Singularity VI: Camelot (219) (Patreon)

Ainz, watching the spear, the World Item that he was aiming for, begin to crumble in the hands of the Goddess of Camelot, did not even look for excuses or ponder the reasons for the current situation. Instead, he did what he should have done long before, teleporting instantly to the Goddess, Ainz simply shoved her roughly aside, forcing the Goddess aside, who was quite capable of staying on her feet. Usually that is, it seems that the shock of losing her spear and her goals, had shocked the Goddess into a stupor.

Having not been expecting such an action from her adversary, and was therefore unprepared for it, she fell to the ground on her bottom, causing her steel armor to make a resounding rumble that rippled through Camelot.

The spear slipped out of the Goddess's hands in surprise and into Ainz's hands, but it was too late. By the time Ainz got his hands on the spear, it was already covered in cracks that jeopardized not just the spear's use as a combat weapon, but even the ability to carry it safely. No, more than that, judging by the sight of a small piece of the spear falling off a moment after Ainz had picked it up, the very existence of the spear was in question at the moment.

Cracks continued to grow, like the most frightening tree in Ainz's life, causing the spear, which had previously had one distinct and concrete shape, to become a jagged mosaic, threatening to fall apart at just a gust of wind.

The low rumble of the trembling walls of Camelot around Ainz went almost unnoticed by him, slowly, as if in a horror movie aimed solely at collectors, the rarest equipment Ainz had longed for began to crumble in his hands.

At that instance, it almost felt like he had lost 90% of his HP in one hit, the gravest of injuries that he had ever received.

The castle rumbling around Ainz did not reach his mind, so consumed with horror, Ainz could only watch as one, two, and then three shards of the Rhongomyniad splintered. Which caused Ainz to open his mouth in mute horror. However, the suppression of emotion saved Ainz a moment later from an outburst, causing him to let out only a muffled ‘f-fu?’ instead of a cry of rage and anguish, before the floor beneath his feet began to shake.

In that instant, Ainz did remember where he was at the moment. Namely, right in the middle of a battle.

With pain, grief, and anger in his heart, he looked away from the World Class Item crumbling in his hands and shifted his gaze to the Goddess he had bulled through. The Goddess who had risen from the floor, but who was currently looking at Ainz with… Confusion.

The previously all-consuming mask of detached coldness seemed to have been shattered and replaced with almost… Resentment? Confusion? That childish emotion in which indignant children usually adopt before shouting something unreasonable like ‘that's not fair, you can't do that, I'm making up the rules of the game!’

Ainz could not tell whether the Goddess was looking at him or at her spear in his hands. Or, perhaps, most likely, at the wall of her Camelot collapsing behind Ainz, an action that coincided with the crunching of the spear in Ainz's hands.

Ainz, however, understood the Goddess's feelings about the situation, and even shared them somewhat, though for another direction altogether, and a little less starkly than the Goddess might have felt. So long had Ainz been striving for a new World Class Item, the disappointing experience he had experienced with Tesla, before finding a new, real and fully tangible World Class Item…

Only to see it snatched away from under his very nose!

Ainz was so overwhelmed with resentment and hatred that when they merged into a single emotion, they overflowed the cup of his patience to the point where they accidentally poured out. The outburst of emotion causes his emotional suppression to work overtime, showering Ainz’s mind with a cold shower, extinguishing the burning fire in Ainz's heart, mind, and perhaps elsewhere too.

Ainz, slowly, with a kind of detached thoughtfulness, let go of Rhongomyniad's crumbling form, which, as it fell to the ground, began to crumble only faster. He then turned his attention to the rumbling of Camelot's as its walls crumbled outside the window of the Goddess's palace.

“ARTHUUUUUUUUUUUUUR!” For a moment, Ainz had to pause and almost thought that the roar came from his mouth. But no, checking the fact that his mouth wasn’t moving, he determined that the loud roar actually came through the gap in the wall, causing Ainz to turn back to the crumbling Camelot, losing all interest in Rhongomyniad.

