Chapter 14
They arrived on the outskirts of Carne Village on their sixth day of travel. 'For a man so eager to get somewhere, he sure does walk slow.' Clementine thought, neglecting at least partially on purpose that he was both an old man and a magic caster, not an adventurer, merchant, nor a young man accustomed to long walks.
"We're here." She said when they crested the hill and found themselves staring down at the village.
"Do you know how to find the boy?" Khajiit asked her, and Clementine reached up with one hand and tapped her nose.
"Sure thing, Khajiit." She said in tandem with the tap. "The woman smelled like more than just 'old woman', it smelled like an alchemy lab, all I have to do is find that smell, and I'll know where he works and probably where he lives."
"Fine, but what about the village? Strange that they should have a wall, very strange. What if there's trouble to be found here?" Khajiit asked with a narrow look down at the little place. The wall was simple spiked wooden logs, each one roughly as tall as two people standing one on top of the other, in addition, there was a watchtower with somebody in it, four of them in fact, facing each direction by what were likely the entrance gates.
Clementine glanced down at him, even in the dark she could see that his gnarled old hands were white at the knuckles where he was clutching his staff. "You worry too much, between the two of us, we can handle anything, and walls go both ways. Sure it is supposed to keep people out, but it also keeps them in." Clementine pointed out. "I'll sneak in, then you just conjure up a few undead at one gate, then I'll grab the brat, and go out the other. Easy."
Khajiit considered her suggestion, it had merit, it wasn't entirely quiet, but it didn't need to be. Plus it was difficult to ignore the appeal of more death that would come from his undead rampaging through a defenseless village. The promise of more corpses was far, far too alluring to ignore.
"Go." Khajiit finally muttered, "Signal me when you need the distraction."
Khajiit watched as the woman leaned into her run, sprinting over the ground toward the walls. 'Definitely a Black Scripture.' He acknowledged her skills privately and reached into his robe to remove the Orb of Death. The few passengers along the road that fell victim to himself and Clementine would likely never be missed, and they provided him with additional negative energy to use at need. It still felt like a shame to waste it, but the chance at bringing death to a whole village was just… wonderful, and that would make up the difference anyway.
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"Will you be returning to Nazarick tonight, Momon?" Lupusregina asked with a look in her eyes that suggested she wanted to say more.
"No, this is important to my future plans." Ainz answered, but it was an incomplete answer, and he knew it. 'I also don't think I'm ready to face them all yet.'
She silently nodded and went to the small cookfire in the corner and stirred the cast iron pot. "Forgive my humble attempts at cooking, but for now this is the best I can do." She answered, he could see the darting way her eyes went from him to the food, his insistence on informality grated on her more than a little.
'She is the best at it, though. Plus her little games with the peasant I rescued seem to be bearing fruit. Protect his girlfriend and he will be grateful, the deeper his loyalty, the harder he will work and the more he can be trusted.' It was still an unhappy thought, and it made him recall the anguish of his own uncertainty.
"Master." Lupusregina stopped dead, she sniffed the air coming in through the window. Her sudden formality and tension would have told him enough, but his own level one hundred senses were alert, and he began to stand.
"I feel it too." He whispered, then pointed toward the door. "Go."
Ainz yawned against his will and reached for his helmet.
Lupusregina sprinted out the door and followed her nose. She exited the little hut just in time to see the blonde woman sailing over the wall, then land rolling in the dirt without stopping. Lupusregina narrowed her eyes, 'That's not bad, not great, but not bad, a damn sight better than the rest of the adventurers I got to play with.' She thought and watched as the woman slipped around the village going door to door. Not to break in, but only stopping, then moving on. 'Looking for someone, but nobody here is really important, except…'
Understanding hit Lupusregina, and a wolfish smile appeared on her face. She went straight to the house of Enri and Nemu Emmott. 'She's looking for him. But he's not home.' Lupusregina chuckled, the smell of sex in Enri's house was impossible to miss, and she privately resolved, 'Whenever I get a chance, I should 'look in' on them some more.' When the battlemaid reached the house, she slipped in through a small window and crawled along the floor.
The faint sound of womanly moans came from beyond a closed door 'Guess I can't call them virgins anymore.' Lupusregina said and maintained her undetectable status in the corner. She listened in, enjoying her lewd and 'strictly necessary' eavesdropping.
She knew it wouldn't be long before the blonde woman found this place, not if her nose alone was good enough to detect her target.
