Spoiler Latest Chapter Discussion Thread for Death Mage Raws

Rodcorte should know almost all the abnormalities of Van's soul, other than the most recent change. He doesn't know that much about Van's magic or other abilities, since he's mostly limited to seeing Van from above. At this point, he now knows that Van can produce clones to do stuff in other worlds, but Van learned how to do that a long time ago.

I never knew if Alda knows Van can eat souls, but I think he probably knows by now. Van ate several gods right where they could see him, so it would be stranger if they didn't know.

 

Alda already knows, via Roddy. Roddy saw through Heinz how Van gained a bit of strength when he attacked the scout with the soul-eating bacteria and guessed correctly.

 

What chapter did that happen in?

 

Main chapter 204 was when it was revealed Roddy knew. Main chapter 225 was when it was revealed Alda was told by Roddy.

 

Wow. It was addressed in just one sentence. No wonder I missed it. Thanks.

 

So the way I see this hodge podge of conspiracy is that 100 years before the events of this novel taking place people got word of the reincarnation of the champions soul into lambda. They don't know when so fake elf girl god creates the trial of zakkart and does his thing. Vida sends some divine messages and goes back to take a nap for a few dozen years. At some point I think there is some sort of either knowledge passed on to the god of earth or Zuruwarn made a deal. This is probably the biggest part of this since it hasn't been stated. In a couple dozen years later we have the event on Earth killing the 102 people.

On that ship was a neet named Amemiya Hiroto who had rarely ever left his house to go visit family (I think?). It just so happened (according to manga) to be someone who could pass as a doppleganger to Amamiya Hiroto. In Van's third life Rodcorte states that he never checked his souls because he had never blessed him. If he had known he was the reincarnation of those souls then he wouldn't have brought them to Lambda. I could be wrong about that fact since I think that I got that information from the raws. If that part is true then it means that someone prepared the other hiroto to have rodcorte make a mistake in their reincarnation. I think that the person(s) who prepared the other hiroto didn't think too much about it and gave them the leading role that Amamiya Hiroto would have played had Rodcorte never made a mistake.

As for your hypothesis I don't doubt that there might be time travel at some point. I just don't think that Amemiya Hiroto's neet life is what Van wanted


In other news I have updated the front page again. If there are any suggestions or things I missed please point them out and I'll fix them.

Now to read the new side chapter

 

I'm a little confused with the part when they were talking about mei. Is Hero Hiroto (Braver) trying to hide the fact that his daughter has DA or is he trying to get rid of it?

 

Hiroto still doesn't know. They're hiding it from him because he's someone who said the Death Attribute shouldn't be allowed to exist, so they have no idea what he'd do if he found out about Vander and Mei's situation. Even if he just tells the world about it, she could very well end up a guinea pig like Van and the Eight Guidance members. Vander does seem to feel there's some need to tell him eventually though, since he mentions this whole situation would be a lot simpler if Hiroto wasn't Mei's father.

 

I mean what if the father was metamorph? That would solve some problems while creating a bunch of new ones

Also thank you

 

Well, it might be more accurate to say that Bandar wants to take a cautious "wait and see" approach, particularly with regards to Rokudou. I'm not sure if Bandar thinks he'll have to tell Hiroto eventually - I don't think it was said either way.

However, Rodcorte seems likely to screw up those "wait and see" plans by sending Rokudou a "divine message" about Van/Bandar, though it's not clear just what Rodcorte will say and how Rokudou will interpret that. The Druid dude is supposed to be on guard duty for 3 days and this chapter just covered the 1st day. It's quite possible that the next chapter will cover Rokudou quickly taking action. Of course, if Rokudou makes careful plans instead then we might not see anything for months. I guess that'll depend on how much of a sense of urgency he gets from Rodcorte's message - if he thinks there's a big risk he'll be unmasked if he doesn't take action quickly then he's much more likely to take action in a panic. If would be rather hilariously typical if Rodcorte's incompetence backfires upon him again....

If Rokudou don't rush to action, then I'd guess the next chapter will mostly be about Alda, Heinz and other characters who didn't get much development in this arc (Randolph?).

 

I think the thing that NOBODY truly realizes, except maybe Alda is starting to get a few hints and inklings but is not perceiving just how much of a true threat it is, is that Van has already started the war on a completely different front from the traditional fighting war that everyone was expecting.

