BREAKER OF INFINITIES 4-165 to 4-166
Chapter: 4
“Keep all friends close, but especially keep the closest very tight inside you, next to your heart, where they can easily wound you. In time you will find the vulnerability to become a source of strength.”
-Dediam, Ascetic
zaid awaaaaaaaay
Zaid’s Rescuing Service
Aw, a shard of cio. Hope she can put her back together.
Good friends will be with you forever, I suppose
friends? cio is not a mere friend.
Partners. Lovers.
Demons are just chaos placed under a mask. If the mask is repaired, the chaos shall follow.
Except that one wanted chaos no more.
Devils /are/ their mask, at least as much as any of us are our identity.
All chaos is the same chaos, the roil of every possibility churning within the hot black flame. The mask and names gives clarity, definition, slash away at the endless possibilities of what it could be to find one particular possibility.
I don’t see why not.
After all, a regular Gold Devil did so once. Maybe this will be the encouragement for Allison to figure out time travel.
He had to piece together all the shards of her mask to do so. Alison only has this single piece, probably from the horn Cio lost when Jagganut used his ‘cut everywhere’attack. The rest of Cio’s mask is still on Rayuba somewhere.
OR maybe the rest of the crew found them and was missing one piece.
Ah, just like Monsters Inc 🙂
Looks like it can do better! It can break her again
the text under the page is surprisingly wholesome here
[Always nice to see someone break out of a funk. This is an auspicious day for our heroine; a meeting with one old friend and the discovery that another has been riding along with her all this time.]
Yissss, flying skateswords!
On a more serious note, I appreciate that he is trying to remind her that she was the one that had the words. Hopefully she will eventually remember that it was those kinds of words that give the meaningless meaning.
Form to the Formless, meaning to the Meaningless.
We spell our worlds into being.
The Word is one part of the Blade of Want, cleaving the universe.
Strive, that you may be more than nothing.
Strive, that you may be.
The flying on swords is a common Chinese/Eastern fiction trope, if by chance you were unaware
Oh I was very aware, and that is largely why I was very happy to see it.
Daoist bladeriding is proof that the rule of cool has always ruled.
literally skateboarding away lmao
*ollies outie*
he was a skaterboy she sa
I wish to read a Manual Of Hands And Feet entry about whatever technique Zaid is using
meti:”ohhh nooo the swords!!! the swords are so evil you guys!! like poison!”
yeah ok old hag *wooosh*
Just don’t try to do kickflips, bad idea
There are spheres where warriors engage in fierce battle using nothing but boards with wheels on the bottom, utilizing momentum and speed and acrobatic leaps to bludgeon one another until only one remains. They are feared and venerated in equal measure.
Skate or Die, Bionic Lester!
Mi Na Kim wants to know your location
Not “wooosh”. The text very clearly says “TK” and then “ZZZZZZZSSSHHH”. It also says “zzzzzz” under that.
The “zzzzz” is the beginning of the “ZZZZZZZZZSSSHHH”, he flew in a spiral.
I mean I had a feeling that cio could be rescued from death in-tact. Her death was quick, and was the final bell ring for the first round against jaggy. But it was such a pointless death in-and-of itself(albeit incubus execution of her was wicked cool looking) that I figured that there was going to be a resurrection plot.
Cio is not gone as long as her mask can be pieced together.
The demon the mask will be next applied on may be a different one, however.
If I had to guess, it would be scripture and scrolls written by masters of the Crane School.
Buzz Buzz
The blue sword is used as a flying blunt instrument to knock people out. And as a form of transport.
The red sword has yet to reveal what it can be used as.
Interesting.
And how long, Alice, did it take before you finally rescued Zaid? This witch’s palace of crystal inspires great apathy, doesn’t it. One hopes this encounter can break through to the rising ling within.
yeah the sword is a poison, it makes you sick as hell
Katieushka is observant.
