Spoiler Latest Chapter Discussion Thread for Death Mage Raws

Wow that scary ability if the one using it really smart. What other cheat Van can use?

 

Well, since you asked and this IS the RAWs spoiler section, he can use Gungier (pass through specified substances), Death Gaze (stop movements of part of an object you can see), Chronos (delay the effects of a spell or ability), Sylphid(name may be wrong, make part of your body or your entire body turn into a gaseous form (the gas is flammable, which makes for a major weakness)), Marionette (use electricity to control a living human body), and one other that I forget the name and effects of.

(And yes, he got these abilities by eating the souls of the original owners of them, except for Gungier and Death Gaze which he got by eating Murakami's soul since Murakami had gotten those two in addition to his original cheat from Rodcorte since Van had already destroyed their original owners.)

However, at this point, he does not plan to use these cheats very openly. He does not want Rodcorte to find out that he can acquire the cheats by eating reincarnator souls in fear of Rod using this information to scare the next batch of reincarnators with some plausible information to convince them Van might have an additional believable reason to come after them. I think there is a chance he MIGHT only use Gungier if Heinz starts to push him a little, but I don't see Van using any other ability since I don't see a condition in which he would be forced into using them against his resolve to keep them concealed.

 

isn't he unable to use them (or some of them) because they were assimilated by his existing skills?

 

He can use those skills, but he's never tried. However, they might function differently from before, and he probably doesn't even know how to use them.

 

Yep, there's a stark contrast between the abilities of Van and Guduranis in soul breaking. Guduranis leaves soul fragments behind after a soul break, while Van typically breaks it completely or absorbs it completely. Guduranis if he could eat, then he would be a messy eater that throws food all over the place. Van is a clean eater, who would even lick his plate clean and eat each and every grain of rice off his plate.

These are all ironically types of abilities for horror movies. Van can recreate famous horror scenes by using these abilities. Truly a cute horror that is Van.

Human's hold quite a lot of grudges despite having one of the shortest lifespans in this novel of all the various races. Imagine the grudge of a god or goddess that's been pent up for thousands and tens of thousands of years. Shiraizon the wind god is male btw and Van doesn't really need the spirit descent skill since he can simply make his own that he later gives to his followers/friends/kin.

 

That IS something I was vaguely aware of, and all the more so as I was listing them off. The death gaze, sylphid, and marionette abilities in particular are rather typical top-tier vampire powers in the traditional lore. Cronos seems like something that you might also see as a vampire ability. Not completely sure where Gungier fits in though, (and I really wish I could remember the ability of the male subordinate in the Murakami group. Whatever it was though, I don't recall it being that impressive.)

EDIT: I just looked it up, the name of his ability was "Odin," but that really doesn't help me remember what it does.

 

So that's why Van is so compatible with them! I also imagine that Rodcorte produced some of these abilities by tinkering with parts of Guduranis. That would make sense, right?

Gungnir is the ability to arbitrarily penetrate physical obstructions, something that Van should already be able to do by manipulating spirit form. That other ability is called Odin, which enables one to see the immediate future. Odin proved useless against Van because all it did was show Murakami and co. just how screwed they were.

 

Well... sorta... That WOULD explain why in the space of 30 years now he had not created even 1 new cheat beyond what he granted at the beginning. However, there is also the counter-evidence that when Van ate the cheats it caused Rod to feel physical pain. Not on the same level as Alda felt when he broke Alda's artifacts binding Vida, but of the same sort, so this means that the cheats were made from parts of Rodcorte's divine soul.

Again, I don't know exactly what part of horror Gungnir would fit into. I guess ghosts or wraiths maybe, but it's really not a traditional Vampire ability. As for Odin, that's even less horror oriented. However, I COULD actually see Van making somewhat regular use of that one. That's one that wouldn't tip off people quite as much as any of the others would so long as he thinks carefully about how he acts on the information. Odin may even just incorporate itself into Danger sense death and just improve it with more specific information. (But then, it didn't activate or help him when the mimicry person ate his arm. The author probably just capitalized on the previous notion of Van not using these abilities in order to create a situation where the steaks actually got raised a little by having Van lose 2 of his best abilities.)