Or rather, forcing himself to lose interest in it, all other options would be too costly to Ainz's psyche.

The approaching black shadow that reminded Ainz of the Death Knight moved almost lightning fast through the crumbling walls of Camelot. Each time, with its sharp, jerky movements, as if subject to the effects of psychosis, he avoided the falling debris of the crumbling city. However, the Servant's figure covered in rising, writhing darkness, moving with its sharp jerky movements towards Ainz was not the only interesting thing Ainz discovered.

"Is that…!" Ainz blinked in surprise, looking at the figure of a moving mass of tentacles, mouths, and hooves, blinking. "A Dark Young?"

The creature Ainz stared at was familiar to him, extremely familiar, in fact. A Dark Young, a spawn of Shub-Niggurath, a creature from beyond the world… And the mob that could be summoned by a Super-Tier spell that Ainz also knows.

It was impossible to meet a Dark Young in YGGDRASIL as an independently existing mob. In YGGDRASIL, other than some special event or raids, they were most often met as a summoned creature of level ninety that Players could summon using the super-tier magic ‘Ia Shub-Niggurath’. It was a two part spell, the first being an instant death spell, after which depending on the total level and health that died after, if any, it would summon a corresponding number of Dark Young.

Of course, while quite the spectacle, the Dark Young did not have any special abilities to match their high level, so they could only serve as an additional aid in battle, and with only a limited area of application. But with its excellent HP, defense, attack, and speed, the Dark Young were among the most outstanding creatures that Ainz could summon through the use of his magic.

If it ever hits, of course.

And that's why Dark Young were not regularly encountered for YGGDRASIL Players, not because they were too ‘strong’, the thought of it makes him have to hold himself from laughing. Oh no, the developers of YGGDRASIL would never even consider creating an ‘Overpowered’ power. On the contrary, the Dark Young is pretty much useless against LVL 100 Players, and also the reason why there’s never a fight where you fight a Dark Young alone.

It was not a consideration because you’ll need special equipment or skill to fight one, in fact, just reaching LVL 100 makes the Dark Young barely an inconvenience. The Dark Young were too easy a target for level 100 players, more a mass of HP that’s to be chopped like dry timber than an enemy to use tactics on, a method to waste time.

So that’s why there were only two ways to encounter a Dark Young in YGGDRASIL, by encountering the results of other Players' super-tier magic as they used it against MOBs, the only target the Super-Tier spell could probably work on… Or by raiding against Shub-Niggurath itself, where Dark Young existed in abundance.

However, the creature he saw, while certainly looking like a Dark Young, seemed to him a bit…  Smaller? A much more compact version than the Dark Young he’s used to.

"A Dark Youngling perhaps?" Ainz thought for a moment before exhaling and shaking his head at the nonsensical thought intruding into his mind. Rather than see the mini Dark Young, he instead turned to see the Goddess, who was looking at her ruined spear with a complex look on her face, who, noticing Ainz’s gaze, turned to look at him. Ainz in turn had no desire to even communicate with the Goddess at the moment, the pain from losing a World Class Item still too raw.

So, turning his gaze to Medb, who had been watching him anxiously, awaiting orders, Ainz was about to order Medb to deal with the enemy, but a deafening roar from beside him made him change his mind.

“ARTHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUR!”

The Servant he had seen earlier, exuding an unhealthy amount of hatred and darkness that rose above him like miasma, appeared next to Ainz almost imperceptibly, holding a blade shining with golden light and silver steel. Just one look at it and Ainz’s collector’s spirit reared up again.

Ainz considered for a moment whether he should take a 'consolation prize' with him, before exhaling defeatedly.

No, he would not be taking this blade away, why bother getting his hopes up again? As soon as he reached out for the sword, a floating city would probably fall upon him. Or maybe the city, so far away from the ocean that even when he was in Medb’s place, up high in the sky, he couldn’t see any of it, would start flooding. Or maybe the gods would suddenly descend from the heavens and simply snatch away the blade before he could get his hands on it!

Anything and everything in this world that could keep him from getting a new artifact to add to his collection.