Van is not trying to fight a war among the gods, he is trying to fight a war among the believers simultaneously on a cultural, political, and battle front. If this was Earth in our age of the internet where we are actually used to culture wars, this approach would be perceived and read through 100% by now and appropriate counter-actions would have been long since taken. However, I don't think the Alda gods have any experience with culture wars, and they are completely at a loss for what to do. At the very least, Alda isn't falling into any Alinski tactics (which, actually, shows a lot of wisdom. A LOT of the responses the subordinate gods have suggested on the Alda side would have stepped right on an Alinski-style land-mine that would have gotten the entire Alda side seen as evil by the public at large, but Alda at least had the wisdom to see that such a thing would be a bad idea.) However, despite the fact he's not stepping on any land-mines, he's also doing nothing to counter his approach, which just means his death is going to be a slow eating away instead of a fast and violent fall from grace.

For the most part, Van's just slowly eating away at Alda's base of support, and only actually fighting when one of the divine level forces tries to interfere with him. The scary thing about this culture war for Alda is that it is the single greatest weakness that Alda has that can crumble the entire foundation. It is only a small % of violent zealots who will conform to a message of hatred, racism, and war. So, when you preech the counter-message of progress, coexistence, and mutual benefit for everyone, that is the message that's going to win eventually and the only way an oppressive force like the Alda school can stop such a message is to put it down in its infancy. Van's already got the message out to an entire dukedom though, so it's LONG past the point where that could have been done.

Yes, if it was a fighting war, Alda would win. However, Van has successfully worked the narrow-end of the wedge in on the culture-war front, and that actually means that he's already won. Just by bringing the one dutchy over to his way of thinking, there is no longer a world in which Alda could possibly win unless he does something incredibly despirate to kill Van, or Van does something incredibly stupid to put himself in danger. (I don't think either of those will happen.)

Again, though, the Alda forces are not used to culture wars. I doubt a single one of them realize they have already lost the war. Nineroad realized their starting position was a bad one based on her otherworldly knowledge, but even she has yet to realize Van is actively and purposefully attacking that weakness. She suggested tactics to start solving this weakness by making peace with the Vida races, and if Alda had started making assertive efforts on that front the very second the suggestion was given without trying to solve the issue of the Vida reincarnation circle first, he might have been able to solve the issue, but now it's way too late and he's also made the disastrous move of putting a Vida-race hater in the position of pope. So, if anything, his position has only gotten weaker since Nineroad gave her suggestion.

Heinz might be the one and only person on the entire Alda side with a position capable to take the correct actions in this situation, and he is coming back into action now, but he's going to be hampered by the Vida enemy titles he got. It's going to be interesting to see where that goes.

 

Oh it's much worse than just a culture war. Culture wars, bigotry against the "other" and so on are generally bred by economic distress. Populations who don't have the quality of life they want generally want someone to blame. Meanwhile, if populations on a whole have more money, on a whole they tend to have higher levels of education, and more exposure to minority populations through travel and the like. This is what makes Alda so doomed: this is at its heart an economic war. The real battle at the heart of all this is Bellwood's feudalism vs Zakkart's industrialization.

Alda's "civilization" is based on keeping the population small and controlled by keeping their quality of life at medieval levels and soothing their discontent with racism and other bigotry. And meanwhile Van has used the death attribute to create industrial grade food, clothing and shelter production, defense, medical care, and so on. The majority when given an outright choice between hating the "other" and having their and their family's livelihood assured, or improved, will generally choose the later. Despite the drama, this is ultimately how Van got the cultivation villages to join him, how he got crazy food noble on his side, how he got reincarnators to join his side, how he got a foothold in the latest duchy. It's even how Zakkart got so many Evil Gods to join Vida's side.

Van's empire has the production capacity to assure you'll never go hungry again, you'll never be without water, you'll never be without a home to protect against the hot and cold. You'll never have to worry about diseases like infertility, broken limbs that keep you from earning a living, or horrible disfigurements that ostracize you from society. And what can Alda's side offer? They've spent a 100,000 years and their civilization is still stuck centuries behind Earth and Origin. They can say all they want about Van being the demon king, but no one will ultimately care if Van offers a better day to day life for you than your current rulers do. More people will immigrate for a chance at the "Vidalian Dream", more people will be able to have bigger families because their quality of life is much better. The longer this goes on, the larger Van's population will get compared to the human kingdoms, and the more worship Vida's side will have than Alda's, even without all the demon king affiliated Evil Gods and human corruption that let Van pull various political figures more easily to his side.

