The mountains rose like the spines of long-dead giants, and the convoy crawled up winding roads toward the source of the pulse. The signal Ainz tracked was no longer a vague thrum; it had resolved into a clear, repeating pattern. A beacon. Not a cry for help, but a declaration of order. It grated against the world's dead-frequency like a steady drumbeat against chaotic noise.
The community, when they found it, was not what the survivors expected. It wasn't a fortress of scrap metal and fear. It was pristine.
The "Alexandria Safe-Zone" was a walled suburb untouched by the collapse, its white-picket-fence aesthetic preserved behind massive, ingeniously reinforced steel plates. Solar panels glittered on rooftops. Tended gardens were visible through the gates. It was a memory of the old world, polished and placed under a bell jar.
Ainz's analytical gaze swept over it.
[Assessment: High-level social reorganization. Resource management appears efficient. Defenses are psychological (appearance of normalcy) as well as physical. The broadcast originates from within. This is not merely a settlement; it is a deliberate social experiment. Leadership will be intelligent, ideologically driven, and territorial.]
They were met at the gate by a man named Deanna Monroe, a former US Congresswoman, and her head of security, a stern man named Aaron. Their welcome was calm, practiced, but their eyes widened at the sight of the convoy: the armored vehicles, the haunted faces of Rick's group, and the two silent, monstrous figures flanking Ainz.
"You found our broadcasts," Aaron said, his voice carefully neutral, his eyes locked on the Death Knight.
"We found a frequency," Ainz corrected, his voice bypassing Aaron and addressing Deanna directly. "One that suggests an understanding of the systemic collapse beyond mere survival. We will enter. There is data to exchange."
It was not a request. The authority in his tone, the sheer unnatural presence, broke through Deanna's political polish. She nodded, a flicker of fear in her eyes, and the gates swung open.
Alexandria was a shock to Rick's group. The clean smells, the sound of children, the normalcy—it was a psychic wound. They felt like ghosts walking among the living. Ainz, however, was utterly indifferent. He saw a controlled environment, a petri dish. The residents stared with a mixture of hope and deep unease at the newcomers, their stares lingering longest on the skeletal king in their midst.
Deanna convened a meeting in her well-appointed living room. Rick, the nominal leader, sat stiffly. Ainz stood, a monument of black in the sunny room, refusing a seat.
"Your community is well-designed," Ainz stated, cutting through Deanna's pleasantries. "You utilize renewable energy, practice crop rotation, and maintain a façade of social order. However, your greatest asset is the broadcast. You are actively studying the atmospheric anomaly."
Deanna paled. "The… the quiet signal? Our ham radio operator, Spencer, detected it. We thought it might be a government remnant, a beacon…"
"It is the root cause of your extinction," Ainz said flatly. He produced the data crystal, holding it aloft. It pulsed with a soft, blue light. "The pathogen you call 'Wildfire' is a biological key. This," he gestured with the crystal, "is the lock. The world is resonating with a frequency that privileges persistent, simplistic neural function over complex life. You are broadcasting a modified, dampened version of that frequency from your water tower, corrected with white noise. It creates a localized zone of reduced walker aggression. A sophisticated tactic."
The room was dead silent. Aaron's hand drifted toward his holster. Rick looked stunned. They had attributed their safety to strong walls and luck.
"How could you possibly know that?" Deanna breathed.
"I have analyzed the fundamental laws of your reality. Your broadcast is a crude noise-cancellation spell. Effective at a small scale. Inefficient." Ainz's eye-lights shifted to Deanna. "You have a researcher. The one who designed this. Bring him to me."
The researcher was a timid man named Dr. Milton Mamet, a former acoustic engineer. Brought before Ainz, he stammered through an explanation of using salvaged military calibration equipment to map the "background death-hum" and create an anti-phase broadcast.
"You are scratching the surface of a celestial-scale phenomenon," Ainz said, after Milton finished. "Your equipment can be optimized. Your range can be increased tenfold. You will give me full access to your transmitter and your data."
Again, it was not a request. Deanna, the democrat, looked to Rick, the fellow leader. Rick's face was a mask of conflict. This place was salvation, a dream. And Ainz was about to seize its heart.
"And what do we get in return?" Rick asked, his voice tight.
"You retain the illusion of your autonomy. And I will expand your 'quiet zone' to encompass a five-mile radius. Your survival probability will increase exponentially. A fair transaction."
The bargain was struck in the parlor. But outside, Alexandria began to fracture. The arrival of Rick's hardened, magic-armed group and their terrifying patron created schisms. Some, like the idealistic teenager Sam, saw Ainz as a dark savior. Others, like the paranoid Pete Anderson, saw a demon who had walked through the gates.
Ainz paid them no mind. He went to the water tower with Milton. For hours, he worked, using [Analyze Structure] and [Arcane Engineer] spells to rewire the crude human technology, weaving his own necromantic frameworks into the circuitry. He didn't just amplify the signal; he refined it, sharpening the anti-frequency into a blade of silence.
When he activated the modifications, the effect was immediate and profound. Every walker within sight of the walls stopped, turned, and shambled away as if the community had suddenly become repulsively bright. The constant, background moaning that was the soundtrack of the world simply vanished, leaving an eerie, deep quiet. The residents of Alexandria wept with relief and terror.
