We've seen stats for Heinz, Schneider and Van. I do remember that Van was way below the other two before hitting puberty and getting that stat spike but I don't remember how he compares now. It was a huge boost for him.
That's not actually correct. While it's possible Van might be able to kick start a zombie apocalypse to "destroy" a world he can't blow one up at this time. His strongest spell can smash the wall between dimensions but only in the sense of piercing a wall like a bullet. He lacks the wide spread destruction needed to destroy an entire world. Although his destructive power can rival the gods of Lambda , that's not actually DBZ levels of power. Even gods in this series generally don't possess litteral world blowing up powers.
Sure, but he has been in a position to kick off a apocalyptic level plague for a while though. Mostly just needs to set the incubation/infectious period a lot longer then he did that last time. Maybe Lambda is just a VERY dense planet, like the god(s) currently "running" it...
He's used power attacks that broke dungeons but it's an exageration to say those attacks were comparable to Freeza's planet buster beam. Van is certainly powerful by this series standards, but there is no reason to believe he can blow up a planet unless the series directly says so. The god's view him as a threat to the world but more in the sense of killing everything on the planet rather than blasting the planet itself to dust. Even The OG demon King only invaded and corrupted the land and It's either been stated in story or spoiled on here (I don't remember anymore) than Van is still weaker than the OG demon king in terms of raw power. Alda fears Van not because of his raw power but his ability to sway others to his side. OG demon King was basically alone at the end of the war with his army either sealed or betraying him. But Van has the talent to possibly sway the entire world to his side if given enough time and that's largely what Alda fears. As well as just automatic rejection of Van for having the Demon King'd power.
i agree that the world destroyer shouldn't be taken in literal sense. more like destroying the norm/status quo. the gods are fueled by believers (idolatry, fear, hate) i guess that was the main/real reason why alda attacked vida because by "repopulating the world" she had/has the potential to usurp alda's place as the top dog|god. same deal with rejecting imported tech/ideas. as new idea/concept took hold, new gods would sprout. if the idea made the old one obsolete, old gods would die out.
Different worlds have different systems, we haven't seen any new gods being born on Lambda through anomalous belief, that's just Earth and Origin so far. Maybe Alda thinks his worship will die out, maybe not, but he's not gonna be replaced by nobodies.
What about them? Those are all gods elevated from mortals, Fidirg and the Gartland gods are all from creatures that reached godhood on the DK's original world.
apotheosis concept a god would become more powerful as the number of believers grow. on the other hand, by not wiping gudunaris from history, alda n co actually keep on fueling him.
I think the biggest problem with this arc is that there's no real stakes, no tension. For example in this chapter, when he's fighting a demigod and gets his arm wrecked while experimenting with the Muscle Technique he's so obsessed with for some unfathomable reason despite his real power lying in the nigh-bottomless mana pool that has had every god he's personally encountered shocked by the... kuhum... anyway, he gets hurt and one of his ghosts chides him, basically saying that that's what happens when he plays with his food. It's the Superman Dilemma, how do you threaten a being that is essentially a god? This arc isn't doing a good job of dealing with that.
I mean Van has always been obsessed with muscles since he connects muscles with being strong. It absolutely makes sense that he would focus on using the muscle skill now that he has it. That aside I like this arc because we also see a lot of the world situation at large changing. Kanako becoming a guider, Alcrem Duchy falling steadily further to work with Van which will have big repercussions on Orbaume especially since Heinz, the only group that can oppose this creeping influence is still stuck in the dungeon. We also still don’t know how things will go ultimately. Van might actually fail to free Botin not because of the defense force but because of some other reason. It’s not the first time something like that happened.
So Arthur is Red Riding-hood, and Miriam is a generic Sailor Scout, but I get the feeling that the rest of the Brigade is also modeled after specific characters?
Dunno about specific characters, but the text describes them as a berserker wearing a cloak of blood, a generic evil wizard, a sailor scout, and a villainess/dominatrix.
I cant remember when, But I'm pretty sure at some point it was said that van had enough mana to be able to use the fire elemental ghost to make a fireball big enough or hot enough to melt the surface of the planet. sure, thats not completely destroying the planet, but for all intents and purposes at that point it might as well be destroyed.
Technically, it was said that if he was a fire attribute mage he could pump out a fireball big enough to do that. And yeah the foregone conclusion nature of the fights usually isn't so bad because they typically don't last that long. However, this is just being dragged out as they deal with one mook demigod after another.