Spoiler Latest Chapter Discussion Thread for Death Mage Raws

While this quote was meant in a slightly different context: "Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls and ask the ghosts if honor matters."

Just consider me to be taking the position of the Dark Continent faction: the scale of Alda's actions makes it very hard to care how well meaning Luke, Nineroad, Mill or anyone else who's been enabling this stuff for several millenia is. Especially not when they were literally helping to train Heinz and co. to murder Van and all his friends in the present.

And Farmaun will never be free of being hit on the back of the head. NEVER!

 

Since when was honor relevant to this?

That's a valid argument for Nineroad and Mill because they are major characters Alda might listen to, but Luke was just summoned to his doom.

Indeed. May he be the team butt monkey for ages to come.

 

Rodcorte thinks that Banda is trying to turn everyone in Origin into undead to boost his and Vida's powers.

Alda's gods thinks Van will kill everyone, and made a Dungeon where the god of records, that should have appropriate records from situations around directly manipulated Heinz training into making it seem like Van is Guduranis and the "monsters" all want Guduranis return.

Not only that, every reincarnator that dies in Origin now will be sent to Rodcorte and tasked with killing Van, if they don't accept it, they will be brainwashed, but you see, Rodcorte is not good with manipulating memories to such extent, however, with help from Alda's gods, they should be able to achieve that, and with the new "Capable soldier", reincarnate them in an adult body in one of Alda's Temple and make them fight Van.

Every single Alda faction god is a piece of shit, and if they are not personally, they are accomplices nonetheless.

And talking about Jerks! As I have been reviewing chapters, I finally got through Van vs Heinz duel, and I noticed this dialogue between Van and Heinz.

Heinz knows why Vida races are being killed indiscriminately, knows this is Alda's goal, and thinks... He can change that...?

Then I started looking at each member...

Martina - Reading the chapter 4 of the manga: "That Dark Elf reaped what she sowed".
You know, I think Van should dedicate himself a little more in finding Martina inside of Jane Doe.
Delizah - Never said much, quite stoic. In battle against Van had no exitation and was only second to Edgar. When Van killed Diana around her, she felt very insulted for going through her protection. When Van released his Hollow Cannon to destroy the dungeon at Heinz, she run and used a skill to defend against it, but Gufa appeared and teleported the huge "Bullet" behind her, wasting her defense, Joshua had to throw Heinz and sacrifice himself to save him. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Edgar - Very direct, some questions asked, but understood Van as an enemy that needed to be killed. Was done in a beam that took his arm, and one Parasitic blood attack, then was the first one "saved" by being killed, so he is also the one that remained for less time in battle, and the one with the worst results, huh.
Heinz - "You don't know what you did! Because there are no slaves, the taxes on the population increased! Because of the Undead in the scylla territory, many soldiers lost their lives trying to subdue the place! Oh, I know that Alda wants Vida races to be killed, but I thought we could be friends and I convince him or something..."

I kinda really feel like killing them myself now. At least it was good seeing the chapters where he is just a weak very emotional soul in recovery, and getting afraid of Van's celebration that resounded in God's Area.

Meanwhile, the two newbies.
Jennifer - Started to get really worried when she noticed that Ghouls could be Vida's races. Felt really bad when Van asks if they ever tried to save the children, or killed pregnant mothers from the Ghouls and Majin Races they fought. (Dediria was here)
Daiana - She averts her gaze when Van asks more uncomfortable actions similar to Jennifer, but it seems she could accept it more easily if Mill were to ask her to do something...

I think only Jennifer can try to redeem herself in this shitty group...

 

To be fair....... Yeah i can't really depends them if even Bellwood the best god in the world of lamda said they wrong.

 

Code:

Arc 9/12   Heinz      Schneider   Van (Latest Chapter)
HP         86,800     175,470     801,690+
MP         56,223+    119,163     14,022,168,571+
Str        10,800     27,525      74,785+
Agi        14,509     35,344      69,595+
Sta        14,960     30,092      80,024+
Int        9,962      6,871       96,641+

So I found Schneider stats and got curious on how he was compared to Heinz, then why not, let's get Van's too.

