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Ainz' Plan (155)
🕑 Added 2021-10-21 11:02:13 +0000 UTCThe conversation with the journalist went on a little longer than Medea herself had planned. After discussing and answering fairly standard questions, like life in the place where the two Servants came from, the reporter, who apparently took a favorable view of Mashu, continued to chat with her about minor things. He kept asking her about her private life and her relationship with Ainz, whose name happened to pop up in the previous questions.
Though, why is he asking those kinds of private questions? Ah, is that? Well, if the reporter was really fascinated by Mashu and hoped for something more than this solitary interview, then Medea could only empathize with the poor charmed fool, seduced by the girl's beautiful figure and exotic appearance. Still, she guesses that love blinds people.
After all, the only one who could not see Mashu's painfully obvious crush on Ainz was Mashu herself, though she never had the motivation or courage to admit it. However, not that Medea herself could blame her for that. Confessing one’s love to anyone requires considerable moral strength. And, if you take into account Ainz's very, very unusual relationship with girls from the point of view of a modern man, it also probably even required physical strength to do so.
Of course, Medea did not think that any of the Servants already in a relationship with Ainz would actually dare to harm Mashu, but caution, demonstrated in advance, saves a lot of problems afterwards.
However, although Mashu's conversation dragged on longer than Medea expected, in the end, it didn't bother Medea overly much. Because the reporter, having correctly assessed Medea’s mood, didn't bother her herself, settling in to interview Mashu instead, which gave Medea the time and peace for an opportunity for reflection and analysis of the current situation.
So, Ainz found out the essence of this Singularity, but he refused to say what exactly he found out. And in the same way, he did not plan to change or influence the other Servants' plan of action after receiving the information necessary to understand this Singularity. Why is that?
The first of the possible reasons was that Ainz's plan of action relied on the Servants' ignorance of his plan. Presumably, Ainz had grasped all the Servants' personalities enough that he could confidently predict the Servants' behavior if they did not know his plan, though they knew it existed. Furthermore, were he to share his information, he could also predict that the information would only cause the Servants to act incongruently, perhaps even disturbed his carefully laid plan. That's… quite scary actually, huh.
To be able to understand the Servant’s personalities so perfectly that he can predict with certainty their behavior in various situations, depending on exactly what they knew and didn't. For ordinary people, such a thing was impossible even after many years of communication, like with family members or close friends. What’s even more incredible, is that Medea could say with confidence that Ainz had not interacted with any of the Servants around him for longer than a few months. Even Medea herself was unspeakably far from the definition of ‘close friend’ for Ainz. All of their interaction consisted entirely of a few casual conversations at best and the two meetings they had, once in the Singularity and the other regarding Olga-Maria's training.
So the fact that he had already grasped Medea’s whole personality and could predict her actions with certainty is quite chilling.
Although, perhaps comparing Ainz with anything ordinary could perhaps be taken as an insult. Even discounting his non-human intelligence and experience clearly beyond imagination that Ainz possessed, Ainz was so far outside the norm that Medea wasn't sure that this reason could be dismissed so easily.
A second possible reason was that the Servants were simply not necessary for Ainz to carry out his plan, that he planned to handle the Singularity on his own. No, that can’t be the case, there would be a question as to the need for the Servants in this Singularity if that were the case. Maybe for a backup plan? If Ainz's original plan didn't work, and if the Servants didn't know about his plan, then it was unlikely that they could help in any way… Especially if Ainz himself had somehow been prevented from acting.
Though, there was also a third possible reason, an unlikely one, but a possible one nonetheless. That the Servants might somehow reveal the details of the plan to someone they shouldn't have.
And though Medea was known as the ‘Witch of Betrayal’, it was only a title derived from her ancient legend, not a description of her identity. Unlike, say, Mephistopheles, she did not seek to deliberately interfere with her Master and his mission. And unlike Asterios she could not accidentally reveal information through ignorance, and unlike Cainabel she would not reveal them in the heat of battle because of her heightened emotion.
However, it is… Medea blinked, she did just do something in that avenue!
