Ainz had grown weary of dealing with weaklings like Archon. It wasn't even worth using teleportation or time-stop magic to incapacitate him. Instead simply releasing his aura would instill enough fear into an ordinary human's heart to completely paralyze them.
As easily as exhaling air, Ainz released his sealed dark aura from within him as it spread out throughout the room and caused the brilliant light of the divine relic and other artifacts to dim. As soon as Archon felt the terrifying aura sweep over him, he could no longer fire off any spells or even speak as his hairs stood on end and even breathing no longer came easily.
With all his might, he tried to move his body but to no avail. His body was frozen solid as the immense fear he felt from Ainz overwhelmed him both physically and mentally.
Seeing his prey had stopped resisting Ainz gave of the feeling of slightly smirking as he prepared to approach Archon and paralyze him completely with [Touch of the Undead] and then send him off to Nazarick.
If Ainz had teleported or used time-stop magic. If he hadn't decided to release his aura. If Ainz hadn't decided to come alone…
Things wouldn't have ended up the way they did.
But because of his carelessness everything unfolded as was destined to.
"Hmmm?"
Ainz suddenly stopped his advance as a strange feeling came over him. Although he had no idea why, he suddenly felt as if something was not quite right.
Not a moment later as this feeling ran through him the ground around him lit up and began to form a mysterious magic ten layered magic circle that continued to shine brighter and brighter whilst expanding in size and eventually stretching out to cover almost the entire floor of the treasury.
Ainz had only now realized that right now he was standing in the physical center of the room which to gamers in YGGDRASIL was known as 'The Black Spot'.
In YGGDRASIL, it was most common for traps to activate once a player or party entered the middle or the room in order for the trap to have the most chance of success. Thus, when one did not have scouts to seek and destroy these traps, it was common knowledge to under no circumstances stand in the middle of the room when exploring uncharted territory.
Ainz, of course, hadn't played YGGDRASIL for more than a year now and had completely become out of touch with most of the game-like aspects and rules of exploring in YGGDRASIL. A grave mistake since he had confirmed that items and spell from YGGDRASIL still existed in this world so it was not too farfetched to assume that traps could exist in this world too.
"Huh, this type of trap is not familiar; most likely another unique creation of this world. Well, no matter. [Teleportation]."
Ainz remained calm as he cast his spell, thinking that it would be enough to escape from the magic sigil only to find that its activation was instantly negated by one of the ten layers of the magic circle that seemed to glow brighter when he tried to teleport away.
Upon seeing this, Ainz became slightly unsettled as he watched his spell being rejected. He tried [Greater Teleportation] and even [Gate] to try and escape, but likewise it proved to be of no use as the layer shone brightly every time and kept denying any form of spatial magic.
"Don't tell me… Dimensional Lock?!"
Amongst all the spells that Ainz tried to think of, only one had the power to negate both low and high tier spatial magic. The exclusive anti-spatial spell that was reserved only for highest tier angels and demons: [Dimensional Lock].
Ainz became slightly nervous seeing what level of power was keeping him retrained. If it had been any less, he would have been able to escape but with the Dimensional Lock in place he would have to forcibly destroy the barrier if he wanted to get out.
It was at this moment that a second bright glow appeared. This time it came from the spot on the ceiling directly above Ainz's head as a second ten-layered magic circle appeared and likewise began to expand until it enveloped practically all of the ceiling's space.
Ainz didn't want to imagine what it was for as he activated another spell [Greater Break Barrier] in order to try and crack open the magic circle beneath his feet.
Like the previous time, one of the layers of the circle began to glow more brightly than the rest as it rejected any attempt of breaking the barrier.
A sick feeling now began to envelop Ainz as a deep frustration boiled from within him. Even though his passive would forcibly calm him down, he only needed to take a glance at the magic circle beneath his feet and his anger would once again well up.
Frustration turned to rage as Ainz began to violently slam his fist on the outlines of the cylinder shaped barrier whilst the glow above his head intensified. This naturally did little if anything at all to destroy the barrier.
Just as Ainz was about to attempt to fire a destruction spell in the hopes of smashing the barrier with brute force a cracking noise became audible above him.
Ainz looked up and the crimson light in his eyes began to flicker as he had difficulty believing what he saw.
The patch of the ceiling directly above his head was rapidly crumbling away revealing what was concealed behind it.
An enormous giant crystal gradually became visible from behind the ceiling wall. As more of the ceiling crumbled away the crystal began to glow more and more fiercely as soon it seemed like it would light up the entire treasury with an intense cyan color.
"This is…"
The crimson lights in Ainz's skull suddenly lit up brighter than ever as he stared at the magic crystal with a trace of fear in his hollow eyes. He could clearly see that the energy crystal was gathering power and would soon emit all of that power in a massive wave with him as the obvious target. Even Ainz wasn't sure whether he had enough resistance against it.
With his gear and stats he could even survive [Heaven's Downfall] once or perhaps twice if necessary but this wasn't YGGDRASIL; there was no telling whether this type of magic that he had never seen before would be resisted or not and how much of a punch it packed. But even faced with all this, what shocked Ainz was not the crystal.
As the magic markings on the ceiling were lit up thanks to the crystal so too were a set of symbols that clearly differed from the rest.
To any inhabitant of this world these markings would be strange and one would immediately assume that this was some dead language from ancient times. After all, with so many civilizations rising and falling through the centuries it would be surprising not to find any unfamiliar markings resembling a language. But to Ainz these markings were incredibly familiar, after all how could he not recognize them? These markings were kanji from his homeland of Japan.
What was the most amazing was the message that they spelled out that caused Ainz to blink his non-existent eyes.
"Sayonara, old friend…"
These words filled Ainz with both dread and dozens of questions as his attention quickly shifted back to the giant magic crystal which was now glowing with an almost blinding light and faintly began to make a buzzing sound that rapidly became louder and louder.
As all of this was happening Archon was standing in a petrified manner as he was having trouble comprehending what was happening for quite a while.
He thought all was lost when his entire body was frozen by Ainz's aura but then from nowhere a magic array that he had never heard of activated and ensnared the Sorcerer King with a spell formation completely unfamiliar to him.
Ever since he had heard about how the Six Great Gods had perished, he thought that praying was useless, but when he saw Ainz trapped, he could not think of any explanation other than the Gods having heard his prayers and activated one of the powers they had left behind. Realizing this, a faint smile could be seen on Archon's face as he roared from joy.