Heinz stats are just before his duel with Van, which means that since these numbers, he got trashed.
Schneider stats are from the time he joined Van for the first time, then he was guided, and since then he kept doing his job, his party was also present in the fight against Botin Defense Forces.
Van stats are the latest ones we have.

So, Heinz, who would have previously needed to multiply his stats by 5 just to be faster than Van, and 7x just to surpass him in the 3 basic parameters, had his skills and values eaten, then recovered, then fought a bunch of Dark Souls-like fights, had the assist of "Buffed" Edgar, and now got Bellwood, which he most likely won't be able to use it for some time, and even when he does start to use it, he may be limited otherwise his body could break or something...

This guy, needs to surpass Van, and there is no respawn this time. For some reason, I'm starting to feel the event will be kinda lackluster in the fighting department.

 

Just what I say before. Heinze and Co. becoming stronger because of Dark Soul type dungeon is very questionable to me. I don't deny that Heinze became strong becouse of it, hell I' will not be surprise is they stronger than Van now. But every thing they learn and do on that dungeon( except for waking Bellwood) will be nothing in front of Van.

 

It's because Van is broken and there is no catching him. He grows too quick for anyone to catch up to him. Personally I think it's one of the biggest drawbacks of this story as it causes none of his future conflicts to have much tension for me. This is why I'm much more curious about events in Origin where there is still plenty of things that are interesting. Banda is stronger than the Undead but how will he fare against an extra 10 years of fighting to the other ~80 people still left?

 

I wouldn't be too surprised if Heinz's base stats have improved massively since training is all that he's been doing recently. And he now has Bellwood as a powerup. One he gets used to it in theory he would be ahead of Van in raw power.

 

About how hopelessly outclassed everyone is in front of Van, I have said it before and I will say it again, I don't think it matters because "threat of being beaten and killed" is not the source of conflict for this story. If you liked One Punch Man, Mob Psycho 100, or Overlord, then you are a complete hypocrite for criticizing this series for making Van too OP. It does a really good job of creating all the conflict that's needed even with Van so ridiculously OP.

As for the actual source of conflict in this series, there are a few sources, but one of the biggest things that's a source of intrigue in my mind for where conflict is generated is that Van himself is an alegory for public uprising against an oppressive dictator. You will notice, it's not just Van's power that's growing. Another thing that's growing is the opposition against Alda and the negative sentiment toward him. Also, every time the rate of Van's strengthening accelerates, it correlates with a MASSIVE step forward in him swaying the people against Alda.

He got a HUGE stat boost due to his growing pains. This took place in the year following him releasing Vida from her imprisonment, so this correlated with the people getting a major viable alternative to Alda (kinda like the opposition leader in Venesuela right now against Modero.) So, if I'm reading this right, Van may be about to get another absolutely MASSIVE stat boost to go with his release of Botin and Peria coming out of hiding, coupled with that "no light" announcement. It does fit, next arc is going to be a transition arc between two major arcs. We have had two repetitions so far of Van getting his largest boosts during the transition arcs.

At any rate, getting back on track, Van's stats really serve more as an allegorical representation of how opposed to Alda the people of Lamba are. It is exactly like situations where an authoritarian dictator is diposed by the people. The more the people realize their power and the farther the revolution/uprising progresses, the more and more hopeless and pinned into the corner the dictator becomes. There is no case where the dictator can pull a strong opposition against the people out of his ass. Once the angry mob is standing outside the gates and the dictator's own subordinates are siding with the people instead of them, the dictator only has 3 options. 1. Surrender to the people and step down as leader. 2. Stubbornly hold onto power until being literally ripped limb from limb by the mob. 3. Commit suicide. That's the direction where things look like they are moving for this series, and I'm not complaining one bit.

 

It's a long long way from being your typical "shounen battle manga" type story that's for sure.

On a side note, have you ever read/seen "The Twelve Countries" (original is novel but there's an excellent anime adaption too)? At a very high level that takes the idea of rulers having a "divine mandate" and makes it completely real and explores various consequences of that. Certainly makes overthrowing a bad king rather different.

