Spoiler Latest Chapter Discussion Thread for Death Mage Raws

"The Demon King, Using the Power of Mortals"

Guduranis on the arc being over: "Nwwoaaaaaaaah! DREAM ONNNN!"

So obviously Luvesfol is on the lower rung of dragon gods, and he's still injured from Van destroying one of his descent familiars in the lizardmen arc, and then Schneider and co. beating him up, so of course he's not enough to take out Guduranis. Still, he did slap his face and his stupid pride, so good job anyway Luves. Also love this exchange between the two.

Guduranis: "Why bare your fangs at me after I released you from your seal!? You worthless dragon, don't tell me they've domesticated you down to the bones!?"
Luvesfol: "Because you realeased me from my seal! Do you know what's going to happen now that you've returned me to my true form! They only spared me because I was sealed, but now... what will you do if after this they decide to execute me after all!?"

But of course this is how he reacted. Luvesfol the cowardly dragon who even betrayed his brothers and sisters to survive, after seeing that being a low rank wyvern makes Schneider, and Vandalieu, and even Tiamat not want to kill him anymore, thinks this is exactly where he wants to be. Better to be the pet of Great Demon King's sister than someone his friends and allies have enmity with. Besides, Guduranis was clearly just planning to use him as a disposable meat shield anyway, and he already lost (to, pfft, Bellwood and Alda) a 100,000 years ago, so who honestly believes he can take on a hero that can channel Bellwood the GOD. AND Vida, AND a Champion/Demon King/God combo like Van?

Randolf meanwhile is surprised that Pauvina's pet wyvern was actually a dragon god, with Van promising that he'll get a new collar from Orlock for Luvesfol later. Fidirg also notes that an injured, cowardly dragon like Luvesfol isn't much of a threat anyway, as there are plenty of rank 13+ combatants all over the place that are stronger than him.

Anyway, Guduranis, seeing this was a bust, starts showing off some of his new abilities, using the martial arts technique [Million Slash] to cut apart the various attacks coming at him. How can he do this, despite not reincarnating into an elf or monster body like Jurizanapipe or Gufadgarn? Well, yeah, since he's absorbed the soul of a human, Edgar, he's been able to get some abilities from the status system despite being a God. Guduranis notes that since the status system was part of the reason for his defeat in the Demon King War, of course he wants to co-opt it to power himself up this time around. He even name checks Zeezoregin, the evil god of cannibalism, basically confirming he's using the same method Zeezoregin used to "steal" skills from the soul of a person who was inside the system.

Guduranis also demonstrates that he has control over Avalon's ghost subordinates, though no one's quite clear if they're being manipulated by Guduranis, or that being undead that haven't been guided / raised to full sentience by someone like Van, they can't actually tell the difference between Avalon and Guduranis anyway. (Man, since we're usually with Van, it didn't even occur to me that without Van's death charm and "calming" death mana, undead actually do lack most of their sentience. Those reincarnators with Avalon probably actually did get totally screwed by Rodcorte.) Guduranis combines [Executioner's Blades] + [Artemis] + [Ares] to do homing, double-powered death magic blades.

Pauvina comes to the terrified Luvesfol's defense (dawww ). Gufadgarn's go to [Transition Gate] isn't working because of [Artemis] making all the attacks homing. Randolf is finding his weapon increasingly insufficient for this fight. Remember, Randolf never had a god as a patron, so he just uses magic weapons, not myth-level weapons like the Five Four-Colored Blades or Van's side possess. Luckily Isla with her Demon King's fragment made sword from Van comes in to protect him, saying that she would be troubled if he died and the adventurer's school didn't resume as she's trying to get in on the next meal and camp-out training mission with Van. Legion meanwhile is tanking tons of the blade attacks, and hitting back with [Counter] every time. Guduranis, who has probably an even stronger healing factor than Legion, just laughs at it being an interesting Death Attribute type magic and telling them to come at him with it as many times as they want. (hmmm...) Darcia blocks with a divine beast made of life magic with [Divine Beast Descent]. I wonder what kind it is given all the different animals on Vida's clothes?

We get some questioning as well as to how a delicate magic like [Exectioner's Blades] can be cast by Guduranis, with Vida noting Guduranis used to brute force his magic, using his massive mana pool to force what he wants to happen much like Van. (It's interesting at this point that we've got the all white Van and the all black Guduranis. Van who was made out of the soul of 4 different ones, and Guduranis who remade his soul out of 3 different ones. Van, a mortal who gained the powers of a god, and Guduranis, the god who stole the powers of a mortal. Also seems like some parallels to Arazan and Diachmell, the great white and black gods who after killing each other formed the founding gods and people of Lambda. ) Eventually they determine this is Gudranis using Avalon's abilities much like he used Edgar's earlier, as Avalon used his cheat skills to study all attributes of magic and their various inner workings on Origin.

