LCD Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?

Discussion in 'Latest Chapter Discussion' started by TUSF, Oct 22, 2015.

  1. sjmcc13

    sjmcc13 Well-Known Member

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    To be fair to Sariel, IIRC Angels are more like programed machines then full sentient beings. She can reason but has directives and it incapable of ignoring or overwriting them, but they do not fit the current situation.
     
  2. kari-no-sugata

    kari-no-sugata Well-Known Member

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    I presume you want to read the WN? I've not seen anyone answer this, so here's my suggestion: there's quite big changes between the LN and the WN. So if you jump from the LN to the WN things could get quite confusing. Personally I'd suggest resetting a bit in the WN version and starting from there. There'll be some overlap but also a lot of new content. I'd suggest starting from when our dear spider MC becomes a god, which timeline-wise roughly matches with the end of LN5:
    https://turb0translation.blogspot.com/2015/10/kumo-desu-ga-nani-ka-chapter-202.html
     
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  3. CountryMage

    CountryMage [XSanguine8] not my blood...

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    So you're conveniently forgetting that Sariel was an Angel that had come loose from the hive-mind that they are usually in, and had grown to have protective feelings (angel bots aren't supposed to have feelings at all) towards humans, especially to children. She explained to Gyurie that if she were following her programming, she wouldn't have been there, wouldn't have protected the humans (especially Potimas) from the Dragons, and would probably have torn the MA energy from that planet when the humans laid their hands on it in the first place, to deliver to her superiors.
     
  4. kari-no-sugata

    kari-no-sugata Well-Known Member

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    This series is not kind to "pretty ideas" or cheap ideals. In fact it tends to take a flamethrower to them. Another way to look at it is "there's no such thing as a free lunch" or "you can't break the laws of physics". You're not going to bend reality to your will with heartfelt pleas or the "power of friendship". And going with cheap short-term solutions that are bad or risky in the long-term is rarely a good idea. Particularly if you keep doubling down on your bets.

    In some ways, I have some sympathy for Sariel as she's just too "broken" to be able to judge things properly. She has emotions, just about, but they're causing her to make serious misjudgements. You could say that she's a bit like D in that she's abusing her power for her own self-satisfaction, except that her particular self-satisfaction is causing her to sacrifice herself.

    Gyurie isn't from a particularly enlightened tribe either but either way he's pretty stupid. It's not like either Sariel or D barred him from say "arresting" Potimas, only from killing him. In other words, indirect methods were available to him. He just failed to make use of them, as far as I can tell. In short, Gyurie gave up way too easily. Even in his own head he's pretty damn pathetic.
     
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  5. Wannabe-shutin

    Wannabe-shutin Well-Known Member

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    Small question: Do we know the side effect of any Virtue skill?
    For the Sins skills, we can see Wrath and the effects of Pride have been mentioned. Moreover, in the LN we get to see the consequences of the Jealousy skill.
    So what about the pope, Katia and Shun?
     
  6. kari-no-sugata

    kari-no-sugata Well-Known Member

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    Not that I know of. There is a data book that came out recently which might have more information but since I don't have it I don't know:
    https://kadokawabooks.jp/product/s12/321911000523.html
     
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  7. Kphone89

    Kphone89 Well-Known Member

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    From my WN knowledge:
    Acquiring a Virtue or Sin skill gives the owner Taboo LV.# (# varies). Using the active effects of a Virtue skill appears to increase someone's level in Taboo. For example, when Shun revives someone he gains more Taboo.
    At level 10, you suffer an assault on your soul non-stop, courtesy of D. This assault doesn't appear to deal damage but wear away at your will and drives you insane. Even Kumoko and Wrath who had Heresy Nullity were noticeably affected by it.
    Since the church of the holy word (Pope Dustin's) was murdering anyone with even Taboo LV.1, even acquiring a virtue or sin skill was equivalent to putting your name on a hit list.
     
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  8. kari-no-sugata

    kari-no-sugata Well-Known Member

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    I believe the original poster was asking about the "unofficial" side effects, rather than things like Taboo level or how the Divine Word Religion react.

    Eg, to quote Ariel from LN8:
    Ariel never mentions equivalent problems for the Virtues but it's clear they exist:
     
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  9. CountryMage

    CountryMage [XSanguine8] not my blood...

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    My guess is that while the Sins have an immediate effect on the emotions of the user, the Virtues an effect on the world or the people around the user, so it's probably less noticeable.

