Jumping to conclusions (161) (Patreon)

The feeling of not knowing what he needed to do was not something new to Ainz. Not in this world he had found himself in, not in his life.

When Ainz had first become a guild master, against his will, it should be noted, for a short period of time Ainz, had often been struck with indecisiveness.

Should he take the side of one of his guild members in a dispute with another guild member? Or should he abstain? Should he impose any additional rules on the guild after they conquered Nazarick, their new guild base? What quests were worth doing in the first place? What should they do first? Which guilds were worth being friends with, and which ones do they need to stay away from?

For the first few weeks, Ainz was extremely frustrated with both his situation and his inability to find the answers to the tough questions.

It was then that Punitto Moe, a man whom Ainz had always thought of as an extremely intelligent and experienced Player, gave him perhaps the most important advice Ainz ever had.

“If you can't do something to help, do something that can't hurt.”

This advice helped Ainz immensely in his role as a guild master. And it seems that that advice would also be helping him right now.

What Ainz could do to help his Servants deal with the Singularity and resolve the complicated trap involving the Demon Kings and that… Salmon? What was his name again? Never mind!

What mattered was that the answer to that question, which Ainz got after much thought, was ‘nothing’. Right now, there was nothing that Ainz could do to help the Servants.

Which meant that Ainz had to do something else, something that wouldn't hurt the Servants currently dealing with the Singularity.

That's why, after warning the Servants, just in case, to turn to him immediately if they were in danger, or if they needed Ainz's involvement, which was, of course, part of his ‘plan’, Ainz decided to do something else.

After all, though it was a little difficult for him to perceive himself as a good boss, letting his subordinates do all the work, but at the moment, in view of his situation, Ainz could actually afford to… Rest?

No, it was more like free time, which Ainz had to make the most of.

And since there were no books in Ainz's inventory for self-development… which led him to curse his luck that the one time he didn’t keep an item in his inventory, he needed it. Maybe he should just put all the books from the library in his inventory? Hmm, no, that wouldn’t work… Well, he still has a lot of various grimoires and documents in his inventory, which had turned from artifacts and items into various books after Ainz was transferred, but… Yeah, no.

Memories of the time when Ainz decided to open one in curiosity and accidentally read one of the books at random, probably a month or more ago? It was still quite fresh in Ainz's mind.

He could literally feel a migraine forming as it almost felt like reading one of those conspiracy theories in the Net with just how illogical it all sounded.

He definitely should stick to the literature of his level.

And Ainz didn't have any books like ‘basics of magic for beginners’ in his inventory… no matter how much he trawled through the various books in his inventory, and there’s a lot of them.

But there had to be such books! Not all mages in the world could know all the specifics of magic instinctively, could they!? There had to be textbooks or something like that. But Ainz, as one would expect as a Level 100 Player, no matter how acute his hoarder tendencies, had nothing like that. Or maybe he did? Maybe there is one, buried deep within his inventory, simply not aware of it…  Hmm, maybe…

Ainz thought about the need to clear out his inventory sometime in the future, he did have a lot stashed in there, after all. Items whose condition or effect could easily have changed in the new world… Actually, never mind. Maybe when he doesn’t have to watch his actions so stringently, less he destroys the world, and a surprise effect of one of his stronger items would definitely count as that.

In any case, if Ainz was given the time and wanted to spend it profitably, studying the magic of this world, trying at least, looked quite appealing.

And where else could Ainz find textbooks for aspiring mages than in a magic school?

At least that's what Ainz himself perceived the Clock Tower to be from what he could pick up.

So in the end, having come to such conclusions, Ainz decided to teleport away to the Clock Tower. To where Ainz could go from his memory at least was the secret archives of the Clock Tower, which he had visited in the last Singularity.

After Ainz had taken many things into account, of course. Such as the peculiarities of teleportation, or the fact that his memory of the archives had been as a ruin with scattered books in the middle of an unremarkable room in the dungeons. Fearing his teleportation would miss because he imagined the now intact room to be a ruin, Ainz chose as his teleportation anchor point a place that should not have changed in the current circumstances.

The small tunnel leading to the secret archives of the Clock Tower.

Ainz had also taken into account the fact that on his last visit, the secret archives of the Clock Tower had been destroyed by Paracelsus. Even if all Singularities existed in a single timeline, the moment of destruction of the secret archives was to occur much later, in the Victorian era and for the moment the secret archives of the Clock Tower were perfectly intact.