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Clementine felt annoyance rise up in her like nothing else when she looked down at the empty bed. "Dammit! Dammit! Dammit! Dammit! Did I miss him again?!" She screamed in annoyance, it had already taken far, far longer than she thought it should have to complete her objective.
But she did learn one thing. She stared in disbelief at the head on the counter. 'The Wise King of the Forest… somebody killed it. That thing has taken down entire orichalcum teams and even a few adamantite ranked adventurers. Somebody killed it?! And if they did, why is it here?!' Clementine felt a sort of rare anxiety, only a handful of warriors were her equal in the world, and she knew all of their names, and was personally acquainted with a few of them. 'If one of them killed it, and is still here, that could be a problem.'
She reached for a chair, broke the leg off, tore a sheet, and then took up a bottle of clear liquid, sniffed it to ensure it was alcohol, and then soaked the improvised torch.
A quick spark from her flint and it was lit. As soon as Clementine left the house she threw the torch as high and far into the air as she could in Khajiit's direction.
She then resumed her house to house search, more quickly than before until she found the house with the alchemical smell, and heard the moans within. Instantly, she understood. 'Oooooh, fun, he found himself some little village slut to pound, lucky him. Well I hope he finishes quickly, because he's almost out of time.' Clementine's bemused smile became vicious when she found the window, 'Open... stupid. Even his grandmother was more cautious than that.' She didn't snort with derision, but she felt it at the thought.
She climbed in, shimming through the small square, then down to the floor and over to the door. She pressed her ear against the wood, the smell of sex and alchemical ingredients was coming from inside. 'Maybe one more minute.' Clementine kept the chuckle to herself, and waited.
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Enri rocked her hips back and forth over her first lover, though she'd been inexperienced before, a farm girl is never completely innocent, seeing the couplings of many beasts, living in small houses with parents that did as parents do to become parents, total innocence was unlikely for anyone. But the experience proved entirely novel, and she found she enjoyed it a great deal.
Shyness was long gone as she rode her lover to her eighth climax of the evening, and finally, at last, collapsed on him when she felt his own pleasure crest. Their bodies were slick with sweat from their exertions, and she sighed as she clung to him. He was breathing harder than she, but when she kissed him, he reciprocated with greater passion as well.
"It feels like I've waited for that for a lifetime." Nfirea said happily.
"Why didn't you ever tell me you were in love with me?" Enri asked when she held his eyes in hers, illuminated only by a small candle, the fire danced in the reflection of one another's eyes.
"Because he was a weakling, duh."
Neither Enri nor Nfirea had spoken, and for a moment each thought the other had, shock formed on both faces at once and they turned their eyes to the open door. The candle illuminated a slender blonde woman with a bare midriff, strange leather armor covered in various adventurer plates, and holding a stiletto in hand. She had a vicious smile plastered on her face and tapped it on her cheek.
"Be grateful, I let you finish first, call it a last favor from one woman to another, but I'm afraid that's the last bit of pleasure for you, girl. I need the boy, I don't need you. Soooo…" She raised her empty hand and wiggled her fingers, "bye bye then."
"Whatcha doing there?" Lupusregina whispered into the blonde woman's ear just as abject terror appeared on the young couple's faces.
Clementine whirled around ready to strike, only to find the impossible. Her thrust was stopped dead by a tanned open hand. "Bad girl! Those aren't your toys! Play with your own things!" Lupusregina said, then closed her hand around the wrist of the still disbelieving, staring blonde, and yanked.
Clementine smashed through the thin walls of the house, the shock and disbelief hurt more than the blows themselves as she went sailing into the night air after the thunderous crash.
She heard the sounds of alarm being raised and the moans of zombies already beginning as Khajiit began his part. 'Dammit!' Clementine groused and flipped herself over to land and slide on her feet over the ground until she could form a crouch again.
The redheaded woman was quiet, and strong, and clearly dangerous. More worrying to Clementine though was… 'Who is she? I should know everybody capable of doing anything like that. But I don't recognize her at all.'
The woman emerged, stepping over the rubble of the ruined house and dusting herself off. "If this were my maid outfit, I'd tear your throat out for getting it dirty." The redhead said to her. Behind the woman, Clementine could see her target, the woman he'd been screwing, and a little girl frantically trying to understand what was happening and throwing on clothes while they tried to work out whether to flee or where to go if they did.
