"Maximize Magic [Vermilion Nova]." Ainz pointed at his opponent and cast a pillar of fire towards him.
His opponent, a skeleton that looked exactly like him, dodged by flying towards the sky.
Ainz also quickly cast [Fly] and followed him through the night sky of the 6th floor of the Great Tomb of Nazarick.
" Triplet Maximize Magic [Call Greater Lightning]," his opponent waved his hand and produced 3 gigantic bolts of lightning that flew in his direction.
"[Create Middle-Tier Undead- Death Knight x3]." Ainz summoned 3 Death Knights in front of him, just in time to receive the lightning bolts.
The bolts of lightning hit the Death Knights with enough power to destroy them, and yet, they survived with 1 HP left.
A skill of the Death Knights was responsible for this; they could survive any one hit, no matter how powerful, conserving only 1 HP, but it did nothing to prevent the 3 undead from falling to the ground and dying there.
"[Undead Rebirth]" Ainz pointed to where the Death Knights had fallen and tried to cast a spell.
[Undead Rebirth] was a spell he was very familiar with. It was a spell that could revive a group of undead under his control that had died for a short period of time.
He had used it thousands of times on his quest for world domination, and for him, using it was as easy as breathing, but as he moved his mana to produce the spell, he felt an invisible barrier blocking him.
His mana circled without producing any effect.
In the end, I really can't do it.
He would be lying if he said he wasn't disappointed, but for him, it was not difficult to accept reality.
It had been 3 days since his meeting with the Floor Guardians, and in that time, he conducted many tests on himself and on the NPCs.
From them he concluded that there was a limit to his body. He was limited by the Yggdrasil gaming system that had originally created it.
Essentially, this body of his was his game avatar come to life, so it still had to obey certain rules that limited it within Yggdrasil.
He could use skills and cast magic that his avatar in Yggdrasil was capable of; in fact, he felt like he could instinctively use them, but he could not execute any action that was restricted by the mechanics of the game.
Holding a sword was fine, but wielding it as a weapon for an attack was something he simply could not do, because in Yggdrasil, you needed to have levels in certain classes in order to execute this action.
Cooking was also impossible for him or for the NPCs that didn't have levels in cooking classes.
Painting, or knitting, on the other hand, was allowed, since there was no class requirement for these actions in Yggdrasil.
He was limited to casting the spells his avatar already knew, so his spells from his life as a Demon Lord would be out of his reach.
I need to see if I can break this limit in the future.
"That's enough, Pandora's Actor. Thank you for your help." Ainz landed in the center of the Amphitheater.
The 6th Floor of the Great Tomb of Nazarick was a vast jungle that covered 4 square kilometers. Nature was the theme here, and as such, Aura, the ranger and beast tamer, as well as Mare, the druid, were the two floor guardians of this floor.
No matter how many times he saw it, it never failed to impress him how realistic the sky was in this place. Seeing the starry sky covering the whole floor, one could easily be fooled into thinking that they were outside, when in fact they were 6 floors underground.
If his memory didn't fail him, there was even a simulation of a day and night cycle in this place.
He was in the Amphitheater, an arena modeled after the Colosseum of ancient Rome.
As a place made for the members of Ainz Ooal Gown to battle invaders, it was the most fitting place for him to spar with Pandora's Actor.
The skeletal figure also descended from the sky, landing lightly in front of him.
No matter how one looked at it, they were both identical in appearance, from their height to the red light in their eyes, and even the clothes they wore.
The skeletal figure then seemed to turn into an amorphous mass, contorting itself briefly before taking another shape.
His head was oval, with hairless white skin. His eyes and mouth were little more than black stains on his head, where there wasn't a face to be seen.
He looked like a giant ragdoll wearing a yellow military uniform full of badges of honor, with a coat hanging loosely on his shoulders.
The hand he used to hold his hat had only four fingers, one of which wore a red ring that held special meaning for the citizens of Nazarick.
It was a Ring of Ainz Ooal Gown.
Just after he returned to his original form, the man, who was a Greater Doppleganger, gave Ainz a military salute.
"There's no need for thanks, Ainz- sa~ma!" His voice was full of theatrical flair, making him sound like an actor in a melodramatic play.
"No, I'm truly grateful for your help this time. There's no better sparing partner than you in all of Nazarick."
Pandora's Actor was one of the few level 100 NPCs in Nazarick, and the only NPC that Momonga had created.
He was a Greater Doppleganger who could take the forms and replicate the skills of the 41 members of Ainz Ooal Gown, and 4 others. Unfortunately, due to a penalty, the skills were only 80% as effective as the originals, but his versatility more than made up for that.
He was someone with an intellect on par with Albedo's and Demiurge's and was originally assigned as the Area Guardian of the Treasury.
"Oh, oh, OH~~!" Pandora's Actor seemed extremely moved by his words and began to chant things in German, so he left him to his devices and turned his attention to the skeleton walking towards them.
She had bones the color of wood, and the light in her eyes was green like the leaves in this forest. From afar, she looked less like an undead and more like a tree spirit.
