Will Momonga get a [Sacred gear], and will his [Sacred Gear] be [Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown]?

A: He already has one, and the latter would only be the case if he was in the sacred gear like Ddraig in [Boosted Gear], and not as its wielder. That'd be another type of fic entirely.

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Q: Would Momonga be able to use [Boost] with [Boosted Gear]?

A: Yes.

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Q:Will Ainz's abilities change if he empowers Ddraig's gloves with them?

A: Yes, they become much more literal.

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Q: Would boosts from [Boosted Gear] be able to enhance Ainz's Super-tier Magic Wish Upon A Star spell? If so, in what way would it amplify the spell?

A:Yes, and it would stop being a monkey's paw

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Q: Could Ainz strengthen his skills with [Boosted Gear] to match the enemies on a level with Shiva?

A: Technically. But once someone starts to close towards that level of power, they're getting to the territory where anyone already holding such ridiculous power would go for a pre-emptive strike to squash any growing potential rivals. So it's in Momonga's best interests to keep his cards close to his chest. Thanks to detection capabilities, any attempt to [Boost] to rival someone like Shiva would instantly ping on his radar and invite disaster upon anyone who tried to harness such power without having a good reason. Even more so if Shiva tried to use direct divination to spy on Momonga directly to verify his intent, and got a anti-divination fireball to the face for his troubles.

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Q: Will Ainz be able to subdue undead (such as vampires) by controlling undead?

A: Yes, but he's a bit wary of overt use of mind-controlling abilities as if they were dispelled or discovered by people who knew the person before mind-control, he might blow his cover.

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Q: Сould true death kill the gods without the opportunity to revive?

A: Yes, but not from the get-go, they'd resist the spell if it was used as an opening. Permanently killing a god would also turn just about every single pantheon in the whole world hostile to Momonga as the ability to kill a god permanently is kinda a big deal, specifically if it's owned by 'some nobody'.

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Q: If you had to associate a Level to the current momon what would it be?

A: Momonga would be level 100 on conceptual, or 'soul' level. 'Momonga's cosmetic body' would be around level 15, which had gone up ten levels since Momonga's arrival to DxD. Momonga's underlying 'body' would be a level 100 skeleton that is in the process of becoming a full-blown Overlord, and it is getting remodeled by repeated exposure to 'Momonga' in order to 'fill the shoes'. However, it is lacking most of YGGDRASIL's absolute immunities such as [High-Tier Physical Immunity] and [High-Tier Magical Immunity], as the 'source' for the skeletal body is from DxD, rather than from YGGDRASIL. That also means that the body is much more vulnerable to 'conventional' attacks.

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Q: How does level scaling work in YGGDRASIL and DxD? Does DxD 'lvl 100' character and 'lvl 100' YGGDRASIL character share similar stats?

A: YGGDRASIL characters are much more min-maxed in an optimal or cookie-cutter build. Unfortunately Momonga's build is neither. On the other hand, while DxD 'lvl 100's' have more health, mana, and such, they have more vulnerabilities that can be exploited. For instance YGGDRASIL vampires would roll their eyes at garlic, while Gasper would be instantly disabled by it.

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Q: If Ainz kills Vali, would he resurrect him as a peerage member? or would he use Dark Wisdom on him?

A: Probably latter, considering that he fits the criteria, unless Vali revealed that he had a powerful patron, in which case he'd try to resurrect him.

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Q: if he resurrects him... how many pieces would that cost? if he uses only a pawn or a knight piece... would that lead to an interesting situation with people trying to understand that Ainz is THAT powerful?

A: Momonga would have to use all his remaining pawns.

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Q: If he uses Dark Wisdom, would it work? would it teach him a spell to Divide? or is Divide strictly a skill, and thus Ainz cannot copy it? if that's the case, then Dark Wisdom is almost 100% useless since most things in DxD would be classified as skills, not spells…

A: [Dark Wisdom] would trigger from Vali's corpse, but it wouldn't be able to teach him [Divide]. [Dark Wisdom] only gives him spell slots, allowing him to learn more spells. That is not incredibly powerful, but neither is it useless. DxD has very strong abilities, but also has some spells that have interesting combos with YGGDRASIL spells.