The sword is the path to many an Art both delirious and biznasty.
this is the comment
Maybe this new wound will be a catalyst for the revival of the Allison we once new but changed and renewed, or maybe it won’t who knows, I’m just a false monarch with a machete
I think what we’re about to see is neither this exhausted Allison *or* the reckless go-getter we saw before. I think what we’re gonna see a real damn hero. And boy am I excited for it.
Your losses hurt you, but their scars define you. Wear them with pride, and take the time you had as a benediction.
Scars reflect experience. The roads traveled, the wounds survived.
Scars plus learning reflect wisdom. The mistakes endured, and to be rectified and avoided.
When encountering someone bearing visible scars, observe them awhile before engaging fully. Determine if those scars are accompanied by learning. Consider that the stupid and the lucky may also be visibly scarred, and yet lack in wisdom.
When encountering someone not bearing visible scars, observe them awhile before engaging fully. Determine if the lack of scars is accompanied by naivete. Consider that the wise and the lucky may also have no visible scars, and yet lack in stupidity.
He’s so cool, he doesn’t even *need* depth perception.
there’s not even anything wrong with his left eye it’s just swag
The classic “pirate’s eyepatch” was actually about preserving half your nightvision, and not about losing an eye. Either going from a brightly lit deck toa hold with the windows mostly shut, you could be blind until you adjust… or you can take off the eyepatch and use the eye that hasnt been getting any light. Same from going out of a lantern-lit cabin onto night-watch.
Basically 17th century tactical shades
The answer often lies within, though usually not so literally.
Splinters are the WOOOORST
Splinters successfully dug out are SO opposite that. One of the few times that digging bloodily into your own flesh makes you happy.
To whoever called this one, hat’s off to you, I didn’t think it was *actually* going to be a mask shard. I like it, though!
I wish I could say Allison deserves to rest. I wish I could tell her to take all the time she needs to process. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t usually give us that opportunity – we have to learn to bear our burdens while on the road. It’s not fair, no, but those who want to make the world a more fair place can’t do so by choosing inaction. “It’s a tough galaxy out there, but someone’s gotta live in it. It might as well be you.”
No cloth is stronger than that woven of blood and tears.
One who bears such clothe strike fear even into Kings in their Golden chains.
Ah someone who has also been struckk by star. All deserve to rest, and all eventually will. We simply have a choice on where our bones fall when we drop them. Love can lighten the load and speeds the process, by which healing occurs. Zaid has done well, Cio has done well.
[Stares at the Quote] Well, I’ll be, something actually inspiring and not horribly ultra violent. I’m impressed!
Wait, the hover text says this is close to the end of the book, but I thought book 5 was the last one, and how the hell is Abaddon going to wrap it all up?
I hope he meant end of the chapter, not book
Abbadon has already stated that there’s no way he can actually press everything into 5 books, so there will be 6 after all.
Oh okay, I missed that Statement, thank you!
I concur! I was confused and apprehensive at the potential for a sudden end to what I expected to be the Final Book. I have seen such happen before, and it was a tragedy. Thank you for the news, Grandfather. You and Jo have helped me trade a post for a reply.
Great page!
Zaid is bringing back the Wuxia of the comic.
Sword surfing is best surfing.
I love this series. I really do.
But this story-arc, man, I’m having a difficult time buying it. Shouldn’t Alice be a major in philosophy? Then surely she would be relatively well educated to deal with existential dread, a meaningless reality, concepts such as loss, self-improvement and ofcause determination vs freedom. It breaks my heart, that Abaddon didn’t bring her education into the equation. It would have been the perfect time; “screw your absolutism, Blue Witch, by the power of Jean Paul Satre, I banish you!!”
Anyway thanks alot for a great comic. I feel blessed.
The difference between the knowing and the doing is surprisingly large.
It’s also entirely possible Allison just wasn’t a very good student? *shrug*
I don’t disagree with that sentiment. I just think it’s a shame to mention her education and then don’t use it for the rest of the comic – especially I’m this obvious situation. A missed opportunity, thats all.
“Difficult time buying it” is a charitable way to put it.
This whole arc is, bar none, the single WORST part of the comic so far. Confirmation on the world being fully deterministic, confirmation that Allison has completely lost, just a compeletely miserable readthrough from top to bottom.
