Spoiler Latest Chapter Discussion Thread for Death Mage Raws

That would make them all queens though, genetically identical to her.

 

As a quick Google search will tell you, the queen bee is not genetically unique. The queen bee develops differently because of her diet.

 

Since you asked and someone did all the heavy lifting then I will update the first post in a little bit. I'll make sure to give you credit as well heiro

 

This thread has become so much more active lately

The situation is basically like a cold war between Vida's side (Van) and Alda's side on Lambda. Neither side wants a full frontal assault on the other due to circumstances, but there are skirmishers as well as proxy fights here and there (Fitun, Curatos, Heinz). For the overly cautious Van, his priority is seeking a more fulfilling life and the safety of his important people. Vida's faction gods are still recovering including Vida herself. Alda and co. are struggling to maintain Lambda because they are short staffed and lack adequate heroes.

We can expect a major backlash of some sort when it is revealed that Alda's doctrine is hindering prosperity. Van does have the upper-hand with his cultural and economic soft power. Also, Alda and co. are largely in the dark about the nations beyond the boundary mountains and the dark continent where its overrun by the demon kings forces.

Bellwood would theoretically be the Heroic god of light since that is Alda's attribute.

P.S. Kanako is also Van's sister. Darcia adopted her too. Chaos elf family.

 

That's going to get weird fast considering how Darcia is now converting all of the Dark Elf immigrants to Talosheim into Chaos Elves. Considering Van's reaction to Kanako when she was calling Van "oni-chan" I get the impression he has not really accepted the chaos elves Darcia converts as truly being part of his immediate family and it's more like a subtle connection to him.

 

Well, sort of. It's not quite the same for Van as Pauvina and Juliana. While Darcia does think of Kanako and Melissa as being like her children and calls them more familiarly because of it, Van has never referred to them as his sisters. Kanako (who refers to Darcia as "Darcia-mama") did opportunistically refer to Van as "onii-chan" for one chapter so that he'd take more notice of her but it didn't work.

 

Yeah, Queen Bees are just normal Bees that eat so-called "Royal Jelly". So even if the Queen was just making clones of herself, they wouldn't necessarily become queens.

 

Maybe her brother would notice her more if she was a giant flesh wife that can smother him in love. If anything there is probably a mental block for Van with any of the reincarnators getting close to him.

What do you think are the chances of Katie Hartner being Van's first (Full time) human harem member? I don't think its that high but I can see her being married off in a political move to the legston family's reincarnated son. I can't remember if it was the emperor's son or him who she was wondering about

 

She was wondering about both of them, but for a correction, the emperor's son is Zod's step-son. The Legston's son is the Legston's son (going to attribute that one to a brain fart on your part.) Pairing her off with the emperor's son would mean more politically, but pairing her off with the Legston's son could be interesting story-wise considering he's the one who's resisting the guidance due to his opinions about the undead. Although I could see that sub-plot exhausting itself quickly, so I'm not sure quite how interesting it would be.

As for her becoming Van's harem member, I think she may be the ONLY member of the reincarnators for whom it's even possible. Doesn't mean it's going to happen, just means if it doesn't happen with her it's not going to happen with anybody. The reason why it's possible for her is because of her past-sight ability. She has shown some political savvy in her desire to help her father mend the aggressions between him and Van. This means she is very likely to use her past-sight ability everywhere something weird happened in the Duchy, which will give her a fairly good idea of Van's character, especially when she uses the ability in the cultivation villages. Using the ability in the cultivation villages will also reveal that Van's a king (wasn't an emperor at that time, so she has no way of finding that one out.)

Van's biggest issue with political marriages is that he doesn't want it to be against the girl's will. It would have to be a circumstance where the girl seems to want it more than her parents who are setting it up do. With Katie using her past-sight abilities, wanting to help her father, and also knowing about the fact that being the daughter of a duke pretty much means for sure she's going to be used as a political marriage tool in the future, there is a non-zero chance she could propose the idea of a political marriage with Van herself. This would satisfy the biggest hurdle for Van's standards.

Again though, all the above is only arguing for a possibility of it being an available option. There are just as many good reasons why it might not happen. So, I will repeat my assessment from the last time I discussed this point. The chances are between 25% and 75%. Can't really narrow it down any further than that until I get some more information on Katie and see what kinds of actions she starts taking though. I am going to say though that the chances are close to 100% she's going to be involved in some kind of political marriage with someone who lives in Talosheim, the only question is whether it's going to be Van or one of the other 2 reincarnators.