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Q: if Dark Wisdom works, and it consumes Vali, would it consume the gear as well? or would Vali'a corpse be enough? or perhaps would Ainz need to target the gear specifically with it?

A: [Vanishing Dragon] would, well, vanish upon Vali's death, going to a new owner, so [Dark Wisdom] would only consume his corpse. He'd need to pull Albion out of the gear, kill him, and then use his corpse if he wanted to use [Dark Wisdom] on Albion. If he could kill Albion is another matter entirely, but he'd have a sizable advantage if he used his personal WCI.

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Q: What would happen to the 'twenty' world items from Overlord when used? Would they go into cooldown or go into a random location to be re-found by someone else?

A: They would go to a new location to be found randomly, much like Sacred Gears except that instead of finding a person, the WCI would find a place of significance.

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Questions regarding Vali v Momonga 'fight':

Whoa, there were a lot of questions about this. And in a way, every time there has been a fight scene, fans from both sides have risen up to voice their displeasure.

In a way it reminds me of a star wars x warhammer 40k fic I read in the past where a super star destroyer went against emperor-class battleship, and while the naval battle raged in the writing, a crusade was fought in reviews with both fiction's fans complaining that their favorite spaceboat wasn't getting the love it deserved or was being portrayed unfairly.

Point is, unless official writers of both universes collaborated to establish a crossover canon with each other to set power levels in stone, there will always be a degree of author bias or compromise made for the sake of the story that is being told.

Subjective things are subjective, is what I'm saying.

So, fight questions/argument- this might get a bit ranty, so my apologies in advance:

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Q: Ainz doesn't fight like Ainz.

A: Everyone often has a view of how a character would fight or react in a scenario. Here he more or less has to keep one hand behind his back at all times, so he's having to use a more limited skill set due to circumstances he's found himself in, than it he fought as 'Ainz Ooal Gown, the King of Sorcerer's Kingdom and Overlord of Great Tomb of Nazarik'.

Keeping in mind that every new spell Momonga reveals also harms his cover-image, and also gives information from his abilities to the Maous, which would also mean that he has a motive for trying to fight with as few abilities as possible instead of revealing his full skill set. As far as he knows the sudden attacker might have even been a deliberate prod from the Maous to make him reveal his abilities.

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Q: Why hasn't Momonga used his WCI's yet?

A: Because they are trump cards that shouldn't be used unless absolutely necessary, lest the enemy learn of their presence and prepares countermeasures.

In battle against Vali he didn't open up with a WCI because even if he had destroyed Vali with one, he'd have revealed one of his trump cards to Serafall who he knows is skulking around somewhere. And Momonga knows that if he gets found out, she's likely to be one of his main enemies, being Maou, and any non-fudged info he'd give to her would only be used against him.

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Q: Why didn't Momonga [Perfect Warrior] against Vali when he was nearly out of mana?

A: Because [Perfect Warrior] is not a trump card in actual combat, but a desperate move that is used when all other alternatives are cut for a magic caster, as it also blocks off all magic. Even though Momonga's magic is neutered by [Divide], he has mana potions, and can still use CC like [Grasp Heart] and suchlike to hold Vali while his summons do the stabbing. Moreover he doesn't know if [Perfect Warrior] was affected by [Divide] as well.

Technically speaking two of his world-class items become usable when he's using [Perfect Warrior], but [Ginnungagap] is only an indestructible halberd in its weapon form and capable of wide-area deletion as a WCI-staff form, but it's deletion is not strong against individual targets. Not to mention that he'd obliterate his own estate and decent-sized chunk of Kuoh when using it, that kind of wide-area deletion is hard to sweep under the rug. [Billion Blades] would have been much more useful but, again, Serafall, and it would have also been an overkill.

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Q: [Divine Dividing] is now OC, it should only work on touch.

A: It only works on touch.

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Q: Vali's [Divide] seems overpowered.