She revealed this information to Mashu, and she did it not in such a secretive manner, but quite openly, practically in the middle of the street! The information that Ainz had a plan.
Had that been her miscalculation!? After all, it is possible that Mashu wasn’t supposed to know.
No, no, if Ainz didn't want her to reveal this information, he clearly would have warned Medea of the consequences of such a decision.
So even if he hadn't planned it, he had at least anticipated it, and therefore, even if Ainz didn't want Medea to share it, at least that wouldn't adversely affect his plan. No, given his capabilities it would be more logical to assume that Ainz was expecting Medea would share what Ainz had told her with Mashu, which means Ainz had planned for someone else to overhear her.
No, even more than that! Ainz wished that she would inform the unknown observer that he had a plan, but that Medea herself could not know about the plan. So now, the observer could not find out about the plan, only knowing that such a thing existed.
Medea suddenly blinked and shifted her gaze to Mashu, who was now alone, before asking the most important question that worried her the most at the moment. “Mashu, where is the journalist?”
“Oh, him? He left a few minutes ago,” Mashu then blinked owlishly, before looking a little apologetically at Medea. “Ahem, if you wanted to talk to him, I'm sorry, I just thought that…”
“What did you tell him?” Medea shook her head, cutting through whatever apology Mashu had concocted, as she asked another question. “About yourself? About Ainz? Or anything about our current operation?”
“Hmm?” Mashu blinked perplexedly, “Nothing in particular really… Just about us being travelers, maybe a bit about our identities, but we mostly talked about Ainz…”
At this point, Mashu was silent for a moment, as her cheeks turned red, but Medea cared little about Chaldea's love affairs to react to that, that wasn't what was important. What was important was that Mashu had clearly told the ‘journalist’ about Ainz far more than she should have. No, before all of that, how could they have been caught in such an obvious trap!?
So Ainz was unwilling to inform Medea of his plan, because he knew that someone was watching his Servants. But then, why, at the same time, say that they were to do the same as before?
Ah, I see.
Ainz was using them as bait, deliberately making the unknown enemy distracted by their actions, like they know Ainz's plan, while not actually knowing Ainz's plan.
Medea was finally able to unravel a part of Ainz's plan. To be exact, only a small part of it, the part which concerned themselves.
And even after knowing that, all Medea had to do was act according to Ainz's plan, playing her part.
Medea nodded to herself slowly as she looked into the eyes of the uncomprehending Mashu.
A picture of Ainz's plan is beginning to emerge in her mind.
***
Nikola Tesla, was a keen and enthusiastic man, in his own humble opinion. His main passion was experiments and dissecting scientific theories, and if he could do that in the current environment, it would be nothing unusual for him to spend hours and even days without a break in the laboratory.
But, even a man of Science as himself, understood that there was a line between scientific obsession, and being possessed with one’s work and own scientific research.
And in his opinion, Helena Blavatsky belonged more to those who were so obsessed with their ideas and theories that it was even more frightening than inspiring.
Tesla, however, could live with that. Even if someone was more obsessed with their research than they should have been, who was he, after all, to judge the burning heart and passion of the seekers of truth? Even if their research did not concern his field of scientific interest at all, but something as barbaric and primitive as occult mysteries, Tesla could accept their passion, even if he did not plan to understand it.
He could even, if not appreciate, then at least ignore the fact that the theory before him was self-contradictory in every sentence and almost entirely composed of white spots and obvious holes. Accommodating gods, magic, aliens, the mysterious ancestral home of humanity, and mentions of Tibetan monks and occult Kabbalah scattered all around.
After all, there was so much delusion in the world that Tesla could live another day quietly without pointing out another egregious case of the like.
But what he really could neither understand nor accept was the insistence with which Blavatsky tried to pester him with more and more information. Something which Tesla vehemently did not want to accept.
It seemed to him that he had found himself in some nightmarish dream. The kind where you are chased by a monster, and you try to run. Only to discover that your arms and feet were like cotton and no matter how much you tried to move them, there was no hope of escape.