And honestly, I'm not even sure Heinz is capable of taking the correct actions. He's got the right idea for an economically smaller power that's unsure about taking military action, reconciliation, but he's got the same problem as all of Alda's side: he has nothing to offer. Reconciliation is based on mutual interest, so what can Heinz actually offer the Vidal Empire? He can't offer them a believable cease-fire, because Van and co have been attacked and plotted against by multiple gods while Heinz has been around. Even Heinz himself was an accessory to the murder of the Empress Dowager (or whatever you want to call Darcia) and was then caught red handed basically training to assassinate their Emperor. So that's pretty much out for the moment. He can't offer a better quality of life to anyone than Van can either. He doesn't have the skills or knowledge to implement any of the industrial improvements Van has. So what does Heinz have to put on the table right now? I mean maybe if he got more powerful he could offer a true cease fire or assure Bellwood stayed sealed or something, but I don't think he even understands what Bellwood represents to Vidal. I'm interested to see where he goes from here, but I honestly get the feeling Alda's going to use him as a puppet for Bellwood somehow, like what Fitun did with Hajime. Because being heroic antagonists like Hiroto and Heinz in Death Mage is suffering.

 

I think you're mixing up what the rulers on the ground are doing with what Alda himself wants.

Alda himself wants the Vida races purged, exterminated, destroyed. Gone. No longer around. That means they wouldn't be available for "soothing their discontent with racism and other bigotry".

I would describe him as a traditionalist who is overly attached to an ancient ideal - he wants to turn back the clock to how things were before the original Demon King turns up. That in a nutshell is what he wants the world to be like and he thinks that anything else needs to be removed from existence.

 

Unless there is something like religious indoctrination saying they need to hate the other, and keeping them from seeing the benefits. Or outright lying so the benefits look like curses (you will lose your soul, becomes a monster, it is a lie you will just be eaten, etc)

Van can recruit those whose minds are not closed off already, people who already revere Vida are easy. but vida worshipers and Free thinkers like Schnider are an extreme minority.

If Van could have avoided Adla's gaze for a couple decades, or can relocate his followers to somewhere Adla's child-killing murder zealots can not reach (preferably with them not realizing that they moved to a new location) then he could build up a population to challenge them.

 

I just didn't want to type "Amid and Alda affiliated parts of Orbaume Kingdom". Sorry.

I totally agree that Alda himself does want to go back to the way things were, and is generally driven by his racism against the "outsiders", but he's really more of a military and religious power than a political one. We've seen multiple cases of the human rulers using racism to push their higher friction policies (Mirg Shield nation and Sauron Duchy alone were filled with it on all sides.)

Again we come back to industrialization: Alda churches don't have the resources to fully indoctrinate everyone, only a small minority. Schneider is a minority in the "1%" of well to do nobles. But again, the majority of humans are living as commoners, not the nobles. We've already seen multiple examples of Alda "believers" who don't care enough about Alda to not switch sides for delicious dumplings... and other more substantial things.

 

I just rewatched "You're getting old" (south park; 15, 7) and the concept kind of reminded me of this: life means adapting and taking a left turn once in a while. Always sticking to what you know just causes you to end up in a world of shit as an alcoholic for alleviation.

 

Actually they do. This type of indoctrination does not rely on church resources as much as time, as parents indoctrinate their children for the church.

A new cult might not get everyone who stops by, but the religion that has been the main church for milenia and has had a policy if "I am always right, kill anyone who says otherwise" for its entire existence like Adla's does is going to have the vast majority already fully indoctrinated to their scripture.

 

The latest translated chapter has something that's rather relevant to explaining some things:

Basically, for practical reasons it's easier for leaders/rulers to follow Alda since you're more likely to get power in return. With Vida starting to recover power properly, this practical calculation is going to slowly go away though obviously there'll be a certain amount of inertia for various reasons. Even if Van did nothing at all there would be a slow shift as people started getting blessings etc from Vida and the gods aligned with her again.

The cities will definitely be easier to shift. It's already been noted that the people in the cities tend to be more open-minded than those in the countryside - Alda extremists are much more likely to come from the more rural areas.

I'm not sure if Van will be able to Guide people in large volumes unless they're specifically aware of him and so far it's Darcia who has been getting all the publicity. But, this is not necessarily a problem as some of the Alda gods have commented that a saint might be even more dangerous than a Guider. We might see the reasons for that soon...

It'll be interesting to see what people respond to. Some people might "convert" simply because the Duke has, particularly those in his household. We'll probably see Darcia starting to preach the Vida faith soon. We'll probably see Kanako organising her idol-like concerts on a large scale. And Van will probably be introducing various foods but it's possible that some of his other abilities will make a big impact - eg helping with construction, sanitation etc...

