Chapter 3: Sierra Heads to School.

Giant millipedes kept pouring in one after another.
For so many to appear in the forest this close to the capital…

(There must be a cave nearby… a nest, probably.)

While cutting down the oncoming swarm, Sierra calmly analyzed the situation.
She had no intention of going out of her way to destroy the nest, though.
Her only goal was to let the merchant’s wagon escape.
This was her way of repaying him for the ride.

Wielding her crimson blade, Sierra dashed through the trees.
Not just millipedes—bug-type monsters in general had almost no sense of fear.
No matter how gruesomely their comrades were slaughtered, they charged forward like disciplined soldiers.
Yet the truly abnormal one here was Sierra, who kept mowing them down with mechanical indifference.
To her, this was just another ordinary day, so she felt no particular pressure as she fought.
And yes—she was, in fact, holding back in accordance with her father’s “Normie Notebook.”
The only problem was that when Ainz wrote “never go all-out,” he had meant “don’t show too much power once you’re living in the capital.”
He had never intended it as general life advice.
That distinction, unfortunately, was completely lost on Sierra.

Every time she swung her sword, a red arc flashed through the air.
The moment it touched a distant millipede, the creature was bisected with surgical precision.
After fighting for a while, Sierra suddenly leapt up into the trees.
A few still remained, but she had already wiped out most of them.
Besides, the merchant’s wagon had long since fled beyond the forest’s edge.

(The capital’s that way. This should be good enough.)

Deciding that, Sierra hurled her crimson blade at the last millipede trying to climb the tree, then leapt away.
With the impaled monster at her back, she bounded from branch to branch through the canopy.

(The capital… feels like it’s been a while. I wonder what the academy’s like?)

She had already forgotten about the millipede horde entirely and was now thinking about her next destination.
Ainz had said it was a place where you “make friends,” but Sierra had no idea what friends actually were.
Maybe something like Dad’s work buddies?
She remembered how happy Ainz looked whenever he went drinking with them—even though little Sierra couldn’t join in the alcohol part.

(If it’s like that… maybe I’m a little interested.)

Those were the kinds of thoughts running through her head.
Her entrance exam was scheduled for tomorrow; for now, her first task in the capital was simply to find an inn.

“Alright. Let’s do our best to make friends.”

Muttering that to herself, Sierra left the forest behind.
Thus, unbeknownst to anyone, the vast majority of the rampaging millipedes were quietly exterminated by her hand.

*

Some time after Sierra departed the forest, a group of armored figures arrived.
They were Kingdom Knights dispatched from the capital.
They had come in response to reports of millipede monsters appearing in the woods.

“Is that all of them?”

“Most likely.”

A young knight answered the captain’s question.
The number they actually had to fight was extremely small.
By the time the knights arrived, almost every millipede had already been killed.

(Nearly all of them died the same way… It’s obvious one person did this, but… to finish them this cleanly…?)

The captain’s astonishment was understandable.
Even among swordsmen, he had never heard of anyone capable of such flawless work.
According to the merchant’s report, a girl he had picked up on the way to the capital had stayed behind.
Yet no girl’s body had been found among the corpses.
Which could only mean that girl had been the one to wipe out the entire swarm with perfect precision.

“…Just who was she…?”

There was no evidence directly linking the culprit to Sierra.
But Sierra herself had no idea that, even before reaching the capital, her existence was already starting to draw attention.