KING OF SWORDS 10-158
“A swordsman is at his most natural state when he thinks of nothing at all. Thoughtlessness is the natural state of things, and thinking is probably the biggest mistake of amateurs. By completely disavowing use of that pesky organ in your skull all that is left is the hard and old nerves in the body that think about deep and consequential things such as survival. They know exactly what to do, and they are smarter than you. You become a completely naturalistic and comfortable animal, who’s only motivation is the killing impulse.
To give you an example, I once spent the better part of a summer afternoon killing thirty five men from the Kagen Amat school who had been sent to execute me, returned home, and I had made most of supper before I came back to myself. I remember the incident poorly but several of the men were almost certainly master swordsmen who had studied the blade for most of their lives, and I unfortunately was still an idiot at that time and had taken no weapon with me. I ended up using a piece of driftwood I picked out of the surf. It was quite pleasant and not difficult at all.
Some people think my story an exaggeration and that I had a hidden blade on me or had used perfidious tricks such as poison or several of my friends hidden in ambush. I tell you no such thing is true. I started my afternoon out taking a shit on the beach and I ended up decapitating fifteen men. I had clams for dinner.”
– Meti ten Ryo
Made of stone, no longer.
“These two are hot flesh and fire, and their fight has concluded.
This one is split faith and stone, but no more is she deluded.”
A reminder.
White Chain is an armored nuclear blast.
Another reminder Solomon can effortlessly facetank a nuclear blast
Possible.
Yet, [citation needed]
A reminder that Solomon rules a whole seventh of the Multiverse and allegedly moved two suns by himself. If he can’t tank an energy blast powerful enough to reduce a planet to cosmic rubble orbiting the sun, then that’ll just be disappointing.
6 Juggernaut Star exploding from their proxy shell getting split in two didn’t shatter the planet. There might be that much energy in the Primes though.
A reminder that she doesn’t need to kill him, she needs to draw one single drop of blood.
If he facetanks a nuclear blast and maybe gets nicked by a piece of shrapnel, she wins.
Unfortunately, that would not help. Solomon clearly intends to end her current incarnation, and even if she goes down in a (victorious) blaze of glory, she cannot claim her reward until she reincarnates.
That would be a whole age.
Except she’s on her 83rd incarnation and is known to reincarnate often and fast.
You are mistaken, 12.
What he intends, foremost, is someone to dump his chains, his responsibility, his Rayuba, on.
And the resolution to kill White Chain has (comparatively) little willpower behind it.
In any Kalpa, In any world above the void, Has there ever been even a single unbound Cold-Flame?
Yes.
For very brief moments.
Apotheosis.
Attaining godhood? The white flame comes from the eye of god called UN, but it is not a god and makes not one.
We are all YISUN forgetting himself.
MOVING IN THE STOPPED TIME
Seems Solomon may get that chance a gab with the white-hair gal anyhow
Jotaro vs Dio right here
Straight up.
“WHITE CHAIN! YOU HAVE INVADED MY WORLD OF STOPPED TIME!”
Nah, she’s just using magnets to make it SEEM like she can move in his stopped time. It’s totally safe for Solomon to approach her.
Fuckin’ magnets, how DO they work?
Bitch, you’d just get pissed and wouldn’t believe me if I explained it.
Relativistic Time Dilation. no, really.
High five ! *Honks*
HoNk HoNk HoNk
White Chain has not entered, she has always been there. The only actions at this speed are those that have been planned out and forgotten, or reflexes that will happen without thought. There is no calculation. There is only action, and action from action. White Chain has a gambit, and Solomon has, through overconfidence, not planned as he should have.
Makes sense. You may shape yourself to be a thing that naturally shapes reality when let loose, but your brainmeat will only catch up with you once you return to the flow of time.
If Dave has set out to “execute a defeated opponent”, rather than to “kill White Chain”, he may lose his footing when the designated target is not there.
*Insert Jojo reference here*
Can we have a street fighter reference instead?
SureYUCAN
One lunging uppercut, master angel, if you please.
It looks like WC is reeling ina kneeling, but she’s just putting in the double reverse dragon motion.
n-nani?! in the frozen time!?
If you can wiggle even a bit, then your enemy has failed at stopping you and you can still kill him, even if it is with only one hand
Every quiver and errant twitch is manifest evidence of your enemy’s failure to kill you. Life itself is resistance, every breath taken an act of defiance.
Even the cession of heartbeat does not abate this resistance, for even a dead body plays host to a billion tiny lives. If your oppressor kills you, they have merely turned one rebel into those billions feeding on your corpse.
Life is resistance, because it mocks the monarch’s pretensions to control.
I would question your conclusion, but miscreants snort my fossilized corpse to get high.
Supersonic Salami inbound.