 

OMFG! You're absolutely right! I'm the one who pointed out how epically screwed the Alda side is, and even I forgot about the fact that Van hasn't even broken out the big guns yet. In fact, the fact that he wants to open trade relations like a proper emperor wanting the financial success of his own nation is so ridiculously perfect a move in swaying the people, I.E. he will not create the "too good to be true" reaction but, rather, a reaction of envy and desire instead triggering attraction instead of suspicion to all of the VAST benefits he has to offer. If he had just offered those revolutionary things up front, there would be push-back. However, if he sells them to the early adopters and they become status symbols from across the boundary mountains that only the rich merchants own, the Vidal empire will instead be seen as the legendary land of milk and honey that everyone wants to somehow get to and everyone wants to recieve their products from and they will be highly valued as a trade partner.

When it is then revealed that they are able to do all these things with the very innovations Alda has been denying them with his doctrine, oh boy is that ever going to stir up some people. Yeah, being told it's possible to live in peace with these people is a favorable message to war and death, but it's still not hard to push the warmonger message under those circumstances. However, once you see a people happy and prospering and you hear the reason you have been denied that prosperity is because the overlord above you simply selfishly wishes to deny it to you, that is a FAR heavier message. 90+% of the population of Lamba will want to convert to Vida worship, which expressly encourages these innovations, over the doctrine of Alda which expressly denies these innovations. Actually, you don't need Van at all to push this message. This revolution would have already happened if Alda hadn't sealed Vida, just her message alone would convert more people if she were only able to speak it and didn't have the image of "a defeated goddess." The only reason it hasn't happened is because of Alda's iron fist holding it back, and it's going to become harder and harder to hold it back now that Vida's revived and Van's advanced the technology and benefits far beyond what Zaccart was ever able to due to the fact more of his efforts were spent fighting the Deamon King.

One more thing here, it was mentioned that guiders get more people following them, especially people across political boarders, if they have a simple and easy to understand message. Van's message is essentially "love and protect your family and friends against your enemies, and do everything you can to improve your lives." That's a message that simply appeals to everyone's human nature, it's exactly what everyone wants to do anyway. Even if Bellwood revives and starts his counter-efforts with his guidance, Van's message is still going to be a lot more powerful and the only reason Bellwood would even be able to compete is the fact that he's starting 5 feet from the finish line in a 100 mile race, and yet Van's message is so much more powerful he still has a very good chance of overcoming that blatantly unfair handicap.

 

Can we take a moment an appreciate how Van's mentality is aligned with Vida's? As expected of the Holy Son.

Okay, before we continue the Alda bashing let me remind everyone take most of Alda's extremist ideologies actually come from Bellwood? You know, the guy responsible of this 100k years cold war? We cool with that? Yeah? Okay, let's continue the Alda bashing.

So, on the subject of religion, have you notice how the reconcilition party feels like they are making Vida a subordinate god? "Alda and Bellwood sealed Vida for her crimes (let me put the biggest quotation mark to that) of giving birth to monster and evil races, but Alda also talks about forgiveness so we should let Vida's believer to spread her words". Seen that way does not it looks like they are tryin to bring back someone who had the same belief as them? Of course, I am not saying that they do it consiously, after all until resently (about 2 years in story?) Alda was the leader of all the "good" gods and Vida was the goddess being punished by said god, but the problem comes when her priest actually want that as if it was a matter of course to seek forgiveness from them and to spread their religion. I think it was one of Peria's subbordinate god that commented on how Alda's current way of managing the world with the gods currently managing the elements working under him is contrary to how the world normally work, with many great gods and the gods under them doing the managment. This bring about another point: what have he ever done to awaken the sleeping great gods (Peria and Botin plus Zuruwarn and Ricklent in the past)? Even now they are seen as being on Alda's Faction! Hell. there actually being a faction is wrong. We know that Zuruwarn and Ricklent were taking power naps at the time of the war and ordered their subbordinates to help whoever won and by Peria's (?) subbordinate account Peria may have given a similar order.

Last volume Darcia was telling anti-Alda stories and apparently it was something beyond everyone imagination by the noble's (can't remember his rank) account, saying that it is weird for her not to support the reconciliation party and instead going against it. I think that that prety much resumes what the current status is religion-wise. A let's unite with Alda's religion instead of maintaining our religons separate.