Here, however, instead of a monster chasing him, Tesla was met with Blavatsky's literally all-consuming voice and deluge of nonsense forcibly pouring into his head through his ears. And even now it’s still continuing.
“…but if the idea of the Platonic form itself is flawed, then in the end we must turn to an idea of a similar kind, the Abhidhamma-pitaka. Something which analyzes an idea, so similar to the Platonic form. So, for example, the Dhatukatha speaks of…”
It was almost impossible to even turn away from Blavatsky’s speaking self, who only went on and on not talking but gibbering, periodically swallowing endings. Sounds, whole words, and ideas jumping from thought to thought, which coupled with an already totally unsystematic narrative made any understanding of Blavatsky's thought impossible, even if Tesla had tried his best to do so.
Blavatsky was like a strict teacher, trying with all her might to impart to a negligent student information that he had to memorize at least in order to function normally in society. At the same time, she was also like a small child, struck with mania to the core, gushing to her parents about the new information about the world that she had just learned.
Too bad, that the combination of both just means that the incessant stream of words is made even more impossible to parse.
In other words, interrupting Blavatsky's endlessly pouring tirade was not only difficult and almost impossible, but also dangerous. In the sense that Tesla could practically see, if he tried to say something like ‘I don't want to hear your fabrications’, she might just suddenly burst into tears, like a little child resenting an adult. He does not need the reputation of an adult making a child cry! Thank you very much!
“…and if the Hierarchy does exist as the body of the inhabitants of Alpha Centauri, then!” Blavatsky suddenly paused, then turned to Tesla with an expression of so much happiness and expectation that it was even a little creepy.
“Do you know what that means?!”
Tesla had lost the thread of the conversation… No, he hadn't even caught the thread of the conversation in the first place, if one existed at all. No, more than that, parsing through his excellent memory, which is now also filled with nonsense, the whole conversation had nothing resembling a central point or thought to begin with!
Tesla had simply been thrown into a whirlpool of thoughts and words that tried to drag the Servant's mind into an unbroken darkness. Wait, is this the work of a Servant’s skill!?
“No, I don't know,” Tesla could only squeeze sparse words out of himself as he looked into the Servant's eyes, shining with pure untainted joy and probably not a small amount of madness.
“Of course, of course, of course!” But without paying any attention to him, and seemingly not even seeming to hear his words, Blavatsky almost waltzed around the frozen Tesla, before rushing out of the room they were in. “Excuse me, I will be back, I only need to note a few important details!”
Tesla, as he watched the girl's back disappear behind the door, could only hope that whatever it is she needs to do would take her much longer… Maybe a year or so. Though ideally, it would be so complex that she would completely forget about Tesla's existence.
To think that he was so proud of his status and title as a great scientist, only to regret it when confronted by another scientist so fiercely passionate about her ideas!
If Tesla had not been himself, it is unlikely that Blavatsky would have begun to draw him into her own fabrications and so passionately explain to him the specifics of her theories and reflections. If he were not the brilliant scientist that he is, she would say something to the effect of ‘it's too complicated for you anyway’ and not subject him to such torture!
But no, just his luck, the first time a fellow scientist acknowledged his great genius in such high terms, it brought him so much trouble!
As a result, instead of the relatively sane tour of Edison's base, with an account of his condition, plans and actions he expected, Blavatsky just ran past various buildings. What kind of information could he acquire from remarks like ‘this is the bunker where Edison's secret weapons are kept’ or ‘this is where Edison develops new cars’? If that were all, he would just rub his head, and endeavor to look for another Servant to lead another tour, but no, that was when the nightmare started. At the end of the ‘tour’, she literally forced Tesla into a small house and into a room that was clearly her office, before beginning to explain to him… something.
Surely, according to what he had caught, in its essence it must have been some kind of magical theory. But as much as he didn’t like to admit, he was somewhat less familiar with magical theories than one would expect from a great genius. Even less was he willing to navigate them. So, given what passes for Blavatsky's ‘explanations’, any, even the most theoretical possibility of understanding her words, was doomed to failure.
