Grand Foreigner (Chapters 1- 200)

Chapter 154

Nursery Rhyme, the Nameless Book God, was essentially a monster with no semblance of normal form, no single body, and perhaps not even a definite mind. Certainly, if one ventured to look at the 'true' form of Nursery Rhyme, one could not bring oneself to look at the form that 'it' otherwise took with anything other than horror. Their minds would buckle and break as they behold the insane and completely alien mind and being that existed as the true form of a Servant with such an innocuous name.

Such was the true form of the Servant, a form that, should a Master summoned it, they could not have survived. And therefore, Nursery Rhyme did not exist in its true form.

Such was the Servant's peculiarity, this creature, though it had something that could be called a 'true form', was not something that can be used to interact with its Master should the latter take its true form. And so, every time it was summoned, instead of some kind of mad and alien creature, Nursery Rhyme, the Servant, would take form.

Why they normally appear as a little girl dressed in gothic lolita fashion, though, is something that no one can answer.

Her 'outer' form was created for two purposes at once. First, to enable the Master to interact with something comprehensible to his mind and consciousness, and second, to give the alien creature a grounding for understanding moral norms, and consciousness that can correlate with its Master's.

If the Master summoning this Servant were one who wished to see an invincible warrior descended from the pages of dusty books of legend, it was in the power of the Nursery Rhyme to create just that. It would create a facade of a creature equal to a wise knight, a great hero, a noble and invincible warrior.

In other words, if one wished to see a noir detective hero, cynical and embittered by the world, Nursery Rhyme could provide that as well.

It was not the creation of a puppet, where the true mind of Nursery Rhyme would control. No, it was not just 'a body' created according to the Master's preference, it was the entire character of the Servant itself. The Servant changed itself entirely, taking from the Master's thoughts the image, the thinking, the knowledge, the understanding of how it was to think, to behave, and then changing itself to suit this image.

At the same time, although technically speaking a Master could control this process, realistically speaking, it was impossible. Not many Masters could independently determine that Nursery Rhyme was the Servant they would receive at their summoning, what sort of catalyst even summon such a Servant?

Even with their summoning certain, not many Masters could fully compose their demand or request to such a Servant to matter, forming its personality and thinking in one go. And therefore, Nursery Rhyme had a sort of 'standard form' or rather, a certain body and consciousness, a Servant that existed in most conditions in the absence of other instructions, a convenient form capable of interacting with its Master.

That form was named Alice.

A little girl dressed in a puffy black and purple dress that belonged more to a doll than to a person, with large eyes and a face frozen like a porcelain mask, staring unemotionally at her surroundings. Her white hair was braided into two long braids down the front of her dress reaching below the waist, with a beret pushed down to the back of her head.

In other words, Alice's appearance was that of a girl, not just young, but small and vulnerable.

The name itself, 'Alice', was taken from a distant, alien memory... But why it chose that name didn't matter.

More important, however, was that, in contrast to Alice's appearance, her mind was not the young and naïve mind of a young girl, but that of a Servant. Not so much an adult mind, as a fully formed one. It was not the mind of a child incapable of perceiving pain or loss, instead a mind fully aware of concepts like 'death' or 'suffering'. Perhaps, even better than by humans themselves.