Enkidu (253)

Ainz teleported sideways, then once more, evading the attack aimed at him, and then again, this time to dodge an enemy lunging at his back,

Ainz teleported sideways, then once more, evading the attack aimed at him, and then again, this time to dodge an enemy lunging at his back, determined to engage him in close combat despite the inherent risks. However, it was the best out of the worst options, keeping Ainz at range was an even more foolish idea. 

Enkidu and his reflection, Kingu, wielded their golden chains to ensnare or wound Ainz, not because it is their best weapon, they simply have no other. Meanwhile, Ainz could use hundreds of spells tailored to any scenario. 

Thus, closing the distance to exploit their melee superiority seemed a viable strategy to them.

Ainz, for his part, showed that just because he’s a magician, a spell caster who favored long-ranged engagements, doesn’t mean that he has no way to deal with close-quarter combat. In his opinion, no matter how formidable a defense or personal strength is, true defense began with not neglecting preparations.

One might assume that Ainz preferred not to engage in combat, and usually, that was true. He preferred resolving conflicts with minimal personal involvement, where he would face the least risk, favoring peaceful solutions. Usually… but not always.

Even if he was not bloodthirsty, he sometimes simply wanted to wield his abilities. After all, he’d studied them for a purpose, not just to admire an endless list of skills, but to use them. 

Nothing was sadder than possessing power with no chance to apply it.

War gaming was one of his hobbies, imagining scenarios of combat with various conditions – and one of the most common ones was how to deal with enemies that prefer the melee range. It was one of the most common counters for spell casters after all. Defeating Ainz would take more than just closing one’s distance.

Compounding that fact, Ainz was particularly determined to win the battle. He had spent most of his time in this entire Singularity searching for an exit, a resolution… And now, finally, he’d found one. And he would be damned before he let it slip from his grasp.

Though, Ainz had to admit, he was perhaps enjoying the fight too much.

He just wanted to relax, to finally shed the stress he had accumulated during his mission here — and combat happened to be the closest, most suitable outlet. The fact that it would also advance his goals was just a nice cherry on top.

Teleporting aside to evade golden chains sprouting from gates that materialized midair, Ainz raised one hand to the side and the other forward, and he cast two spells in quick succession.

“Wall of Skeletons. True Dark.”

A skeletal wall erupted from the ground, intercepting the chains tipped with golden spikes. Simultaneously, a pillar of black light engulfed Kingu, who’d tried to stealthily corner him using his counterpart’s chains as a distraction.

Ainz, of course, didn’t miss it.

The viscous, thorny darkness clung to Kingu’s body, grinding his flesh like a sandblaster stripping skin. Yet no blood sprayed forth from the flayed skin. 

Beneath the torn skin lay a shapeless gray mass, neither muscle nor metal, but more akin to unset concrete or amorphous clay.

A moment later, Kingu’s figure shuddered, his flesh writhing as if alive, bulging grotesquely from his back as [True Dark] threatened to swallow Kingu whole. The bulge soon showed its function, as a part of Kingu, the shapeless mass, was jettisoned from the rest of Kingu, thus escaping [True Dark]’s effective range. 

The shapeless mass then first reshaped into an anthropomorphic form, then skin and flesh re-formed into Kingu’s form once again.

Ainz didn’t linger to gawk at the metamorphosis, he only noted that [True Dark] hadn’t killed Kingu. Perhaps, like an undead or golem, Kingu was undeterred by injuries and needed to be destroyed completely without leaving a single part to prevent it from re-forming. 

With a blink, Ainz teleported again, this time to evade Enkidu’s strike aimed at his now exposed back.

Just as before, the golden rifts hanging in the air shot forth countless thick golden chains from nowhere, tipped with golden stakes. They stretched impossibly far and maneuvered with such freedom, as if they were less a weapon and more an extension of Enkidu’s own limbs. Ainz noted that the chains were not striking from those portals, but rather materializing wherever needed, with the hovering portals serving as their origin points.

Momonga observed this assault carefully – by all appearances, it was lethally efficient. The ability to manifest a dozen attack vectors around an enemy simultaneously, followed by instant strikes from all directions, entangling and capturing the target. Just that alone would have made the attacks extremely dangerous.

Yet, Ainz wasn’t convinced this was the full extent of the chains’ capabilities.

“Fireball.”

