Battle for Babylonia: Ending of a battle for Babylon (264)

Ainz was almost enjoying the battle with Tiamat. ‘Almost’ because under no circumstances was he some kind of adrenaline junkie for whom any fight was a source of entertainment or confronting an opponent capable of injuring him was itself a joyful event. 

On the contrary, if given the choice between receiving a reward after a battle or getting the exact same reward without fighting, he would choose the second option in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases. The one percent of cases was reserved for situations where Ainz urgently needed to vent his negative emotions, and beating up a helpless mob with his own hands was the first thing that caught his eye, offering an outlet for his feelings.

However, sometimes it wasn't bad to stretch his limbs. 

Even, as strange as it might sound coming from the Ainz who usually preferred to surround himself with two hundred protective barriers and then add another hundred because two hundred was definitely not enough for his paranoid soul, taking a couple of hits in a fight wasn't bad. Another paradox of omnipotence, perhaps. 

If he could do everything, defeat everyone, and solve all problems with a snap of his fingers, then Ainz would find himself woefully bored. After all, what was the point of doing anything if that’s the case? 

If he could resolve all issues at any moment without encountering any resistance in solving the ‘problems’, then nothing he could or would do would have any meaning, as things would be ‘predetermined’. Making it meaningless since it brought Ainz no satisfaction. 

It could just as easily be done at any later time; or not done at all, simply leaving the current issue for the future, allowing it to evolve, change, or resolve itself without any interference on his part.

The fact that he not only couldn't win a fight with a snap of his fingers, but even received small counterattacks from his opponent was something Ainz rather liked, showing him that he needed to put in at least minimal effort to defeat his adversary.

In other words, under any other circumstances, Ainz would have been glad about the ongoing fight. He wouldn't be jumping in joy, but he would certainly be at least a little happy and engaged in what was happening.

But at this precise moment, he could only ‘almost’ be enjoying his battle with Tiamat.

Tiamat, standing opposite Ainz, and at a great distance from him, allowing Ainz to assess her full appearance, looked unwell. Several huge gashes on her body were openly bleeding, the wounds slowly attempting to close. [Obsidian Swords] had sliced into her flesh, bypassing her scales, which served as a natural armor for Tiamat's body, easily. 

After all, it was a spell designed specifically to pierce through heavy armor.

In some areas, her flesh was singed, in a couple more, frozen, some were simply stripped bare of skin leaving only gouged muscles. Facing the full brunt of Ainz’s arsenal of spells, from fireballs and lightning to exotic curses and a few summoned undead minions, minions that had long since been crushed by Tiamat, had done their work.

On the other side was Ainz himself, looking at his form, one might easily think he hadn't been harmed at all, dodging Tiamat's attacks and firing at her as if he was in a shooting range, but this was solely due to Ainz's nature. As an Undead, no visible damage would appear on his body and he could operate at one hundred percent efficiency until his body was completely destroyed, and his HP dropped to absolute zero. 

If he was of the mortal races, his appearance might not be so different from Tiamat’s current state.

It was only his excellent control over his emotions that he looked unruffled. Tiamat’s current appearance also helped his calm severely. Under any other circumstances, Ainz would clearly look far less comfortable, at the very least because he had already spent half of his own mana and taken at least three hits from Tiamat earlier. That is, not only had his mana dropped by half, but his HP wasn't at one hundred percent either, he had even had to trade a few blows with Tiamat to land some solid hits on her. 

In other words, under any other conditions, one might even say that Ainz was nearly panicking; if Tiamat's condition didn't look so pitiful at the moment, it's quite likely that Ainz would indeed be panicking right now.

But that wasn't the reason Ainz couldn't fully enjoy the battle with Tiamat. As mentioned, given all the circumstances, he wasn't even too opposed to the fact that he was genuinely fighting at full strength against Tiamat. 

No, something else troubled Ainz.