A: [Divide] is overpowered from YGGDRASIL point of view. That's quite the point. DxD's abilities are few in number, as I recall saying in the previous Q&A, but they are individually very strong. Momonga knows that as well, as Ddraig told him about [Boosted Gear] and [Boost], which he deemed 'broken', justifiably so.

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Q: Could [Silence] nullify Vali's use of [Divide]?

A: In the same way that a tree won't give sound when it falls in the forest and no-one is around to hear it. Which is to say, verbal command is part of the skill, but not dependent on it. That's as far as I know how the silencing would affect it. Silencing spells would actually cause more harm to Momonga's ability to cast spells, as he'd have to switch to using silent spells exclusively and thus shoulder increased mana drain.

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Q: At the moment, Ainz looks too weak to withstand the majority of even the mid-level rivals, let alone the highest. Is he holding back or is it his body holding him back? Or is he simply not aware of his powers because he has not yet tested them? (For example, the enemies are the level of the gods.)

A: He was hit by [Divide] which cut his power in half, twice, cutting his power to a quarter of what it was. That was more or less the only reason Vali didn't die from [Grasp Heart], and instead was only partially crippled. It wasn't so much that Momonga was too weak, but rather, that his enemy is fighting on a 'conceptual' level from the very get-go, the highest level of magical combat.

'Conceptual' level of magical combat being the fight that happens against, and with, concepts of things- a spell that burns your skin is regular, physical damage spell, whereas an ability that causes the very concept of your power to be cut in half is attacking the concept of one's very being. Think of it like something from Fate akin to Gae Bolg, which when used twists 'The target was hit, therefore blow has been struck' to 'A blow has been struck, therefore the target was hit'. The weapon twists the concept of causality on its head and causes a 'hit' to be unavoidable on the account that a 'blow was struck'. It's not that Momonga is incapable of fighting at that level (e.g. [True Death]), he just wasn't fighting at the start on that level.

Moreover Vali is definitely not only a 'mid-level' rival, those would be something along the lines of Xenovia & co, and her 'fight' with Momonga went… somewhat as expected.

Think of Vali's and Momonga's fight like a veteran boxer challenging a junior boxer to a light spar, and the other person reveals themselves to be someone else entirely than who you intended to fight, and then the new person pulls out a gat and domes you, but you reveal that you had a helmet the whole time and pull out an assault rifle.

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Questions regarding story flow and progression:

Q: When are the girls going to stop fainting?

A: When Momonga stops being Momonga.

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Q: Why so many cliffhangers?

A: I usually favor 'setup- story- conclusion/setup' style of chapters. At the start of the chapter is a 'setting up phase' where a new character is introduced, or an event is started, or something is being set up to be used later. Think of it as putting a chekhov's gun to the wall alongside others. Next is the story that was set up earlier, which may or may not be directly related to the setup from the start, and where a chekhov's gun from one of the setups from before is fired. Then what follows is the conclusion, or a setup for the next chapter or a scene which starts another event.

The decision where to cut a chapter is always a bit difficult one, as not doing so will lead to huge mini-novel chapters that take forever to get out if the cut is too long, or lead to a case of 'crossing a bridge while building it' if too short, where people who come to read later don't find cliffhangers as they can just click to next chapter, but those who read as the story is published find themselves cliff-hung every two days or so.

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Q: Is there an actual story in all this? I'm losing focus because of all this filler

A: Sort of. I'm trying to keep the story moving, but there needs to be some 'soft filler' as well. It's a constant balancing act of 'things that explode' and 'things that build up stuff to explode'. In a similar vein, building bonds between Momon's Peerage has been the focus of the few past chapters, which is more or less 'building up' for what's to follow. If that counts as a story or not, I don't know. Stories are, after all, quite subjective things even if there are some basic 'standards' for stories such as 'hero's journey'. Or in this case you could call it 'Hero's switcharoo'.

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Questions about misc. things.

Q: One plus one is?

A: Three, if DxD universe is concerned. Gosh, I wonder how Underworld can stay depopulated if their members are hornier than a herd of goats.

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Q: Are you a man or a woman

A: One or the other.

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Q: How old are you?

A: Old enough to write. Uguaa!

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thanks for reading!