It also doesn’t help that she sucks at teaching. Well, now that she’s gone, Tesla was finally able to rest his overworked brain.
After several minutes of silence and attempts to recover his mind, Tesla was able to slowly raise his hands to rub his throbbing temples, before looking around the room he’s in.
The room he’s in, which he had not been able to actually see until that moment, distracted by Blavatsky, indeed appeared to be her workshop, or study, which was actually the same thing to the magi. It actually looked somewhat similar to Da Vinci's workshop. However, while Da Vinci's studio was chaotic, filled with all sorts of things reflecting her chaotic nature as an inventor, a collector of knowledge, Blavatsky's was filled with things that could hardly be used in any way for anything scientific. Tesla would not strictly judge a collection of strange crystals or an almost decayed sheet of parchment badly though, who knows what was on the minds of these magi pursuing their own, occult goals.
Still, books with titles such as ‘One Hundred Courses of Ancient Egyptian Food’ and ‘Secrets Architecture of the Tibetan Monks’ would raise questions even for him.
At least the books might have a congruent thesis behind their writings, in contrast to Blavatsky herself and her theory, or, at least, the few passages that he did manage to catch from her story. Although, judging by those same passages, even if he had listened to the entire lecture from Blavatsky, it would clearly not have made much more sense to him.
Tesla was wondering about what he should be doing at the moment, before the creaking of the door leading into the room made him flinch as he turned to the new visitor, afraid that Helena had returned.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” Luckily for Tesla’s barely recovered sanity, it was not Helena who appeared on the doorstep, eager to tell Tesla some new theory, but an unassuming middle-aged man instead who looked confused at Tesla’s presence. “I delivered Madam her lunch…”
Tesla thought about what he should say for a moment, before, with a shrug, decided that if Helena’s food got cold, it’s not really something he would mourn. “Leave it in this office, I'm sure the Madame will remember about her food… One day.”
A second later, an idea was born in Tesla's head. “Speaking of which, do you know where Edison's laboratory is located here? I'd be very grateful if you could escort me there…”
“Absolutely, Mr. Tesla,” Apparently, having already been made aware of the new addition to Edison's team, the man only nodded, before he uttered something that made his skin crawl. “Though maybe I should call for the Madame, she…”
“…about the Madame!” Tesla interrupted the man's thoughts at once, turning round as if he feared that Blavatsky would appear over his shoulder at the mention of her name. “I suggest you do not worry, she told me that she would be back soon! Moreover, I suggest we both hurry up!”
Then Tesla heard something that made him pale, the sound of a door opening somewhere further in the house-which could also mean that Blavatsky returning, having dispensed with her burst of inspiration. Maybe it was something else, or maybe Helena was now planning to return to Tesla to finish her story, if it could ever end. With a sweet smile so saccharine everyone could tell it was fake, Tesla returned his attention to the unassuming man.
“Speaking of which, how about a jog? Running toughens the body! And sharpens the mind, believe me!”
Then Tesla dashed forward passed the door, leaving the perplexed Demon King behind.
***
“This is the friend I mentioned,” Karna looked first at the girl who introduced herself as his mother, and then turned her gaze to his friend.
“Hello!” her voice was phenomenally loud and resounding, but this was to be expected from a figure of her size.
“Oh, Karna, she's just the sweetest little thing,” Karna's self-appointed mother immediately turned to him with a smile. “But, don't you think she's a little… small for you?”
“I'm not small!” Her loud voice, though it sounded deep because of the size of the speaker, was also paradoxically high enough that no one would mistake it except for a child's voice. “I’m totally the biggest!”
“She really isn't small, since she is more than twenty meters in size at this point. Technically speaking, she really is the biggest in the current circumstances.” Karna replied calmly.
Angrboda turned her gaze from Karna back to his friend.
That she was about twenty meters tall and probably several hundred tons in weight was the first thing that caught her eye when she looked at the Servant. The rest of her features were difficult for the average person to see due to her excessive height, to look at her fully one needs to crane their neck or to look from a decent distance. But, thanks to the fact that right now Karna and Angrboda were also at a great height, they’re practically looking right into the girl's eyes, so Angrboda could see the person who was speaking completely.