Ainz didn't even bother to reach for the blade, instead allowing the darkness-covered knight to stop for a moment in front of the Goddess before the knight let out another grinding roar of hatred and pain. “ARTHUUUUUUUR!”

A moment later, the Servant raised the blade in his hands – and threw it forward, piercing through the chest of the Goddess of Camelot, who didn’t even bother raising her hands to defend herself.

Ainz wasn't even surprised by this.

***

“Sir Bedivere, do you swear to faithfully serve the British crown, the people of Britain and me, your king, Arthur Pendragon? Do you swear to stand hand in hand with me in the name of the people and the faith, in the name of the throne and in the face of all the dangers of the world, in defense of Britain, the people, Camelot, and your king?” The voice that spoke these words seemed solemn and majestic, but beneath the mask of a measured king was anything but.

The king had to desperately hold his voice, trying to lower the high-pitched octaves of a young woman in bloom. While the king's hands continued to hold the blade, the Sword-in-Stone, Caliburn, on Bedivere's shoulder, trembling imperceptibly minutely due to her nervousness. “Do you swear to honorably endure every trial that falls to the people of Britain, to your King and to you, and if you fail in your trials, to accept defeat with dignity and honor, laying down your lives in the struggle for the ideal of chivalry, honor, and valor?”

“I swear," Bedivere said a single word without raising his gaze, making King Arthur smile slightly.

“Then, in the sight of every one of my subjects, the crown, and God himself, I appoint you a Knight of the Round Table, Sir Bedivere. Rise, and henceforth stand by my side, doing your knightly duty, First Knight of the Round Table.” King Arthur spoke with a bright smile on her face, forgetting that she was supposed to act solemn and serious, moving the blade from Sir Bedivere's shoulder, finishing the ceremony. With Caliburn back on its sheath, allowing Bedivere to rise from his kneeling position, raising his gaze at last, to look with a calm little smile into King Arthur's eyes.

And then the vision passed from the Goddess’ mind.

"What is it?" The throbbing pain in the Goddess' chest made her open her eyes wider. The last moments she remembered were her throne room, in her Camelot, where her spear, her reason for existence, crumbled in her hands. Her Camelot, defeated, crumbling to ashes, just like her spear.

The Goddess of Camelot felt the pain in her chest, the blade piercing through her body… And yet, death had not come. The Goddess had no doubt that her death would come, her spear was destroyed and Camelot shattered, she was left without her powers and without her defenses, and yet, in her last moments, she saw instead… Something.

The knighting of Sir Bedivere.

The very first of the Knights of Camelot, steward of the royal court, Bedivere – the Goddess, had no memory of the event. Time had erased that and much more from her memory, she remembered Camelot, her shining castle, and the Knights of the Round Table.

Yes, that's right, she had remembered them, that's why the Goddess had brought them into this world. Her Camelot, her Knights of the Round Table.

But the memory before her eyes shifted, as if it were an oil painting blurred by water, transforming with running rivulets of colors into another painting, other memories. No, into dozens of them.

“Do you swear, Sir Gawain.” Gawain… A name that echoed with the pain of a blade in the chest of the Goddess of Camelot. A loyal knight of King Arthur, a glorious knight of the Sun, polite and yet not without a sense of humor and even a certain charming boastfulness, one fitting for knights of his qualities, character, and strength.

“Do you swear it, Sir Tristan.” Another familiar name echoed in her chest alongside the flash of pain. Sir Tristan, the famed sad poet, as skillful with the harp as he was with the bow, who had swore allegiance to King Arthur.

“Do you swear, Sir Lancelot.” The blade sank deeper into the flesh of the Goddess of Camelot, causing her to wince in pain for the first time in ages. Lancelot, the most loyal follower, the finest of the Knights of the Round Table.

The shimmering rivulets of pictures merged into one full-blown picture.

“Do you swear, Your Majesty.”  The picture changed once again, this time the voice that came through was not her own; it was male, deep, aged, and the Goddess of Camelot knew he did not need the help of tricks for such a voice. No, the speaker was a man, an old and experienced priest, saying the words, enunciating it one by one for her vow of marriage. A sham.

