23rd of the Lower Fire Month (September). The sun hung high in the sky.
Within the Roble Holy Kingdom, inside the Chalk Palace of the capital city, Hoburns, a six-year-old princess with golden hair and blue eyes dressed in a pure white gown. She moved with a light step, weaving through the dappled shadows cast by the vibrant stained-glass windows as she walked down the palace corridor.
The maid leading the way could clearly sense the excitement, urgency, and trepidation radiating from every movement Princess Calca made.
Today was the day the Holy Kingdom's royal family would begin her formal education in magic. Calca was finally stepping into the halls of arcane knowledge. In truth, it was difficult for anyone to remain calm upon learning they were about to become a magic caster.
However, to the maid, Calca's demeanor—akin to someone going on a pleasant outing—seemed remarkably composed compared to the royal children who had come before her.
What the maid couldn't guess was that while Calca was indeed excited and urgent about touching magic, those weren't the reasons for her trepidation.
As a transmigrator who had been working on the seventh floor of an office building before being sent flying by "Truck-kun," Calca's mental fortitude wasn't necessarily world-class, but it certainly exceeded that of most people.
To any other transmigrator, her status as a princess and the privilege of automatically gaining access to supernatural powers upon reaching adulthood would be enough to make them green with envy. If they knew the Holy Kingdom's royal family rarely suffered from the sort of fratricidal "succession wars" common in other stories, they would likely descend into a mental frenzy, cursing Calca for her god-tier luck.
But if they knew her full name was Calca Bessarez, and that she was a character from the famous anime Overlord—affectionately nicknamed "Lord Bone" by fans—they would likely burst into immediate, mocking laughter.
A simple change of context turned a winning hand into a pathetic tragedy.
Calca was almost certain that if her situation were made public, her face would be edited into every "I'm fighting Sukuna" meme or whatever internet trend was currently viral. At least the people challenging Ryomen Sukuna, or even the disciples of the Tang Monk, had the ability to fight back. Even a minor character like Benzhibaba from Journey to the West could flop around a bit before dying.
But her?
Ha!
She was destined for a scene of "intimate interaction" between a gate-guarding Dian Wei and the soldiers of Zhang Xiu.
Using a person as a halberd, using her as a sword.
It was a bit too much of a dark joke.
Over the last few years, she had dreamed of that scene every single night. Even though her dreams were perhaps a bit too vivid—thanks to her having watched the Overlord movie trailers before her transmigration—she had eventually gotten used to it.
Neither sorrow nor joy, neither joy nor sorrow. Perhaps this was the true strength of humanity, or life itself.
Calca could now accept this fact as calmly as a person accepts their own mortality. If another transmigrator stood before her and told her story to mock her, she would probably respond with a polite, vacant smile, laughing at the absurdity of life.
After moving past her initial terror, Calca had set a singular goal for her life: to survive.
Based on the information from the original novels, she would ascend the throne at fifteen and have nearly ten years of experience ruling. That meant the encounter with the Evil Lord of Wrath would likely occur when she was around twenty-five.
In other words, she had only a dozen or so years to change her fate.
Frankly, it was going to be difficult.
Whether it was the Holy Kingdom's deep-seated hatred for the undead and demi-humans, or the fact that Demiurge's "Abelion Sheep" farm was located right next door, every factor pointed toward the inevitability of the Evil Lord of Wrath's invasion in a decade.
An Level 80+ NPC like the Evil Lord of Wrath attacking a nation where the average level didn't exceed twenty and the peak was barely thirty-five... it was easier than harvesting leeks.
In this situation, survival was difficult, but no matter how hard it was, she had to try.
Setting aside her infancy, Calca had been pondering this issue since she was four years old, coming up with numerous solutions. Generally, they fell into two categories: passive and active.
The passive options included going into hiding and leaving the Holy Kingdom before the invasion, or marrying the "Bloody Emperor" of the Baharuth Empire as a princess.
The latter was particularly compelling. As one of the few monarchs in Overlord to survive, Jircniv lived a life of quality second only to Ainz's "daughters" once he decided to just give up and lie down.
However, passive measures were like building a wall during a war. You might think your defenses can hold, but if they fail, you have nowhere left to run. Furthermore, the Bloody Emperor would most likely cut ties with her the moment things went south in the Holy Kingdom; whether she could survive that was a gamble.
As the saying goes: "Aim for three to get two; aim for two to get one."
To increase her margin for error and leave herself a way out if her plans failed, she had to take the initiative.
It might seem laughable for a "small fry" who would likely never exceed Level 30 to strike out against the Great Tomb of Nazarick—an underground guild filled with dozens of Level 100 heteromorphs.
But Calca wasn't without advantages. In her previous life, she had been a fan of Overlord and had read almost the entire light novel series. While she didn't remember every single detail, the lore she had used to win arguments on internet forums was still fresh in her mind.