She wore a brown sleeveless shirt and pants that hung loose on her skeletal frame.
On her shoulder, there was an exquisite quiver, and in her hands, he could see a green long bow that she quickly stored in her inventory before assuming a bizarre curved posture as she approached him.
"Why are you walking curved, Artemis?" He asked her in a gentle voice.
"It's disrespectful for me to look down upon you, Ainz-sama. Think nothing of it." Her voice was warm and serene.
This was Artemis, one of the 7 Skeletal Sisters he had created, and one of Nyx's younger sisters.
Artemis was a level 1 Skeletal Archer, an unreasonable tall Skeletal Archer.
Ainz stood at a respectable 1.77m, which allowed him to interact easily with most of the denizens of Nazarick. Artemis, on the other hand, was 2.40m tall, which made for a considerable height difference between them.
It didn't bother him. Cocytus was even taller than her after all, but it did seem that for her, it was a problem.
"But isn't this uncomfortable for you?" He had to ask. She was bending at an almost 90º angle with the ground, all while looking up at him.
"Compared with the happiness I feel with your presence, Ainz-sama, this is nothing."
So it is still uncomfortable, huh?
"I'm sorry, Artemis."
"Why are you apologizing, Ainz-sama?" She started panicking upon hearing this, and even Pandora's Actor, who had been locked into his own world, stopped to pay attention to the situation.
"It was I who created you with this size of yours, so if it's making you uncomfortable, it is my fault, no?"
"I-I would never dare to blame you, Ainz-sama. Please don't feel burdened with this situation." She knelt on the ground and pledged with him.
He looked at her, and his guilt only grew bigger. With the other NPCs, he could accept their quirks and mannerisms as the result of his former companions' designs, but when it came to Artemis and the others, he couldn't help but feel responsible for anything in their designs that may bring them suffering.
In Artemis case, he could understand that her problem didn't come from hating her own height, but rather from the fact that she felt like it was disrespectful for her to look down at him.
This, he thought, came from one of the lines he put in her backstory: Artemis is extremely polite.
When he made her, he was thinking of her as something of a mother figure for the elf twins. Someone who could be a perfect teacher for children, so he gave her this feature. But now, it seemed that this was backfiring.
It was his fault, no matter how he thought about it.
"In this case, [Fly]." He began to float in the air and rose until he was a bit higher than her head.
He put his hand on her shoulder and said. "Now we can talk normally, right?"
"Thank you, Ainz-sama!" Artemis thanked him profusely, and he noticed that she had put her Ring of Ainz Ooal Gown on the ring finger of her left hand.
He decided to ignore the implications for now.
There was a reason why she and Pandora's Actor were granted these rings.
After going through all the floors and receiving the pledges of loyalty, he decided to make a few administrative changes in preparation for their future moves.
First, he promoted Pandora's Actor to Floor Guardian of the 10th floor. As one of the few level 100 NPCs in Nazarick, he thought it was fitting.
He also promoted the 7 skeletal sisters to Vice-Floor Guardians on their respective floors, a new position that gave them the second-highest authority on their floors; in the floor guardian's absence, something that would only happen more often in the future, they would have full authority over matters regarding their floors.
The effects could already be seen on the 6th floor at the moment: with Aura and Mare out, there would have been no immediate candidate to lead the Area Guardians and the Vassals who lived here, but now Artemis would naturally assume this position.
The sisters were extremely smart, so he didn't doubt their abilities to manage the floors, and there was also the fact that they were so weak that he would probably never deploy them on a mission outside, making them virtually always available.
To each Floor Guardian and Vice-Floor Guardian, he gave one Ring of Ainz Ooal Gown. A ring that originally only belonged to the players of the guild.
This ring allowed its user to teleport to almost any location in the tomb, making it easier to move between floors and, in the sisters' case, possible.
He said his goodbyes to both of them and teleported back to the throne room, using his own ring.
There, he saw Nyx and Sebas, who promptly knelt when he appeared.
He signaled for them to get up and sat on his throne.
With Pandora's Actor leaving, Nyx, as the 10th-floor Vice-Floor Guardian, stood to manage things, while Sebas was there to be his bodyguard once he returned.
Usually, Albedo would be the one to stay by his side, but with the new administrative reform, she had been extremely busy, and Sebas was the closest to him.
I need to find a way to help her with that.
"So, Nyx, have you discovered anything?"
"Yes, Ainz-sama!" Nyx responded with conviction.
Nyx was wearing a silver dress today, one that hung loosely on her shoulders and left her chest, well, the bones where her chest would be, exposed.
He noticed that since his meeting with the guardians, she had been trying on many different clothes and giving him some weird looks from time to time.
As he didn't understand what was going on, he chose to ignore it.
Nyx brought a floating mirror to his front.
This was a Mirror of Remote Viewing, an item that allowed the user to watch things from a distance.
He had given it to Nyx so she could look into the outside world and see if she could find any source of information for them.
Nyx then controlled the mirror and showed him the scene of a human village where a massacre was happening.