Talking of other series, it could be said that the series "so I'm a spider, so what" at a very high level is "energy conflicts with a fantasy twist". Seen like that then "Death Mage" is more like "when gods get ideological" or "stupid is as stupid does, for gods".

 

I've read the source material and seen the anime adaptation. My impression was that the 1st book was excellent, the 2nd book was.. decent enough to coast on the good will and good impression the 1st book left. The 3rd book was absolutely horrible. I am given the distinct impression that the editor was completely asleep at the wheel for the 3rd book, because no decent editor would allow that 3rd book to go to print as it was.

I do 100% blame the editor for the condition of the 3rd book too rather than the author. I could see the shadows of what were probably good ideas that just weren't able to shine properly due to the trudge of trying to get through the redundancy of exposition dumps immediately followed by flashbacks that went over the exact same information as the exposition dump from a moment before that just numbed the brain. I could very easily see errors like that having existed for the first two books, but a better editor just caught them and told the author to not do that. Then, for the 3rd book, the author was given a new editor who may have been less experienced and less willing to counter what was now a best selling author with 2 previous books in the same series.

Essentially, what went wrong with the 3rd book is the EXACT same thing that went wrong with the Star Wars prequels. Except that in written form it is even more unbearable to deal with that sort of thing. At any rate, I was only really able to make it around half way through the 3rd book before I couldn't stand it anymore. It left me feeling kinda sad that the series I loved the first 2 books of had sunk so low with the 3rd book, you can tell I'm still a bit salty about it with how much I just ranted on it there.

EDIT: (Actually, the exposition dumps followed by flashbacks were not the only issues I caught in the 3rd book that were the sorts of issues editors are supposed to catch, there really were a lot of issues of that sort that I recall coming across left and right, but it's been too long now so the exposition followed by flashback issue is the key issue that I am still able to remember.)

 

New chapter's out! "Preparing for Going to School, and for Heroes."

 

Need to get a betting pool up on how fast we'll see an arrogant noble will pop up and get whipped (the ever so wonderful staple of all isekais)

 

EDIT: I forgot the most important info. Diana got a transformation stick, so we get our first colossal Magical Girl!

So, to make things short:

New chapter 13: Champion and Origin Arc (?)

Celis and Bestra are training killing Manticores, they are using armors Saria and Rita, and are surprised with their own strength. Why are they training? Because the Orphanage is also being targetted by Alda fanatics. Correction, Vida believers that were in peaceful relationship with Alda Harmonic Faction seems to also be involved in attacking places related to Darcia and Van. Remembers placing fire on the tamer's guild, or attacking Kanako's shows and Michael? Those attacks are still going on.

Bagnio also appeared for the first time since he was desperate saving children and telling them to call his name. I wonder if the other four will also appear. XD (For reference, check my Reference Guide, link is in the first page, or in my signature. These vampires appeared in Arc 10 chapter 224.)
Anyway, they are also training, and cleaning dungeons in the DK Continent. Van has made multiple teams and placed a Demon King Body with them so he is getting tons of experience.

It has been a week since they found out about Heinz, and Van has been training a lot to increase his parameters. He has also changed his job 3 times since then, going for the 4th now.
The first job is a superior job for Hollow King Magic, which has also evolved to Hollow God Magic.
The second job is "God Magic" (?)
Third job is Dungeon Master, now he can make S-Rank dungeons, but it seems even Borkus said the difficulty is buggy.
Now for the 4th job he got one of Earth's mythos: Qlippoht. Seems to be something from Sephiroth and stuff, I'm not knowledgeable about that.
Van also got a new Unique Skill, seems the translation could be "Inner Body World", it could be related to his usual Equips (like equipping Undead, Insect and so on), but not sure about that yet.


Then we move to Moksi, where Bellard is explaining how the Adventurer's School works to Darcia, Van and Pauvina. He gives the vague explanation about what it teaches, like dismantling monsters, collecting herbs, defending and attacking, the sort of think that is easy for the trio here. Pretty much the school is open to anyone interested, unless you have a weak body.

