A Theory on Godhood: An Overlord Story

Chapter 7: A Sunny Day to Blend in

"Alright everyone, settle down. It's time for the weekly meeting. Get into your seats and let's get started," Momonga said, a bandage having been placed onto his skull after Punitto Moe's "disciplinary measures". Though he didn't actually need it, as he hadn't suffered any real harm, Ariel had still jokingly placed it on her guild leader when they were away from the death vine battle priest.

Momonga was more or less dressed in his usual attire, his magnificent robes pooling into the confines of the head chair as he lowered himself into it. The guild staff was resting in its alcove in the wall behind him, and a gavel like what an old world judge would have lay in his right hand instead.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Momonga hammered the gavel, ceasing all side conversations as the members of the guild focused the entirety of their attention on him. Ariel squirmed at having so many people in close proximity, though she calmed when she felt her sister's airy hand squeeze her own right wooden one.

"Relax," her sister, Tempest Aizawa the air elemental, said. "I know how you feel, but we're among friends here. Fath-Momonga shouldn't take too long with this weekly meeting. We haven't even had anything important yet save for the other thing."

Ariel rolled her eyes, sticking her tongue out at Aizawa's near verbal slip-up. Though her sister didn't have any true facial features of her own, save for two specks of cobalt she could call eyes, Aizawa somehow managed to give her an exasperated look. Ariel silently giggled at her sister's annoyed look, who's vortex body was darkening with miniature lightning storms.

Though the guild itself had only been in the new land for around nine days, Momonga had decided to revive their ancient practice of having a guild meeting every Monday of the week. Ariel was unsure how the undead overlord even knew what day it was, until she realized that many of the grandfather clocks around the tomb of Nazarick had somehow attuned themselves to the seemingly alien timezone. The days from her old world had continued seamlessly into this new world.

She felt a tug on the left sleeve of her white-cotten dress. She turned to see that her friend, Luci*Fer, was giving her a concerned look.

'Are you okay?' The corrupted angel signed, ending it with his thumb sticking up and spinning his entire hand in a circle. Flecks of tar from his cosmetically degraded body sizzled as it fell against the table top of their meeting room.

'I'm fine,' Ariel signed back, smiling. 'I just don't know how to handle such a large crowd if I don't keep my hands busy like this.'

'I understand,' Luci*Fer replied, flicking his index finger upwards. 'Grandfather Momonga won't take long, then we can play more checkers, yes?'

Ariel nodded, her hearing tuning back into whatever it was that Momonga himself was saying. She and the geomancer had played checkers so many thousands of times that if she and him were anyone else, they would've snapped the board in half and set the pieces on fire. Unfortunately, Chess itself proved to be too frustrating a concept for Luci*Fer to learn, so he and Ariel had stuck to their favorite board game in the end.

"-which means that we will have to take more stringent measures in the future when dealing with the natives. Am I understood?" Momonga asked, overlaying his fingers as he leaned forward to give them all a stern look. Ariel felt herself nodding automatically, as did the rest of her guildmates. She chanced the sasquatch berserker Suratan idly tossing a dagger up into the air, narrowly catching the weapon by the handle as Jo-Bro and Dynamite cheered him on in whispers.

Her eyes darted to her left, looking beyond Luci*Fer to see the two dragons, Connaisdiam and Nearata, conversing in hushed tones. Connaisdiam caught her eye, to which the elder dragon knight gave her a warm, grandfatherly smile. She instinctually returned it, her mood brightening instantly at his kind gesture.