    Edit: Kindness already has one glaring defect, if the souls are being worn down by the repeat reincarnations in the system, then having Shun revive people over and over should be accelerating the damage.
     
  10. Kphone89

    Kphone89 Well-Known Member

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    Ah, those. Those effects don't really stand out.
    Spoiler to reduce page length:
    These side effects don't stand out to me for multiple reasons. Apart from otherworlders, who seem limited to Wakaba's class, I don't remember people actively getting skill points to spend. Even if they do get skill points, they wouldn't think "I want to be prideful/selfless/etc."

    I'd expect the natives of the world to acquire the skills by repetitive actions, and thus become the embodiment of the sin or virtue before getting the skill. This would make the side effect a part of their personality before getting the skill.
    I didn't really notice the otherworlders being affected by their sins as much as their description implied. Kumoko already viewed most creatures as enemies and food, and those needed to be eliminated. Sophia was already jealous of everyone in her class before her reincarnation so she's just switched from being passive to aggressive. Wasn't Wrath an aggressive and violent person even before reincarnation as well? Their awareness of the skill should also allow them to reduce the side effect as well.

    With that said, I can now definitely see the sin and virtue skills heavily impacting the other otherworlders. I suddenly feel really sorry for Shun and Katia. Shun sees the world as a game (flavor text on the skill window) and Katia picked up the skill to be with Shun (idiots in love don't read warning labels).
    I was going to try guessing the effects and side effects, but I stopped after Temperance.
    Owner/Ruler: Pope Dustin
    Possible Side Effect:
    Since temperance is all about equality, the side effect should force the person to view all beings as equals. To make the skills wielder impartial, the skill probably makes its owner view all life as negligible. This could definitely line up with a prank from D because Dustin would unconsciously be forced to think "humans should just die" by the skill.
    Possible Effect:
    Temperance could have an effect similar to the hero's skill (vs. Maou/God).
    When used in battle, allies and enemies would be elevated to equal the highest level participant. MA would be expended for the full duration of the battle rather than for the single attack that connects vs. Maou/God. This would theoretically burn an exponential amount more MA than the hero's skill.
    Furthermore, elevating a group to fight a God would probably empty the world's MA in less than 1 second. #TRAP

    edit: Just caught up to release.
    So.. Chastity.. anyone else see the problem? Wrath's attacks are at the 99,999 system cap. Taking the hero system's attack into account, and that it takes a noticeably higher defense to negate an attack (ie: 10 damage would require 300 defense, not 10 defense, to nullify), this war is literally burning precious MA. I didn't think about Shun's Mercy before since I thought he'd only use it once every 4-10+ battles, but he's using it tens-hundreds of times in one battle. One of the dragon mentioned seeing the afterlife too so his skill has to create a connection with the afterlife location and guide/pull the soul back before reviving them-MA waste.
    And Dustin.. sigh
    He's targeting the reincarnators-humans. There goes his plan to save humanity.
    Didn't D literally make the n%I=W so that any time they die, they lose it and are return to the regular cycle of reincarnation? Any plans he comes up with to try and use their repeated deaths should have be foiled before they can even begin.
    A super interesting question came up when I was editing this!
    1. If a reincarnator dies, can Shun revive them?
    2. If they can be revived, they would've lost n%I=W, so wouldn't they be outside the system? The skill is the only thing connecting them to the system and without it, they wouldn't get skills or be drained on death.
    Edit: Strike out some text made obsolete from new information.
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2021
  11. crazedreader

    crazedreader Well-Known Member

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    Actually the main effect of Temperance should be retaining memory upon reincarnation. As for whether or not the reincarnators could be revived through kindness, the answer would be yes. It's mentioned previously that kindness' revival can only be used up to a few minutes after death, so the mechanism should be similiar to SAO, where the brain frying will only commence 10 minutes after death, in case of system the skill stripping should only start when the soul is declared completely dead - no longer recoverable.
     
  12. Kphone89

    Kphone89 Well-Known Member

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    Isn't that weird though? Retaining ones memory doesn't really fit within the ideology of sins and virtues (desires and lack of desires). Taboo is readily available and provides a way for him to keep his memory. There's something funny here and I don't see D's usual malicious pranks from this explanation.
    Temperance doesn't need to be the skill that stores his memory. Owning temperance grants him Record LV10 and Harmony in addition to temperance. Record seems like it could store his memory so Temperance and Harmony should be free to have other effects!
    The provided content was a description about the pope and not a skill description so I don't readily believe Temperance only preserves the users' memories.

