Overlord Supreme

Momonga's footsteps echoed in the Royal Suite's passage, followed by the tapping of his staff. After a few turns around the corners of the wide hallway, Momonga saw a woman in the distance moving towards him.

She had a luscious blonde hair down to her shoulders and well-defined features.

She was wearing a maid outfit, including a large apron and a long skirt. At a height of about 170 centimetres, she had a slender body with a full c.h.e.s.t threatening to spill out of her clothes. Overall, she gave a virtuous and elegant impression.

As the two of them approached each other, the maid stepped aside and bowed deeply to Momonga. In response, he slightly raised his hand.

The maid's expression did not change; her face was showing the exact same unsmiling face as before. Facial expressions did not change in Yggdrasil. However, there was a difference between the unchanging expressions of players and this maid. The maid was a Non-Player Character (NPC). Within the game, these artificial intelligences only move according to their program. In other words, they were the same as moving mannequins, and even its bow to Momonga was just a pre-programmed action.

His greeting earlier could be seen as a waste of time, but Momonga had a reason why he didn't treat them with disrespect.

All 41 maid NPCs working in the Great Underground Tomb of Nazarick were based on different ill.u.s.trations by a guilder member, who had lived off his artwork and was now a manga artist serialized in a monthly manga magazine.

Momonga gazed not just at the maid's appearance, but also at her astonishingly elaborate uniform. Especially, the exquisite embroidery on the apron was the subject of admiration.

Since it was ill.u.s.trated by a person who boasted that "a maid's best weapon is her uniform", the level of detail on the outfit was far beyond normal. Momonga couldn't help feeling nostalgic when he recalled how the guild member who was responsible for her visual rendering would start to scream at the task.

"Ah… Right. Since then, he was always saying things like "Maid uniforms are justice!"... Speaking of which, the heroine of the manga that he's drawing now is also a maid. Are you still making your assistants cry with your excessive attention to detail, Whitebrim-san?"

As for its behavioural program, it was created by Meromero-san and five other programmers.

In other words, this maid was created from the hard work and joint efforts of the past guild members, so ignoring her was a little out of the question since, like the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown, she was also a part of his precious memories.

As Momonga was thinking about these things, the maid tilted her head as if to ask what's the matter. As long as someone was close to her for a certain period of time, the maid automatically adopted this position. Recollecting his memories, Momonga was amazed by Meromero's meticulous attention to detail. There should be a few other hidden positions programmed in as well. Although he wanted to see all her postures, there wasn't much time left.

Momonga's eyes turned to the semi-spherical holographic clock displayed on his left wrist and confirmed the current time.

Indeed, there was no time to idle around.

"Thank you for your hard work."

Momonga said this phrase of farewell filled with many sentiments and walked past the maid. Of course, the other side did not respond. Nevertheless, Momonga believed that a farewell was in order since it was the last day.

Leaving the maid behind, Momonga moved on.

Before long, a giant staircase with a luxurious red carpet covering the middle appeared before him. Momonga slowly walked down the flight of stairs and reached the tenth floor ─── the lowermost floor in the the Great Underground Tomb of Nazarick.

The first servant to catch his attention was an elderly butler dressed gracefully in his traditional uniform.

His hair was entirely white, just like his immaculate beard. But the old man's back was straight as an arrow and strong as a steel sword. He had visible wrinkles on his hollow face, which made him seen gentle in appearance, but his eyes were as sharp as an eagle after its prey.

Following behind the butler like shadows were six maids. However, their equipment was completely different than what the earlier maid had.

Their hands and feet were covered in gauntlets and greaves decorated with gold, silver and black metals. Donned in armours with a maid uniform motif, they wore white headdresses instead of helmets. Each maid was holding a different type of weapon, establishing the image of a maid warrior.

Their hairstyles were also quite different from each other: buns, ponytail, straight hair, braids, curls, French twist, etc. But something they all had in common was their transcendent beauty.

Additionally, the maids were divided into types such as flirty, sporty, traditional and other personalities.

Although they were NPCs and their designer had made them all playful and unique, their main purpose was to fight intruders.

In Yggdrasil, guilds in possession of a base equivalent to a castle or greater were given several special benefits.

One of these benefits were NPCs that guarded the base.

The undead monsters in the Great Underground Tomb of Nazarick fell under this category. These so called 'spawn NPCs' had a level cap of 30 and respawned automatically at no cost after a fixed period of time, but since it wasn't possible to change their appearances and AI programming, they did not pose much of a threat against other intruding players.

On the other hand, another special benefit was the power to create an original NPC. When a guild takes over a base with a castle-level rank, they could create NPCs with a collective maximum level of 700. Since the highest level was 100, you could create a maximum of five Lvl. 100 and four Lvl. 50 NPCs as an example.

When creating an original NPC, in addition to their appearance and AI, it was even possible to change their armours and weapons. This allowed a guild to create far stronger NPCs and assign them to guard key locations.

There was no need to create these NPCs with combat in mind. Another guild who occupied a castle, the Great Cat Kingdom, turned all their NPCs into cats or other feline creatures. It could be said a guild was given the exclusive right to create the image and atmosphere of their castle.