"Bitch… you may be strong, and quiet, but I'm a Legend." Clementine snarled, "You're some nobody… get out of my way!" She snarled, "Do that, and I'll leave you alone, I only want the boy."
"My name is Lupu, but I guess 'bitch' isn't totally wrong, if you think about it." Lupusregina said and laughed uproariously at a joke that Clementine couldn't quite grasp. The woman who called herself 'Lupu' went on. "Fraid I can't do that, you see we're supposed to protect that one, and that means I'm going to have to kill you, or take you alive. But either way, you're not leaving."
"The undead! The undead!" Shouting and screaming carried up all over the village as people rushed to the alarms of the watching goblins.
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"What the hell is happening!" Peter shouted in response to the alarm, his team was already throwing on their armor and readying for the fight while the goblins bought them precious minutes.
"Why are the undead here?!" Brita shouted while she secured her belt.
"We can worry about that later, but we've got to go!" Lukrut shouted as he ran out the door with Dyne and Ninya following hot on his heels.
"We're earning our coin today!" Ninya shouted as encouragingly as she could, and stopped cold. She'd expected to see Momon and Lupu at the gate, but the first thing she saw amidst the light of villagers running with torches beneath the light of the moon, was Lupu facing off against someone who was clearly not undead.
The attacker was clearly beyond the realm of heroes, darting in to finish Lupu off, only to be batted aside like an ant. 'Lupu is… playing with her? She's playing with someone moving so fast I can't even see her…'
"Come on." Ninya looked up when the voice reached her ear and a large hand rested on her shoulder. She looked up to the towering figure of Momon. "We have to protect the village." The majestic voice all but melted her on the spot, only to reform itself into iron conviction.
'If my home had a hero like this, my sister…' Ninya had the momentary selfish thought, and it redoubled her own resolve over Lupu's advice, and she lept to follow Momon's lead.
Zombies were climbing over the walls despite the goblin's best efforts, the gate was giving way, thunderous bashing and smashing from the stronger undead that cared nothing for injuries, slowly began to force it to give way.
Lukrut was shooting arrow after arrow and hitting his mark, Dyne's plants were holding the undead in place, Peter lopped off heads. Ninya added her magic arrows to the defense, and villagers gathered to protect their own, shooting arrows as best they could.
It would not be enough for long. "Stand back from the gate!" They heard the powerful shout of Momon, "Stand out of the way! They're going to break through!" Ainz felt the very human fear rise with the stink of death, but thanks to the stats of his warrior body, it passed away almost instantly as the fear resistance kicked in.
The cracks, thunks, and tears redoubled, almost like the undead understood they were going to break through. However, because of his orders, the goblins and the humans alike began to fall back. "Hold them back from climbing over the wall! I will take care of the rest!" Ainz gave the order.
"There's over a hundred of them out there! You can't possibly handle so many!" Brita shouted.
Ainz drew his two great swords. "Fifty swings each." He snapped, and then the gate burst open. The villagers cried out with alarm, and then watched in disbelief as the hero in black armor charged alone.
The swords swung wide and swift, bodies were knocked to pieces, shattered, rotted heads spun away and bodies fell without them. 'I'm seeing a legend being born… the Battle of Carne… where one warrior destroyed… how many are there even?' Brita recognized, and nor was she alone. The dark hero disappeared from view and the flow of undead over the walls began to falter.
"We're going to live…" People said, and then they heard the crash at their backs.
They turned en masse, and Ninya recalled the sight she'd put out of her mind a moment ago.
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Clementine wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "I'm going to kill you."
"You said that, but as far as I can see, you're only killing time, and you're even doing a pitiful job at that." Lupu responded and tapped her foot. "Really, I was almost impressed at you, but you're just a one trick pervert, did you develop all those skills just to listen to people screw?"
"Bitch… you'll pay for that!" Clementine shouted, and opened her arms, "I'm beyond human limits, I kill and kill and kill and nobody can stop me, everyone fears me! I can rob the treasures of cardinals and the homes of mages! I'm death itself!"
"Hmpf, little people often lift themselves by claiming lofty titles. But I see nothing special about you. Saying you're beyond human limits… that's like saying you've got bigger boobs than a loli. Who cares?" Lupu mocked her and Clementine's face went red with rage.
"I will show you what that really means…" Clementine said, and crouched down. "Fucking bitch." She groused, and began to activate her martial arts.