"In love and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, in happiness and in misery, to love Her Majesty Guinevere?”

“I swear it.” King Arthur bowed her head. There were many thoughts swirling around inside her mind, respect, friendship, tenderness even, familial concern, a romantic crush on her new consort… But not love. It was not love that brought the two in front of the altar, but political ones. The moments of passion and romantic gestures did not become the ground for love, did not create a single eternal hearth of comfort between the two, instead into a seed of tragedy instead.

The wound in the Goddess's chest blended even more, stronger than before, before an image once again rose in the Goddess’ mind, but this time it was a much less happy memory.

“Your Majesty, Your Majesty!” Mordred, the newest knight, moving at a quick pace, hurried on, nearly stumbling over his own feet as he ran, trying to get to King Arthur in time. Mordred, so young, yet so promising, so zealously loyal and devoted a knight.

“Sir Mordred.” King Arthur glanced around, noting that the other knights had already left for the Round Table meeting, and the Camelot guards, dismissed a little earlier by King Arthur himself, had dispersed into the surrounding countryside. “What can I do for you?”

“Your Majesty!” The joyful knight, who had never removed his helmet until now, pulled it off.

The face and short hair, the same eyes and mouth that King Arthur was very familiar with – for it was her own.

“Father!” Mordred's voice echoed in the deafening emptiness of King Arthur's mind, shocked beyond her reckoning at the sight in front of her.

“Father, I am your son, Mordred Pendragon!”

Mordred's face seemed to come into focus as the Goddess felt a new stab of pain, stronger than any she had felt before. A cutting, piercing pain, echoing through the nerve endings, a pain at the very center of her chest unconnected to the sword currently stabbing her… It was a much deeper pain.

And yet, when the Goddess could not hold her hand back and raised it to the blade running through the center of her chest to try to push away the source of pain – her palm slid over untouched skin. The blade, Excalibur, that had pierced her body…  Vanished.

But how? Why? Excalibur had pierced her body, of that the Goddess was certain beyond a shadow of a doubt. After all, if Excalibur hadn't pierced her body…

Then why did she feel that pain in her chest?

"Mordred…" The Goddess murmured as if to taste the name on her tongue, rolling the sounds around in her head. A word that tasted of metal… Blood… Tears… Despair… Disappointment…  and bitterness.

The pain piercing her heart only grew stronger after the name slipped the Goddess' tongue.

The picture changed again.

“Sir Lancelot, accused of dishonoring Lady Guinevere and His Majesty, of violating his duty to King Arthur, as a Knight of the Round Table, as a loyal servant to the British crown and as a man, of treason, and of killing Sir Gareth in a fit of madness.” A new figure spoke, it was her own, and yet the emotion behind it was alien to her. It was a picture of desolation and despair.

King Arthur's voice that was so close to breaking into an accusatory cry of pain. Gawain's gaze from the crowd, looking with maddening hatred at Lancelot. The downcast faces of all the other Knights of the Round Table. The piercing look of Mordred's anger, hidden by the indifferent steel mask of his helmet.

The throbbing, aching pain in the Goddess's heart began to spill further down her chest, traveling to her right. A pain for which the Goddess could find no explanation.

The memory changed again, this time into a memory that was very familiar – it was where she failed to die.

A rivulet of blood was running down from her mouth, staining her body. She could hear the piercing wheezes of her slowly weakening breath, and all around her the cursed hill of bodies…

Camlann.

“Your Majesty…” Bedivere's worried voice was soothing, like the voice of a mother lulling her sleeping child to sleep – as gentle as the embrace of death slowly enveloping King Arthur. The last vestiges of his strength. The last words falling from his lips. The last thoughts that pierce the mind.

It was when Excalibur, the sword of the King, was handed over to the First Knight of the Round Table, with one last mission. The first and the last. The one who witnessed the beginning of King Arthur's legend – and the one who saw its end.

