Overlord Volume 10

The Ruler of Conspiracy is the tenth light novel volume in the Overlord series. Written by Kugane Maruyama and illustrated by so-bin, it was released on May 30, 2016. It details about Ainz Ooal Gown's decision to turn his kingdom into a utopia for all races. Meanwhile, rulers of other countries are plotting to oppose him and his newly founded nation.

Main Summary
"Sovereign of Stratagem" "Abyss of the Great Sorcerer King" After his coronation, Ainz decided to turn his kingdom into a utopia, a forever thriving world with various races that submit to him. As the first step, Ainz turns toward the Empire with the intention to strengthen the Adventurer's Guild and nurture the adventurers.

Meanwhile, rulers of each country were taken aback by the sudden emergence of the Sorcerer Kingdom, and have devised their own countermeasures. How would Ainz, the immortal ruler of the country, influence them with his actions?

Full Summary
The prologue opens with Albedo, conveying a course of heart-struck affection towards her master. She outlines a list of forthcoming duties: training the Elder Liches to manage the administration, a visit to the Re-Estize Kingdom, and the policies to confirm and implement. Albedo still has trouble following Ainz's radiant plans and brilliant mind. Though, she takes on her duties with little complaint, as her heavy burden is service to her beloved master.

After the founding of the Sorcerer Kingdom, Ainz Ooal Gown is in the former mayor’s chamber, having moved in after taking over E-Rantel. Seated nearby in a corner of the room is Foss, one of the Homunculus Maids, who had kept steadfast vigilance on her master throughout the night. After Foss' shift is over, Fith, another homunculus maid, moves into her shift. Ainz, Fith, and the Eight-Edge Assassins leave for the dressing room. Ainz feeling too inadequate to select his attire, allows Fith to select his outfit. For the day, he styles a vibrant crimson robe, adorned with gems instead of buttons, and further embroidered with gold thread. Ainz heads downstairs, Fifh opening the door to his study. On the balcony, he feeds his pet lip bug. As he seats himself, Albedo and the Elder Liches make their entrance and the organizational conversation begins.

While so, Ainz finds out from a documented record that the merchants are refusing to enter his domain leading to the steady decline of resources. Ainz pauses, then mention that he is not versed in legislation and law; Albedo concludes that this is because he has never been bound by laws. They move onto the proposals, some made by Ainz in hopes the anonymous veil can protect his suggestions from instant implementation. Ainz accepts (presumably) Yuri's suggestion to start an orphanage which will help the children, provide work to the widows, and help integrate the next generation into the Sorcerer Kingdom. Ainz managed to convince Albedo to release Nigredo and Pestonya, who previously went against his word to defend the children with no memory of the Eight Fingers incident.

Later on, Aura and Mare come to visit Ainz. The forest resource depot is complete, Mare has been tasked with building an underground tomb on the outskirts of E-Rantel, the three elves that had been saved during the Invasion of the Large Tomb were attempting to act as parental surrogates to Aura and Mare; Ainz hopes they can help with Aura's and Mare's development. Shalltear is assigned to Gate related teleportation duties and the security of Nazarick. Cocytus is currently in charge of the Lizardman village and its nearby lake while Demiurge is assigned to a mission in the Roble Holy Kingdom. Both the two dark elves are picked up by Ainz, placed on each lap, and coddled in fatherly affection. Albedo voices her interest, but is shot down, thereafter Albedo begins a baby-like display in retaliation and Ainz allows her to sit on his lap. Ainz breathes in a familiar scent, but Aura stops him telling him brashly that it is perverted before he can pinpoint why the perfume smelled familiar.

On the other hand, Aura and Mare make a suggestion that boys should wear girl clothes, and girls should wear boys clothes, but the suggestion is turned down when Ainz convinces everyone in the room that Aura and Mare are dressed that way because of how their creator Bukubukuchagama wanted them to be special; his explanation is accepted and the idea retracted. Albedo asks Ainz for approval to visit the Royal Capital for a diplomatic meeting and Ainz approves it while discussing letting Pandora's Actor take over during her absence. Ainz visits Hamsuke, sleeping with his Death Knight. Wondering, Ainz asked Hamsuke if she knows about The Giant of the East and The Serpent of the West but Hamsuke doesn't know them and it's the first time she hears about them. After leaving Hamsuke and his Death Knight, Pandora's Actor continues to act as Momon in Ainz’s place and resides in the guest house. After having a chat with Pandora's Actor, Ainz finally acknowledges Pandora's Actor as his own son and allows Pandora's Actor to call him 'father.' Ainz also told Pandora's Actor to keep his special treatment a secret. When Ainz was about to leave, Pandora's Actor asks his father on the concerned behalf of the citizens what Ainz intends to do with the nation.