Ainz cast the spell experimentally before teleporting sideways, evading an attack from Kingu, who had fully reformed, as he lunged at Ainz’s back. Ainz paid special attention as the blazing projectile hurled toward Enkidu, and was instantly obliterated by more chains that erupted from thin air, shattering the magic. 

Enkidu then darted aside, narrowly avoiding the other fireball Ainz had launched from a new angle, silently and with a delay to it.

‘Hmm. Fascinating.’

That single thought flickered through Ainz’s mind before he teleported again, exhaling slightly in irritation as he hurled a bolt of lightning at Enkidu.

This battle felt routine, almost mundane by YGGDRASIL standards—one of thousands he’d fought over the years. Not a clash against a worthy rival or formidable raid boss, but something as tedious as grinding low-tier mobs in the swamp outside of Nazarick… And that was what intrigued him.

Another teleportation, this time, however, his repositioning was into a zone corralled by Kingu, a place already primed by Enkidu for an ambush. All part of Ainz’s own stratagem. If his foes believed they’d adapted to his combat style, he would enlighten them of his PvP mastery, and the feats he had accomplished even with his suboptimal build. 

And the brutal lessons learned from years as Guild Master in a PK guild.

As he teleported, Ainz added a deliberate delay to his reappearance — a mere two seconds, as a hovering mine, Explode Mine, one of his favorite spells, materialized in his destination point first. Enkidu, spotting the faint shimmer of incoming teleportation, lunged forward, eager to clinch victory… only to trigger the trap. 

The resulting blast hurled him backward like a kite lost in a hurricane.

The explosion would have shredded even a High-tier Servant, one without a special skill focusing on defense at least, into a grotesque pulp. Instead, Enkidu’s body dissolved into a gray, formless mass of clay, just like Kingu did, the droplets of earthy material splattering before coalescing back into humanoid shape almost instantly.

Such had been the pattern for the past ten minutes, Enkidu’s attacks grazing or missing Ainz entirely, while Ainz only occasionally counterattacking inflecting quickly regenerated from damage. With the Explode Mine being the exception, borne out of taking advantage of Enkidu’s mistake.

Ainz held back from an all-out assault, opting instead for attrition — a safe, methodical, and effective method of attacking.

By now, Enkidu and Kingu’s methods of attacking told the tale – neither risked reckless aggression anymore. Instead, they schemed, parried, and guarded meticulously. Their caution spoke volumes of how Ainz’s attacks were too punishing to trade blow-for-blow despite the fact that they can regenerate, it was still taking its toll on them. 

And so, the stalemate continued — a war of patience, precision, and inevitability.

What was truly astonishing was that Enkidu and Kingu, who had been battling Ainz for nearly ten minutes, had yet to lose. Yes, they were unquestionably losing, that is, inching ever closer to defeat, but they had not been defeated thus far, nor would they be within the next few minutes, even having swallowed several potent spells from Ainz. 

In other words, they had proven themselves to be among the most resilient, even strongest, Servants and adversaries Ainz had encountered in this world to date.

Could Ainz destroy them now? Likely. If he exerted himself, he could surely eliminate both enemies. But, doing so would require him to either tap into abilities he preferred to avoid due to their inherent risks or inefficient resource expenditure, or needing him to fully engage his intellect, coordinating his spells and strategies with meticulous precision. Similar conditions had only previously arisen during his clash with Solomon, who had turned out to be the Grand Caster and the final boss of the entire Singularity crisis. 

For Solomon, such a level of power was not just expected — it was necessary. Ainz would have been disappointed if his ultimate foe had been any weaker. 

Yet the fact that Enkidu and Kingu, at least, approached this caliber of strength struck Ainz as genuinely surprising.

Of course, Ainz could still triumph through sheer brute force, only preferring to grind the battle into a war of attrition, as defeating him in such a scenario was theoretically impossible. Still, the mere fact that he hadn’t crushed his enemies with a snap of his fingers by now was remarkable.

If Enkidu and Kingu felt delight or pride at Ainz’s astonishment, they show no sign of it. 

Instead, both abruptly disengaged, leaping backward in synchronized motions to widen the distance. They kept Ainz, and each other as they are both still enemies, in their sight while positioning themselves far enough apart to avoid being caught in a single area-of-effect strike.

Intrigued by the sudden change in paradigm, Ainz surveyed both of his opponents and his surroundings to see the reason for it. 