I honestly hope that Abbadon just whips out the double-middle-finger and ends the comic soon. It would make a lot of sense, at least. Wouldn’t have to figure out a way to disprove the factual statements of there being no free will or any ability to defeat Jagganoth.
I won’t dispute that. You are entitled to your oppinion, and I get what you are saying – but I would’nt go so far.
Jadis probably has a flawed sense of reality like all the other Demiurges. She even straight up says it herself; she does not exist. She is tethered to nothingness, warping her perspective on the real. Allison on the other hand is still tied to reality, which means she still have choices – even if her actions are determined.
This arc brings many etraordinary cool things to the narrative, and I adore that. The meta commentary, Allisons low, strange conversations, world building. All the things we love as a community. But yes, we need some very specific answers at some point.
How, exactly, is Allison still tied to reality? She went through the same Everything Bagel that Jadis did, she saw the entirety of the Wheel, and saw how nothing mattered. Isn’t that also what happened to Jadis? What makes Allison so special?
As for Allison having choices, she can’t. Choice implies free will, which literally does not exist. Allison can’t make choices any more than I can eat the Sun in 48 hours. How can choices exist if actions are predetermined?
I’ve honestly given up hoping for answers and explanations and things to improve and am just going to ride my sunk-cost fallacy all the way to the end of the line.
She looked away last second, I believe. Never actually went through the same thing that jadis did, got close though. A little smidgen of mindbreaking knowledge.
This kinda thing is the basis for existential dread. It’s a common topic that many people come across in life. Fundamentally everything we do is pre-determined, every word you and I and everybody else here types was fated to happen. Free will is a lie.
That being said, free will being a lie dosnt matter to us, because we are incapable of perceiving things to a degree that it would matter. We are organisms that do not need to know the truth of reality for us to function. So free will exists still, as a practical technicality.
TLDR: the fact that everything is fated and cannot be defied ain’t our, or Allison’s, problem. (that’s what the whole breakfast thing was about).
Let’s set aside the argument of whether or not free will exists (I believe it does, for the record).
The problem is the WRITING. Abbadon has written a story where the only answer to “what happens next” is “they all die, lmao”. Like, do you not remember the secret panel from KSBD 4-79? “Don’t wear it out?”
I’m not mad because I got lectured about free will, I’m mad because I got trolled over YEARS of storytelling! I’m accepting it, but I refuse to go quietly! I will tell the author to his face that he’s a fucking bastard and he’s making terrible choices!
I don’t dispute anything on philosophical grounds or metaphysical points or anything else because that’s way beyond my pay grade! I’m mad because I got trolled! That’s it! That’s the deep, singular core of my dislike of this arc! I have been successfully trolled by the author who is clearly going to end the story in a terrible way for all the characters, and I don’t like it!
I know the panel. See the thing is that I’m pretty sure that this is going to turn into a good Allison vs evil allison fight in the end.
Notably zoss made a comment roughly along the lines of “things looking like they were going to turn out the same again” during the heist where Allison was butting heads with cio(this is roughly how I remember it going)
Now we factor in that zoss has been fighting to defy the outcome of the prophecy of KSBD. And the fact is he’s been doing this for a while now, and narratively I read that, as that this is the outcome where all his efforts finally pay off, the loop where he gets it right. We get to see the the exact events that were needed to lead to victory.
Now there is a chance I’m wrong, and apparently there exist a short story abbadon wrote that became the prototype for KSBD. And that contains potential narrative spoilers. (Not that I have read it) so there are some potential awnsers out there.
Now I’m also going to stand on a bit of a pedestal here and say that I can smell what direction a story is going in as I read through it, and this dosnt strike me as a story that’s going to end on a sour note, not that there is anything wrong with that, but given the nature of the story and how it’s developed, along with the powers at play, and most importantly, the love and care that’s obviously gone into the crafting of the world and its setting, I’d safely say that abbadon isn’t going to shit on all of it just for the sake of a bad end.