Time does appear to stand still when he’s in ki-rata mode – but judging by the horizon of the dais they are upon and the raindrops, Solomon even seems to have reversed time between panels seven and eight.
It’s the relativistic effect, the faster you move, the slower time seems to move.
We already know that our physics does not apply to him, or necessarily in his realm, from the last time we all discussed this (or several times if one includes his heavenly body manipulation). If it did then special relativity would dictate that his mass would tend to infinite as time slowed to stopping. He would be a tad heavy to move at all. He again would have to negate our physics to overcome such.
From the biomechanics and kinetics (kinesiology if you prefer) of his motion he is also not drawn as moving fast. He is walking purposefully and almost normally, and stomping in frozen or near-frozen time.
The nub of one’s post was that the raindrops have moved fractionally higher between panels. Time not stopped but momentarily in reverse.
General relativity has solutions that do allow for time to travel backwards in very certain situations, and the quantum world cares not for the arrow of time. But combining the two even as far as has yet been done, negates any GR faster-than-light time travel scenario, and subatomic particles are a teensy bit smaller than raindrops. Solomon could perhaps manage it.
Hm. If Ki Rata’s secret is the power to slice time, then the rings make sense. The ritual of throwing them into the air, finishing the move and then retrieving them would be the structure of a loop of time, and would prevent inconvenient time buds from interfering with the course of fate. But what would happen if the ritual were disturbed? If the rings were not caught? Would time shatter like a diamond? And would each ballistic fragment from that shattering be capable of drawing blood? Becuase this dude seems to have an almost menstrual urge to bleed. Bonus question: can we see all of Solomon David’s rule as one long PMS episode?
If it’s ability is to slice time, that doesn’t explain WC appearing to start to move as fast as he is, since she should be frozen in that same slice of time and is outside the ritual.
It makes more sense that he is just going extremely fast.
Damn I was wortking up to a nice megatheory right there. Oh well, carry on White Chain Born in Emptiness Returns to Slap Dat Ass.
Time for the most powerful move in the world. THE SUCKA PUNCH!
WIGGLE YOUR BIG TOE! WIGGLE YOUR BIG TOE! WWIIGGLLEE YYOOUURR BBIIGG TTOOEE!!
The hard part is already over.
Surebaet Noodles–It’s a “sure bet” you’ll love your bowl! Look for our festival menu, available until the end of the Royal Tournament!
OBLITERATION is the rights of Kings. Thus, in order to destroy the notion of King one must first suborn that sacred right to OBLITERATE and use it as the point of your spear.
When your enemy believes you to be at your weakest is the moment you may take his head with least effort.
“I WAS BLUFFING!”
Well, she shall explode, but Solomon will be impervious. Both of these things are expected. The other, outrageous, idea one could posit would be that Allison might teleport inside her, twitch, to produce White-haired Chain? One would love to see her.
Nice Allison/White Chain portmanteau name. But since we’ve had AlliCio, how about AlliChain?
Zoss was right all along, he was just referring to Alice in Chains
They really should make threeway willing hybrid.
Devil skin, human in between layer and angel core inside human protected to not interact with devil.
One is now forced to think of AlliCiChain as the Angel-core Devil-skin Warrior. Our impious little blue devil did also jump down not wishing to see her friend pulverised, she should not be left bereft on the sidelines.
White Allicio?
Farewell, sweet Nerevar. Better luck on your next incarnation.
No time to think, only time to do. So it must be thoughtless, effortless action. Solomon will never be able to fight tactically at this speed; being made of law Whitechain might.
Also, love the principle of non action here.
Solomon would have to speed up his own sensory proccessing when going fast time or he’d be effectively blind. Actually, how that I think about it a second, maybe he actually IS effectively blind there, hence the request to not move for those combatants.
ultra instinct was a cool thing to observe. one punch too.
and fire force I think it’s called? also the neosensory buzz watch
So it’s the same kind of stand as Star Platinum?
I reject the philosophy implied by this page’s accompanying quote. A warrior should always be thinking. Even beasts measure the situation, weigh their foe, plan their attack, and adjust their strategies as the fight goes on. There is a reason the word for one who learns martial arts is *student*, and it is because an immense amount of knowledge must be gathered and accumulated to truly become strong. To all those who think that you do not need your head to fight – I will gladly deprive you of it and see how long you last without it.
Do you think about breathing, or walking? Do you imagine the curve of each stroke as you write?
A student may practice anything, even the art of death, until it becomes as effortless and natural.
The art of death is the art of life. They are separate, but they are not two.
What could be more natural than life itself?
Stillness, dear brother.