Both Kingu and Enkidu looked no worse for wear, a slight perspiration on their brow being the only indication that they had been engaged in a high intensity battle and that Ainz’s effort was slowly bearing fruit. Was it the environment, then?

Ainz glanced down to see that the ground beneath and around him was scarred, from both his spells and the two’s chains. Gouged, cratered, and littered with gray clay debris from his attacks and the remains of Enkidu and Kingu — a scene that Ainz had seen many times before as a result of high-level battles in Yggdrasil…

Ainz chuckled quietly to himself, though his skeletal visage betrayed no emotion. 

His gaze shifted back to his opponents. He couldn’t claim genuine enjoyment from this fight — as he’d thought of it, it was merely ‘one unremarkable skirmish among hundreds’. Yet, after venting his frustrations with the ongoing Singularity, testing himself against a worthy adversary, and devising a potential solution to the crisis, he felt ready to propose a ceasefire. 

As always, Ainz preferred diplomacy to unnecessary combat.

But before he could voice his offer, both Servants, Enkidu and Kingu, stiffened. In an instant, their forms dissolved into shapeless gray clay, surging toward each other. They merged, then solidified anew.

“We have reached an accord. The Age of Babylon.”

Ainz had no time to react, to congratulate Enkidu on this mental reconciliation between the warring halves of their psyche, before they activated what he recognized as a Noble Phantasm. 

Countless golden portals appeared all around him, uncountable, much more than what the two had been capable of not seconds ago, combined.

Ainz immediately retreated skyward, evading the swarm of portals erupting around the reborn entity.

For a moment, the dozen golden rings appearing on the ground around Enkidu made Momonga think this was no different from Enkidu’s ordinary attacks, until the irregularly placed circles, lined in a single row around Enkidu’s body, suddenly multiplied. A second ring formed around them, then a third, a fourth, and beyond. 

In the blink of an eye, within a span so brief that blinking risked missing the relentless emergence of new gates, the ground below Ainz became littered with hundreds, if not thousands, of portals leading nowhere. It was an attack far more than even Ainz himself could reasonably defend himself against.

For a silent moment, all was still.

From each portal, Ainz glimpsed a chaotic amalgamation of weapons, many clearly intended as projectiles but then many more that aren’t. Arrows, spears, throwing axes, but also maces, swords, and halberds, thousands of armaments appearing from the portals, each a flawless archetype of its kind. Each a perfected template against which all such weapons, clubs, daggers, glaives, and all the armaments made by human hands before the age of gunpowder, were measured. All frozen momentarily in space after manifesting from the hundreds of thousands of portals around Enkidu…

Then they struck, the sound itself was like a calamity as the sky was covered with deadly implements.

His flight was swift, but Ainz had no hope of evading it entirely. Even with his flight and the significant distance from Enkidu, the sheer volume of weapons simultaneously hurtling toward him was staggering. It seemed as though a mountain had erupted from the earth, surging upward in a wave that blotted out the sky for Enkidu and the ground for Ainz. 

Worse, the blades, hurled with inconceivable force and speed, could abruptly shift their trajectory as they aimed for Ainz, veering directly toward him. Without teleportation, his gruesome demise would’ve been not only inevitable but nightmarishly visceral. 

Yet teleporting away spared him the steel tsunami, only to force him to evade a second, identical wave aimed precisely at his new location. Then a third. Wave after wave of weaponry relentlessly pursued Ainz, compelling him to teleport repeatedly as he stared contemplatively at the onslaught.

Becoming a living target for such attacks was hardly pleasant, Ainz held a certain disdain for serving as a practice dummy for any adversary. Surviving a few waves might’ve been possible, given his high resistance to slashing and piercing damage – blunt force, however, posed a greater threat. Still, he could’ve endured several strikes, especially since the weapons didn’t seem heavily enchanted.

But even if Ainz were inclined to humor his opponent – which he wasn’t – the ceaseless barrage offered no opening for retaliation. It would probably continue until he died from a thousand cuts, or a thousand bludgeons, as the case may be. 

Teleportation became his sole recourse.

Basic logic dictated that even a Noble Phantasm as potent as Enkidu’s couldn’t sustain such intensity indefinitely. Yet ceding complete initiative was perilous. At any moment, Enkidu might unveil a lethal surprise.

Teleporting once more, Ainz paused — a fleeting moment — to acknowledge the surprising strength of his foe. 

Then he raised a hand.