    Are you speaking from future content beyond the current WN release or your guess?
    I don't believe the reincarnators can be revived. The system shouldn't expect people to have the Mercy skill so it should start collecting the MA from the deceased the moment they die. The natives souls would then be put in storage for reuse (and revival) and the reincarnators would be released from the n%I=W skill, the only thing connecting them to the system.
    • Their body is the client; n%I=W is the internet; The system/other world is the server.
    • Their client connects to the internet and the internet connects to the server.
    • After reincarnators die and are drained, they would lose the internet connection.
    • So- would Mercy reach someone NOT connected? Even then, wouldn't they be without n%I=W and not have system support?

    Edit:
    I forgot Katia's death because she was dead for less than a second. I believe even a new soul might collapse if it was drained of 800+ MA in less than a second. Right after Katia suffered her own spell, not even a second later, Shun was already using Mercy to revive her. If she was dead for 15+ seconds and then revived, I wouldn't consider reviving the reincarnators impossible; unless they were revived with n%I=W outside the system.

    Edit:
    The system doesn't immediately drain those connected to the system while a user with Mercy is nearby. We know this affects native humans, monsters, and monster-dragons. We haven't been clued into how this might be impacted by n%I=W.
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2021
  13. crazedreader

    crazedreader Well-Known Member

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    Nope, it's actually before the elf village battle, when Shun just escaped from the castle, a brainwashed Katia chase after him and died, and then revived using kindness by Shun without anyone else's knowledge under the guise of healing magic. So there's already an example of it being done. As for that thing about the system expecting someone to have the Mercy skill, simply put although D is malicious, she never did anything half-heartedly. She always finish things perfectly, and the system not being able to anticipate the ability to revive someone when there's a skill capable of revival is simply a huge bug that she'll never allow to exist.
     
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  14. CountryMage

    CountryMage [XSanguine8] not my blood...

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    The only reincarnator with an unexpected ruler skill was Shiro, and only because the Wisdom skill was created for her, so she could continue entertaining D.
     
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  15. NZPIEFACE

    NZPIEFACE Leecher

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  16. Tiken

    Tiken Well-Known Member

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    So you also read the last chapter uh...
     
  17. Amuris

    Amuris Well-Known Member

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    I hope someone intervenes at the last second. I took a break from this one awhile back because it felt like the MCs were moving further away from directly confronting their underlying emotional problems. If Kyouya falls here, I'll lose all hope of Sophia ever speaking up about being left behind or Kuro surviving this and moving forward. This is becoming a tragedy.
     
  18. Kphone89

    Kphone89 Well-Known Member

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    Suddenly-this series just got DARK, pitch-black with no light of hope at all.
    And Shun still hasn't been told that he's sacrificing everything for the people who took everything from him.
     
  19. MeriLEN

    MeriLEN New Member

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    After watchin the anime, I read the web novels and now in the waiting to read the light novels, and man I had hopes for Shun. As soon as I saw his character in the anime, I didn't really get the feels of "oh no, killing is wrong" , "Stop! there has to be another way", "I will save everyone" mary sue kind of character (a bit more of those vibes in ep 17). Just someone that really admires his brother who has the "Hero" title, and wants to be like him.
    But UGHHHHH, WE CAN'T HAVE THAT NOW CAN WE?? I'm so upset, especially after the last couple of chapters. I didn't want him to be that kind of character. But at this point I honestly don't care about him anymore. To be honest characters like him who suddenly has character development in to "yeah, I guess your right, i can't save everyone," is honestly even more annoying.

    I'm also sorry for randomly joining this forum and complaining about a character , that was probably already complained about. Just really needed to vent my frustrations out
     
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  20. Arha

    Arha Well-Known Member

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    I actually don't think Shun is meant to be wrong, at least not necessarily. There are some hints that Shiro's pragmatism is kind of overkill and that his idealism might actually work in at least some situations, but no one gives him the chance. I don't think we'll get confirmation on that one way or the other until this arc is over, though. Also, his attitude isn't entirely natural because the System is screwing with his head. It really isn't normal to think the way he does.

    I suspect this will come to a head if I'm right and this isn't actually the climax of the story as a whole but rather more like the end of act four.
     
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