In other words, Ainz accounted for many small details, but left out one detail so large that, in fact, it was somehow even too easy to skim over that detail with his eyes.

Namely, that right now he was on his way to the secret archives of the Clock Tower.

***

There were many epithets with which to describe the Clock Tower as an organization.

For some, the ideal description of the Clock Tower would be ‘heirs to tradition, keeping up with the times’, a phrase that seems to be taken straight from an advertising brochure. Which kind of excuses the fact that it’s a blatant lie.

A Magus? Keeping up with the times? Since saying that a Magus is conservative is saying that the sun is a little bit hot, it is surprising that they even use self-flushing toilets.

Though then again, since they are ardent Conservatives, wary of change, to a millennium old tradition, perhaps the brochure-like saying was actually true, if only to a much lesser extent.

To some, the Clock Tower was more accurately described as ‘a pseudo-elitist club of mages mired in faux aristocracy’.

Some, simply, thought of the Clock Tower as ‘one of the branches of the Mage's Association’.

But whether one's view of the Clock Tower was positive or not, none of them could say that the leaders of the Clock Tower were stupid and that the knowledge they had accumulated over the centuries was worthless.

At least, not without a lot of protection or a standing that would protect them from the backlash.

The lords of the Clock Tower were smart, powerful, and most importantly, cautious, some would say even to the point of paranoia. Fools, in the Clock Tower, do not become Lords.

So, of course, Magi understood the need for the strictest protection of their archives. Especially those that the Clock Tower Lords wished to keep secret.

Numerous defenses were erected around their secret archives, powerful spells served as deadly traps, and the strongest barriers, which even Servants could not easily break, surrounded the secret archives. And if all fails, signaling spells exist that could make even the most modern and advanced alarm and security systems in the world envious, repeatedly duplicated for all occasions and possibilities, from all possible disasters and malfunctions.

Even if one were the greatest thief of secrets, a powerful wizard, or even a reckless burglar who wanted to steal the secret archives of the Clock Tower, he would have had no chance. Even a servant like Paracelsus himself could only get inside the secret archives of the Clock Tower a long time later, and only by chance. And was only successful, thanks to the magical fog that had cut London off from the rest of the world at the time.

If not for that, even the mighty Servant, Paracelsus himself, the lord of all the elements, would not have been able to get to the secret vaults of the Association. Defense against Ghost Liners were, after all, a very effective defense against Servants.

In other words, the Lords of the Clock Tower were ready for anything. Well except for perhaps the fabled Magicians, owner of the True Magics, but then again such people have no need of the Clock Tower Secrets. For anything less ‘magical’ the vaults were impenetrable.

The only problem was that for the Clock Tower, teleportation, or at least the Magic or even magecraft related to it, in fact, did not exist.

But for Ainz, teleportation was quite real and quite trivial.

And so the terrible traps, indestructible barriers, and rapid response teams ready to snap at the first call to stop any thief trying to get into the secret archives, simply went unnoticed by Ainz.

And instead of accidentally encountering the most unexpected consequences of his actions, Ainz simply found himself inside the vaults. Not even having the vaguest of ideas of how many generations of magical labor had gone into creating the insurmountable defense of the Clock Tower's most secret secrets. Not realizing that if any of the magus of the past had seen how easily Ainz simply bypassed the defense arrayed against him, they likely would have simply cried. Or perhaps even drop-dead at his brazen impudence, in simply ignoring all the magical labors they had spent on protecting their secrets.

However, in the end, as he ’broke’ into the archives, Ainz was only looking at his surroundings placidly. He had found himself in the tunnels leading into the archive, coincidentally passing all the security features implemented by the Clock Tower.

Satisfied that he was where he wanted to be, he started walking forward, towards the vaults. And as he walked towards the inside of the vault, nothing barred his way.

The insides of the secret archives were not covered with protective spells or anything like that. After all, no one could get inside the secret archives of the Clock Tower without permission.

The doors were not sealed, no identification spells could be found anywhere. There were no traps or even doors that needed identification. In the mind of the Lords of the Clock Tower, no one, without their permission, could get inside the Clock Tower's secret archives, so why bother?

