Grand Foreigner (Chapters 1- 200)

Chapter 168

Archer, wrapped in his green cloak, watched the arrival of the ranks of mechanical soldiers moving along rails laid out in the bare steppe. The sight of the unstoppable stream of trains that is completely out of place, moving at a speed that would be hard to expect even of a high-speed train of the twenty-first century, was quite anachronistic. Archer watched yet another of Edison's inventions that would make any historian collapse in a tizzy.

It would be funny, though, watching the hoity-toity academics lose their minds.

Edison's creation, however, like all of his 'inventions', was not entirely Edison's creation. Although he tried to present himself as the inventor of everything, including railroads, but, as in other cases, Edison merely improved upon what had already been created before him.

Did such a creation deserve Archer's praise? Of course, it did, it was still an engineering marvel. Did it make Edison the sole inventor of the railroad itself?

Well, Archer had an opinion on that, but the less he crossed his boss, the less likely he was to be noticed and dragged into something very stressful. Edison would probably proclaim that since it was before the original invention of the thing, then he was rightfully the first that created it. Probably hoping that if he repeats the claim enough, that the Proper History would be changed.

Keeping quiet and pretending he was very busy, trying his best to hide from problems or work, that was more Archer's thing.

To be honest, though, Archer wasn't even quite sure why they needed an army, robots or otherwise. I mean, of course, he understood that the robots were Edison's plan to divide the Servants in Cu Chulainn's army and take them out one by one. Even Servants would still need time to deal with a few thousand mechanical dummies. Ones perfected by Tesla, might even put up a decent fight, might even get one if they were stupid enough to face the entire army alone.

Still, the tactic was foreign to him.

Archer was more used to acting alone against an army, and was definitely not used to finding himself on the other side of that situation. A hunter, hunting an escaping deer, was closer to Archer's preference than actual combat.

"Hey," A voice, instantly snapped Archer out before he could get to any distracting tangent, surprising Archer out of his comfy idleness. "I'm hungry."

The huge figure of the Servant, whose two large horns remained one of her most prominent features, and whose name Archer never catches, distracted him from his thoughts. Turning around, Archer had to look upward to see her bored amber eyes. "You, Hunter, go out and hunt for someone."

"Someone? Not...? Ah." Archer didn't even want to know who usually fell prey to this outstanding, in every sense of the word, girl's 'hunt'.

"I'm not a hunter, and I'm b... " Archer tried to sound indignant, and was about to use the 'important order' Edison assigned to him as an excuse, before hastily pausing. When he met her eyes, he quickly remembered that the speaker most likely thought of Edison's orders as nothing more than the squeak of a mosquito, something equally annoying, and useless in its essence. Or, at worse, as a reason to start swinging.

Archer, as expected, quickly nodded. "Sure, I'll just be going now."

Then with absolute certainty and a need to rapidly disappear from the girl's sight and not in any way be seen by her again, Archer tried as quickly as possible to disappear from the sight of the girl. Without hesitation, Archer discarded the duties of watching over the pack of automatons.

Angrboda, watching Archer's disappearance, only looked around irritably. She was really hungry! All she got to eat so far was a few skinny men and women from Edison's army.