Like that at this point Legion and Kanako both laugh at the fact this is what Avalon's been reduced to. Not so fun when you're the one being puppeted around by a complete jerk, is it Avalon? Everyone also realizes though that it's too dangerous to let Guduranis go, as he probably has [Increased Learning Speed] and [Unlimited Development] still available from Avalon's soul as well, and since he has all of Edgar's soul, he might be able to even change jobs, meaning not only could he raise another army of monsters like Avalon did, he'll only get more dangerous from here himself. Of course Guduranis finds the concept of running away ridiculous, as he's a dumb stupid rage monster who won't leave until he's murdered Van and everyone else here.

Van proceeds to blow off his own arm and releases a massive amount of blood and mucus he'd been building up in there with his demon king fragments to get rid of the [Executioner's Blades]. Guduranis, still wanting Luvesfol dead, decides to do a new magic [Executioner's Crescent Blade] at this point, turning his death blade into one big round one that avoids everyone else's attempts to stop it and goes straight for Luvesfol... only for it to hit Legion, who has wrapped themselves around Luvesfol. Legion does another [Counter], and now we get why Guduranis was so happy about being hit by it over and over again: Edgar's soul is still gaining new skills for Guduranis to use, and he just picked up [Death-Attribute Resistance].

Van and Darcia then team up with a No-Attribute, Life-Attribute Canon combo, destroying most of Guduranis's body, only for his head to start expanding to massive size. That's right everyone, you know Van has the [Demon King's Sub-brain], well Guduranis has the [Demon King's Brain]! Phase 1's over, time for Phase 2. Guduranis is going magic form, and uses [Shaman] to make a ton of artificial spirits.

We get a status sheet for Edgar, a status sheet that is still active , as we see the Death-Attribute Resistance Guduranis just said he got got added to it and [Mana Control] leveled up. Thankfully his job right now is [Holy Blade User], which probably limits the kind of growth corrections its granting Guduranis. Still, guy's got various skills in bladed weapons, archery, explosives, stealth, oh and a level 1 in cooking. And also Avalon's cheats are powering up Edgar's status now, so he's still got a fairly large growth correction over normal.

Next chapter's 1/24.

 

This is the textbook definition of Murphy's Laws.

 

vandeliu has unlimited means to solve the problem, so you don't have to worry about time. about the schedules and doing it in a group, zaridis for example no longer has basically lust, basdia only wants one or two children and maybe after that they remain as friends with rights, the official wives, servants, concubines and pets may be organized At a time that will initially be days and eventually will be for months and years, vampires may if they go at the same time to compete, while Bellmond stays outside, watching and hearing until he decides to join them. The pseudo daughters and pseudo sisters remain off the list until they are legal and decide whether or not they want to be with vandeliu.

 

I’m not sure if other people realize this but at least as far as I see it, Rodcorte and Van are using pretty much the same magic. They both can put curses on people, they can reincarnate people (although for Van it’s not a full reincarnation) and they both use souls/ghosts to do all kinds of stuff. Am I missing anything big that separates them. Rodcorte and Van are both gods (Van’s a Demi-god). The only thing I can see that separates them at all is basically just their personality/mentality.

 

Rodcorte doesn't have death attribute, you don't need death attribute to perform reincarnation. Vida was able to create a reincarnation system after all. Even Avalon could make a crude reincarnation system before obtaining death attribute. I don't think curses are exclusive to death magic either, though I can't remember a another example of the top of my head. Regardless, Rodcortes powers are pretty much just an authority (or whatever its called) for reincarnation. Its not really magic (like how van can use Fitun's authority to create lightning even though he doesn't have the magic attribute for it).

 

This is a moment where Alda could technically do something to partly redeem himself. Even if it creates danger for the world maintenance have some of the heroic spirits descend to aid in the fight. It was mentioned in an earlier chapter they could do that and maintain themselves for a few minutes before they’d basically collapse. This is the kind of time where those sacrifices should be made. Sadly I know he won’t do it. Maybe I’ll be surprised though.

Also even if he’s happy about being hit to get death resist, he still has to be taking some damage. Is this going to end up an endurance match?

 

There is precedent for that kind of control backfiring, but I don't have such high hopes this time around.

This would be the perfect time for Van to slap on a divine protection, but I guess he's a bit busy.