In general, it was difficult to evoke feelings of pity in Ainz. Not that he was completely devoid of any possible empathy for any other living being, no, he empathized with his Servants, showed concern, and one could even say that in some sense, he loved the girls he was in relationships with. But getting him to feel sorrowful emotions, especially towards an opponent in the middle of a fight with him? 

It is challenging to say the least.

In his past world, Ainz had encountered things that, as he discovered, were not commonplace in this world, things that could make a bleeding heart die of blood loss. Things like orphans dying of hunger scattered in the streets or people forced into organ donation for being unable to pay their debts, so, he approached many things considered horrifying in the current world with a rather calm perspective. Especially considering he would never allow himself to become truly emotional and switch sides to his opponent mid-battle, as if in some cheap plot of an equally cheap novel. 

Even in YGGDRASIL, the fact that your opponent had a tragic past didn't mean they ceased to be your opponent.

However, his very much jaded mind still scratched at the insides of his skull with thoughts, not allowing him to relax and simply enjoy destroying Tiamat.

‘Humanity betrayed me in their own minds, and therefore I wish for them to stop fighting, and for that, I will become the monster that destroys them, or grants them a final victory over me that they will celebrate.’

There was little of humanity in this thought, but it was not devoid of its own strange yet effective logic. That is, one could trace how one conclusion flowed from one thought to another, and they all served as premises for the subsequent deduction.

And so Ainz doubted, as he couldn't enjoy the fight fully, and started thinking.

Because, no matter how he looked at the situation, it somehow turned out that in a twisted sense of inhuman logic, Tiamat…

She was an absolute good. Ainz wouldn’t be surprised if her Karma was maxed out.

In YGGDRASIL, Ainz had destroyed plenty of ‘good’ beings, not just in self-defense, but also in pursuing his own goals in quests, raids, and other such things; but he wasn't Ulbert. Not someone whom the words ‘good’ and ‘hero’ were like a red rag to a bull. But Ainz wasn't about to pretend he was a champion of humanity or the most moral of all possible people, either.

Yet, for some reason, at this very moment, in this battle with Tiamat, Ainz felt uneasy, perhaps because…

He felt a certain sense of kinship with her.

Not the kinship that all living beings surely felt with their primogenitor, at least because Ainz himself wasn't a living being, and he didn't even originate from this world… And where he did come from, considering his mind from one world and body from another, remained a big question, but that’s neither here nor there.

It was but a kinship on the level of thoughts and perspectives.

Perhaps because he himself wasn't overly rational in his logic, but that didn't mean his logic wasn't sound.

Rising upward, Ainz gazed at Tiamat, judging by all the information he had gathered, she was already very close to her final moments. One successful application of [Triple Maximize Magic: Reality Slash] would likely put a definitive end to Tiamat now. Of course, the mana cost for such a move was astronomical, but Ainz could easily afford it even with his current halved mana reserves.

A worthy investment, especially if it meant effectively securing victory over his opponent.

And so, convincing himself that he wasn't making a mistake and wasn't wasting his advantageous position, and that he could always finish what he started at any moment, Ainz teleported much closer to Tiamat. Appearing just a little ahead of her, hovering in the air, looking at Tiamat's figure and her enormous monstrous face. Tiamat, who also lifted its gaze to the small, distinct point against the shapeless darkness before her.

In response to Ainz's appearance, Tiamat attempted to jerk her head, hoping to knock Ainz aside with her massive horns. But in her current damaged form, and as Tiamat was definitely not an undead capable of one hundred percent efficiency at any given time, as a result, her head movement was rather slow, if not downright lethargic. Ainz, in turn, easily dodged it, confirming his assumption that he needed just one powerful strike to finish Tiamat off. 

He paused just out of reach of Tiamat's movements, before silently staring at her again.

Her battle-scarred body, monstrous maw, formidable-looking claws, though considerably less formidable in Tiamat's current state, Ainz seemed to be trying to discern something in her form and couldn't find it.

