[The first day of destruction]
Valeria stared at the apocalypse.
The soldiers—his men, his comrades, fathers, sons, believers—were gone.
In their place was a writhing sea of nightmares.
The men had burst apart, their bodies reconfiguring into giant insects. Some were massive beetles the size of horses, their shells gleaming with the iridescent sheen of oil; others were centipedes ten meters long, made of what looked like fused human faces; still others were bipedal cockroaches wielding the shredded remains of Slane Theocracy armor.
Even the forest had turned against them. The trees groaned, their bark splitting to reveal insectoid legs. Branches became antennae; roots became mandibles. The very grass underfoot grew spiny legs and began to scuttle.
"In YGGDRASIL, this spell only affected units," the Sorcerer King mused from above, sounding genuinely intrigued.
Valeria could see the monster stroking its chin, as if examining a curious bug in a jar rather than a field of abominations.
(In the game, 'Creeping Doom' was a localized damage-over-time field that summoned ephemeral insect swarms. It didn't transfigure the terrain or the targets. This... is this the result of the 'flavor text' becoming reality? If the lore said 'transforms the land into a nest of doom', then the New World interprets that literally? Dangerous. The friendly fire potential on plants and animals is far higher than anticipated. I must make a note of this for future tactical deployments.)
"But in this world, plants and animals are valid targets. Fascinating."
Fascinating?
Valeria felt his mind cracking. A hairline fracture ran through his sanity, widening with every passing second.
Fascinating? He calls this hell... fascinating?
This wasn't war. War had rules. War had honor. This wasn't magic. Magic was a gift from the Gods to protect humanity.
This was an affront to life itself. It was a desecration of the natural order so profound that the sky should have cracked open and the Gods should have descended to smite the perpetrator. But the sky remained blue. The Gods remained silent. Only the Devil spoke.
"Ah... ah..."
Valeria stood alone in the center of the swarm. The monsters ignored him, their compound eyes fixed on the remaining human survivors who had been outside the rain's radius.
"Run..." Valeria whispered. His voice was a rasp, dry and weak.
He looked at the survivors. They were staring at the insects, their weapons hanging limp. Their minds couldn't process the visual data. They were waiting to wake up.
"RUN!" Valeria screamed, tearing his vocal cords. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? RUN AWAY!! DON'T LOOK BACK!!"
The survivors flinched, but their legs were rooted to the spot by terror.
"Still concerned for your troops? Commendable," the Sorcerer King said. His tone was light, almost conversational, which only made it more grotesque. "If you were not an enemy of Nazarick, I might have recruited you. Loyalty is a treasure, regardless of the vessel."
The skeletal figure raised his staff. The jewels glittered with a malevolent light.
"Go. Feed, my children. Leave none alive."
"SKREEEEEEEEEEE!"
The roar of the insect army shook the earth. It was a sound that vibrated in the teeth and bones.
The giant insects surged forward, a tidal wave of chitin and mandibles.
"No! Stay back!"
"Help me! GODS HELP M—!"
"Gyahhh!"
The slaughter was instantaneous and absolute.
A soldier raised his shield, only for a giant mantis to shear through the steel and the man behind it in a single stroke. Another man was swarmed by fist-sized beetles that burrowed into his armor, his screams turning into wet gurgles as he was eaten from the inside. Men were bisected by giant pincers, melted by acidic bile that turned flesh to slurry, or torn apart limb from limb like ragdolls.
The sound of wet tearing, crunching bone, and the high-pitched snapping of tendons filled the air, drowning out the prayers.
"Oh, yes. Do not kill the Commander," Ainz added casually, his voice cutting through the screams. "And try to avoid killing any Elves you find. Other than that... do as you please."
"Why..."
Valeria fell to his knees in the pool of blood spreading around him. The blood of his men. It was warm. It soaked into his trousers.
He looked like an old man, broken and hollow. The commander who stood tall against the Elves was gone. All that remained was a broken husk.
"Why are you doing this?" he sobbed, looking up at the god of death. "They were just soldiers... they were just following orders... Why..."
"Why?"
The Sorcerer King descended slightly. The red flames in his eye sockets flared, burning with an intensity that seared Valeria's soul. For a moment, the apathy was gone, replaced by a glimpse of an infinite, cold void.
"This is retribution."
Ainz Ooal Gown clenched his skeletal fist, the leather of his glove creaking.
(They dared. They dared to touch her. They dared to mind control Shalltear. Ignorance is no excuse. Time is no excuse. If I do not make an example of them, if I do not show this world the price of crossing Ainz Ooal Gown, then the safety of the children of Nazarick cannot be guaranteed.)
"Those who harm Nazarick... those who dare to touch what is mine... be it intentional or accidental, be it today or a century ago... they will face punishment that makes death seem like a mercy."
The Sorcerer King spread his arms, the golden staff gleaming in the morning light like a perverse scepter of judgment. Behind him, the massacre continued, a backdrop of gore for his proclamation.
"Let this be known. The Theocracy shall be erased from the map. Their cities will burn. Their history will be forgotten. Their people will serve as fodder. No one will be spared. No one."
From the corpses of the fallen, a pink, toxic mist began to rise. It was the result of the massive release of death mana and the chemical byproducts of the insectoid venom.
The mist swirled upwards, thick and cloying, smelling of copper and rot. It choked the sunlight, turning the bright morning into a hazy, twilight hellscape.
Through the pink fog, the silhouettes of the giant insects feasting on the dead looked like demons dancing in the mist. The screams of the dying had faded, replaced by the wet, rhythmic sounds of chewing, a sound that would echo in Valeria's ears for the rest of his wretched, short life.
The First Day of Destruction had begun. And the silence of the Gods was deafening.
Author's Note
This chapter represents the moment where scale gives way to consequence. Creeping Doom is not presented as a powerful spell, but as a misalignment between game logic and a world that interprets lore literally. The result is not balance, but inevitability.
From this point forward, the story is no longer about conflict—it is about enforcement. The silence of the Gods, the absence of mercy, and the perspective of those who can only witness are all intentional. This is the first day of destruction, and nothing that follows will be clean.