"Y-you're lying."
Thrud grabbed Doma by the collar of his clothes and lifted him up to eye level. Yet, she noticed no sign of deceit coming from the man in her grasp. Worse still, her instinct perceived the truth in his last words.
Something made possible by Doma's power, which slightly altered his interlocutor's judgment ability.
'Surprisingly, she's one of the strongest minds I've ever encountered,' he thought, diving his gaze into her green eyes.
Thrud had a mind far stronger than Doma had anticipated, but persuasion didn't need to be 100% supernatural. He just needed to get her to consider his words as possible, since the ice demon only wanted to plant a seed of credibility in her.
Time would do the rest of the work.
"You don't need to believe me right now. You just have to watch the next match and judge for yourself if I'm lying~"
Doma's voice was calm, despite the pressure the giantess was exerting on him. Finally, Thrud clicked her tongue and set him back down on the bed.
"If you're right, then Brunhilde needs to be informed…"
Thrud wanted to continue, but Doma interrupted her.
"No. The more of you interfere, the more unpredictable the knot of causality will become and end up closing in on you. In your opinion, why have the gods never been able to defeat prophecies without paying the price?" he said in an honest tone.
This time again, Doma wasn't lying. Fate is inevitable, except when challenged by special beings: heroes or entities of overwhelming power.
Thrud didn't meet those criteria.
No one could save Adam except Doma. However, the latter had no way to help that man.
Yes, Doma liked Adam, but he was simply powerless with his current strength.
That's also why he was using his death as bargaining currency against Thrud, to gain credibility.
"I'm still going to try. And didn't you come to see me with a solution? It would be strange to announce an inevitable future while neglecting your own health, especially when it's deteriorating because of such a power…"
Thrud's gaze settled on Doma with a certain expectation. She had hit the mark, the key point of this conversation subtly guided by the demon.
'Too bad she plans to tell Brunhilde, but I had already anticipated that possibility.'
Doma remained calm at the idea that the Valkyries' leader might doubt him.
He didn't need her approval, only Thrud's. And if the latter ended up bending to her sister's wishes and foiled his ruse, then Doma would go see Hlökk.
"Hmm… as I expected from you, Thrud. You're exactly as I saw you in my visions of the future: a strong woman."
Doma nodded approvingly, after slipping in a joke about Thrud's name and complimenting the young woman.
'It's also why you die in the other timeline,' he thought, without voicing that part of his sentence.
"S-stop flattering me, you idiot, and get to the point!" the giantess retorted, embarrassed by the compliment.
A reaction that was both funny and strangely cute, but Doma stayed focused on his goal.
"I want you to fight by my side in the Ragnarok, more specifically during the gods' camp's next match." Doma nonchalantly asked the woman to betray her sisters and her camp, in a calm voice.
'Given the rage that the Paradise of Vanity detects, Thrud's answer will obviously be no, but…' Doma had anticipated that too.
Is it weird that Doma manipulates people so well? The answer is no.
Doma's manipulation gift in the manga is very high, and Jay made it even more monstrous with knowledge from other fictional characters.
Take Ogai Mori, the person behind the name of Doma's eldest child, for example.
That man uses a manipulation tactic identical to the one the ice demon employs every time.
First, Doma gathers information on his manipulation target.
Then, he uses external forces, linked to him or his target, to guide the latter toward the exact conclusion Doma desires.
At the third step, the target makes the decision herself that leads to her downfall.
Doma's child died that way. In the Bungou Stray Dogs universe, Ogai Mori killed Oda Sakunosuke without lifting a finger or involving a single member of his mafia, and he was even rewarded by the government for that act.
A true monster. Especially when you know that Oda was forced to play his game after the death of all the orphaned children of his former comrades.
And the funniest part of this story is that Ogai Mori wasn't aiming for the government reward, nor the rival faction in his city, nor even the overly talented subordinate that Oda was, but someone else… namely Osamu Dazai.
A person similar to him, whom he wanted to chase out of his organization without taking the slightest risk.
Spoiler: he succeeded in all his objectives, and Dazai had perfectly understood his little game… but he still had to play it.