Tiamat, not willing to wait until Ainz finishes whatever it is he’s trying to do, attempts to raise her arm before swinging it forward, another unsuccessful attempt at an attack. An attack which Ainz easily evaded, before realizing what he had been searching for in Tiamat's form and hadn't found.

"There's no bloodlust in you." Ainz finally declared his verdict with complete certainty.

Tiamat, at these words, turned her head again, stared at Ainz before her in confusion, as if not understanding what he meant; before, having decided that she was already in a vulnerable enough position not to pretend she could still somehow finish Ainz off, spoke instead. 

"I want to win."

"And I believe that," Ainz nodded, before countering her words. "But there's no bloodlust in you, I understand now why I thought we're so similar. Because you're, just like me… You would prefer to achieve your goals without a fight; but you can't do that."

"Didn't I say something to the same effect earlier? This fight is the goal." Tiamat responded without mockery, as if genuinely curious whether he was incapable of grasping the idea she had expressed, or if the problem lay in her inability to convey her thoughts clearly.

"You did. I just couldn't understand it right away." Ainz disabused her of the notion, before slowly drifting closer to Tiamat, once again placing himself momentarily within reach of her attacks. "You became a Beast precisely to fight Humanity, didn't you?"

"Exactly so," Tiamat answered, this time not attempting to catch Ainz with an attack. Perhaps she too could see how futile an attack now would be, or she’s just waiting for the opportune moment, a 50/50 chance, usually not the kind of gamble that Ainz liked to take. But needs must.

"But something has been bothering me all this time; you’ve said that you’re a law of nature, that you cannot be betrayed, cannot be hurt, that you do not feel emotions… But how is that possible if you love humanity so much that the only way you can fight them is by becoming a Beast?" Ainz looked into Tiamat's eyes, a comical sight considering their difference in size.

"Because I am the primordial mother," Tiamat answered as if it were self-evident. "A mother's nature is unconditional love; my love cannot be escaped, just as it cannot be betrayed. A mother will always love her child."

"Then how could you take the form of a Beast? If you love your children so unconditionally, how can you even pretend to blame them for betraying you?" Ainz tilted his head slightly, before exhaling slowly. 

"You know… I once had a mother too."

Tiamat, who was about to respond to the first part of his statement, paused upon hearing the second phrase, froze, as if she was genuinely surprised by Ainz's words, asking a question so uncharacteristic of her. 

"Who was she?"

"She was…" Ainz opened his mouth, ready to utter a name, once so dear to him even more than his friends’, before freezing. 

"I don't know."

This answer didn't stem from the fact that Ainz's body was born of YGGDRASIL, but because he didn't remember his mother. He remembered the warm hands and equally warm food she’d cooked, remembered the words of support she would give when he was sad. But most of all, the constant overwork, the additional shifts she took to support a family as a single mother. But who was she really? As a person? As something more than a name and a few random memories, he could only rationally associate with his mother?

Emptiness. Ainz's attempt to recall who she truly was, failed from the very start. Was she strict or kind? Did she have brown eyes or gray? Did she smile with a thin line or slightly crooked, lips tilted to one side?

Ainz didn't, couldn’t, remember. Perhaps his, then, child mind had blocked those memories in an attempt to protect his traumatized psyche from further shock? Or perhaps his future monotonous daily grind had simply erased those memories from his mind, deeming them ‘unnecessary’ compared to the far more important day-to-day knowledge, about work, raids, or sales on nearly new gas masks for navigating the streets.

Attempting to recall a personality, a face to which he could attach a name, a surname, and a span of years, to create a true, complete identity, all failed.

"Huh, I don't remember…" Ainz repeated once more, "But I still love her."

These words made Tiamat blink, before responding in the most logical way for her, "But you don't remember her."

"Not as much as I would like. I don't remember our conversations, I can't even piece together how she’d looked… But I still love her." Ainz sighed, looking upward away from the bulk of Tiamat, a grave mistake for such a veteran of PvP battles as Ainz, even if his opponent was so heavily wounded at the moment. 

