Grand Foreigner (Chapters 1- 200)

Chapter 140

It would be wrong to say that Ainz had become confused by what he had just learned from Angrboda.

He was indeed confused about his own 'history', his abilities, and even the simple basic things like how this world 'works'. He didn't even want to begin to untangle the mess that is what had actually happened to him in the first place to bring him here. The Servants he could 'understand' enough. A super secret conspiracy that was running full steam in the background of the world? Ha! That was a simple fact of life!

The strange fact of his existence in its current state though? He didn't understand a single thing from the get-go, so it would be wrong to say that he was only completely confused only now...

So, Ainz simply treated it as a simple fact of life that he understood absolutely nothing about what was happening. So he simply gave up trying to understand, not even bothering to dream that he would one day somehow figure out all the intricacies of what had happened.

He was not that smart.

After all, from what he could tell from Angrboda's story, he had just played a game, which turned out to be not a game. And played it for twelve years, which was actually lasting at least several hundred years. Only to then end up in the past somehow after the first game was turned off, but in fact, the game he 'thought' he had played was not a game at all!

And now he is fighting a magician that travels through time and wants to destroy humanity, all the while fighting alongside legends that have returned to life...

As Ainz added more and more 'facts' to the pile, the more complex and paradoxical the pyramid became. Who summoned him? Was he even 'summoned' in the first place? Did he actually ever 'play' YGGDRASIL at all? Where did Cainabel, Baal and Angrboda come from? How did they know about him? Why did they know things about him that he did not know at all?

Therefore, as he had decided a long time ago when dealing with puzzles, Ainz, trying in futility to organize the dozens of paradoxical facts in his head that were ready to tear his mind apart, simply gave up. And so, instead of trying to build a single coherent through line from the thousands of facts piled up in a single heap that would only fall on him and crush him - he just left the pile of facts lying in their place, periodically pulling out one or two facts at a time when it was necessary.

Of course, Angrboda's words were a mountain of facts and conjectures that had added an uncomfortable amount of things into the 'pile'. An event that had suddenly collapsed the barely put together act of balancing that is his understanding of the world...

Though, is it really called 'understanding' if he actually understands nothing?

Still, Ainz was mature and even self-assured enough to be able to look himself in the eyes and admit his weaknesses.

Ainz did not possess the mental capability to understand these complex mysteries that seems to become more bizarre the more he thinks about it. In the past, he was very glad that Ainz Ooal Gown was a PK Guild that everyone basically hated. No need to trouble himself with the complex system of personal relationships between the heads of guilds, when everyone is a target or wants to kill them right?

So, how was he supposed to understand the almost quite literally, for him, eldritch mess that is the system of magic of this world that is based on such unprovable and unverifiable concepts such as 'legends' or 'mysteries'?

The moment he understood even an iota of the system, something new and radical that changes everything would suddenly be added to the mix!

Of course, Ainz was not an absolute idiot when it comes to something more difficult than waving a staff and pressing buttons. It is simply that he had just soberly assessed his abilities in building or god forbid understanding really complex schemes with dozens of variables and unknowns, and had found that he was complete shit at it. And so he preferred to give the opportunity to scheme and understand elaborate mysteries to someone, who really liked and was interested in doing it, rather than charging in himself and making a jumble of everything.