The Great Tomb of Nazarick, 8th Floor: 『Vault of Wisdom』.
This vast vault of knowledge was filled with its usual silence, the scent of old ink, and the dense remnants of magic power.
On the left wing of the space, as if to heal the fatigue from the fierce mock battle earlier, Ra, the bird god of the sun, rested his golden wings and quietly refined his magic power. In the darkness of the right wing, Apep, the giant pitch-black serpent god, curled his massive tail and clicked his tongue with a slither, looking bored as he waited for his scorched scales to regenerate.
While they took physical rest, I—the Record Administrator governing Nazarick's omniscience, Tawil Balah—remained floating in the center, throwing myself into a wave of massive data processing without requiring a single moment of rest.
『—This is the Cherry Blossom Sanctuary. Lord Tawil, I am encrypting and forwarding the initial report from Narberal, who has arrived in E-Rantel. ...As usual, subjective insults make up seventy percent of it, however.』
A telepathic transmission from the youngest sister of the Pleiades, Aureole Omega, reached my cerebral network directly.
I pulled one of the pale blue pages orbiting me closer. Using the overwhelming processing power of my [Omniscient Flesh], I instantaneously decoded the encrypted runes being carved onto it, flicking away the noise.
...I see. The registration procedures at the Adventurer's Guild are complete. Lord Ainz has begun his activities as the Black Warrior, Momon right on schedule. They've secured an inn as well; as the first stage of information gathering, it's going extremely smoothly.
Blinking my hundreds of pupils, I neatly stored only the pure facts I had extracted into the database's index.
Up to this point, there wasn't a single deviation from the Plot of the Anime in my memories.
Ainz should be learning the rules of human society with extreme caution and perfect maneuvering, steadily raising his fame.
However, the moment I confirmed that fact.
Deep within my black fog, an intense sense of impatience welled up, as if my heart (though I lack such an organ) had been stroked by a blade of cold ice.
The fact that Lord Ainz is moving exactly according to the anime... means that the clock for the 'other mission' running simultaneously is also ticking forward without fail.
Currently, the Guardian of the 1st through 3rd Floors, Shalltear Bloodfallen, is flying around the perimeter of the forest alone, tasked with capturing Martial Arts users and criminals.
And if time continues to pass like this... She will corner a bandit group in the forest, and immediately after—she will encounter the Slane Theocracy's special forces unit, the 『Black Scripture』.
What they possess is the World Item of mind control that twists even the logic of YGGDRASIL and penetrates the absolute resistance of the undead, 『Downfall of Castle and Country』.
Nazarick's ultimate spear falling into enemy hands.
That is the first, and greatest, fatal error Nazarick will experience in this unknown world.
If that fact becomes known to the other Floor Guardians, Albedo and Demiurge will go mad with rage and begin insisting on an all-out war to reduce the surrounding human nations to ash.
The Grand Design of peaceful rule that I presented to Lord Ainz will come crashing down with a resounding roar in that very instant.
...I have to stop it. Absolutely.
Unconsciously, I had tightly knotted my black fog tentacles together.
But how?
I am a completely base-bound NPC tasked with the defense and record management of the 8th Floor.
Under the system, I will never take a single step outside of this vault. I am an entity that merely processes the data sent to me and observes the board from a safe abyss.
Even though the worst event, one that will sway the fate of Nazarick, is about to unfold right now in the real New World forest... Am I supposed to just shut myself in this dusty server room-like space and wait for an after-the-fact report?
Overwhelming frustration and a sense of powerlessness.
That intense frustration fiercely knocked on the index of a certain "Forgotten Class Skill" slumbering in the depths of my omniscient database.
—Wait a minute. My Job Classes should include...
I instantly deployed my status screen within my brain.
The class traits of an [Archivist], a [Diviner], and my racial traits as an [Aberration].
Because I never took a single step outside of Nazarick during the YGGDRASIL era, there was a skill I had never used even once.
An extremely advanced composite skill of espionage and divination meant to physically gather external information and conduct reconnaissance from afar.
"...It's worth a try."
Solidifying my resolve, I heightened my magic power to its absolute limit in the center of the space.
My hundreds of pupils blinked violently in bluish-purple, and the cluster of pages orbiting me crackled with sparks of magic power.
"Skill Activation. ——[Omniscient Proxy]."
With an intense concentration that felt like it was scraping away the core of my mind, I intentionally tried to peel off a portion of the 『Omniscient Flesh』 composing my body.
Rrrrip... A sticky clump of black fog and ink separated from my main body.
A bizarre, unprecedented pain ran through me, like tearing off my own limbs with my own hands, or forcibly ripping a single consciousness in two.
Eventually, a dense clump of black fog roughly the size of a fist completely separated from the main body and fell to the marble floor with a heavy thud.
The black fog that fell to the floor writhed like a sentient slime, expanding in the blink of an eye.
