Ladies and gentlemen please observe our Fair Van-kun as he demonstrates what many have referred to as “surprise paradigm shift.” Hitting the ladies in the party hardest when he brought up the question of the children “monsters” they had killed. Frankly not the Vanda-Nuke I’d been hoping for but somehow equally or more satisfying that what I’d expected.
I gave up looking for a reminder halfway through page 19 of comments. But please all remember that right now all members of Heinz party are technically not present, or some other way preserved, while diving the dungeon. They were given a reset point by Kuratos. Now with Van’s upgrade on Unarmed Fighting it’s all but guaranteed that he can ignore the reset function and directly harm their souls. But all Kuratos really needs to do to save them is “kill” Heinz and Co. while going ahead and pulling the plug on the dungeon. Eject Heinz and Co. and then sweat bullets cause he nearly f’d everything up.
Everyone is morally crucifying Ketchup and party while I'm thinking, like damn, maybe the two non-holy mother killers will become more neutral in all this. It bugs me slightly that if Heinz dies now, there will be a lack of a male perspective in this big female spotlight of sidekicks.
Mostly but you are forgetting one thing (I'm not sure how much of this was mentioned at this point in the story so I'll be vague). Alda put something very valuable in the deepest part of the dungeon he wants Heinz to find. Van noticing it and destroying it would be the worst case scenario. Still, even if Kuratos kicks Heinz out of the dungeon, the emotional damage should be significant. I'm rather surprised he hasn't lost faith in Alda after all this, considering everything Alda wants him to do for him. Wonder if he would feel different if he knew he was up against a (or rather 4) reincarnated heros.
That is a good point... I wonder what would happen if the non-holy-mother-killers were to tell him that he is wrong. Would he still insist that he is in the right, or start actually thinking for once?
A number of things to consider in this whole clusterfuck: Here is Heinz perspective: - Humans are good, Alda can't be THAT wrong in his choices, Orbaum is nice for accepting more people, and everyone recognizes that monsters are monsters. - Heinz doesn't know history, and the story of Talosheim was certainly unknown to him. He could have checked the Scylla territory as Van said, but he didn't most likely because there was no conflict. - Although one could say that Heinz should have checked nonetheless, he was not some political figure, however, after getting noblehood in Hartner, he earned some political power now, however, he went to Farzon soon after and remained while waiting for the Trial. It's a lot of time wasted. - Slave culture is something accepted, and unlike in the Amid Empire, where Vida's races are accepted entirely as slave material, in Orbaum, Slaves would usually be criminals or, for those not "pure of heart", illegal slaves. The taxes were increased not because the Giants were saved, but because of the damage inflicted in the castle, and the destruction of the mine. Besides, the mine didn't had only Giants, it also had humans criminals. And Heinz believes that Van killed everyone to turn them into Undead. - Similar to Mashkzar, Heinz thinks Van's interest is only about using Undead rather than helping people to live. Asagi may have a similar idea, but he knows that's not the case, since he has some small info from the inside. And similar to Asagi, he thinks of one that creates undead is playing with a soul that was supposed to rest. - The reason why he is doing this trial of Alda is because he wants an audience with Alda to ask and try to change his idea in regards to Vida's races, considering all Alda's people know that Alda want the death of every new race because he wants the world to return to how it was. - People that have DK Fragments are possessed and go crazy. Here is reality: - People are people, and as he himself already quoted Zakkart: The Gods can be wrong too. While Orbaum accepts more races, as some duchies seem to be moving to Alda's faction, every Vida races are still treated historically as an inferior race, not only in Hartner, but even Moksi, if you look at Aggar and Kest, the gatekeepers. We know that Sauron, Hartner, Farzon are that way, Birgit and Jahan have Vida's races as their dukes (Beastmen and Giant, respectively), and then there is Alcrem. I don't remember if there was anything about the Orbaum duchy in the translated chapters besides Dolmad's speech during Sauron's coronation, but if he was a supporter of Rudel Sauron, that may not be good for Vida's races. That's 7 mentioned Duchies already. - Not knowing the history of another Kingdom is normal, the event of Talosheim, if I remember well is told as something carried by the Amid Empire, then the passages being destroyed. The part about Hartner was kept mostly in secret, or as a forgotten story, considering that Lucas Hartner only found out about it after he was selected as the Duke. Of course, Lucas could have told Heinz, but does