Since Ainz himself is unsure of that question, he decides to take a walk out on the streets in hopes he can form an idea. While waiting for his Pantheon spells to be done, Ainz has a little chat with Fith, he was told by Fith that Albedo is forbidding the maids from entering her room which made Ainz curious and Ainz orders Fith to get the lip bug. He summons six Cherubim Gatekeeper to protect him and Fith and was welcomed by the less populated streets of E-Rantel. While walking on the streets, Ainz starts a conversation with Fith about their nation. Fith told Ainz that she is very happy in this country because Ainz rules it but no one came to greet their ruler and it's upsetting her. After thinking about it, Ainz finally decides to turn his kingdom into a utopia, a dream-like world where all the races of the world must kneel before him. He also thinks about going down a path of ruling different from Demiurge and Albedo. Out of habit, he arrives at the Adventurer's Guild.

As Ainz and his escort enter the Adventurer's Guild, he sees that there are no adventurers inside the guild, only the staff. Because of Ainz taking over E-Rantel the adventurers have a hard time to find a job in hunting down monsters and protecting the people. This is because almost all of their jobs were replaced with Death Knights and Soul Eaters instead of adventurers. Inspiration flashes through Ainz's mind: changing adventurers from monster-hunting mercenaries to explorers of the unknown like in YGGDRASIL. Just as Ainz was deep in thought, he sees Moknach, leader of Rainbow. Ainz asks Moknach why he is still here in the city. Moknach replied that it's because of Momon, who stayed in the city and became their shield. After hearing his reply, Ainz told Moknach that he and the other adventurers might someday become like Momon. After a verbal exchange with Moknach, Ainz develops an idea toward his next objective of allowing the adventurers to live up to their name, being about adventuring, instead of just staying to protect the residents.

At the same time, Ainz tells the receptionist to set a meeting with the guildmaster, Pluton Ainzach. After the negotiation concluded, the Adventurer's Guild of E-Rantel will be assimilated into the Sorcerer Kingdom. A labyrinth will be built to train low leveled adventurers and the new purpose of the guild will be to explore the unknown lands that remain blank on the map. Ainz extenuates that under his rule, humans, demi-humans, and heteromorphs beings will be equal as long as it is under his flag. Ainz also told Ainzach that a group of goblins will be visiting E-Rantel along with other demi-humans and heteromorphic beings.

In the Re-Estize Kingdom, Princess Renner builds an orphanage for the children whose fathers were killed in the massacre at Katze Plains. The death count for the Kingdom exceeds 180,000 with more missing, leaving the remaining soldiers too depressed to continue. Climb returns to the princess' side while Brain Unglaus searches for a new Warrior Captain to take Gazef Stronoff's place. Renner, Climb, Evileye, and Tina make their way to the Royal Palace. The leader of Blue Roses, Lakyus, is elsewhere, training the revived Gagaran and Tia who are suffering experience loss. During their conversation, Evileye is worried about Momon and wanted to rush to E-Rantel but was stopped by Tina to wait until the training is over, Evileye also reported to Rigrit about the Sorcerer King. Arriving at the Royal Palace, Renner and Climb separate from the group and meet with Prince Zanac. There is a word that an envoy from the Sorcerer Kingdom will be arriving in one week.

Narration shifts to Philip, the third son of a noble. He gains the right to his father's estate and land after the death of his two older brothers. Their deaths allowed him to attend the ball to welcome the envoy, Albedo who came to greet the Royal Family. Philip becomes entranced by her dark beauty, and fantasizes about her, a dream he feels is achievable when his plans bring wealth to his domain. He invites Albedo to a ball at his estate. Back at home, his father scolds him for trying to befriend the envoy rather than his deepening relationship with the count and other nobles. Philip rebuts that the Sorcerer Kingdom is a powerful ally. He assures his father that the count has recognized him as heir, though he didn't even meet with the count. The family does not have an estate large enough to host a ball, but Philip made plans with the landlady in the royal capital in exchange for an unnamed favor.