 

watch hellsing ultimate ep.3

 

The pain Rodcorte felt was actually from having his divine protection eaten, not the cheats. The cheats technically don't belong to Rodcorte. When reincarnated people were guided by Van, Rodcorte's good fortune and other skills vanished but the cheats remained.

If I could pass through walls and wanted to enact a horror scene, I would give people heart attacks by jumpscaring them.

Well, unless you want to use it to scare yourself slightly faster... It technically is horror movie material, but only as an involuntary mental disturbance involving seeing the horror moments before it inevitably strikes. As a voluntary ability, its horror potential is almost nil.

Van can regenerate a limb before blood loss becomes a huge problem, and he can control his own body to the extent that blood loss is not a problem at all. Danger Sense: Death is not going to present a major reaction if Van's arm is eaten.

 

That comment was actually made in context of Odin possibly operating as an enhancement to make Danger Sense: Death more powerful, more inclusive, and able to give specific detail. Obviously, that didn't happen in the instance of the Mimicry person for the reasons you just listed off, which is clear evidence Odin is not under passive-effect use like Danger Sense: Death is.

 

New chapter out. Relatively quiet start to the arc. POV from Randolph wondering various things about Van - he thinks he doesn't seem to be anything like how Alda's side characterise him but thinks there's probably some hidden things. He also spots some discontinuities in the songs Kanako had given to him to learn (they had been written by different people but Kanako was claiming she wrote them for simplicity) which frustrates Kanako a bit. Later we see Kanako talking about "Rudolph" with the others but while they think he is slightly suspicious nobody has noticed at all who he is since he's really good at concealing his abillities. Van will be returning to Moxy in about 10 days. That should be... interesting.

Meanwhile, it's the awards ceremony for the fake battle at the end of the last arc. Darcia gets made a noblewoman, apparently the first time this has happened to a Vida race member (for the Kingdom or just the duchy?) and this makes Van one too. Darcia's name in her status has also changed to Darcia Zakkart and we see her current status (no big changes really).

 

Can anyone spoil me on how many Demon King Fragments Van has now in the current raws and a list of what they are???

 

He has only 1 now, it is called the Demon King's body/flesh (incomplete.) I don't actually remember how many fragments make it up, but I think someone has already listed them off at some point a page or two back.

 

33 or so, if I counted them correctly. It doesn't really matter anymore because whichever god manages the status now prefers to identify the body as a single entity, probably because they got tired of counting all the fragments individually.

 

They're not just combined into only 1 piece, they're also considered a unique skill now instead of a separate category. So, the entire category of Demon King fragments has completely disappeared.

 

Did the author ever give a specific number of fragments that are in the world of Lambda?

 

We can pretty much say for sure the Gods of Skills and Status got stuck with it at this point. Also yes, Ricklent was just that lazy in naming his subordinate gods. So you can see why they also just want to merge every Rodcorte cheat and Demon King fragment into existing skill names.

Nope. They also don't correspond to any full set of body parts! That way the author can make up as many as he needs.

 

A small thought on one minor thing from the latest chapter that surprised me slightly: during the ceremony when Darcia becomes a noblewoman, the Vida priests are said to be happy and the Alda priests unhappy. Not surprising about the Alda ones but the interesting bit for me is that earlier in the previous arc the Vida priests had wanted Darcia to keep a low profile etc etc. I had been wondering if the committed "moderates" in the Vida priests (the ones who wanted to create a united church with Alda) would strongly oppose Darcia. Anyway, based on the limited info to date it looks like this isn't going to happen or at least it's going to be limited in scope. I guess we'll get more detail as time goes on but so far it seems that people who don't like that Darcia has become a noblewoman are going to be very much in the minority.


Regarding the Demon King fragments:

 

Maybe now that they know that there is no doubt that she is being "endoursed" by Vida (they made sure to show her "spirit clone (goddess)" descend during the battle) they decided to follow her who is going to make the church grown instead of basically become subordinates to the Alda church? After all the whole reason they wanted Darcia to stop was because it would make it more difficult for the church to collaborate.

Did not Van obtained [Demon King Body] because of his Demon King job and his skill leveling up? And I may be wrong (and by that I mean most likely wrong), but was not it mentioned at some point that Van have the majority of the fragments? Now that I think about it Van is doing a inverse encroachment to DK Gudu. As expected of the Great Demon King...