he have any reason for that? Could this old secret be relevant in any way? We know he didn't, for now at least. - Heinz misunderstanding is not helped by the fact that Van didn't correct him. Of course, from Van's perspective, there is no reason to correct Heinz, and let him be the fool that assumed things in the wrong way. Van has nothing to gain or lose in fixing this misunderstanding, the only one that loses is Heinz, who ends up acting and making decisions based on wrong assumptions. People think that when the other side doesn't defend themselves is because they are right and the other side is wrong, without realizing the other side (Van) simply doesn't care about how he is seen nor respected by people like him (Alda's believers, and specially Heinz). - Comparing Heinz with Schneider is easy, but it's important to understand that both sides have different religious beliefs. Looking at it realistically, Schneider found that Alda's teachings were wrong, and from that moment, he refused to trust Alda. Heinz thinks that the interpretations are wrong, or that they must be updated, so he still trusts Alda, and Alda giving Heinz his blessing even after he saved "a filthy Dhampir" makes the other believers question what is Alda trying to imply through it. - He is not wrong in his regard of Undead, the natural Undead are dangerous, and due to this common sense, he wouldn't be able to trust Van if he said that his are different, of course Van didn't say that either and kept the misunderstanding. Same goes for the DK Fragments, Heinz shouldn't trust the claim of "no side-effect", and believe that Van is just being possessed, at this point, killing Van would be freeing the boy's soul that has been encroached. I have no intention of defending Heinz, but I just want to make sure that people understand that his assumptions were following the common sense of the world properly. But he is described by his friends as a Justice Meathead, the Meathead here is important.
Nice summary. Yeah, don't want to defend Heinz either but a lot (but certainly not all!) of his problems stem from how Alda has screwed up the world. I think you mean Orbaum Kingdom there. Dolmad's basically chief of the overall Orbaum army (marshal) though it's not clear exactly what that means since Orbaum is more like a collection of semi-independent states. There's no particular indication that Vida races are common amongst the nobility in Orbaum. There's some but that appears to be more because of historical reasons - ie that region has always had Vida races in control. It seems very rare for them to rise up through the ranks (I don't think we've seen any examples). We've seen with the example of the Amid emperor that the humans don't like even half-elves being in government if at all possible. There's no reason to suggest that there aren't similar sentiments in Orbaum and if so then naturally we can expect that attitudes towards Vida races in government is significantly stronger.
How does Van compare to gods nowadays. He’s obviously above most, if not all evil gods. Is he on par with the subordinate gods of Alda? Can he straight up fight Alda? It’s stupid that they even send champions and shit at him anymore since he’s just too strong
I meant Duchy, because Orbaum is the current leader of the Kingdom, but even them have their own policies, and if the Kingdom in itself is leaning towards Alda that most likely mean that the Duchy where the leader of the Kingdom is located should be doing the same. Still, this is 7/12 of all the existing Duchies, it's already over 4 of these are pretty much certain by now to lean towards Alda, with Alcrem quite possible being the same, so 5. Then we have 2 duchies led by Vida's races, so it should be expected for them to go towards Vida, however, we know from Sauron that the Duke may not have much influence on the population's religion, as can be seen by Sauron, which has a strong history with Vida due to the war against the Amid Empire and them representing Alda.
There isn't a thing called the "Orbaume Duchy" though. There's the "kingdom" and there's the "capital" and also "central" region (which seems to be how the overall region is called) but nothing has ever been called the Orbaume Duchy I'm pretty sure. The way I think of it is a bit like Washington DC - it's not a state but it is the seat of government. While it could be said to be similar to a duchy, it's still functionally different - ie the leader is elected rather than inherited and I think there's not much apart from the capital city itself. And though I say all that, it doesn't really matter - as you note, all the indications point to those running the Kingdom being more Alda believers to some degree (though I think it's often more for practical reasons like the Amid emperor rather than because they're particularly religious). Indeed. Seen from another way, there wouldn't need to be a "harmony" faction if the Vida races were seen as equals or similar. And yeah, I think a lot of the pro-Vida sentiments in Sauron are simply to differentiate themselves from the Amid Empire rather than true belief.