Now as for the jadis issue, she hasn’t actually given us any hard awnsers. The most concrete thing she’s said is Allison’s life expectancy of another 35 years, and that strikes me as a very useful bit of knowledge, with many applications. And the fact we haven’t been told anything else concrete sets some flags off in my mind.
Second is that jadis has only warned and mentioned suffering, but not actual failure. This likely means that jaggy loses, and the question turns then to “at what cost”. That subject is a slew of wild mass guessing at this point tho.
And I must apologize,
this entire response of mine is getting far larger than I’d like, and i have other irl things I really need to address and stop procrastinating on. I could easily fill the entire page with my ramblings and theories, but its probably best to just sit back and watch the show, so to speak.
Seriously calm down, dude. It’s a webcomic.
Remember, Pree Aesma saw the wheel, but disregarded it.
Of course Allison isn’t making choices, she and other characters are following script laid out by Abaddon. This holds true for all works of fiction, so why does it bother you in this particular webcomic but not in all other media?
I do this for everything. It’s why I hate typing. I have to much to say about all things.
Maybe this story doesn’t work like the one you expected because it was always a different story. Not “How Allison saved Creation, became the new Ruling King, solved all the problems, resolved all the paradoxes and lived forever”, but “How Allison finally overcame her personal blocks and grew up enough to live an ordinary, small life (until everybody’s time ran out)”. The _illusion_ of free will is enough for the human-scale story.
ughhh…
determinism has nothing to do with choices.
the only nihilist in this is the people (like you) who think they are mutually exclusive.
so what if the universe is deterministic? you still have to decide what you do. Deciding against making a decision is still a decision. You are forced to make them.
that is some philosophy for you.
The world being deterministic doesn’t mean things can’t change- especially because Jadis seems to be fully ignorant of Zoss.
A maze is deterministic until you start beating down the walls.
Well said.
Or—often easier—climb the walls to walk along the tops of them.
But there is no maze. There is no winding path. It’s just a single, straight line, moving in one direction.
And you have no proof that Jadis is unaware of Zoss’s…whatever he is in Allison’s head. Again, she is omniscient. She knows everything. How can a being that knows everything not know something?
First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. Oh Juanita, I call your name!
She says she’s omniscient. We don’t actually know that for a fact.
Jadis knows the wheel. But what lies beyond the wheel? If one can stand outside it, and look at it from the outside, then there is a space outside it. There is something there, beyond her knowledge.
It’s a deterministic world, but also not (otherwise every cycle would be strictly identical). There must be at least one chaotic element. And there is information that travels from the future.
So one could compute the end of things, and be wrong.
Just consider what was posited before: The lich queen is just as venial and petty as her brethren, and is a soulless lying piece of shit who plays with people just because she can.
She’s not lying. Abbadon has repeatedly said she isn’t lying.
She is literally incapable of lying, because lying requires an active choice to not tell the truth, or to not tell the complete truth. Jadis has seen the entirety of the multiverse of the Wheel, and with that knowledge has seen everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen.
There’s a reason why I like calling Jadis a philosophical zombie. She has no wants, no desires, no feelings, no emotions, but she is acting as though she does because the “script”, for lack of a better word, demands she do so.
Please stop giving her malicious motives when she, quite literally, is incapable of having any.
Beating someone down with nihilism doesn’t seem to be anything other than bad. She’s clearly playing a game with her claimed omniscience.
It’s been confirmed by the creator that jadis is legit. She is omniscient, and telling 100% of the truth.
I really should stop replying to people that can’t handle this concept.
Ought to stop with the unwarranted snark as well.
Jadis is no different from anyone else in any of those respects. All that’s different is her perspective.
To be fair to Allison, she’s currently under the influence of, more or less, the God of Apathy. It’s not clear whether this attitude comes solely from within herself.