***

Enkidu did not understand humanity well – or rather, their ‘understanding’ of Humanity resided from the detached perspective of a divine puppet, sculpted from perfect divine clay. 

As an observer untainted by mortal biases, Enkidu grasped humanity’s essence clearer than any human mired in the biases of their own existence. Yet this very detachment left them unable to comprehend humanity as humans themselves do. The irony that their sole friend was Gilgamesh — a man as far removed from ‘ordinary’ people as possible, further estranged Enkidu from understanding the mortal’s perspective. 

Consequently, Enkidu’s mind, both alike and alien to humanity’s at the same time, struggled to reconcile contradictory human concepts that clashed with their own perception.

Enkidu was aware of the fact that he had died, officially punished by the gods for slaying the divine bull Gugalanna – though the true reason was to chastise him for his disobedience and to hurt and weaken Gilgamesh. 

He remembered this fact, not through the lens of genuine recollection, but simply knowing it, much like how Servants summoned by the Grail inherently understood the world around them, even things far removed for their times like machines, gunpowder, microchips. All without explicit memories of learning such things.

He also remembered becoming Kingu, the son of Tiamat, tasked with resurrecting her through the Holy Grail's power. He recalled how Tiamat's Black Sea had flooded his flesh, granting him new life. Unlike his fragmented past, this memory was visceral, etched into his mind, connecting his present to a lineage of betrayal. The Alliance of the Three Goddesses, Gorgon, treachery, murder, and the devouring black tide that consumed his body in his final moments, just as he sought to reawaken his primordial mother.

Enkidu understood words like resentment, rage, and pity. He himself had understood, and even felt these emotions, yet parsing them completely remained elusive. Human sentiments had seeped into his divine clay after his first encounter with humanity, back when he was naught but a wild beast, a monster of the ancient world. 

They were foreign to his divine clay — puzzles to be solved, not truths. This dissonance was what fractured his mind when Kingu’s identity emerged within Enkidu’s vessel. 

The tempered instincts of Gilgamesh’s lone friend clashed with the awareness of being Tiamat’s progeny. The external manipulations that forced Tiamat to dissolve Enkidu’s form and scatter its divine clay, were merely kindling for this fire. Trapped within Tiamat’s abyss, his body reduced to nothingness, Enkidu had only his fracturing psyche left, and so the two irreconcilable halves waged war. 

Kingu, the loyal son of Tiamat, and Enkidu, the divine weapon who defied the gods for humanity.

Enkidu was not foolish. Over time, he recognized the root of his conflict and how to solve it. It was his imprisonment within Tiamat’s sea, his own flesh resisting his purpose. As soon as he could emerge from the Black Sea, the conflict would disappear, and Enkidu would be whole again. 

Yet, Kingu clung to his mission, refusing to abandon Tiamat, his all-encompassing mother. And so Enkidu’s mind splintered, and in the labyrinth of his consciousness, he witnessed two reflections of himself locked in eternal battle…

Until Ainz appeared.

The absurdity was beyond measure. How could a physical entity enter into a mental landscape? One that is not his own, no less? An even more baffling accomplishment since Enkidu’s corporeal form had been erased, dissolved into Tiamat’s infinite Black Sea. The realm where Enkidu and Kingu do battle was a product of pure thought — a metaphor made manifest. 

Yet here stood Ainz, defying reason, compelling Enkidu to visualize his psychic struggle as a tangible scene.

Against all logic, it was real.

Enkidu, embroiled in his internal war, suddenly found his conflict externalized. And so, both conflicting forms, Enkidu and Kingu, lunged at Ainz, driven by instinct, knowing only the intruder’s name, form, and the chilling truth, this being defied comprehension, an absurdity transcending Enkidu’s grasp.

However, as if part of some divine joke, the collision with such an absurd being united the two fragmented halves of Enkidu's own personality. Akin to how a common enemy unites disparate individuals, or how an existential crisis suppresses doubts in a person’s mind. 

A comparison fitting for this uniquely peculiar situation Enkidu found himself in, especially apt now.

Yet even the combined powers of the two divided facets of the Servant could not defeat Ainz. And so, unsurprisingly, overcoming such an absurd entity demanded measures even more ludicrous than reconciling two mirroring aspects of one’s psyche on a mental battlefield. 

Still, this absurdity bore its own merits for Enkidu, quite positive ones at that.

The realization that regardless of which part of his personality was genuine or in control of his mind, Ainz must not be allowed to win. 