At the ballroom in the Royal Capital, Philip notices that all of his invited guests are newly promoted nobles just like him and worried if they could compete with the other noble factions. Hilma persuades Philip to be the head of the new noble faction and she has high expectations from him. In truth, he has become a puppet of Albedo to form a new faction in the Kingdom along with Eight Fingers to eventually annex the Kingdom. Albedo orders the Eight Fingers to transfer all the resources to the Sorcerer Kingdom and also orders them to search for information related to a legendary mind control item for personal reasons. She then visits Renner to have a private conversation, which reveals that Renner had betrayed her kingdom in exchange for taking her into Nazarick and be a candidate to be converted. She also would be granted a status equivalent to that of an Area Guardian, supposedly only after the preparation for the annexation has been completed.

In the Slane Theocracy, a meeting of the highest authority of the Theocracy begins. Their first topic is the seizure of the fortress city of E-Rantel and its surrounding area. They argue that they should have intervened in the war, but it was refuted in their previous session to not engage with the extremely powerful magic caster that could control a mighty Death Knight on its own and tacitly acknowledge it. They received a report from the Thousand League Astrologer, who has confined herself to her room, reporting over 500 high-level undead, and a single spell that could take down an entire wing of the Kingdom's army. They immediately understand that Ainz is capable of using the magic of the gods. They scorn the Empire for siding with the Sorcerer King and irritated at the Kingdom's idiocy to let their army be massacred, but now they could not play a direct hand in ruling an area that bordered a nation of demi-humans ruled by the Dragon Lords. They decide to send an emissary to meet the Emperor, but they are still concerned with his allegiance.

Meanwhile, they try to piece the relationship between the Sorcerer King, Momon, Jaldabaoth, and Honyopenyoko, all strong individuals that appeared around the same time, knowing full well that it is the time of the year again where gods will start descending down on the world. They received another report from the outfield agents: E-Rantel was ruled in peace with no revolts under the undead king and the citizens are living ordinary lives with the Death Knights are used as city guards, Elder Liches as public servants while Soul Eaters are used to pulling cargo wagons. They agreed that they will not antagonize Ainz Ooal Gown and his nation, being wary of creating another enemy while still had not fully ended the war with the elves and they decided on sending a messenger to talk with that Dragon Lord about the elves. They decide not to use the Downfall of Castle and Country on the Sorcerer King and instead to use it on Catastrophe Dragon Lord as a vanguard if they could find that Dragon Lord. They also decided to send the retired Black Scripture members to aid the Dragon Kingdom.

In the Baharuth Empire, Emperor Jircniv Rune Farlord El Nix is visually distraught, he starts losing hair and his health is deteriorating, succumbing to a habit of drinking potions to alleviate his stress. The imperial soldiers blame their misfortunes on the emperor, believing that he had full knowledge of the effects of the spell cast by the Sorcerer King. After hearing about the arrival of the emissary from the Theocracy, he decided to set the meeting place to be at the Colosseum, along with the two high priests from the temples. Despite being very paranoid about people eavesdropping on him, even with multiple prevention magic being cast, he still decided to continue his plan of the meeting.

In the Imperial Capital, after Ainz was told by Ainzach that they will meet the arena owner tomorrow, Ainz paid a visit to Fluder Paradyne at his residence. Fluder tells Ainz that his influence within the Empire is decreasing and that Jircniv might have found out about his betrayal. Ainz offers Fluder a position within the Sorcerer Kingdom to be in charge of the magical research. At the same time, Ainz rewarded Fluder a copy of the Book of the Dead for his efforts and Ainz also tells Fluder that he needs to stay in the Empire for a while longer because he needs the Empire intact. Ainz asks Fluder about the details of the Martial Lord and the Death Knights. The next day, Ainz and Ainzach meet Osk, the promoter of the Martial Lord. Ainz tells Osk that he wishes to secretly arrange a match against the Martial Lord, Go Gin which Osk accepts his challenge and gives Ainz a condition that he will not use magic during the match.