Indeed, if someone were to encounter Ainz right now in this corridor, it would be more likely that they would mistake him for a random hallucination of their imagination or even someone that was supposed to be there.

A hallucination, however, Ainz was not, and that's why, as he walked through the corridors of the secret archives, he could only shake his head. "Hmm… I expected a ‘secret’ archive to be more secure."

If only his words could be heard now by any of the Lords who had created the protection of the secret archives… it would make quite an interesting sight to say the least.

"Though I suppose stealth is also a defense… "  Ainz sighed. “Indeed, given the capabilities of spells like Magic Detection, it may indeed be quite effective to leave the secret archives completely secret, without any magical protections. All to prevent giving away its presence by the very presence of magic protections. Although, with the existence of Magic Concealment… Or do the mages of this world not possess such a spell in their arsenal? No, that would be silly, it is quite the simple spell."

Of course, Magus possessed such spells, entire lineages even specialized in that one spell. And there were those who had mastered them so well that even Ainz, who had the passive ability to see enchantments and magic, could not discern the most powerful protection around the secret archives. At least without actually casting spells to detect them.

Of course, since Ainz was already past those protections, it made his words sound like a particularly caustic mockery to those generations of magi.

All in all, it was a situation in which a hypothetical magus who had put his life into creating the most perfect system of protection for the secret archives could do nothing more than fall to his knees and cry.

However, Ainz, who was unaware of the hundreds of souls that were weeping at his behavior right now, only continued forward on his way. Quickly enough, he reached the door to the vaults, opening which he was able to discover a room that looked exactly what a room containing secret archives was supposed to look.

In other words, he couldn't call the room he found anything but a dungeon, with all the details that were proper to the word. Things such as a stone floor or a candelabrum hanging from the top with perfectly natural, though enchanted, candles. However, the walls of the dungeon were lined on each side with numerous bookcases, the shelves fully stocked with various books that had, in fact, caught Ainz's attention instantly.

However, as he stepped into the center of the room, he suddenly paused, and started looking around

"Hmm…  Ah, how am I going to find the books that I need?"

The cupboards, so gaudily decorated, it pinged his treasure senses, seems to be stacked with the most precious books and the most secret documents, certainly caught Ainz's attention. But nowhere around the cupboards were there signs like ’beginner's sections’ or ‘all the secrets of witchcraft for dummies’.

This was extremely logical. For in the mind of the Lords of the Clock Tower, any visitor who might find himself in these secret archives knew specifically which book or manuscript he was supposed to take, what it looked like, and where it was located. So the bookshelves around Ainz, though sorted, were not signed or labeled.

For Ainz himself, however, this posed quite the problem.

"Actually, which books should I take?"  Ainz blinked at the task ahead of him in bewilderment.

There were many books around him, but from Ainz's perspective those differed only in appearance. Some were bigger, some were smaller, some had different colors for covers, some had words and letters written on the spines of the books.

"Actually…" Ainz blinked, "What does a magic textbook even look like in this world?"

Answering that question honestly, there isn’t one.

In fact, the Clock Tower was not a magical school, or, to be more accurate, making a similar analogy, it was a magical university. A place that, upon entering, a magus was already supposed to know enough about magecraft to be able to use it safely in their everyday lives, as far as one could call a magus’ life that way. And for the magus, to be able to enter the Clock Tower, was actually an examination of their knowledge of the magical sciences.

Basic training for magi was done with their families or, at most, in private lessons with their own tutor.

To add to that, an additional factor, was another extremely large, but easily overlooked, factor.

The place where Ainz was in, was not the public library of the Tower, where there’s a possibility that such a beginner tome might exist, probably as a way to insult anyone checking the book out. No, the place Ainz was currently in, was the secret archives of the Clock Tower.

Even assuming that somewhere in the world, there existed ‘The Magical Arts for Dummies’, it would simply be counterproductive to look for them in the Clock Tower's secret archives.

Unless one particular Wizard Marshall was in his pranking mood, no such books could be found here.

Not that Ainz knows that. After all, up to this point, Ainz had only seen the secret archives and could therefore not specifically judge what was or was not in them.

And so, in his search for the most meaningless magical books of no value, at least to the Clock Tower itself, Ainz was preparing to dig through hundreds of volumes of the most priceless magical writings.