 

Yoshi just translated the chapter with the statue scene, Van stopping Nuaza from building his statue next to Vida.

Just had to post that here and laugh because we all know how that one turned out.

 

Well, he's still only a demigod, which means that he doesn't uphold any attribute or other concept, and he can be killed like any other mortal. Other than that little snag, though, Van has the best of both worlds. Like a god, he gets a boost from worship and can grant divine protection and can even freely allow others to use his familiar spirits. Like a mortal, he gets all the perks of the job system. Furthermore, the fact that Van isn't quite a god means that Alda technically can't use his powers as god of law to punish Van directly, no matter how much Van is worshipped as a divine being in Lambda.

 

Speaking of Van's demigod status, I just had an amazing thought. You know that "Divine Spirit Mage" job Van has had become available to him just recently? What do you want to bet that when he takes that job, Princess Levia, Princess Orbia and Kimberly will all immediately rank up into Heroic Spirits and Van's other ghost familiars will become familiar spirits?

Actually, it has already been commented that Princess Levia has power that is just shy of matching the Sun Giant Talos, who is a full-fledged god. That's the one I know for sure, but I could also swear the comment was made that the three I specifically named above all three have power in and around what would be needed for them to personally fight and win against a demigod (other than Van) with zero assistance from Van. (I mean, hey, Van had already wounded him, but Kimberly dealt the final blow to an evil god already. Oh, yes, and Van was powering Kimberly up with spirit magic at the time too. So, not entirely creditable to him, but those three really are at a level that can rival gods by themselves already.)

Yeah... I am thinking the chances of the scenario in the 1st paragraph here is pretty likely, but to take it up a notch, I wonder just how many heads would explode if those three went all the way up to joining Van in having demigod status.

 

We've not seen anything like that so far in this series and I doubt it'll happen now - if I remember correctly there is a skill equivalent of that job and the skill simply allowed Van to use higher level spirits/ghosts.

 

The skill name seems to imply that dead spirits at an absurdly high rank are effectively similar to divine spirits, so it can't be completely out of the question, right?

 

Except that we've not seen power ups to Van (or others) directly cause power ups to the rank/skills of others - rank/skills are about one's own achievements. I know this has been seen in other series (eg "Slime") but not here.

Anyway, looking back through the past chapters I don't think we've had an actual explanation of the awakened skill. Van comments on it briefly (basically equating gods to being high ranked ghosts/spirits) but he's speculating and I can't find anything more. But Van considers it likely to be a simple upgrade of the skill it awoke from. That skill was about him using ghosts to channel his magic to create something very similar to attribute magic. We never saw it directly make any ghosts stronger - it's a purely active skill. Van's also had the skill for over 30 chapters now and I don't think there's been any surprises. The job version of the pre-upgraded skill didn't have any side-effects on the ghosts that I remember either.

 

Err.... what do you call the guider jobs?

EDIT: At any rate, the 3 main ghosts attached to Van have already reached god-tier by their own achievements. This would be more of a recognition of how absurdly powerful they already are. Again, princess Levia is likely 1 rank short of being an even strength match for Talos, the father god of the Titan race.

 

Alda's Law power specifically only works against Lambda's gods, so we can't even be sure if it would actually work against Demon God Van.

 

No, Van's worshiped by people in Lambda, which makes him a Lambda god. Recall that Rodcorte was concerned about keeping Alda from figuring out he had become a Lambda god because of the people in the boundary mountain being aware of him. It was specifically commented there that Alda now had the authority to punish him because of that.

 

Hmm but isn't Vida Religion really didn't like political marriage without love. She goddess of love after all.

 

I think I can probably respond to this pretty easily just by quoting myself, the exact passage you quoted as a matter of fact.

In other words, Van is the perfect paragon of the Vida religion. He doesn't adhere to the tenants of the Vida religion, he just naturally follows every single one of them because his values align perfectly with Vidas, therefore he will never succumb to the temptation to go against any of her teachings or struggle to follow a single one. He doesn't follow them, he aligns with them.

What I was saying is that there is an existing possibility for Katie to fit into the requirements by falling in love. Or, at the very least, wind up making the case that he's someone she could potentially fall in love with and appeal the case that if she doesn't marry him then she will wind up marrying some other duke's son who will likely turn out to be someone she doesn't love, therefore even if she doesn't love him now she actually has a chance of finding love with him.