Then Bellard mentions another special school, a school that seems to be harder, and tries to train hero-like adventurers, by graduating from there you can start from a Rank over C, but usually only the best can get into it, like children from strong adventurers or noble children that know how to fight to some extent. Also, it's not as easy to enter, you must first have an exam to show your abilities.

AND GUESS WHAT IS THIS EXAM? GUESS WHAT? IT'S A CLICHE!

Van and Pauvina will enter a noble school and kick everyone's ass!

Oh, here are new stats:

Code:

Arc 9    Heinz      Schneider   Van (Arc 12)        Van (Arc 13)
HP       86,800     175,470     801,690+            860,946+ (51,657) (69,668 UP)
MP       56,223+    119,163     14,022,168,571+     15,778,736,081+ (15,778,736,081) (3,513,135,020 UP!)
Str      10,800     27,525      74,785+             84,418+ (8,441) (10,586 UP!)
Agi      14,509     35,344      69,595+             78,260+ (7,826) (8,632 UP!)
Sta      14,960     30,092      80,024+             88,868+ (8,886) (9, 728 UP!)
Int      9,962      6,871       96,641+             114,878+ (11,487) (20,060 UP!)

 

Time skip. The vampires that head up the orphanage have been all fixed up by Van and are now and doing some leveling up given Alda weirdos keep coming out of the woodwork to mess with anything Van's involved with in Moski. Even with Van’s various protections, best to be able to protect yourself too. So they put on some death metal body suits, and then put Saria and Rita on top of those, and went to join in on the ongoing Demon King’s continent grinding.

Van’s been through 4 different jobs since the end of the last arc: [Hollow King Mage], [Divine Spirit Mage], [Dungeon Master], and now [Qliphoth]. Also [Hollow King Magic] became 虚界神魔術 (literally “Hollow World God Magic” but, uh, let’s go [Outer God Magic] given the recent Azathoth job pickup.) And [Herculean Strength] awakened and just became [Super Strength]. Van’s got a literal superpower now!

[Qliphoth] also granted Van the 体内世界 / [Internal World] skill, which they’re thinking might synergize with him equipping followers with [Group Shadow Binding Technique], but what exactly it does is left hanging for future chapters.

Finally, Moski adventure guild master explains the rules of Central’s entrance exam while Van, Pauvina and Darcia listen like a lecture. Guild Master is afraid Van and Pauvina will fail the various more extreme exams for the Central adventurer school (since most people who come out of there are c-class or higher, they are more exacting in their entrance exams than other adventurer schools) while everyone else is just worried about standing out too much (as Van is an S+++-class champion and Pauvina’s what, A? B?). Do your best on your entrance exam cram school prep guys!

Also Densuke says he might change the volume title, which is currently "The Election Kingdom and Origin".

 

Well, at least we know about what this volume will be with the present title.

 

my bet is on "there will be one at the exam who will score very high and then tells van to try and beat his score all high and mighty just for van to pull a Shikkaku Mon no Saikyou Kenja~ Sekai Saikyou no Kenja ga Sarani Tsuyoku Naru Tameni Tenseishimashita~ (Page 6). that is going to be funny.

 

it's a smart move from Densuke to quickly put 3 jobs that were just to meet table [Hollow King Mage], [Divine Spirit Mage], [Dungeon Master] in a time interval that does not matter to us and then put a job that ra really interesting ... this new skill he won I can think of some possibulities ... Van now has a special dimension inside the body that is connected to all his clones and then Van's friends can easily move between Van now and he can put anyone inside it until the Legion can save objects and maybe buildings, imagine only Van having a mansion inside himself where his friends stay waiting for Van to need them ...

 

Am i the only one who gets "Bringing The Farm To Live In Another World" vibes from Vans new skill/job, like possible able to receive prayer power when people are in his "world"(body) or he can enter into himself, even a possibility he can make his own god area now.

 

Just rename Van to Zhao Ming and done lol