In other words, yet another was added to the chorus of weeping Clock Tower magi, figuratively speaking, that is, all the magi were none the wiser of Ainz’s presence. For all the people who wished they had access to all the priceless knowledge of the Clock Tower, but could only, figuratively speaking, watch as Ainz ignored books with titles like ‘Picatrix’ or ‘Sefer Raziel ha-malah’ in his search for books like ‘black magic for babies’, ‘what makes a spell different from a hex’, it was pure torture.

Indeed, Ainz's terrifying nature was such that even in his ignorance he could make the great and long-dead magi suffer a terrifying torment.

If only Ainz knew about it…

***

Thomas Alva Edison always held his own all his life, maintaining his proud posture and unwavering confidence bordering on arrogance against all threats, proudly looking forward as befits a legendary inventor.

After becoming a Servant, even when his appearance was changed, when he was given a huge muscular body and the head of the king of beasts, he still proudly continued to maintain his image as a great inventor, the father of the modern age.

And it was precisely because of this that Edison's current appearance aroused such morbid interest from the man opposite him, Edison's peculiar commander and secretary, who served as both his deputy and his general.

Indeed, an ordinary man, and he was definitely an ordinary man though born in this Singularity. He never wondered what a bruised lion's face looked like. Well, now he knows.

It was strange to see the enormous, picturesque, lion battered face. It was like someone had poured purple paint on his face, to the point that it practically glowed. The bruise on Edison's face simply attracted attention like a magnet, but that, of course, was not all the reason why Edison’s current figure attracted attention.

The bruises, the abrasions, lacerations, everything painted a clear picture. The way Edison continued to cradle his left arm with his right, on how he breathed cautiously, trying not to strain the right side of his rib-cage, all indicated that Edison had just been in a fight to the death. That he had just miraculously survived a fight with a most dangerous foe, capable of easily taking out even the most powerful Servant…

The problem, however, was that if Edison had actually won such a battle, news of it would have spread all over the media and among all of Edison's own commanders, in the first three minutes after it happened. Edison would not have missed an opportunity to boast of his victory, and even if he had lost, he would certainly have added that he had inflicted terrible wounds on his enemy from which they could never recover again.

But instead of such posturing, it was as if Edison himself was trying to show the fact that he had experienced nothing, absolutely nothing unusual. As if his condition represented his normal, no, the only possible condition he could be in at all.

“What?" Edison growled, unable in the end to bear the scrutiny of his deputy, which had little to do with his feline appearance. The growl forced the commander to look away from the glowing bruise on the lion's face to his eyes. "Are you going to study me like you've never seen me before?”

Edison's mood was definitely far from positive at the moment. So, after casting another glance at his huge black eye and deciding not to ask Edison any uncomfortable questions, the deputy could only sigh. Trying to remember what urgent information he ran into Edison's office with, which he had immediately forgotten as soon as he saw Edison's new appearance. It didn’t take long for him to remember the news, panicking once again. “The Demon Kings are gone!”

Edison could only blink stupidly at the news. “What?”

“The Demon Kings!" His deputy repeated, shaking off the magic allure of the huge black eye of the bestial Servant once again. "The six that we’ve preserved. They're all gone!”

Edison took some time to digest the news, before rising abruptly from the table, stretching to his considerable full height.

In the early days of the Singularity, when Edison had first found himself in America, and before he and Cu Chulainn Alter had even faced each other. Karna, the first of Edison's Servants, had helped Edison capture six Demon Kings in battle. These Demon Kings were securely sealed and frozen, their potential and magic reserves used to its fullest for Edison City. The endless source of magic, their bodies were Edison's greatest work, enabling an instantaneous leap in technology that might otherwise have been impossible.

How could Thomas Alva Edison even have access to nuclear weapons in this world, where there were no uranium mines, no blueprints, no scientists, not even the technology to produce, not even touching something technologically advanced like rocket engines, the high-quality steel to make bombs?!

Demon Kings, that’s how. The magic extracted from the Demon Kings' bodies allowed Edison to cut dozens, no, hundreds of corners at once, skipping the many steps that took humanity several hundred years to go from primitive coal trains to nuclear weapons and semi-autonomous robots.

The entire industrial power of the Eternal President rested on the bodies of the six Demon Kings he had captured at the beginning of the Singularity.