Moreover, Emperor Jircniv arrives at the Colosseum with Baziwood Peshmel and Nimble Arc Dale Anoch. They meet up with the Silver Thread Bird who are supposed to be Jircniv's bodyguards, during a secret meeting with the emissaries of the Theocracy and the high priests from the temples. Just before the secret meeting started, Ainz suddenly appeared as a challenger in the Colosseum, surprising everyone. It caused the emissary to accused Jircniv for setting them up and immediately left the meeting, leaving Jircniv in great confusion and despair of Ainz's predictions. Jircniv still managed to convince the two high priests that he did not betray them and wanted them to at least stay behind to watch the battle in the Colosseum. In truth, Ainz only came to the Empire with Ainzach to recruit members for his Adventurer's Guild and wanted to stage a battle in the Colosseum as a display of an advertisement to search for potential adventurers.

In the Colosseum, before the battle with Go Gin starts, Ainz had badly equipped himself and disabled his ability to negate weak attacks to balance out the difference in strength between him and Go Gin. As a challenger, he enters the arena first while thinking that his illegal border crossing has been exposed, Ainz used Fly to get to Jircniv to apologize to him while causing his meeting to be exposed and break down. The audience in the arena was shocked and silent of Ainz's appearance but the silence broke with loud cheers when Go Gin arrived at the arena, which includes Jircniv screaming like a madman amongst the cheers. After Go Gin's entrance, Surprisingly, Go Gin then started to have a friendly and respectful chat with Ainz, which Ainz starts making a deal with him that he wanted him to be his subordinate if he wins, and asked Go Gin what he wants if he wins. Which Go Gin claims that he wants to eat him and both of them agree to the deal in a handshake.

Immediately, the battle starts right away after the bell went off. After fighting against Go Gin for a while with some display of deceptions and skills, Go Gin becomes greatly weakened in the fight. Knowing that he will lose, Go Gin requested Ainz to show him a part of his true powers, which Ainz agreed. Ainz then reactivates his physical attack nullification ability and started moving toward Go Gin despite his relentless attacks and which he then stabbed the Martial Lord's chest with his stiletto and then released the spells imbued within, killing the Martial Lord with it. After the Martial Lord's death, Ainz immediately used a loudspeaker to announce his plan to build his new Adventurer's Guild and that he will support the adventurers under him with his great power to become strong before dying. To show this, Ainz immediately resurrects Go Gin in front of everyone. Calling for people who want to be true adventurers to visit his nation.

Thereafter, Ainz then flies to Jircniv's room to have a chat with him, which Jircniv then proposes to Ainz that the Baharuth Empire is willing to become a vassal state of the Sorcerer Kingdom. Surprised at Jircniv's offer, Ainz denied him and instead asked Jircniv to sent a written petition of it to him at a later time. After Ainz left, Jircniv then started a talk with his knights, finally admitting his defeat while trying to understand why Ainz had refused his offer, thinking that Ainz might be planning for something else. In the end, Jircniv decided to press forward the vassalization process by spreading the news to the surrounding countries and starts to quell the internal unrest in the Empire.

Back at Nazarick, Demiurge had returned from the Holy Kingdom and intends to meet up with Ainz, only to find Albedo in his office. After a talk, it is revealed that Ainz had decided to visit the Dwarven Kingdom along with Shalltear and Aura. Demiurge is also shocked that the Empire sent a petition offering to be vassalage to the Sorcerer Kingdom which is a lot earlier than he expected. While the best method that Demiurge could devise to make the Empire a vassal state required the estimated timespan of a month, Ainz took three days at most. Subsequently, it motivated the pair to work harder after they are given the job to handle the vassalage process of the Baharuth Empire and the Re-Estize Kingdom before Ainz returns.

Chapters

 * Prologue
 * Chapter 1: Sorcerer Kingdom of Ainz Ooal Gown
 * Chapter 2: Re-Estize Kingdom
 * Intermission
 * Chapter 3: Baharuth Empire
 * Epilogue

Trivia

 * In the Web Novel, a Death Knight fights against the Martial Lord of the Empire instead of Ainz Ooal Gown.
 * The Slane Theocracy has called the event that happens every 100 years or so when YGGDRASIL Players are transported to their world as "The Advent of the Gods."

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