Mori's manipulation method works even in the absence of its user.
How?
Take an example: Doma's cult believers and Orochimaru's servants.
They willingly accept being "eaten" and "used" by their benefactor, and often work for free.
Something abnormal from an external point of view, but impossible to achieve in the matrix. After all, they grew up in an environment conditioned by their tormentor.
Thrud is currently undergoing something similar, but accelerated thanks to Doma's knowledge of her possible reactions and those of her entourage, aka her environment.
Is it demonic? No, since the target always had a choice.
Welcome to a capitalist world.
A world where you have a choice… without really having one.
The only ethically questionable aspect of Doma's method is the use of his power to get what he wants (Information to initiate the manipulation and final objective) while subtly pushing the target toward the choice desired by the ice demon. A violation of privacy, in a way.
That's also why Mugen secretly calls him a mind rapist.
'Even if she's hesitant now, Thrud will help me kill Sasaki Kojiro and complete the quest,' the demon told himself, without noticing that at that moment he was straying from the Chill Guy path… by killing another Chill Guy.
Sasaki Kojiro.
That man was clearly much stronger than Muzan, or even Yoriichi in the KNY universe.
Doma estimated his chances of victory at zero for the moment.
But there was a way to upset the odds: the combined use of his three powers in broad daylight and his vector manipulation, elevated to Accelerator's level from the Toaru no Index manga.
'Accelerator demonstrated overwhelming power from childhood. Even weakened, he could annihilate a city effortlessly,' Doma recalled inwardly.
The only difference between him and that monster of power was control over vector power.
If he could combine vector power and his time-altering ice, then victory would be guaranteed.
Thrud was his gateway to success.
Bam.
A punch struck right next to Doma's face and destroyed the pillow where his head rested.
"You work for the gods?" Thrud's voice was cold and emotionless, but Doma could read her like an open book.
Fear, confusion, doubt, and faint hope.
Those were the strongest emotions the great Valkyrie's mind was emitting passively.
Doma put on a serious face, picked up a pen next to the bed, and wrote down the next two Ragnarok results.
"Beyond these two, you die in combat because of the other Sumon-obsessed one's weakness, so… think fast, Thrud." Doma ignored the pressure from Thrud and walked toward the door, playing the sick role.
"Oh, I almost forgot… but you're cute when you're angry~" He had just finished his words when he perceived two things before running down the corridors, forgetting his sick role:
The flushed face of a giantess and a dark bed hurtling toward him at insane speed.
….
"She's a bit crazy, but it's better when she resists a little hehe~," the demon thought as he walked along with a big lump on his head.
Unfortunately, he hadn't been able to dodge the bed, and his vector power had failed due to a mysterious force.
Doma attributed that to toon force, since he was in a fictional world.
"Anyway, even if Brunhilde changes the human fighters against Zeus, the result will be the same according to my knowledge," he analyzed as he entered a gloomy-looking place.
According to the system, Doma and the members of his group were special among the multiverse's inhabitants.
They possessed the fate-breaker trait.
Without that characteristic, it would be nearly impossible for Thrud and Brunhilde to change what had already been established by causality.
That's also why Doma hadn't feared announcing his sister's death due to Adam's defeat.
No matter Brunhilde's actions, one of the Valkyrie sisters would perish against the king of the Greek gods.
The same went for Poseidon.
If Brunhilde didn't let Doma face Kojiro with Thrud, then Zeus's brother would perish.
"Who are you?" A calm and neutral voice echoed after Doma reached a laboratory at the end of his path.
According to the guard's memory, no one was allowed to enter Beelzebub's private quarters.
"Me? Just a demon come to retrieve Satan~" he said in a nonchalant tone.
As soon as he uttered those words, the atmosphere darkened.
Yet, Doma didn't waver before his Plan C.
After all, he didn't know if Thrud and Hlökk would be easy to manipulate in the future.
He had to take precautions against the future god whose participation spot he planned to steal.
And who better for the task than the anathema of Adam's creator?
Beelzebub, aka Satan's host.
(Image)
***
Author's note: Damn, I was tired of writing conversations and explanations.
Next chapter:The Defiant Demon(1)