Orbaume is union monarchy state. They share common enemy (Amid allied are common enemy) but technically don't corporate with other for nation interest (Marsh said about corruption to the core of nation). Every duchy has the duke who has ranked than king (Orbaume king is the leader of all king) , so every duke are potential enemy and never truly trust each other. Cons. - Because everyone duchy do for self-interest so they rarely unite against that common enemy until in grave danger and some how f*ck themselves (Sauron was a good example) - fragile unity. discontent among citizen from different duchy(Hartner's citizen and Sauron's refugees)
In Japanese, when referring to the country, Orbaume is always written as "選王国オルバウム" (literally "elective kingdom Orbaume") which is almost certainly referring to "選挙君主制", ie elective monarchy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_monarchy There's an election every 10 years and each of the 12 dukes gets 1 vote. A particular person can only be elected twice (ie maximum rule is 20 years). So I'd say that both from the name and how the ruler is elected, it's clearly an elective monarchy. While it does make all dukes rivals, to be elected they need some allies and they also have the threat from the Amid Empire to keep them in line. A lot of these problems would happen anyway - refugees are rarely welcome and it's rare for "locals" to feel that they have much in common with those from other regions. But yeah, they're less capable than a fully centralised country with a standing army at dealing with major threats. The reason why I specifically mention a standing army is that such a thing used to be quite rare in Earth history until relatively recently - it was common for the king to have to rely heavily upon local lords for soldiers during war. So yeah, choose your poison... unless you're lucky enough to live in Van-land...
But Heinz doesn't know that littel bit of information about the dungeons, neither does he knows that it comes from Van so from his point of view can we really say he doesn't see the wrong in Van actions??? Besides yes Schneider was raised in the same enviroment as Heinz, but I am sure that Thunderclap (?) is the exception to the rule a rarity of an individual, how manny people from the Empire or Alda faction will follow in Schneider path and how manny would follow Heinz?? Now the enviroment where one is raised does influece the type of person one ends up becoming, by this I don't meant that if raised by thieves one have no other option that turn to thieving, one can advocate for a different path but choosing that different path will be influenced by living in an enviroment of thieving.
Well it seems like you really whent and readed the commen, and no I am not advocating that he isn't racist, nor I am saying he is a Saint, I am saying that form people of Alda faction and the Empire he looks pretty much like the very deifnition of a Heroe, maybe some of the common folk consider him a Saint even, I believe he got a tittle related to that. We all know why he acts and the reasons behind it, but form different factions those actions of his would look like they have different meanings, look at his companions they believe he is this repenting soul looking to rigth the wrongs of that world and they are with him 24/7 they have inside information about his belief and motivation, but for Van and his nation he is nothing more that an uncaring fiend that commited the atrocity of killing the 'Holy Mother' and they don't know squat about him beside what Van has said. The truth of the matter is that I like the fact that the author doesn't need to 'demonize' Heinz to make him a proper antagonist for Van, he just need to show us how different the both of them look at the world to put them in a clashing course.
I have a bad feeling that even if van kills Heinz, our BS leader of the Bravers Amemiya Hiroto will be his successor, or even worse they'll join forces. I don't think i can take so much misguided "good" intentions.
Their backgrounds are very different. Heinz comes from a culture poisoned by 100,000 years of Alda worship with little in the way of better examples. Amemiya has seen two modern cultures and while he has made mistakes, they're of a different sort to Heinz - he genuinely tried to save 8th Guidance for example, costing the lives of several Bravers. Unless he's fed false information, he's likely consider that dark elves and elves deserve the same rights as humans, for example. That doesn't mean he'd side with Van. But none of the Bravers have shown any sign of siding with Alda either. ie if they have a problem with Van it's more to do with that Van's specifically up to (as told by Rodcorte etc) rather than Alda's opinion. It's worth noting that the only person to join Alda's side since the start of the series is Rodcorte, and then only marginally. Alda has been leaking support rather than gaining it.
100,000 years. The author even provided an official timeline: https://lightnovelbastion.com/novel/death-mage/volume-8/v8-timeline/
Your forgetting the fact that he can't use other attributes because the "dumbass god of reincarnation" fucked up and didn't give him a blessing after taking his attributes away. I think the death attribute then came into existence from that energy from guduranis filling in the gap where his attributes were.
Gods are soul entities. Van is build as a super anti-spiritual entity death mage. The gods are much more powerful than the champions, but van is simply way too effective against gods. Champions actually have a better chance at beating him than the gods.