Whether Enkidu, who desired humanity’s salvation, or Kingu, the loyal son of Tiamat prevailed in the end, both fought against Ainz because he stood as an unequivocal threat to their grand designs. His victory meant defeat for both Enkidu and Kingu. Which half of the Servant’s mind prevailed in the end with their conflict mattered not if they lost to Ainz.

And it was precisely this realization that allowed Enkidu, if only for a fleeting moment, to reconcile with his conflicting half, and reach a unified decision backed by every fragment of his consciousness. 

To deploy his Noble Phantasm.

Age of Babylon.

Enkidu, the divine clay marionette forged by heavenly will, had been created to subdue Gilgamesh, the rebellious key linking the realms of gods and mortals. Gilgamesh dared to forsake his ordained purpose and misuse his god-given nature to conquer the world and hoard all of the earthly riches. 

Even the gods saw Gilgamesh as an intolerable adversary. 

Though descending to Earth themselves might have subdued the arrogant king, such an act would require unleashing powers that would not usher in a new golden age for humanity and divinity but plunge them into cataclysmic ruin. So, instead, they sent Enkidu, a doll without a will of its own, to slay Gilgamesh or force his submission to the Gods’ plan once again.

His body was molded from clay, his life woven by divine authority, his emotions gifted through Shamhat’s guidance… and through the Age of Babylon, they granted him unparalleled power.

Gilgamesh stood closest to godhood among mortals, yet he was no deity, merely a man and a great king who subjugated all earthly treasures. Reflecting this, the gods endowed Enkidu with a matching power.

The ability to replicate any weapon, artifact, or tool in existence — in limitless quantity and peerless quality.

Of course, this was not true ex nihilo creation. Instead, Enkidu reshaped his own divine clay into forms and channeled his energy to imbue them with transcendent power, transforming raw matter into flawless armaments. With this ability, Enkidu clashed with Gilgamesh and fought him to a stalemate, becoming the sole being to ever fully exhaust the infinite treasures contained by the King of Babylon’s vault.

In other words, it was a near-absolute means of offense and defense—a power capable of replicating any effect and overwhelming any foe…

Unless that foe was Ainz.

The revelation that waves of blades and spears had vanished into nothingness struck Enkidu simultaneously with an alien sensation he couldn’t immediately parse. Sticky and viscous, it was foreign — he had never felt fear before. Not when he lived as a beast in the wild forests, nor when battling Gilgamesh, not even when confronting Ishtar’s divine bull, nor when he last crumpled lifeless to the earth as punishment for betraying his mission. 

But as the feeling of fear seeped into his bones now, rather than panic, Enkidu froze in confusion. He had no framework for this strange new variable, as though encountering an equation with no solution.

And it was at that moment of confusion that became his last, the magical circle that materialized beneath his feet restrained him. For an instant, Enkidu's divine clay form shifted instantly at his will, altering his physical attributes as effortlessly as his mind demanded, reshaping his flesh like modeling clay. 

Yet that split second of hesitation was all that Ainz needed, for in the next moment, Ainz appeared beside him, binding him with a new spell, and then another, this time not shackling his body, but sealing his power.

"[Eternal Death]. Not the strongest of my summons, but certainly one of the most unique… A fear aura capable of bypassing even complete immunity to it…" Ainz, now standing beside Enkidu, forced the latter to pause, granting Ainz a moment to observe Enkidu once more. 

"I see you've adopted a unified form… Does this mean the two of you have reached an agreement?"

"Yes," Enkidu and Kingu replied simultaneously, their voices merging as one, glaring at Ainz. 

"You must be destroyed." Even now, shackled as they were, an unflinching truth remained evident in their mind.

Ainz, hearing this, merely sighed… but not before allowing a faint smile to flicker across his mind - as his face, skeletal as it was, didn’t change. 

"Strange… Under these circumstances, even such hostility toward me feels almost reassuring, as if I’m on the right path."

Enkidu offered no response to Ainz’s words, prompting him to exhale softly before locking eyes with the clay construct and smiling. 

"In that case… Perhaps we could discuss whether my path is truly correct?"

Enkidu hesitated briefly, weighing whether to respond at all, before finally uttering the truth that had made the two conflicting minds join forces. 

"You will destroy the world."

Ainz nodded slightly at this, his smile still lingering. "That is precisely what I wished to discuss…"