I get what you’re saying, but I don’t think this is unrealistic, being a philosophy undergrad doesn’t actually equip you for serious bereavement. Allison might be reading endless nihilist philosophy books (to go along with smoking), or just wallowing in fiction. Being a philosophy major doesn’t equip you with the emotional toolkit to use your education to handle major life events and traumas. Withdrawing into a shell of apathy, cigarettes, and metaphorical (or real) opiate abuse is unfortunately not uncommon among the philosophy majors I’ve known when faced with heavy trauma.
Like, to be clear, I really do NOT believe that Abaddon meant this to be the profound truth that undercuts the happy lies of the rest of the story. I’ve seen webcomics go sideways but don’t think that’s what’s happening here. He’s showing a hero go through a very realistic period of being shattered by grief, instead of the usual fridged-girlfriend roaring rampage of revenge. It’s not the end of the book, and it’s not the thesis of the book. Allison is going on a painful internal journey, and right now she’s lost.
probably the context of her and her bestie-gfs just having been absolutely wrecked and obliterated in a pretty finale-like way added to Allison’s mental state, and the viability of her just sorta going with what Jadis suggested
She’s young. Defining life experiences are how this kind of thing becomes understood internal wisdom instead of read in books to debate the meaning of and examine at a distance.
I can’t believe Zaid just pulled a Goku!
Something is oddly familiar about that fragment.
Thank God this arc will be over soon.
Worst part of the comic by a LARGE measure.
Just the most oppressively depressing, meaningless, nihilistic revelations from beginning to end.
There’s nothing wrong with doing that, obviously. Some of the best stuff I’ve read has been oppressively depressing, meaningless, and full of nihilistic revelations. The difference is they didn’t lie to me about what they were. They told me from the get-go “Look, this will be pretty bleak and dark. Be prepared for that, or head on out”. They didn’t lull me in with everything KSBD had at the start and THEN turn out all of…THIS.
I look forward to reading whatever story you tell next, Abbadon. At least then, I’ll know what to expect.
I mean, Abby has been subverting just about everything he could subvert right from the start. It’s his fetish or something. I wasn’t surprised when he went this route, it was just a “Yep, another trope subverted, as expected” moment.
ONE MORE GOD REJECTED.
ONE MORE TROPE SUBVERTED.
One more demon killed.
Really? Shit this ain’t even that bad, as I have a feeling that the roll zoss is playing with repeated attempts to get a happy outcome, means this story has to have a good end.
I’ll contrast with Kamen rider: amazon, which as I like to describe it as “a bunch of likable and even unlikeable characters all slowly and tragically forced to find a black-and -white hill to die on, as the morally Grey shitshow that the setting rapidly devolves into drowns out every good awnser possible.
I just really like trying out that description, it’s a good show, but damn it really likes to crush every small hope that things might work out.
Why? Why does the story have to have a good end? Why can’t it have an ending that’s purposefully miserable?
Zoss could easily be a Sisyphean figure here, trying forever to find a successor who will break the Wheel, only to fail every time. And in an infinitely large multiverse that this takes place, it could be his task forever.
I’m not going to guess where the story goes, but I’ll stick around to see.
Honestly, it’s a gut feeling. But I’ve seen enough of this comic, that I’m certian it’s going to end on a very. . .natural note, if that makes sense.
This story has had a fucking lot of thought put into it, it’s trying to grapple with extremely difficult concepts and characters, all without compromising even a little. Things that don’t have a clean awnser or easy fix, or even a moral at the end. Shit like this is hard to write, and it’s for that reason that I have faith that abbadon will pull through on its conclusion.
The prophecy was in chapter 4. I don’t remember quite when the various details about Jadis were laid out… But I didn’t find this arc all that surprising. Maybe we just understood the early parts of the story differently.
I mean, I’m not believing Jadis at face value. So far *every* demiurge has been full of it, in some capacity. I strongly suspect that Jadis is either wrong or lying. And even if she’s factually correct, things being predetermined doesn’t mean they’re pointless.
Reposting a comment I made a month ago.
Do we (the readers) know with any certainty that Jadis has seen The Future?
We’ve learned in earlier pages that the universe of Throne is cyclical.