Stable production, technical innovations, weapons, and his entire army, everything Thomas Edison had, was built, literally, on the bodies and blood of the Demon Kings.

And if the Demon Kings are now gone…

“Where could they have gone?!" Edison roared like a wounded lion, which he actually was in every sense of the word. "Find them! Send the Servants! Find them!”

From Edison's point of view, the bodies of the Demon Kings he'd seized were just that, bodies, not something that could move on their own accord. Bodies that Karna, with his help, of course, had captured. All of them had been plunged into a deep sleep, behind every barrier imaginable to the mind. They were supposed to be nothing more than items to be harvested, one step away from being cadavers entirely, devoid of feeling and reason.

But in truth, they were nothing more than props created by Solomon. In fact, according to Solomon's plan, the Demon Kings that Edison captured were never really under the King’s control.

By creating, no, rather, altering the Singularity to suit his needs, these ‘Demon Kings’ served as part of Solomon's own plan. Solomon understood that the absence of Demon Kings would only raise even more suspicion from Ainz. So Solomon, from the start, had ordered the twelve selected candidates to reveal the secret of their existence to the two Servant camps, then ordered them to give in and be captured by the two Servant camps. After which, he began waiting for Ainz to act, planning to analyze his every move…

Which, in the end, did not work at all. To be expected from someone he regarded as his enemy.

Ainz, who accidentally chose a strategy of behavior that Solomon himself had not foreseen, deprived Solomon of all information that he could get about Ainz. And thus making Solomon’s plans with Demon Kings moot. And therefore, the most logical decision for Solomon, in this case, was to order the Demon Kings to return.

Still, while Solomon was willing to sacrifice his minions, it did not mean that he was willing to sacrifice them needlessly.

But, of course, Edison could not have known of such secret details, and therefore the information that the Demon Kings, that for all he knows were defeated and sealed, had disappeared could only mean one thing.

Someone had released them into the wild.

“Call Tesla down here at once!" Edison yelled loudly.

And, what was particularly ironic to Edison was that Tesla was the last person Edison suspected of such treachery.

Tesla's relationship with Edison was… complex to say the least. To be frank, the relationship between them was full of open hatred, shouting, and threats. But it was from this kind of thing that Edison's confidence in Tesla's innocence stemmed.

Because Edison hated Tesla, and while love or friendship was capable of blunting one person's perception of another, he knows Tesla well. And thus he knew that, for all his viciousness, and Tesla had many, this was not his modus operandi, not at all.

Of course, it is possible that it was simply a ruse, that Tesla was only acting, such familiarity does breed blind spots after all.  But Edison knows, deep in his Saint Graph, that such a thing was impossible. No, Tesla was his enemy, and so Edison knew every one of Tesla's flaws and negative qualities.

And so Edison's suspicion was immediately fixed on all his other Servants.

Karna? A seemingly completely illogical idea, but kindness was indeed that dangerous a leash, it was literally impossible for Karna to betray him.

Blavatsky? For the sake of some other insane experiment, possibly… but no there were six of them, maybe if only one was missing.

Bunyan? Maybe in her childish curiosity, and without adult supervision… but what would she be doing with them? But again, it was impossible for the Berserker to be so stealthy as to bypass the security he had placed. Maybe when pigs started flying.

But, who else could there be… Wait.

Edison suddenly froze in realization.

That Servant! That gigantic Servant who had arrived with Tesla! The one who did not give her name and had flown into his office just a few hours ago screaming that he had locked up Bunyan and… beat him up.

The jigsaw puzzle finally came together in Edison's mind.

The attack on him was an attempt! The attempt to give the Demon Kings time to escape!

Edison's mind instantly lined up the dozens of disparate facts into a coherent, logical theory. “Find her! Find her now!”

Now if only he had not been so wrong it would have been perfect.

***

Angrboda, not even suspecting that in her absence, Edison had already accused her of treason, and was ready to execute her over it, just turned toward Bunyan. They were walking quietly down the street, scaring the casual passers-by by her size, smiling all the while. “Do you want to eat some cotton candy?”

Even if she had known what had happened, however, she would not have been upset to realize that in just a second she had turned from a potential ally to an adversary.

I mean, sure, she'd promised Karna, her sweet child, not to kill Edison for no reason, but if he insisted on jumping into her mouth so much… Who was Angrboda to refuse him?