Valkyrie's Shadow

Chapter 1

Stamp.

Flip.

…

Stamp.

Flip.

…

Stamp.

Flip.

Stamp, flip…stamp, flip…stamp, flip…wait, is that too regular?

Ainz Ooal Gown, absolute sovereign of the Sorcerous Kingdom, Supreme Overlord of the Great Tomb of Nazarick, Leader of the Ainz Ooal Gown Guild and totally-stressed-out-salaryman-in-disguise stayed his mighty hand. Was he approving documents in such a mechanical manner that his subordinates would notice that he wasn’t doing his job properly?

Out of the corner of his eye, Albedo, Prime Minister of the Sorcerous Kingdom and Guardian Overseer of the Great Tomb of Nazarick stood by with her ever-present serene smile. Somehow, she noticed his glance and started preening her jet-black wings. Ainz looked back to his work, and he could almost feel her disappointment.

Stamp. Flip.

He couldn’t linger too long, either. The road of approval was fraught with all manner of hazards that could ensnare him in their merciless grip. Especially this stretch: a pile of documents detailing matters of the judiciary. He had absolutely no idea about law and justice or anything like that.

“Has something caught your attention, Ainz-sama?”

Dammit!

Though her voice was gentle, Ainz straightened in his seat as if he had been struck by a whip. He picked up the sheet of paper before him and scanned through it. Close to the middle of the report, he found an excuse.

“Ah, ahem,” he cleared his nonexistent throat. “The name of this Martial Art struck me as odd. P-papa…papa…”

Nope. He couldn’t say it. There were some really cringey Martial Arts that he had come across during his time as Momon, but nearly all of them were named in an attempt to sound impressive to those who witnessed them. It was part showmanship and part strategy – efforts to attract a following or influence the thinking of opponents.

But this one…he couldn’t figure out how it could in any way be impressive or intimidating. Maybe it was just meant to confuse people. Only someone like Nishikienrai could appreciate something like this, and he would only find it humorous.

“Does it displease you Ainz-sama? I shall issue the order to have this pest exterminated.”

“Huh? H-hold on!” He held up a hand, “It’s nothing like that. It was just the name that stuck out to me. Don’t think too deeply about it.”

“Of course, Ainz-sama.”

Ainz turned his attention back to the page. Since he had already come halfway, he may as well read the rest.

A string of arsons, leading to an investigation. Narberal and someone named Camilla were dispatched to investigate.

“…Camilla?”

“Ah, the agent was using an alias, Ainz-sama.”

“Hmm…that’s not a bad idea. Agents going incognito would make it more difficult to foil their efforts and retaliate against them.”

A name probably wasn’t enough. Maybe a mask or a complete disguise? It was an aspect of divination magic that did not exist in Yggdrasil, as players couldn’t alter their in-game identities by changing their names or using cosmetic alterations. Once one knew what they were looking for, it became a contest between divination and counterdivination efforts.

“It is as you say, Ainz-sama. Was there anything else you would like to know about this report?”

He resumed his reading. The agent was successful in resolving the case and had addressed several other issues in the territory that she was operating in. As a result of the agent’s efforts, the judiciary, the administration and the army gained much-needed experience.

To top it off, the entire set of incidents was staged, posing no great risk to the Sorcerous Kingdom. A local expert was called in as a consultant, and he also committed the acts. The local leaders performed to an acceptable standard, stability was maintained and knowledge was gained. After making adjustments, they would employ the consultant again. The process would repeat itself until he had worn out his usefulness.

This is pretty good. Something like disaster drills? Hm…I should use that sometime…

“This was quite a fruitful exercise,” he looked over at Albedo. “Did you fashion it on your own?”

“I did, Ainz-sama.”

“Umu. Excellent work. The Sorcerous Kingdom continues to show promising gains due to your efforts as Prime Minister.”

Albedo beamed radiantly, so much that Ainz thought she would start to physically glow.

“A-Ainz-sama, your unworthy servant is overwhelmed!”

As she basked in his praise, Ainz took the opportunity to quickly get through the pile of documents and move on to the next.

This set had to do with economic concerns, which he felt he had at least a tiny bit of knowledge on due to his previous occupation in sales. It also contained topics of direct interest to him, such as the ongoing statistics for Undead labour leases, generation of Yggdrasil gold coins. Trade with other nations was also reported, which helped to indicate how well the Sorcerous Kingdom was doing in their efforts to appear as a friendly neighbour. As with his old world, resources drove the wheels of civilized society; hard numbers had a way of stripping away all pretence and posturing.

