ALL NOVEL 45. A Spider’s Thoughts
Shiraori PoV:
Location: The Office; The 10th Floor of Nazarick
I was mechanically going through the stack of paperwork that Albedo had placed in front of me. The documents concerned the progress of all the plans that had been put into motion. I affixed the official seal on the documents that were verified.
By that, I mean that my parallel minds were processing all the information quickly while I used this time efficiently to think about something else.
Albedo, who was standing to my right, picked up the documents that were verified. She had no doubts about whether I had actually gone through them or not.
The NPCs already knew about my parallel wills skill so they had no doubts about this. Much less they would not dare doubt a Supreme Being.
Meanwhile, Sebas stood guard by the door while Cocytus was standing to my left.
Pandora's Actor had managed to communicate with Albedo and notified her that he would be providing some of the results that he had gathered during his infiltration of Kamar Taj. This was certainly good news as I can start learning new magic soon. Learning magic was addicting and it had already become a hobby of mine.
Shalltear had not yet left for her mission. She would leave within the next few days. Before that, Demiurge and Albedo were giving a crash course about the information in the comics to Shalltear as well as all the other NPCs in their free time. She will also personally review her plans with them as I ordered earlier before departing for the mission.
I have also been thinking about whether there will really be a magical plot armour at work against my actions in the future. The conclusion I came to is that I don't know and I can't know unless I witness plot armour at work.
This is hindering any further actions. If I really do invade Asgard, the plot armour will make sure that it would only be a matter of time before they somehow revived and bit me in the ass. Or maybe some other entity might suddenly come and intrude to disrupt my plans.
As I had theorised earlier, Marvel and DC have essentially the same sort of plot armour principles as the Xianxia universes. If a villain tried to crush the protagonist, the world would skew in the protagonist's favour to help them in most cases.
I had already somewhat achieved the goal of becoming a cockroach-like existence, ahem, I mean an unkillable spider. Like some of those Xianxia characters who had an endless number of means to save their lives.
The ones who had backup plans after backup plans. If someone tried to destroy them, they had hundreds of barriers and defensive formations, followed by healing spells, extreme regenerative abilities, transportation talismans, some sort of soul-protecting device, etc.
But none of this would do any good at all in front of the aforementioned almighty plot armour.
That is why I had to find out every bit of information about Asgard as I could before actually planning an invasion if any at all. This is obviously no easy feat. Not to mention what 'Those Who Sit Above In Shadow' would do.
Would they really allow their precious nutrients to be eradicated once and for all? The answer was obvious. They would not. These leeches had to be dealt with as well.
For now, I plan to borrow Momonga's idea of having the identity of an undead overlord Ainz and Momon. I will completely separate the persona of myself and another persona that will play a different role.
The first persona will obviously be me, that is Shiraori, the virtuous Spider Goddess. I will use this identity when I commit 'morally decent' actions such as saving or helping someone. Just as I had done with the Olmecs.
The other identity will be that of the Evil God D. Since I had already used this identity while talking with Agatha, I planned to expand the use of this persona even more. When I used it earlier, it was simply an alias used as the first level of defence against corruption.
Now, I would use it to take responsibility for all the actions perceived by other sentient beings as 'morally dubious' or 'evil.
Personally, the concepts of good or evil meant nothing at all to me. All that mattered to me was my own interests, safety, and enjoyment. To achieve this, I would display any sort of character, whether it was good or evil.
I had also been studying Mini-chan whenever I visited the 6th floor in my free time. Calling it a 'mini world tree' every single time is a mouthful so I will call it Mini-chan for now.
I had Mini-chan sealed with dimensional magecraft so that outsiders wouldn't stray into Nazarick again. For now, at the very least. I could feel the barrier weakening and it would have broken if I did not have my parallel minds concentrate on keeping it intact.
Under Mare's care, Mini-chan was growing rapidly. She did not have any more leaves yet, but she was integrating into Nazarick itself.
The world tree was also giving out mana instead of oxygen like a normal plant did. That was understandable as Mini-chan was a mythical tree after all. The guardians had also noticed the floors expanding from their original size at an extremely slow rate.
I went to another timeline to run some tests. The connection between Yggdrasill and Mini-chan, or rather, Nazarick still existed even when I was present in that other timeline. I could also feel Mini-chan trying to form a connection with the Yggdrasill in that timeline.
If I had not returned quickly, there would be two Yggdrasill's connected to Nazarick. Unless I abandoned Nazarick entirely and ran away, Yggdrasill would always be connected to Nazarick. I did not want to abandon Nazarick unless absolutely necessary.
This pressing issue required a solution, further incentivizing the idea of waging war on Asgard. I sighed, feeling the weight of the ever-increasing list of tasks I had to complete.
"Is something wrong, my lady?" Albedo asked, concerned.
'It's nothing, Albedo.' I calmly replied to her.
I can only solve all issues one step at a time. There really was no point fretting over these except putting myself in a bad mood.
Hmm, thinking about it now, I have barely spent any time until now with Vampy even though she is my own personal creation. I did not even give her a task until now. Guess I'll take Sophia with me on my next trip outside Nazarick. I planned to go outside again sometime after Shalltear left.
Just as I was thinking, one of the clones I had spread out all over Earth notified me:
'Body-in-charge, there are some pesky flies buzzing towards our web. They are possibly Asgardian soldiers.' There is someone heading toward the Olmec settlement?
'Pesky flies buzzing towards our web…hehe, interesting choice of words to talk about intruders.' The magic-in-charge responsible for experimenting with magic laughed derisively.
'Hey, don't mock my aesthetic sense. I feel being notified in this cryptic manner has a certain charm to it. Besides, we are one and the same so you should think so as well.' I replied.
'No way. If I had to give a phrase, it would be much cooler.' The magic-in-charge rebutted my claim. Before I could argue, it continued: 'Instead of arguing, shouldn't you think about how to deal with these Asgardians instead?'
That was fair. Dealing with the pesky flies was more important than arguing with one of my parallel minds. After all, I could argue with magic-in-charge later as well.
Since the guardians were present, I simply pulled out a mirror of remote viewing from my inventory for them to view as well.
"MY. LADY?" Cocytus spoke, doubt evident in his tone. The NPCs in the office were alarmed at my sudden actions.
'One of my clones notified me that Asgardian soldiers were heading towards the Olmec settlement.' I replied as I got the mirror to show the visuals I desired. The soldiers marching towards the settlement after inspecting my [Creation] spell could be seen clearly.
I had expected something like this to happen eventually, albeit with a low possibility. So, I already had prepared to benefit from this if possible.
I could let these soldiers return to Asgard safely but I wanted to take this calculated risk. There was a 97% that things would work out in my favour if I carried out the plan.
If discovered, of course, the dangers Nazarick faced would increase. But I had contingencies for that as well. As I said earlier, my path was one of becoming the almighty unkillable spider. The one who can never be squashed.
'Now, then…'