Era of Madness

A wild guess 2

"The victory is... impossible?" Marten repeated. "What exactly do you mean by that?"

"I mean exactly what I'm saying: against this person, strength advantage or not, winning this game of real life chess would be absolutely impossible" Cain replied. "There is no hidden meaning, it just is impossible"

"Stop taking me for a fool, I know you would never make the effort to go through all of that if it was all hopeless from the start. Now, please explain it in a way that my non-nigh-omnipotent brain can understand"

"If that's what you want, I guess I have to comply"

Cain sighed:

"So, let's start by the beginning" he said. "First, you have to understand the way I operate. You might thing I simply use my superior knowledge and experience to pull out perfect plans out of thin air, but that's not representative of the reality"

Marten didn't understand how it was relevant, but didn't interrupt Cain as the latter continued his explanation:

"Those are only the stepping stones" he said. "But the most important part is to asset everything I can about the individuals implicated in my next move: their methodology, way of thinking, personality, emotionnal reactivity, goals, values and more, everything that can allow me to reach the perfect psychologic portrayal. It is the same as in chess, actually: you have to know how every piece move to play and, as importantly, to guess how the opponent will play"

"So if I understand correctly, you plan your moves as you'd do on a chessboard? Is it that simple?" Marten asked, skeptical.

"Haha, of course no. On a chessboard, rules are set, but reality isn't that simple. After getting an acceptable understanding of everyone, I start looking at the external factors, and how they could affect everyone. I order all of these in my mind like pieces of a puzzle, and I add my own goals as the rest of the pieces, as much as I can without ruining the puzzle. Finally, I see how my powers as an Angel can help to change the pieces' form to solve the puzzle more easily, and then I just re-order all of this to complete the puzzle, reach my goals, and set the key pieces for the next ones"

"That is... both terribly logic and very disturbing. What if your estimations happen to be wrong?"

"Good question... Honestly, not much, I always keep a margin of error into account. Similarily, the more I'm wary of a person, the less I base my plans on my portrayal of them. For instance, the rebels back on Glactia-62, there was no trouble at all convincing them to launch attacks all around the planet to ease the focus on Tyler's group. Transwalking was useful to go from one to another but, honestly, I wouldn't even have needed it, had I made the effort to contact them earlier. Quite honestly, recreating Glactia-62's situation without any power would've been completely possible, it would have just required to start planning much earlier and much longer, but it would have definitely been doable"

The magician chuckled:

"That's the best things about most humans: they are living beings, so you can get them to move on their own like any other living creature but, at the same time, their mind is what makes them predictable" he said. "I just have to make a few moves, change a few details..."

He looked straight into Marten's eyes with a bright smile:

"And everything else will work out on its own, just as I predicted and planned it to"

Marten fought against himself not to grimace. He already had realized for a moment he he had fallen into a spider net, and this simle look confirmed it, but he also knew it was too late. Now, all he could do was push forward, hoping it'd be enough to go through the net before being eaten.