Albedo had sorted the documents in order of what he told her were of the most interest to him, and time passed as he took his time reading over the reports. Leases for Undead labour were mixed. The numbers for low-tier Undead were slowly heating up with the Dwarf Kingdom as the nation started its long road to recovery. He somewhat regretted pricing things as he had – lower-tier Undead were several orders of magnitude more popular than mid-tier Undead, creating a drastic disparity between them.

He could create twenty low-tier Undead per day and twelve mid-tier Undead per day, but low-tier Undead were being leased at a small fraction of what mid-tier Undead were going for because he priced them based on their relative power rather than their relative availability. Unfortunately, it would be unwise to alter the leases so early on. Maybe he should just consider it a promotion.

The generation of Yggdrasil gold coins from their tax revenues exceeded initial projections, both to his relief and surprise. Apparently, the Farmers had class production bonuses that affected the yield of their crops. The adoption of Undead labour in the Sorcerous Kingdom, however, was still slow. Less than ten per cent of rural households used them, but the people still worked the same amount of land as they would with Undead labour.

This meant that they paid the same taxes, but the Sorcerous Kingdom was not collecting Undead rental fees. According to Albedo’s projections, at least half of the rural population – which made up ninety-five per cent of the Sorcerous Kingdom’s citizenry – would need to be allocated to other industries. They did not have that industrial capacity at present, so all they could do was encourage growth until they did.

This was all well and good. If the entire duchy adopted Undead labour at once, he would not be able to provide the hundreds of thousands of Skeleton labourers required. The price of imports from the Dwarf Kingdom would similarly shoot up, as it was cheap Undead labour that was keeping their costs down. As things stood, the early adopters would be in the lead for a long while. Everyone else would simply have to wait their turn as more Undead were created to fill market demand.

The bottom line for him was that all of the low-tier Undead would be leased out – a process he originally believed would take far longer – so he counted it a win.

The problem now lay with his mid-tier Undead. Pricing was difficult. The majority that were leased out found employment as communal labour, or pulled wagons for the local merchants and transportation companies. A few were working in the Dwarf Kingdom and none in the Empire. They were powerful enough to serve as trump cards for national militaries, but pricing them as military units would exclude the majority of his customer base.

In the end, he had settled on creating a civilian contract and a military contract, but the neighbours still showed next to no interest.

“How goes the restructuring of the Imperial Legions?”

“The Empire is cooperating,” Albedo replied, “but as expected it will be a lengthy process. After conferring with Demiurge and Cocytus, I made the ‘recommendation’ to disband two of the Legions and supplement the remaining six with mid-tier Undead. Our forces are ready to deliver, but the Empire’s side still needs time to find work for the tens of thousands of Imperial Knights who will end up unemployed as a result of the changes.”

So much for the Bloody Emperor…

Such was his epithet, but it appeared to mainly stem from the actions he took to consolidate power early in his reign. The megacorporations of Earth were more ruthless by far. They had no qualms about downsizing tens of thousands of employees, even if it meant putting them out into the streets where they and their families would die from the lethally toxic environment. Though decisive when the situation called for it, Jircniv was still a kind man by comparison.

Ainz shelved the matter for later review, moving on to the reports on trade and travel. These reports were limited to information gathered by patrols and customs checkpoints in E-Rantel and the towns along the major highways. That being said, nearly all traffic in the Sorcerous Kingdom eventually passed these points. Traffic from the hundreds of villages went to their local towns. Traffic from towns almost always came to the city. Foreign merchants and travellers had to at least go through the towns.

Most of their trade was with the Empire. This was to be expected as their client state had over thirty times the population of the Sorcerous Kingdom. Considering that the number of citizens in the Duchy of E-Rantel had dropped by half and trade with the Empire had returned to more than half of what it was, one might say that things had returned to normal. It did not make up for the loss of trade with Re-Estize and the Slane Theocracy, which remained at a small trickle of what it was before, but E-Rantel was no longer in the dire situation that it had been in before.

Reactions to the Sorcerous Kingdom’s first food exports could be at best called bad. The Dwarves happily bought all manner of produce and liquor from them, but their population represented a tiny drop in the vast sea of trade. The tens of millions of Humans in the nations around them were reportedly anywhere from hesitant to outright refusing to buy the Sorcerous Kingdom’s exports.

Rumours of cursed grain and poisoned produce abounded. Superstition – no, he couldn’t call it superstition – biases against the fact that everything came from a nation ruled by an Undead King severely hampered sales. Even in the Empire, which was officially their protectorate, the Merchant Guild reported that consumers had segregated goods on that basis. People favoured products that were not sourced from the Sorcerous Kingdom to the degree that they were willing to pay substantially more for the exact same thing.

