The maids in the canteen could be separated into four main groups. The first three were grouped according to their creators. There were forty-one regular maids in total, but it was not because each Supreme Being created their own maid. Rather, the regular maids were created by Whitebrim, Herohero, and Coup De Grâce. Strictly speaking, the last group wasn’t a proper group by itself, but composed of those maids who had detached themselves from the first three groups in order to eat in silence, to eat while reading or to talk to maids from the other groups.
Sixth, who came in late, belonged to the last group. She greeted the maids made by the same Supreme Being as herself —they were her sisters, in a sense— and then headed to her usual place.
“Good morning… have you eaten?”
“Good morning. And yes, we’ve already eaten. Breakfast was so good~ so smooth and creamy, so tasty~”
Foire delivered this deadpan reply. She was bad at lying, but lied anyway. She had short hair and her maid skirt was similarly shortened to match her energetic appearance.
Beside her was Lumiere, whose delicate face was crowned by her blonde hair which sparkled like stars.
“Good morning. Now then Foire, since you shouldn't need seconds, you can wait here for us. I haven't had breakfast yet, so I'm going to get some. Come, Sixth, let's go.”
Lumiere stood, trailed closely by Foire, who was frantically saying, “I was just kidding, really~”
After that brief drama, the three of them went over to the self-service buffet counter. Before they left, they had the maid called Increment, who was quietly reading a book, watch over their seat for them.
The first thing Sixth took at the buffet bar was a serving of crispy fried bacon. As a member of the faction which believed that “soft bacon is the devil”, she always went for that first. Next, she helped herself to some soup. Of the three flavours today —soup of the day, corn and onion— she selected the last. After that were sausages, french fries and danishes. Her other plate was piled high with onion salad, almost to the point of spilling.
Finally, Sixth placed an order with a masked manservant.
“Um, I'll have triple cheese, double onions, and extra mushrooms.”
The manservant nodded, and began making the omelette.
Sixth returned to her seat to put down her dishes, and then poured herself a glass of milk before returning to where the manservant was waiting with her freshly-prepared omelette.
“Thank you very much.”
The flawlessly-prepared omelette didn't have so much as a single singe mark on it, and she got back to her place just as her friends did.
“Then, let's eat!”
“Let's eat~”
“Let's eat.”
The three of them had their breakfast in silence. Slowly but steadily, they transferred the mountains of food — far in excess of what a normal girl would consume — from their plates into their bellies. It was because they all possessed ‘Increased Food Consumption’ as a racial penalty.
Because of that, even though they were among friends, they never shared while eating. Foire chewed while her cheeks were bulging with food, Lumiere ate elegantly, but her fork moved at a ferocious speed, and Sixth ate at a rate in between the two.
“Huuu…”
The three of them exhaled in unison and then looked at each other.
“Seconds?”
“Sounds good, but let's take a break first.”
“Yeah, I'm so stuffed~ Say, Sixth, isn't it your turn to serve Ainz-sama today? You seem perkier than normal today.”
Foire smiled mischievously, and so did Sixth.
“Lucky you, how much longer will it be until it's my turn?”
Lumiere counted off the days on her fingers.
The rooms of the Supreme Beings of Nazarick were massive in scale, so much so that one person needed half a day or more to clean one of them carefully. By numbers alone, it was possible for the maids to clean them all on a daily basis, even with Albedo's spare room factored in, but that would require a lot of people to work all day without any rest.
However, this was not a problem to the maids. They had been created by the Supreme Beings of Nazarick; it was only fitting that they should work their fingers to the bone for them in devout reverence.
And then, these fanatical workers had been told to stop by their god, Ainz Ooal Gown.
Ainz knew the hardships of working under unethical companies, and he could not bear to let these girls, who were like his friends’ daughters, suffer like that.
He had told them, “Don't clean the unused rooms so frequently”, and then “You will be grouped into teams for shifts.”
Thus, the regular maids of Nazarick were organized into two shifts; the day shift and the night shift. The former had thirty people and the latter had ten, while the one remaining person got the day off. After calculating the working days for the maids, the announcement that they would have a break every forty-one days was met with complaint.
It was not that there were too few days off, but the opposite. They protested the need to have a day off at all.
The purpose of their very existence was to work for the Supreme Beings. When they were told they didn't have to work, it damaged their self-worth and they felt like they no longer had a reason to exist.
As such, the maids took their concerns directly to Ainz. They said, “Please don't take our jobs”, “We want to do it all day and night”, and so on.
Ainz shot the suggestion down on the spot. A fatigue system existed in Yggdrasil and while it could be easily solved with magic, there was no guarantee that fatigue would be healed as easily in this world. Even with magic, it would be bad if the workforce was worn down to the point when it could no longer function, like a cog gradually losing its teeth due to overuse.
Yet, the maids adamantly refused to back down. Faced with their tears, Ainz gave in and proposed a new type of work for them, which was to personally serve him. That task entailed staying by Ainz's side to attend to his every need and whim, and the maids would take turns filling that role.
This offer was as tempting as sugar honey sprinkled with sugar to the maids, whose greatest joy in life was to serve the Supreme Beings. They accepted the order without a second thought, telling themselves that “we need to take care of ourselves and rest well the day before, so we can serve with all our strength when it's our turn.”