Short golden hair that didn't even reach the girl's shoulders, honey-gold eyes, and a large warm coat that came down to just below her waist pants. Wearing two thick leather boots on her feet and leather gloves on her hands with a beret on her head to match her size, and a huge double-bladed red axe, the girl fit perfectly into the idea of a logger… She would have fit it perfectly, had it not been for the frown on her face, with the puffed cheeks that gave her away as a child. That and the fact that she was about five stories tall, that gave her identity away as anything but a human being.
“Oh no, I don't mean her height,” Angrboda smiled slightly at the young girl’s tantrum before she took a closer look at the huge Servant before her. Yep, totally still a child. “I mean her, um… age. As far as I can tell in the present circumstances she ‘s still really young.”
Indeed, though the Servant before Angrboda and Karna was enormous, not just taller than Asterios, but the size of, say, a kaiju, her face, her expression, even the tone of her voice, adjusted for her size, she was a child.
“I'm not a child!” In her indignation at Angrboda's words, the titanic Servant merely stomped her foot. An action which seemed perfectly childlike, confirming what Angrboda had said about her age. Though her ‘childish’ behavior made the solid concrete bunker shake like an earthquake.
“Well, well, of course not.” Angrboda wasn't frightened at all by this fact. As a mother of monsters who could see the cutest, most childlike features in a litter of hydras or dragons, she merely smiled at the Servant before her. She then turned her gaze to Karna and sighed.
“Hmm?” Karna just looked at Angrboda’s disappointed expression with some confusion in his eyes, answering the unasked question. “But I told you I don't have a… girlfriend. There's only a friend I'm in touch with.”
“Oh, Karna, my dear.” Angrboda smiled at her child’s innocent words, looking at him again like an adorable but inexpressibly stupid rabbit. “That's not what I meant… But don't worry, you had no upbringing from your mother, so I will have to teach you everything, but later.”
Burning with some strange emotion, Karna could only nod at Angrboda’s determination. Content to fix her child’s bad upbringing in another date, Angrboda turned to the monumentally large Servant before her and smiled. Quite the feat considering that Bunyan’s considerable size would make any hardened warrior quake in their boots, never mind smile. Then again, Mother of Monsters etc, etc. “My dear child, I am so glad to meet you!”
“I'm not a child!” With her cheeks puffed up adorably, making her look involuntarily like a titanic-sized hamster, the Servant folded her arms across her chest. “I'm Edison's super secret super weapon, Paul Bunyan!”
“How cute.” Angrboda couldn't hold back a motherly smile, looking at such an adorable scene. “And I'm your mother.”
Bunyan, with a blink of her huge eye, slowly descended to her knees to take a full look at Angrboda up close. Seeing that it’s not enough, she then lets her face down, causing the difference in size between the two Servants to appear even starker. Angrboda, not small in the least by human standards, was no bigger than a finger to Bunyan. Something which Bunyan herself not failed to immediately notice.- “But you are so small!”
“Only as I am, for now.” Angrboda merely smiled at the perfectly logical remark, “In my true form, I would be even much larger than you…”
Karna, who had been silently observing the conversation of the two, suddenly heard a snippet of the Servant's supposed ‘true form’, causing him to frown.
The Servant opposite him had given no hint of her real name or abilities until this moment, except that she somehow knew of Karna's name, which wasn't too difficult given his fame, really. That, and her introduction as his mother, which also made little sense. So Karna immediately hastened to ask a question. “Do you have another form?”
“Yes.” Angrboda immediately answered, before looking away from Bunyan with a complex emotion on her face for a moment. “Hmm… no, I had one, but not anymore. It was… necessary to discard it, in order to appear here, but… Hmm, never mind that.”
After these cryptic words, Angrboda turned her attention back to Bunyan, who was still staring at Angrboda with interest as she knelt. Seeing the curious look on Bunyan’s face, Angrboda immediately broke out into a smile, as if she had figured out something. “My dear, I see that you are capable of changing your size…”
Karna blinked.