“How are our efforts at marketing grain in Re-Estize?” Ainz asked, “I believe you said that merchants affiliated with the Eight Fingers have been at it since you visited them in the spring.”

Albedo’s serene smile faltered imperceptibly.

“They were able to make headway by participating in the commodities exchanges around the nation,” she answered. “There were none of the current distinctions on those contracts back then, after all.”

“And now?”

“Our exports have been marked,” Albedo sighed. “The delivery contracts for the autumn harvest also exclude our produce.”

Ainz sighed as well. They couldn’t match the Sorcerous Kingdom in open battle, but they could certainly pick on them in other ways. There was nothing his country could do about it without being perceived as a belligerent actor by the rest of the region. It was a battle that could only be fought with weapons that they currently did not possess.

“Have they come up with any alternatives?” He asked, “Say, processing the raw goods before delivery to be sold as a different product.”

“Transporting processed foods was discovered to be problematic,” Albedo said. “The technology to do so exists, but not in the quantities required to handle our export volumes. There is a…compromise of sorts where the Eight Fingers and their affiliates are utilizing local mills to produce flour from the grain we’ve been delivering to Re-Estize. It is then rebranded and sold, but the additional steps add to their costs. Capacity is limited as well, so our deliveries of grain to Re-Estize will dramatically slow down until consumer sentiment improves or we can find another outlet.”

“Aren’t these people supposed to be teetering on the brink of famine?”

“Shortages are beginning to affect food prices, but it will be another four or five years until the accumulation of shortfalls and logistical inefficiencies drive them over the edge. This coincides with our plans for Re-Estize, but we have no ability to fine-tune their downward spiral until the population breaks down and starts buying our produce.”

“So they are willing to impoverish their nation and starve rather than buy our food.”

“Some of the merchants postulate the cause to be superstition due to cultural and religious factors. Others see it as a form of resentment for the Battle of Katze Plains.”

“Foolishness,” Ainz snorted. “Whatever it is, the result of their actions will be undeniable.”

“Indeed, Ainz-sama,” Albedo’s amber eyes gleamed. “Only fools would think to oppose your supreme will.”

How did Albedo end on that point? Giving his head a shake, he replaced the report in his hand with the next set of documents. The crimson points of his eyes slowly moved back and forth over the first page.

“A request from Countess Liane Wagner…”

The name brought to mind one of the brave noblewomen Shalltear had introduced to him.

“Instead of growing grain, she wants to import unprocessed cotton with the objective of starting plantations on her new territory…Albedo, what do you know about this?”

“I believe her eventual goal is the creation of a domestic textile industry.”

“Textiles…come to think of it, we had a supply problem early on, didn’t we?”

“Yes, Ainz-sama,” Albedo nodded. “The primary industries in the duchy involve lumber and food production. Imports of ore and stone have been secured through our favourable relationship with the Dwarf Kingdom. Textiles, however, are primarily imported by merchants throughout the region with no specified contracts for delivery.”

“So if economic tides turn against the Sorcerous Kingdom, our citizens will run around in rags?”

“It is highly unlikely, given that the Empire is one of our client states, but it is possible. With the projected population growth over the next few decades, it is more likely that our nation will accrue trade imbalances if our industries and the regional markets remain in their current state. It is an untenable situation, but well within our capability to mitigate through domestic production.”

Ainz leaned back in his seat, cupping his chin in hand. When he thought of cotton and other natural textiles it immediately brought to mind a luxury that only the wealthy could afford. His old world was so polluted that nothing would grow outside of the agricultural districts of the arcologies. Most of that production was allocated towards crops that were processed into the nutrient paste that Suzuki Satoru ate every day.

This New World was the complete opposite. The air and water were clean and the people ate fresh, real food. Synthetic textiles were unheard of and natural ones were an everyday necessity.

“I take it that this proposal has your tentative approval?”

“Yes, Ainz-sama. It appears to have no notable downsides.”

“I agree,” he nodded. “We should at least aim for a degree of self-sufficiency, just like we have in Nazarick.”

Stamp.

He skimmed over the proposal one last time. Though she had achieved much for the Sorcerous Kingdom’s transportation network and was an instrumental factor in the nation’s economy, Countess Wagner had also drawn Ainz’s attention because of the advancements she made in technological fields. As he had explained to Albedo before, knowledge, education and information were the basic weapons of humanity. Some of Countess Wagner’s developments could eventually lead to threats in the far-off future.

But this is just cotton. Cloth. Well, they do say that ladies love clothing. It’s not even magical…what could possibly happen?

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