Pain slowly began to rise up and down from the Goddess' chest, penetrating through every part of her body slowly. A strange pain, a pain so unfamiliar – a pain from wounds not inflicted with a blade, but from wounds that bleed not blood, but tears. Pain that gives off the sweet taste of the past, the smell of summer fields, the cheers of the brave knights of Camelot. The sound of laughter at unsophisticated jokes of boasting noble knights, and the taste of disgusting campaign rations. The taste of Lancelot’s cooking, that King Arthur tried to wash off his tongue the following weeks.

It was memories of the everyday life, one that somehow remained in King Arthur's memory forever.

The picture changed again, and the Goddess suddenly realized that she was no longer seeing the story of King Arthur.

No, her mind was telling her, telling her that she was now seeing something completely different, a different story.

Sir Bedivere. A knight bereft of his arm, slowly leading his horse towards a Lake. Pain, it was another man's pain, the most burning pain there could be, the pain of a man stripped of everything… And yet grasping onto that very last strand of hope.

“Maybe…  Merlin?!” A frantic question, a flash of hope, illuminating the darkness, pulled down by dark clouds of pain. “Yes, Merlin! Maybe he can… Yes, I can still save the King! I can still make things right! Just… I just… I just need to get to Merlin…”

The Goddess felt the pain spreading through her body. A strange sensation of something that felt alien. A new pain joined the old pain, a tugging feeling of discomfort, as if what she’s seeing is a broken reflection, as if it was something she shouldn’t have seen. She couldn’t think about it further before the vision passed, replaced by another.

It was of a knight running desperately through the forest, Bedivere, gasping with panic, with fear, with bitterness – scalding tears of shame and fear creeping down his cheeks.

“It's gone! It's gone!” A desperate search for a lake, to complete his mission that had failed. The only order of King Arthur that he had broken, the only order Bedivere had ever broken in his life. A mission that he had put aside for a few days for the sake of trying, in the hope of a miracle.

“It is… It’s gone…!”

The feeling of discomfort continued, intensifying. It was as if she was observing a painting of alien geometries, which shouldn't have existed. Wasn't supposed to exist. A picture painted on a day that should never have been.

The next vision only intensified, coming with a feeling of vertigo.

It was a vision of an aging knight with only one arm, where, in a cloth-built sling at his belt, rested the blade he could not return. The knight was wandering endlessly, with each occasion he met another Human he would repeat the same question he had spoken countless times before, only to be met with mocking laughter.

"How do we get to Avalon? What ship is going to Avalon!?”

It feels… Wrong. As if it had been a memory of things that have never happened. Couldn't have happened. Ships don't go to Avalon, Avalon cannot be reached. The promised land that cannot be set foot on…  But the aged knight nods to himself with a frown.

If no ship goes to Avalon… Then Bedivere will reach it by swimming.

Such a vision was repeated again and again, the same event, the knight wandering endlessly in search of Avalon, with the only difference being the knight slowly aging. Each and every one, a new lingering pain in the Goddess's soul.

Now the vision showed a tired, wrinkled old man with one arm, waddling leisurely through the deserted streets, leaning on the walls with his one arm, supporting his decrepit body and looking around at the world with his weakened eyes. And yet, despite just how weak he looked, the bundle tied to his back never touched the ground. The faces and places and streets blend together, strange peoples and castles and trees and creatures.

And each time he arrived somewhere new, he would ask the same question.

"Have I come to Avalon?" And each time he would be laughed at as a mad man that had lost his mind, each time he would simply continue walking to his destination, forever trying to reach Avalon.

The heart of the Goddess clenched in pain.

The Heart. That's right, it wasn't pain in her body or in her chest. It was a pain in her heart, something she had thought she had abandoned long ago. The pain of…

The last vision was of a desiccated corpse on the shore of a beautiful island in an ocean with no edges. Where a field of flowers blooms all around and the ever-young prisoner of the tower that is unable to hold him walks slowly towards the dried up, decrepit old corpse with eyes sunken from time and the pain of wandering. Even then, he was still clutching in his hand a bundle that he could never return to his king.