"I might have forgotten her name, even how she’d looked… But I remember the warmth of her hands, and how much she loved me… And I love her in return, even if I don't remember her face."

"That's foolish," Tiamat replied so childishly that if it weren't for his [Emotion Suppression], Ainz would have been genuinely surprised by the words. 

"You can't love someone you don't know."

"Can't you? I thought you loved your children," Ainz shifted his gaze back downward and smiled at Tiamat, though on his skeletal face, no emotion was reflected.

"I do love them. That is an immutable truth," Tiamat, clearly not following Ainz's line of reasoning, tilted her head to the side, as if perceiving what was said not as a continuation of their previous dialogue, but as a separate question.

"And they love you," Ainz responded just as simply. "After all, you can't know what people truly feel, can you?"

"I feel what they feel. My blood flows through them. Their emotions flow through me," Tiamat countered, not moving from her previous argument, seemingly so offended by Ainz's words that for a moment she completely forgot about their battle.

"But do you understand them? Truly understand them?" Ainz pressed the primordial mother again. "When parents look at their children, they always think they understand them, what they need, what their future is supposed to be; but do they truly understand? Do they really know what their children are experiencing? They remember what it was like to be children themselves, but that doesn't mean they are still those same children. Times change, as do the generations. Parents and children are not meant to fully understand each other…"

Ainz paused, as if chewing over his thought, before summing it up. "But they still love each other, even if they truly can’t understand each other."

Tiamat opened her mouth, as if to disagree with Ainz’s words, but stopped, frozen in the pose of a monster ready to pounce and devour her prey, and Ainz was prepared to [Teleport] away. Yet no attack came. Instead, Tiamat simply continued to stand silently, contemplating something in her mind, before finally speaking again, a little less confidently than before, "I still love them."

"I know," Ainz, in truth, didn't doubt Tiamat's statement. 

Yes, one could argue about Tiamat’s actions, the death of Humanity isn’t exactly an act of love, from the perspective of common human sense. But, Tiamat's true feeling wasn't a matter of common sense or human thinking, and therefore any attempt to engage in dialogue with her as a rational person was doomed to fail before it even began. 

And so, if Ainz couldn't rely on Tiamat's rational side, he could only rely on her emotional one; and what could elicit a more emotional emotion for a mother than her love for her children?

"You love them, and they love you in turn, therefore… they will grieve for you." Ainz spoke in breath, getting to the heart of the issue. "Do you think that if you become a monster, if they defeat you once again in that form… no one will be saddened by your death?"

"Then I simply need to win, no?" Tiamat responded so logically that in the current circumstances, this answer seemed self-evident. "If I can absorb the entire world and recreate it anew… no one will grieve for my death."

"But you will grieve for those who died, no?" Ainz responded in turn to Tiamat’s ‘logic’, finally finding the most critical contradiction in Tiamat's argument. "Didn't you say that you would bear the sin and sorrow for the death of your children, who perished for this ‘salvation’?"

Tiamat, clearly wanting to say something in response, couldn't speak, only able to mull over Ainz's words repeatedly, letting Ainz realize that he had found a nerve he could press to batter Tiamat’s argument. Which is exactly what he planned to do.

"You said you would recreate the world anew, that your children would hear your song once again… But won't your song be filled with sadness and regret for those who gave their lives for this future to happen? For those who never got to be born in that other world where you never triumphed? Won't you ever imagine the image of those who never lived their lives in this other world?" Ainz slowly moved his still-hovering form forward, dangerously close to Tiamat's maw. 

But if he wanted to get his point across, to get that critical strike, it’s a necessary danger.

"You worry about people being saddened by their actions, for the guilt they felt in killing you… But will the sorrow you transmit to them be any better than the sorrow they chose for themselves?"