Time for symbolism. If Guduranis acquires a fourth soul, he'll either become too dangerous to fight or self-destruct as the other souls fight for their freedom.

Hopefully, since the job system works for Guduranis via Edgar, the available jobs are still limited to what makes sense for Edgar. (Though being overtaken by a Demon King might open up a few unfortunate job options regardless.)

The body fragments are totally kaput? The Pokemon collector in me is disappointed.

Uh... Increased brainpower means increased magic ability. At least the brain should be relatively squishy?

Where did cooking come from? Is the author joking?

 

All adventures need to know how to prepare simple meals. It is an isekai fact.

 

What are the chances Alda gives Van divine protection during this fight?

 

none if anything probably considers van to still be a worse threat lol

 

I'd sooner believe Bellwood would give Van a divine protection vs Brainless (Alda) and we all know this won't happen lol.

 

Current arc poster(wip) help me add cool poses
https://imgur.com/a/ayKmIK1

 

Well, we can see from Heinz and Amemiya that the author loves the use of parallels in his writing. I would not be at all surprised if he's set up a genuine anti-Vandaleu in the form of Gudu here. Plus, having effectively the same abilities that make Van impossibly powerful in an enemy shows a couple things. 1st, that this is a very real threat. 2nd, that these powers in the wrong hands are incredibly frightening. The gods should be taking notes, this is what it would look like if Van was evil. The very fact this isn't happening under Van should tell them something.

 

I'd be more inclined to believe they would just fear Van more. But that's just non-Vida-clique gods. The Vida aligned gods already understand your point.

 

Not just gods - those that were more neutral towards Van (like Heinz and some of the reincarnators) should also take note. But this has arguably been foreshadowed since long ago, considering this scene from Alda's POV:
https://lightnovelbastion.com/novel/death-mage/volume-7/chapter-152/

 

Man I don't remember saying any of that.

Haha I clicked the thing for it to show the OP that you were quoting and I think something happened that wasn't supposed to.

 

Looking at the issue of parallels, I think there would also be some between Arda and Van, both of them are extremist fanatics (we know there are no limits for Van when it comes to Darcia) who were asked which one they would sacrifice, their family or the world , Arda chose to save the image of the ideal world that he had and that had long since disappeared, at the expense of his brothers and the progress of intelligent species, while Van chose his family, and put almost everyone in against him and ready to destroy him if necessary.

not only the gods, several of Van's allies joined him out of fear and stayed because of the lifestyle he offered, and those who are neutral leave the continent to avoid causing problems.

 

That's not exactly a parallel, the exact opposite of a parallel in fact, but it is also another powerful literary technique which I completely missed until you pointed it out. Van and Arda are dynamic opposites, the absolute most extreme you can possibly go in either direction (choosing the world over the people Vs. the people over the world.) And, it sends a pretty powerful message about individualism.

What you just pointed out is most likely what I was continually picking up on that made me describe Alda as representing the USSR in this world. Now that I see it from this perspective, I think I was probably wrong all this time. The only similarity between Alda and the USSR is that they are both destructively collectivist to an absolutely extreme degree. It's just that the USSR was collectivist in favor of communism, and Alda is a collectivist in favor of conservative religiosity. It's also quite the statement then that Bellwood was pretty much a green-peace terrorist, which is by definition hyper liberal and the opposite of conservative religiosity, but Alda saw Bellwood as being the human most in line with his way of thinking because of the collectivist bent of favoring the world over people that they both shared. That's a powerful statement about collectivists. It doesn't matter that the actual ideologies that drive them to oppress people in favor of the world order are very opposed to one another, they will pick up each other's ideologies in favor of supporting one another in holding their corrupt and destructive power over the people.

On the other hand, Van's philosophy is radical individualism to the extent he doesn't even seem to care about national boarders, let alone the world. However, despite how completely he disregards these things, the mere fact he's trying to pay attention to every single individual as an individual person and do what's best for them in their own lives means he winds up instituting policies that ultimately make the entire group a lot more happy in the end.

Yeah, I think you just found the ACTUAL core theme of the entire series that I was dancing around but never quite grasping the entire time.

 

Birthday gift? Yay! Thanks!

 

I don't know if politics map that cleanly onto the story, and I can think of a couple examples that fly in the face of Vandalieu being hyper individualist, chief being him becoming emperor of half a continent.

-Mandatory leveling in case of invasion
-State run industry in the form of dungeons
-Free housing (he literally builds homes on a whim) along with public schooling

I don't know if it's been stated, but does talosheim levy taxes? I would think not as everything grows on trees (or from Van).

I dunno, for a (sort of) nation building isekai, the politics are all over the place.