Bunyan did indeed have the ability to change her size, not at will, however. She does so rather by adjusting to her surroundings so that her head would always rest against the ceiling if she was in a room, whether the ceiling was three meters or thirty. It was adjusted in the sense so that she could be ‘seen by all’ if she was not indoors, but guessing about these abilities of Bunyan without knowing about them beforehand was problematic. It was much more logical simply to assume that Bunyan was just that big, especially since she was not the only giant. Even in her current form, she was actually not the biggest of the Servants.
“Why are you staying down here, then?” Angrboda looked at the girl with a soft smile. “Don't you want to go out and walk in the street?”
“I do,” Bunyan answered immediately with enthusiasm, before she suddenly became embarrassed as she remembered something. “But Edison forbids me to go out…”
“Edison, huh… I see.” Angrboda’s face was frozen with an unknown emotion as she muttered something under her breath, before nodding as she came to some kind of conclusion. “Don't worry, I'll talk to him. Come on, I'll let you go out.”
“Ho?” Bunyan blinked in surprise, before holding up her fists in the air, much bigger than the average adult's. She was about to jump, before she realized that she was going to hit the ceiling if she did, so she just swung her hands around, childishly exuberant. “Let’s go, let’s go!”
“Madam, I beg your pardon, but Edison…” Karna tried to object, before a sense of danger gripped him, and his words died in his throat
For a moment it seemed to Karna that he really was a rabbit. A small and defenseless animal, cornered by a huge and ferocious hunter, about to deliver the killing shot. It was as if he had been immobilized, caught in a snare, and had already seen the hunter reach for his skin to skin him alive.
A moment later, the sensation vanished without a trace, as if it had never existed.
“Karna, did you mean to make your sweet mother mad by objecting?” Angrboda turned slowly, a sweet smile on her face, making Karna freeze like a deer.
Her appearance had not changed in any way whatsoever, but somehow, it seemed to Karna that this was not the Servant he had been seeing all this time. It was as if the kind, joyful, and loving mother had never really existed.
“I think that it’s necessary to consult with Edison as to the reasonableness of such a move.” And yet, even so, Karna's loyalty was absolute, enough to make him ignore the second of confusion and the wave of sheer fear that passed through him, allowing him to utter the necessary words.
Angrboda, after listening to Karna’s objection, only smiled lightly at Karna, as if she were once again the joyful and kind mother that he had first encountered. “Oh, don't worry, my dear Karna…” Angrboda paused ominously, before continuing.
“I will definitely talk with him,” Angrboda smiled even wider, and Karna shuddered.
For a moment, a lonely thought flashed through his mind. The thought that perhaps Edison had been wary of the wrong adversary all along.
***
Excerpt from “Numbers and Letters: The Connection between Mathematics and Literature”.
… To give an example of the previously mentioned theory, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, or as he’s better known ‘Lewis Carroll’. His monumental work ‘’Alice in Wonderland’ perhaps overshadowed his capabilities as a mathematician, but he’s still an accomplished mathematician of his era. In fact, even in the same era, he was not the only famous mathematician that was also a famous writer. Charles Babbage, a no less famous English mathematician, was also a distinguished writer.
In particular, his hit fictional series ‘Attack on London’, a series of books that tells a very futuristic, for his time, picture of a three-way battle of the undead, demons and steam-driven robots. It was not even a stretch to say that his work is quite likely the ancestor of several currently famous genres. In particular, his series can be considered the earliest representation of the genre of ‘urban fantasy’, ‘mecha’ and, quite amusingly, the same series of books can also be called as having all the classic features of a ‘self-insert’.
This writer doesn't think that anyone would miss the implication of a story about a young mathematician fighting in the author's world against foreign invaders using the so-called ‘steam armor’…
Comments
BoneDaddy_2019
Medea is now part of Sasuga Ainz-sama Club
alassandro
So Karna may have just signed Edison's death certificate by accident there. Also love the medea revelation.