That night, the pseudo-players made their move. They did not attack the walls. They delivered a message.
A single arrow, fletched with hawk feathers, shot over the gate. It was not aimed to kill. It struck the porch of Deanna's house, impaling a folded piece of paper. The note was brief, written in charcoal.
"You have taken something that does not belong to you. The Silent King does not rule these mountains. Return the Beacon-Cutter, or we will silence your song forever." It was signed with a crude symbol: a wolf's head.
The "Beacon-Cutter" was Milton. The "Silent King" was clearly Ainz.
Ainz read the note in Deanna's living room, the paper crumbling to ash in his hand after his scan.
[Analysis: Threat is direct. Opposing force identifies with territorial and intellectual property paradigms. They have designated me as a rival sovereign. This simplifies diplomacy.]
"They will attack," Aaron stated the obvious.
"They will attempt to," Ainz corrected. "Their goal is the reclamation of the researcher and the cessation of my broadcast, which disrupts their hunting grounds and their own, likely similar, research. A siege against these walls, with me inside, is a negative-value action. They will attempt subterfuge or assassination."
He turned to Rick and Daryl. "Your utility is now. You understand the minds of desperate, territorial humans. You will be the counter-insurgency force. Use the tools I have provided. Carol," he said, and she flinched as if struck by lightning at being directly addressed. "You are observant. You will monitor the internal population for signs of collusion or panic. Report deviations."
He was deploying them like pieces on a board. Rick was no longer a leader; he was a lieutenant. Daryl was a hound. Carol was a sensor.
The attack came two nights later. The pseudo-players, the "Wolves," didn't scale the walls. They used a sewer line—a vulnerability even Alexandria had forgotten. They emerged silent and deadly in the heart of the community, targeting the water tower and Deanna's house simultaneously.
Chaos, familiar yet alien in this clean place, erupted. Gunfire and screams tore the night.
Ainz did not go to the tower. He went to the source of the secondary threat. He found the Wolf leader—the fierce-eyed woman from the mountain ambush—and five of her best, fighting their way toward Deanna's residence. They moved like shadows, killing two of Alexandria's unprepared guards with brutal efficiency.
Ainz stepped into their path in the manicured square.
"You were warned," the Wolf leader snarled, her voice raspy.
"You delivered data. I am returning the results of my analysis," Ainz replied. He cast not a combat spell, but a [Zone of Truth] amplified to painful intensity. The area was flooded with a compulsion for absolute, verbal honesty. "Why do you seek the researcher?"
The Wolves resisted, teeth gritted. But the leader, her hardened will already scarred by his prior [Dominate] attempt, broke. "He… he hears the song!" she gasped, fighting the words. "We all do! The quiet place… the calm… it's wrong! It unmakes the strong! Your broadcast… it makes us weak! It calls the true dead!"
Her words, torn from her, were more revealing than she knew. The Wolves hadn't just adapted to the apocalypse; they had acclimated to the primal frequency. They drew strength from the chaos of the undead world. Ainz's ordered silence was a toxin to them. They weren't just protecting a resource; they were fighting for their evolved identity.
Fascinating, Ainz thought. Speciation driven by environmental metaphysical resonance.
"Your adaptation is a dead-end," Ainz stated. "You are parasites on a dying host. I am the physician." He then cast [Mass Hold Person]. The Wolves froze in mid-step, mid-snarl, statues of feral fury.
He left them there, immobilized in the town square, a living exhibit of the defeated opposition, and walked toward the sound of fighting at the water tower. Rick and Daryl were there, back-to-back, using the enchanted weapons with lethal skill. A Wolf lay paralyzed from one of Daryl's arrows. Another screamed, a limb severed by a mana-blast.
Ainz looked up at the tower. A lone Wolf was at the top, planting explosives. Ainz pointed.
[Delay Teleportation] followed by [Falling Star].
The Wolf at the top vanished from the tower in a flash of light, reappearing fifty feet in the air directly above the hard pavement of the square. An instant later, a meteor of crimson energy smote him from the sky, obliterating him and cratering the asphalt in front of the frozen Wolf leader. The message was unmistakable.
The remaining Wolves broke and fled, their will shattered.
At dawn, Alexandria was intact, but forever changed. The bodies were cleared, the Wolf leader and her frozen squad were locked in the town jail—living specimens for study. The silence from the tower was now absolute, a dome of peace that felt, to some, more oppressive than the moans.
Ainz stood with Deanna and a shattered Rick on her porch, looking out at the clean, quiet, terrified streets.
"The threat is neutralized," Ainz said. "Your community is secure. The research will continue. We will now use this stable platform to run the next experiment."
Rick finally asked the question burning in his soul, the question whose answer he dreaded. "What experiment?"
Ainz's ocular lights glowed as he looked at the rising sun, at the crystal in his hand, and then at the people below.
"Phase Two: Localized Frequency Inversion. We will not just cancel the song of the dead here. We will attempt to rewrite a small piece of it. To turn the silent back into the living. A test of the planetary system's malleability."
He turned his gaze to a single, shambling walker trapped outside the walls, pounding mindlessly against the steel.
"Starting with that one."