What if Jadis’s machine doesn’t show The Future, per se, but rather shows The Past? If Throne’s time is cyclical, a close viewing of the last X number of past cycles would presumably show the viewer the most likely outcome of any set of circumstances in the current cycle.
… and then there’s Alison. Specifically chosen by Zoss as the wrench to throw in the gears.
I think one of the underlying engines of this whole story is finding out which interpretation is right — 1. Is the crushing weight of cyclical time enough to force temporal homeostasis, and keep the universe in its status quo of inevitable repetition? 2. Or will Zoss’s bet pay off, and the right amount of chaos introduced into the pattern will bring the whole train off the rails?
After all, sometimes it takes only a pebble in just the right place to derail a real-world train. Maybe Alison is just that pebble, in just the right place…
Which brings us back to the mask shard, and how devils are chaos contained (barely) by their masks. Hmm…
I mean, hop on twitter and look up the double pendulum bot.
It starts by attaching a pendulum with a varying weight at one location, links the second pendulum with a varying weight at another location, then they fall and do what they will do for 30 seconds.
Such a simple system, seems like it would be easy to determine exactly what should happen from looking at the initial conditions, yet it consistently surprises because we’re bad at predicting chaos.
Heck, what was Aliciochain called again? Aspected Chaos?
I mean The Author has explicitly said that yes she sees the future exactly as it happens and really actually knows everything and isn’t deceiving Allison in this part of the story. I really don’t know home much clearer it can get, this part of the story is about the seductive nature of nihilism and the inevitability of death
A while ago, I speculated that a forcing a big enough paradox might cause the multiverse to “reboot” and run again with a different history; and that Jagganoth might be exploiting this.
I now wonder whether Zoss is exploiting this and that’s where the great cycle come from. If no free will is possible but the heir still imposes will with the master key, then Boom!, meta-kernel panic, start again.
If the heir instead puts aside their will, no paradox and no reboot.
I am of the opinion that true Royalty means moving past determinism. You can have the stage, the script and the costumes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t tell the director to take a hike, wear your own shit and say your own lines. All of the demiurges have their fatal flaw, that something that keeps them from being all they could or would want to be. Jaggy loves his role as destroyer. Incubus is still beholden to his petty appetites and lust for power. Solomon David was held in place in a cage of his own making…his pride wouldn’t let him leave it. Gog Agog is a weird little control freak. Jadis saw everything and…gave up. BTW-I find it odd that Jadis took part in the war…if she knows everything and it’s all meaningless, what was there to fight for?
I believe Alison will find a way beyond the wheel.
I believe that Jadis was glazed after Universal War came to a close. She is the *former* bearer of the word Mind, something I imagine she only gained after bearing a seventh of the Master Key. Her shattering would then be akin to Mottom’s fear, Mammon’s reclusion, or Solomon’s empire- a self-inflicted decay.
The options are determinism, or pure randomness. There’s no room for “choice” in either. I’ve yet to see a theory that proposed an alternative that didn’t depend on insufficient definitions of the terms, or just moving the goalposts.
Who or what makes those “choices”, and why are they not either deterministic or random? Either there is a reason for each action, a cause, or there isn’t. You can’t just punt the question up the chain and call it resolved.
Word of God actually says yes, jadis is both correct, and has been perfectly honest. Also it be shit writing to try and pull that old trope of “actually lol you don’t know everything” at this point.
I know for certain that Jadis knows about the mask shard. I’m just wondering why she didn’t remove it.
Couldn’t be for medical purposes. Getting it lodged in her arm would be very traumatizing, and even her staff would have known to remove it. Maybe, through demon/love magic, it miraculously healed before they got to inspecting it.
If it was on purpose, I wonder if that conflicts with the whole sloth theme. If her goal is to trap Allison here by instilling some apathy, then having the mask shard would go firmly against that.
Curious.
I agree. It’s very strange.
So I have a theory that jadis is litterally scripted to give Allison just enough mental recovery time to be able to re enter the ring, but not so much time off that jagginoth comes back to finish the job.
Think of like turning Allison’s will to fight off, and it back on again. It’s a system reboot of sorts.