And a few seconds later. Standing there was an 『Alter Ego』 that looked exactly like a miniaturized version of my main body, but with a silhouette much closer to that of a humanoid.
Its height was about that of a human child.
Its entire body was deeply covered by a tattered gray robe, an illusory cloak composed of shadows, and from the darkness deep within the hood, only two bluish-purple pupils exactly like my own glowed quietly.
"...A success, huh."
From the perspective of my main body floating in mid-air, I looked down at my small alter ego standing on the floor.
Simultaneously—from the pupils deep within the alter ego's hood, I visually confirmed the figure of Myself, a grotesque monster so massive I had to look up at it.
Whoa...!?
This was far beyond the level of seeing different scenery with my right and left eyes.
Two completely independent senses of sight, two senses of hearing, and two spatial awarenesses flowed into a single brain simultaneously.
Intense information sickness.
I was struck by vertigo so strong I felt the world sway violently, as if my semicircular canals were going mad, but my Omniscient Flesh adapted to the parallel processing in fractions of a second.
The nausea subsided immediately, replaced by a terrifying sense of omnipotence - the feeling that I could grasp and control everything simultaneously - filling my brain.
...This was a sensation as addictive as a drug.
As I manipulated the alter ego, making it walk across the marble floor with a clack, clack, the two giant gods noticed the bizarre sight and reacted.
"Hoh..."
Ra, who had been resting his golden wings, moved them slightly, opened one eye, and let out a voice of awe.
"For the Keeper of Knowledge himself to divide his own essence. What abyssal magic is this? I sense a dense presence on an entirely different plane from a mere familiar."
"Slither... What's this? That little shadow scurrying about."
Apep raised his sickle neck and looked down at the alter ego with amusement.
"Tawil, is that your child? Or a new toy? It looks like a tasty shadow snack I could swallow whole in one gulp, though. I'd advise keeping it away from my jaws."
"Cease your jesting, Serpent of Gluttony."
I narrowed the hundreds of pupils on my main body, and simultaneously narrowed the eyes deep within the alter ego's hood on the floor, looking up at Apep.
"This is my own hands and feet, and my own eyes. I have no intention of letting it end up in your idiotic stomach."
Parrying the banter of the two defense units, I transitioned to the next phase.
I had to send this alter ego to the Forest near E-Rantel - in other words, the fateful coordinates where Shalltear would encounter the Black Scripture.
However, there was a major problem here.
If I used the official teleportation gate network connecting Nazarick's floors, the teleportation logs would undoubtedly be caught in the censorship of Demiurge, the Head of Defense, or Albedo, the Overseer.
The Record Administrator of the 8th Floor is, for some reason, sending his own alter ego to the outside world.
If they detected such suspicious movements, they would definitely try to probe my true intentions, and in the worst-case scenario, the alter ego's actions could be obstructed.
What I was about to do was Over-Interference using knowledge of the anime. I absolutely could not let anyone notice.
In that case, I simply won't use the official door [Front Door]. I just have to pry open a backdoor with my own hands.
I dug deep into the mana pool of my main body and drew out my personal magical resources, completely independent of Nazarick's systems.
I fully mobilized the spatial coordinate pinpointing of a [Diviner's] divination and the formula analysis capabilities of an [Archivist].
"——Laws of space, yield the path before my observation. Designated Coordinates: The southern forest region near E-Rantel."
The space right in front of the alter ego began to warp, making a grinding sound like glass cracking.
As my tentacles traced complex runic trajectories, the distortion became a black vortex, forming a small, extremely stealthy Personal Teleportation Gate just large enough for a single adult to pass through.
It was a stealth gate that suppressed magical remnants to the absolute limit, guaranteeing it would not be caught in Demiurge's surveillance network.
"...Let's go."
My alter ego readjusted its deep gray hood.
In appearance, it looked like nothing more than a Wandering Scholar who had lost their magic, or a low-tier undead with a faint presence.
Because I had throttled its power output to the extreme, even if a powerhouse of the outside world used detection magic, they would never dream in a million years that this was the alter ego of a Level 100 NPC.
My objective was singular.
To pinpoint their location and acquire real-time information before Shalltear made contact with the Black Scripture.
And then—
If I can capture the decisive moment the Black Scripture uses 『Downfall of Castle and Country』 with these very eyes...
Within my main body, the thoughts I had cultivated during my days as a corporate slave sharpened into a cold, keen edge.
Without anyone noticing, I might be able to crash that mind control event from behind the scenes and prevent Shalltear's rampage beforehand.
Without a sound, the alter ego took a step into the black vortex.
Space inverted, and the humid air of the outside world—completely different from the cold air of the vault—touched the skin of the alter ego.
All the while, my Main Body continued floating in the center of the Vault of Wisdom, processing the daily reports of Lord Ainz sent from Aureole with perfect precision and compiling them into designated formats.
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A/N: Sorry for only updating now. I had to revise a few parts of the story outline because I wasn't happy with the direction it was going, but yeah, I'll upload the next chapter soon!