The convoy ground to a halt, tires crunching on broken asphalt as they followed Ainz's relentless, off-road stride. The trees here were thick, swallowing the sounds of the engines until the world was reduced to the rumble of motors and the unsettling silence of the forest. No birds. No groaning walkers.
"This is wrong," Daryl muttered from the passenger seat of the lead truck, his eyes scanning the dense foliage. "Ain't no birds. Even the damn bugs are quiet."
Rick, his hands tight on the wheel, just nodded. He was following the black and gold robes that moved with unnatural smoothness over fallen logs and through thickets. Ainz was a compass pointing towards a mystery they couldn't perceive.
After twenty minutes, they broke into a clearing. In the center stood a low, concrete bunker, almost overgrown with ivy. It had no windows, only a single, massive steel door, slightly ajar. The air around it was cold—a dry, static chill that had nothing to do with the weather. And there were no walkers. Not a single one within sight. The ground around the structure was littered with bones, but they were picked clean, old, and scattered, not fresh.
Ainz raised a hand, and the convoy stopped. He cast a series of rapid, silent spells.
[Detect Life]. Negligible readings. A few rodents, deep underground.
[Detect Undead]. A faint, pulsing resonance from within the bunker, but it was… discordant. Not like the walkers' monotone curse. This was a tangled, messy signature.
[Detect Magic]. Again, not the rich tapestry of Yggdrasil, but a sharp, ozone-like spike of raw energy. Not mana. Something else.
"Remain here," Ainz commanded, his voice low. "The entity within is anomalous. Do not approach the entrance."
Shane threw open his truck door. "Oh, so now he's giving orders about what not to touch? This whole place is a death trap!"
"Shane, get back in the truck," Rick said, his voice tense.
"No! I'm done taking orders from him and you! We need to see what's in there! Supplies! Intel!" Shane's anger, simmering for days, was boiling over. He grabbed his shotgun and started toward the bunker.
Ainz did not turn. He simply spoke. "Death Knight."
The towering black-armored entity, which had been standing as still as a gargoyle, moved. It covered the thirty yards between itself and Shane in three ground-shaking strides, placing its massive, gore-stained form directly in Shane's path. It made no sound. It simply stood, its hollow helmet visage fixed on the man.
Shane froze, the barrel of his shotgun rising slightly toward the knight's chest. A standoff against a foe that didn't breathe.
"The volatile asset is compromising the mission parameters," Ainz stated, still facing the bunker. "His emotional logic circuit is overloading. Restrain him, or I will convert him into a more predictable resource."
The threat hung in the cold air, crystal clear. Shane was a variable, and Ainz dealt with variables by either eliminating or repurposing them.
"Daryl, Glenn, get him," Rick ordered, his voice cracking with exhaustion and authority. It wasn't a plea. It was the last command of a sheriff trying to prevent a massacre.
Daryl spat but moved, crossbow lowered but eyes sharp. Glenn followed, looking sick. It took both of them to pull a rigid, furious Shane back toward the trucks, his curses echoing in the silent clearing.
Ainz, satisfied the distraction was contained, approached the bunker door. The discordant undead signature was stronger here, mixed with that sharp, electric non-magic. He pushed the heavy steel door open with a thought, [Telekinesis] grinding it against concrete.
Inside was darkness, and a smell that overpowered even the decay of the outside world: chemicals, burnt meat, and a sickly-sweet rot. Ainz's darkvision activated. The bunker was a single, large laboratory. Shattered glass, overturned tables, and… cages. Empty cages with broken locks.
In the center of the room, connected to a jerry-rigged car battery array, was a large glass tank. Inside, suspended in a murky fluid, was a walker. But it was wrong. Its skin was a mottled, electrical-burn black in places. Tendrils of copper wire were surgically fused to its spine and skull. Its eyes, milky white, flickered with tiny arcs of blue static.
It was hooked to monitors that still displayed flatlined brainwave patterns, except for occasional, violent spikes that coincided with the static arcs.
A science experiment, Ainz mused. Attempting to harness or manipulate the animating curse through primitive electrical stimulation. The researcher is likely the source of the other signature.
He found the scientist in the corner. Or what was left of him. He had turned, but the transformation had been… interrupted. One half of his body was a typical walker, grey and necrotic. The other half, the side connected to a torn-apart electrical harness, was charred, crisped, and frozen in a rictus of agony. This hybrid creature dragged itself in a slow, pathetic circle on the floor, a continuous, low buzz emanating from its charred vocal cords. It was this buzz, this field of painful energy, that had kept the other walkers away. They sensed not a predator, but a malfunction—a source of pain to be avoided.
[Analysis: Fused entity. The electrical current failed to kill the host before reanimation, resulting in a symbiotic, tormented state. The energy field is a byproduct of sustained neurological damage. Crude. Inefficient. But a unique data point on the curse's resilience.]
The creature sensed Ainz and turned its head, the good eye focusing with mindless hunger, the burned eye socket just a crater. It tried to lunge, but its crippled body only twitched.
Ainz felt a flicker of… something. Not pity. The concept was alien. It was the same feeling he got when a piece of automated mining equipment in Nazarick malfunctioned and began grinding itself to pieces. A waste of potential utility.
He could end it. A simple [Death] spell. Or he could preserve it for study, though it had little left to offer. Or…
An idea formed, cold and perfectly logical. He needed a new tool. One native to this world, yet under his absolute control. The Death Knight was powerful, but it was a being of pure Yggdrasil-grade necromancy, a glaring anomaly here. He needed something subtler.
He extended both hands. With his left, he cast [Control Undead], aiming to overwrite the crude, natural curse with his own supreme dominion. With his right, he cast [Lesser Energy Stabilization], seeking to tame the chaotic electrical discharge and bind it to his will.
The hybrid scientist writhed. The buzz escalated to a shriek of frying circuits and dying nerves. The lights in the bunker flared, and the monitors exploded in showers of sparks. From outside, the survivors saw blue light flash from the open door and heard the horrific sound.
Then, silence.
Ainz stood amid the smoke. Before him, the hybrid creature knelt, its head bowed. The chaotic buzz was now a steady, low hum. The static arcs still crawled over its burnt flesh, but in a rhythmic, controlled pattern. The mindless hunger in its single eye was gone, replaced by the empty, obedient gleam of a dominated undead.
"You are an instrument of this world's failure," Ainz stated. "You will now serve as an instrument of my understanding. Your designator is… Stitch-Wire."
The creature—Stitch-Wire—let out a sizzling groan of acknowledgment.
Ainz led his new creation out of the bunker. The survivors watched in mute horror as the abomination emerged, walking with a lurching but steady gait behind the Overlord, sparks occasionally leaping from its wire-fused spine to the ground.
Shane stared, all defiance drained from his face, replaced by naked terror. Rick felt his stomach turn to ice. This was not the clean, armored terror of the Death Knight. This was something born of their own world's agony, twisted and claimed.
"The anomaly has been resolved and integrated," Ainz announced, as if he had simply repaired a broken wagon. "Stitch-Wire's emissions will provide a mobile zone of walker repulsion, increasing travel efficiency by an estimated 35%. Proceed to the vehicles. We continue to Atlanta."
He walked past them, his two undead servants—one a masterpiece of dark artistry, the other a blasphemy of science—following in his wake. As the convoy reluctantly restarted, moving now through a forest utterly devoid of the dead, the survivors understood the true terms of their bargain.
They were not just following a protector. They were part of a crawling, expanding nightmare. And the devil, they realized, wasn't just offering safety. He was recruiting.