Tiamat, who clearly hadn't thought so deeply about the matter until this moment, stopped moving completely, no longer any consideration of attacking Ainz existed in her mind. Instead, she desperately tried to find refutation to Ainz’s words from all angles, her very goal and existence counted on it. 

Ainz was not going to allow such a thing to happen.

"Your love for them is unconditional, and that will be the source of your sorrow. But the sorrow they feel after your imprisonment is also born from their unconditional love for you," Ainz drew so close that Tiamat could no longer track his figure in front of her, her eyes going cross-eyed, focusing on her snout. "And that's not something you can simply forget."

"A mother's love for her child is unconditional… But so is a child's love for their mother. No matter how strict the mother is, no matter how much she hurts the child, the child will still continue to love their mother. Even if they've forgotten her, even if they never knew her," Ainz paused for a moment, recalling his own mother. 

No matter how blurred his memories of her would become, no matter how much time passed, he couldn't simply erase or strike out those fragments of memories he still retained of her. Perhaps there were only a few of them. Perhaps he could no longer find a face to match the warm embraces and the sandwiches on the table, but that didn't mean he had forgotten them. That he simply erased them from his past.

"I…" Tiamat opened her mouth, but for the first time, the living law of nature, the universal mother, couldn't find an immediate answer that would halt her stream of contradictory thoughts and serve as a continuation of her argument. Because Ainz was right. 

He didn't follow ‘common sense’ or try to convince Tiamat that she was doing something wrong, he operated fully within Tiamat's own paradigm. And he was winning.

"I'm in your mind, aren't I?" Ainz moved back slightly again, then spun in place, spreading his arms to the sides to indicate the absolute, endless void surrounding the battlefield with Tiamat. 

"I thought long and hard about why, when I attacked you over and over at the beginning, my attacks didn't wound you, or why they didn't hinder you… And the answer is as simple and obvious as it is unexpected. Because this is your mind, and right now, I'm not fighting you, Tiamat, the Mother of All, or even Beast II. I'm fighting your convictions."

A chuckle left his lips, if he had not realized this, then he would have fallen for the most devious of traps, where he would waste his resources for nothing.

"And until now, your convictions were strong, rock solid, every time I’ve wounded you, you just brushed it off with absolute certainty in your own rightness, in your chosen path forward. That's what made you invincible. What a devious trap! Though I don’t know if you’ve intended it to be that way.”

Laughing openly now, it took a few seconds for Ainz to continue speaking again.

“I don't know, a fight is hardly something easy to predict, but perhaps I wouldn't have been able to win a simple fight with you here, in this place, within your own mind, without using something truly extraordinary. Even if my spells came in an endless stream, what power do they have against an invincible mind?" Ainz paused for a moment, as the puzzle finally came together, making him exhale in realization of where exactly this line of thought had led him. 

"And I think I understand what’s happening now. I'm just a medium, a catalyst, as I’ve had always been ever since I’ve dropped into the Abyss; the real battle is happening in reality, isn't it? Your current form isn't a reflection of how wounded your body is, it's how weakened your convictions are, isn't it?"

Shaking his head, Ainz continued talking to the now silent Tiamat.

"It's a little sad for me, of course, but in a way, it's even funny," Ainz raised his hand, then ran it across his face, part in annoyance, part in relieved exasperation. "But all these wounds appeared on you not because I was so powerful… but because your convictions can't withstand the clash with reality, the clash with your own children, isn't that right? Every time they opposed you, every time they tried to fight, every time they forced you to retreat… you gave in a little more, didn't you?" Ainz had realized a simple truth.

No matter how many times Tiamat became a Beast, and no matter how many times she spoke of her nature and her own plans, no matter what happened to her, in the end, she was a mother. She was what a mother's love is supposed to be, infinite, based on nothing, and yielding to nothing. No matter how strict she would be, in the end, she loved her children all, regardless of who they were or what they did in their life.

Every time she saw her children striving forward, how they continued to live despite everything, how they overcame her invincible form, growing a little stronger with each strike, her conviction crumbled. Ainz, in this case, was the mediator, the catalyst of her defeat perhaps, but not the root cause of her defeat.

