"Wait a moment, Aya!" Ainz shouted.
Ainz covered his head with one skeletal hand, emerald light flickering around him—the sign of his inner turmoil.
"Aya, why..." Ainz said, his voice trembling slightly. "Why do you know that my name is Satoru Suzuki?"
Ainz had never asked any of his companions for their real names. Likewise, he had never told any of them his own real name.
A game was a game. Everyone was a player; there was no need to connect the game with reality. That had been everyone's unspoken consensus.
But now, Aya had casually spoken Ainz's real name from the real world—Satoru Suzuki!
Faced with Ainz's shaken expression, Aya remained remarkably calm.
"I have no desire to do something as tasteless as prying into my companions' private lives and real identities," Aya said. "But I have an older brother—an older brother with a slightly strong desire for control."
Under Ainz's stunned gaze, Aya continued calmly.
"He worried that dangerous people might be among those approaching me—for example, agents from other countries, spies from hostile families, or revolutionary forces from the lower classes." Aya shrugged.
"Of course, besides those people, there were even more opportunists buzzing around me like flies." Aya smiled. "My brother helped me drive them away."
Ainz swallowed dryly, suddenly gripped by an inexplicable sense of dread.
What exactly did "drive them away" mean? Making sure those people did not approach Aya, or...
In this New World, Ainz had done things no different from those of a Demon King. He had tortured humans to death in the cruelest ways and carried out inhuman massacres.
Although those events had been erased by the reset of time, their memories still remained in Ainz's heart.
Even so, hearing Aya describe things from the real world still sent a chill