The Dark Warrior Read Online Free PDF Page A

their type, which is why tackling them required people with a larger variety of skills—countermeasures—than soldiers had.
    Given that, one might think that they’d be in a position like the hero in a video game, with many people depending on them…
    But that was not the case.
    The ruling classes weren’t too keen on having armed groups roaming around outside of their control. For that reason, even if adventurers were doing well enough from a monetary standpoint, their status was low. The reason they weren’t brought in to work on a national level was that countries used the same logic that corporations do: Full-time employees cost money, so it was cheaper to just hire temp workers as necessary. And just as there are some companies that get by without hiring any temp workers, there were countries where the army could subdue the monsters; in those places, an adventurer’s status was even lower.
    The lady behind the desk at the guild had grumbled that there were no adventurers in the Slane Theocracy and that the standing of adventurers in the Baharuth Empire had been falling ever since the current emperor came to power.
    Ainz cleared the faint disappointment from his mind. It wasn’t so uncommon a thing for someone to take a job they’d always wanted only to discover it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
    He waved his hand loosely, and his raven-black armor and two great swords melted into thin air, revealing his skeletal figure wrapped in magic items. Every now and then, a red target sight appeared on his thin black-mirrored shades and then disappeared. The amethyst circlet around his head was like a rose vine—the outside had a number of thorns sticking out. On top, he wore a black long-sleeved shirt with a silky sheen and, on bottom, baggy pants. Around his waist was something closer to a black belt—as in the martial arts kind—than a simple belt. He took off his unsophisticated gauntlets, and all his fingers except his ring fingers had rings on them. His rugged, red-brown ankle boots were embroidered with gold thread. Around his neck was a necklace that featured a silver plate fashioned into a lion’s face and then his crimson cape.
    Normally,
Yggdrasil
items were augmented by inlaying them with data crystals. For this reason, it was extremely difficult to have matching gear. But there were enough people who hated looking like a jumble of east and west that the developers released an update that made it so a player who met certain conditions could keep their stats but align the style of their equipment.
    The matching raven-black armor that had been covering Ainz’s entire body up until moments before was created with Create Greater Item, which was one of the conditions.
    The items Ainz had equipped included Direct Hit Glasses, a Crown of Psychic Defense, Black Widow Spider Clothes, a Black Belt,
Járngreipr
, a Nemean lion, Haste Boots, and—
    In
Yggdrasil
, buying and selling was often done at the data-crystal level; however, there were times when players had created a more powerful item and would then sell what they had been equipping before. The problem was that if a player created an item, they could name it basically whatever they wanted (the admins would request a change if the name contained words prohibited on TV or insults against a particular individual).
    There was an understandably strong tendency for items with strange names to be avoided on the market. The in-game purchase to change an item’s name was rather inexpensive, but there were not a lot of people who would go so far as to use one in order to buy something. For that reason, most players racked their brains when it came time to name an item. Names from myths or English words were common solutions.
    Of course, there were exceptions.
    Naming rings Ring1, Ring2, Ring3, and so on was still on the charming side. Ainz had even seen Thumb, Pointer, Middle before. One of Ainz’s friends, the Warrior Takemikazuchi, had two
ōdachi
that