Because, despite everything, Tiamat loved her children more than her own life.

"Then why do they suffer? Why do I see sadness in their faces? Why, every time I hear their words, about the difficult decisions they must make, about the necessity of it, do I hear only pain and regret?" Tiamat's voice, usually so calamitous, coming out rolling with monstrous thunderclaps, this time came out quiet, almost human. 

"Why does it hurt me so much to see their pain?"

"Because there is always sorrow in life," Ainz exhaled slowly, then smiled gently. "It didn't start because of you, and it wasn't the result of the decisions of Humanity. It just is. Every meeting means a parting, all joy turns to sorrow, and everything beautiful has its own end."

Ainz knew this. Intimately so.

Looking at his life from an outside perspective, the life of Ainz Ooal Gown, of Suzuki Satoru, it could be said that his life was unmistakably sorrowful. He never knew his father, and lost his mother so early, and that was just his childhood. Trudging through the streets every day with a gas mask pressed to his face, what greeted him was only endless, unpraised, unrecognized work, a single cog, in the behemoth of a machine called a Mega Corporation. His only solace was a singular game and his friends, and that too, slowly wound down until only he’s left. Until the game itself ceased to exist.

But that didn't mean there was nothing good in his life.

He remembered his mother's embraces. At his job, he felt glad every time he closed out and completed another task, receiving his own sense of pride and accomplishment. And in YGGDRASIL, he had found friends, true friends, with whom he spent so many years together.

And here, in this world…

There was unmistakably sadness, anger, and disappointment; but there are a lot of joys as well, of all kinds. From the feeling of pride he felt for resolving the Singularities, from a sense of camaraderie he felt fighting alongside Heroes, even if some irked him, and he had to ‘correct’ their behavior. Then there are the girls that had found their place besides him, even if he didn’t know how exactly that had happened. And of course there’s the loot, rare and one of a kind. There’s even the simple joy of knowing that he’s progressing, of moving forward. 

Despite knowing that he had been burned before, despite knowing that he would definitely get burned again. That everything beautiful in his life would have its own end.

Despite all the sadness and pain, he kept moving forward. Because despite everything…

Life was beautiful.

"If I give up, will this pain go away?" Tiamat asked, finally letting go of her restraint. Her own body, or, to be more precise, her mind, completely surrendered, abandoning the fight.

If she could, if she strengthened her resolve, she would no doubt return to battling Ainz, no, it would be more accurate to say that even her defeat in reality would also amount to nothing. She would reclaim her body in a fraction of a second, she would recover, and she would continue to fight. And now, after all the Servants had exhausted their strength, she would surely win. Her nature as Beast II seethed within her, demanding release, demanding that she continue the fight.

But instead, Tiamat asked a question, as if entrusting her life to Ainz's hands. If Ainz just said a single word, a single lie, she would surrender at that moment.

"No," But Ainz did not, and would not lie or try to manipulate Tiamat. 

"The pain doesn't go away, not truly. It becomes constant and quiet, barely noticeable, becomes the norm, and gradually fades in the mind, replaced by memories of itself. But it always comes back, no matter how many friends leave, no matter how many failures you face, no matter how many times you're wounded, it will continue. Every time as if it were the first, even if you lie to yourself that you're used to it. And that is life."

"Even if all my children forget about me…” Tiamat raised her gaze to Ainz, and if she could, she would have shed a tear.

"I will remember. Which means there will always be a little sorrow in the world, because there is someone who didn't want to say goodbye to you," Ainz responded with a sad smile, and although his skeletal face didn't change with his words, Tiamat understood his expression and returned her own sad smile.

"Then I no longer want a world without pain," Tiamat replied slowly, feeling her desire to continue fighting break completely. "I want a world where my children will be happy."

And, after a moment, Tiamat's nature as the loving primordial mother finally and completely rejected the nature of Beast II.