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My : https://[email protected]/AuAuMon
I'm not the Queen Greatsword. (41 Chapters, Ongoing)
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One of those details concerned the spawn locations of Yggdrasil players after they transmigrated.
There was a pattern: they usually appeared near environments or races similar to their own. Minotaurs appeared near Minotaurs, humans near humans. If a multi-racial group transmigrated, they appeared in a location representing an average of their traits—like the Six Great Gods.
In both the main story and the side stories, the Great Tomb of Nazarick appeared at the intersection of the three great human nations, on the edge of the Katze Plains near the Great Forest of Tob.
In the side story, Ainz—appearing alone—found himself in a nation populated entirely by undead, with no living beings in sight.
In other words, if she could change the status of the Katze Plains so it wasn't teeming with undead, she might be able to prevent the Great Tomb of Nazarick from spawning there. Compared to attacking Nazarick directly, this method held significantly more hope.
This was especially true for someone in Calca's position.
Aside from the Slane Theocracy, the Holy Kingdom was the only nation with a deep understanding of faith-based magic. Past Holy Kings had produced many Fifth-Tier divine casters and possessed a corresponding knowledge system. The crown of the kingdom could even trigger the Sixth-Tier divine ritual magic, [Ultimate Crusade].
Its effect summoned over a thousand low-tier angels to assist in combat—a perfect tool for striking down the undead.
If the plan succeeded, the best-case scenario was that Nazarick's arrival would be blocked entirely—assuming the Katze Plains was the only location in the world that fit the criteria, though that was unlikely. The worst-case scenario was that Nazarick would be diverted to another region, away from the northwestern corner of the continent occupied by humans.
And that was when things would get interesting.
The human-occupied lands were generally weak, but that didn't apply to other regions. In the east of the continent, the Platinum Dragon Lord held his ground. If those two clashed, it would be a fight to the death.
While Calca didn't think the Platinum Dragon Lord could necessarily defeat Nazarick, Ainz's personality—fighting against imaginary enemies—meant he would waste years being cautious. The Platinum Dragon Lord calling upon his allies could buy her a significant amount of time. After all, the "big shots" on the forums had speculated more than once that the Cure Elim Dragon Lord might still be alive.
During that period, Calca could grow, increase her strength, and even transform her country into a multi-racial demi-human nation. That way, whether the Platinum Dragon Lord or the Sorcerer King arrived, she would have room to maneuver. At the very least, she wouldn't be like the original Holy Kingdom—so fundamentally incompatible with the Sorcerer Kingdom that it had to be destroyed and rebuilt to be of use.
And if this plan failed, she had a secondary, more passive backup plan.
She would wait for the window when Ainz became an adventurer and replace Ninya and her group.
The arrival of the Great Tomb of Nazarick in the Katze Plains wouldn't be a quiet affair. If Calca spent her time purging undead there as planned, she would notice the disturbance. When the time came, she could simply camp out in E-Rantel.
The reason this was a backup plan was that it involved too many variables.
Whether she could become friends with Ainz was an open question. In the original story, Ninya only managed to touch Ainz's heart after she died. Calca couldn't exactly die once just to test the theory. There was a high chance she would end up as a mere "acquaintance," like the members of Blue Rose.
By comparison, the Katze Plains was always there. Calca had countless opportunities to experiment. But there was only one Ainz, and interacting with him was like walking a tightrope—if you fell, you never knew if there was a bottomless abyss below or a safety net provided by Ainz's mercy.
Thus, Calca's goal was clear.
Work hard to increase her strength, then head to the Katze Plains to purge the undead while simultaneously preparing Plan B: befriending the Overlord.
Now, she was about to face the most critical factor of all her plans: Was she as much of a genius as the original Calca?
The original had reached the Fourth-Tier—Level 21 or higher—by the age of fifteen.
If she didn't have that talent, her goals wouldn't change, but the path would become significantly more treacherous. She might even have to start preparing for Plan B much sooner than expected.
Finally, the maid leading the way stopped. Calca stood before the door of a prayer room.
Through the open wooden doors, the interior was clearly visible.
Four plaster statues of the gods stood atop a high platform, surrounded by a multitude of flickering white candles. The room was filled with the faint scent of incense.
Rather than a prayer room, it was more like a small chapel, with rows of wooden benches that could seat over twenty people.
A middle-aged woman in priestess robes stood by the statues with several young nuns, her eyes filled with affection as she looked at Calca.
This wasn't where the royal family usually conducted lessons, but it was a place every prince and princess of the Holy Kingdom had to visit before becoming a magic caster.
In this world, anyone wishing to become a magic caster had to undergo a vital first step.
To meditate, to perceive, and to experience the process of harmonizing with the world.
Without this experience, one could not use magic. Calca, who had seen the Fate series in her past life, preferred to think of it as the ancient magus's process of connecting to the "Great Source" of mana.