The vision ends as Merlin speaks. “Bedivere?”

The Goddess sensed something strange, unnatural, so sickeningly motherly in the vision before her. It was as if the distant lands in the vision were calling to her, as if her place was there even now, when she was so far from it. It was as if she were seeing the place where she would belong, it was right in front of her, and yet so far that she couldn’t grasp it.

Even then the vision passes, and that feeling vanishes with it.

This time she was seeing Bedivere again, but this time it was no longer the dead man walking, it was the Bedivere in her memories. The only difference being that his missing hand had been changed to a silver prosthetic. It was no ordinary prosthetic, however, it was the blade that had pierced her before, Excalibur – the blade that he had to bring back.

Now bequeathed with new instructions from Merlin, Bedivere took a step and left Avalon again – forever, his King was not in Avalon. He had left the destination he had searched for his whole life, leaving it to finish his mission, to fulfill the command that should have been carried out so long ago.

The vision brought a new brush of pain once again, the feeling of wrongness. This time he could see where Bedivere was heading – it was the place of her summoning in this Singularity. At the moment of her summoning, she had felt nothing. Now she felt pain.

Gawain, a knight full of charisma, relegated by the Goddess’ gift to be a mere soldier, subject to her orders. Tristan, transformed from tragic poet to emotionless machine. Gareth, broken after hundreds of deaths in duels that she once loved so much. Richard, the naïve fan now festooned with a gaggle of gore, who has become nothing more than a living platform for the blade he had idolized so much.

The walls of Camelot, built in a single night, built from memory, so perfectly matched from every tower of the castle's past down to every single last brick, but somehow now seeming so alien and strange to her.

Lancelot and Bedivere.

Two loyal knights… Each a traitor. Lancelot, for falling in love with King Arthur's wife. Bedivere, who disobeyed her order, refused to return Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake. Each of them was loyal to King Arthur, and each was invariably linked to the end of the legend of King Arthur.

And by both of their hands, that Excalibur had returned to where it belonged.

A final vision rose before the Goddess's eyes. The first day of the Knights of the Round Table.

“What is the purpose of the Knights of the Round Table, Your Majesty?” Bedivere. The first Knight of the Round Table asked.

“To protect the people of Britannia, of course!” Was King Arthur's throwaway answer, an instant answer, as if King Arthur thought it self-evident.

A moment later, her vision turned to normal and the Goddess's gaze, King Arthur's gaze returned to the world, her hands clenched on the hilt of the sword that had finally been returned to her after all these centuries. The sword that had pierced her heart.

King Arthur looked up, ignoring the sad languidness in her soul, and smiled at her opponent before raising her gaze to the monster looming over her and smiling at him. Avalon, the unreachable island of her dreams, Avalon awaited her return to a place she had never been.

After centuries and betrayals, King Arthur's story was finally over.

***

The Grail served as a consolation prize for Ainz, a result which Ainz was dissatisfied with. Every time he had finished Singularity, he had gotten the Grail at the end, and it was quite the useful item, but he had lost a World Class Item again!

So after getting out of the solved Singularity, Ainz didn't even bother to stop to talk to Olga or Da Vinci and went straight to his room. Locking himself in and, after some deliberation, headed for the shower to wash away a little of the lump of irritation he had been ‘graced’ with at the end of the Singularity.

Usually at the end of each Singularity, Ainz went through some sort of self-discovery, a revelation even. What did he learn in this Singularity?

Most likely the fact that he couldn't ever get his hands on a World Class Item. That every time he tries, some unseen, but evil, force prevented his success on that front every time.

What else? He took his first look at the Servant he couldn't easily catch and disarm, also, Medb never used her Noble Phantasm…

Although, considering that she used it all the time, after all, her Noble Phantasm was passive and didn't require activation, was it fair to say such a thing?

But still…

Ainz made his way to the shower stall, finding himself under the warm water and, slowly, as if through sheer force, he smiled a small but genuine smile, the kind of smile he thought he'd never use again.

"That was fun… Really fun…"