(Making an elder scrolls reference, not assuming your pronouns)
I second Ominous star, and append that when it comes to swords, muscle memory and instinct that one earns from practice only get you so far. Planning an attack, anticipating the opponent, feinting and baiting… these require constant thought during a bout lest one is out-maneuvered or lured into a vulnerable position. The instict is surely needed to parry without being stabbed and stab without being parried, since there is no time to think in the moment of a single manoever. But between actions the brain should be analyzing and planning.
You fail to understand what Meti was getting at. Read this part of the quote: “The hard and old nerves in the body that think about deep and consequential things such as survival. They know exactly what to do, and they are smarter than you.” You see? Your instinct alone is perfectly capable of planning attacks, anticipating what your opponent will do, feinting and baiting, and all such other things. When it comes to battle, the muscles are far more intelligent than any brain.
And how do you think those muscles became intelligent? Far too often I have seen some untrained whelp try to rely on his natural instincts, only to stumble and fall at the slightest touch from a master. The only way your muscles learn such things is by beating your thoughts into them – ‘this is how to cut’, ‘this is how to feint’, ‘here is how you weave’, ‘that is the foe’s wind-up’. Only through constant training and drilling those thoughts into your muscles do they learn how to think.
Objectively false. They know such things from the moment they start to exist. Those untrained whelps you speak of were only partially relying on their natural instincts- they still used their worthless brains to order them around, preventing their bodies from actually doing what they wanted to. If they simply turned off all thought and ceased to issue any commands to their bodies, then they would fight far better than any trained master. You have to be effectively unconscious- to the point where you won’t even realize you were in a fight until after the fact. Really, it is an extremely simple concept.
Way to reject actual useful learning. It’s clear your priorities lie more in tavern storytelling than on the battlefield.
As I stated before, if your brain is so useless in battle, allow me to pluck it from your skull and see how well you fight.
To say you do not think of breathing is to declare ‘I do not see it, therefore it does not exist’. The thought still exists, hidden in the crevices of your mind. Allow me to draw it out – you are now breathing manually.
I am a student of the sword.
There is the speed of thought and then there is the speed of a fight.
Thinking and planning are reactionary; fighting is blending with reality. Thought is attempting to project on reality.
This is why the tengu says that you must be the true moon in fight.
There are ten thousand bodies of water and ten thousand reflections of the moon in them. If you get caught up looking at the reflections, you will never see the true moon, and you will die.
This is why the masters speak of floating mind, or seamless mind, or no mind at all. You have to be one with reality, so that you can seize it.
There will be thoughts as you train, but over the years, they will fade. This is progress.
“He who strikes without thinking can cut God.”
What a foolish sentiment… projecting such a trivial concept as masculinity upon the hand that can split heaven in twain.
Meti Ten Ryo was a woman.
I assume she was using the pronouns in the generic sense, as she routinely cut gods.
Yet it is through it’s reflections that the moon may be caught in a bucket.
Do you think the beasts think? reason? plan? reach conjectures?
Or feel? Feel what their instincts, separate from their consciousnesses, are telling them?
I was charged by a lion once. Let me tell you, everything in me screamed “run”. What if everything in the lion screamed “kill”? No planning there.
Maybe the instinct “kill” is in us too. Maybe we just need to hone it, and that is what Meti is talking about.
Beach crabs eat shit and corpses. The circle of life.
An untrained whelp could break any experienced and knowledgeable master with little if any effort, if only they removed all thought from their head.
Your so called strategies and battle plans will always, always fail in contact with anyone who knows this truth.
Thinking is a thing to done certainly. Those who do not spend long painful hours thinking about their actions will never know the joy of acting without thinking. But at the moment of beautiful liberating violence, all thought must leave you. To bring thought into the middle of a swordfight is as useful as bringing out your hammer and anvil.
I have multiple takes on this. As a musician, I practice until something is muscle memory before I take the stage. The practice is mindful, the performance is not. It would hinder me greatly if I had to think of every pick stroke on stage. So that’s a bit of both. Also, while I’ve seen masters say (and win by the philosophy of) you’re supposed to think 3 moves ahead. I’ve beaten many a decent players at chess because I’m not thinking 3 moves ahead, I’m only reacting to their last move and moving my pieces accordingly. Thus my moves and goals are unpredictable until acted. Which a “master” who’s trying to think and predict will be faltered by. In the end, I guess it’s a mixed bag that comes down to which art you’re wielding.
This kind of calls to mind a quote from Sekiro.
“He often ruminated on how a cut should be made, but his blade always moved first.”
Next, 82 White Chain Born in Emptiness Returns to Subdue Evil will unexpectedly shift aside, causing Solomon David to trip on her arm at such a speed he cannot prevent it and fall on his majestic visage, thus provoking a slight nosebleed and conceding her victory.
(Also, it’s whose, not who’s – it’s literally the only thing I could nitpick in the entire book, sorry!)
It be so poetic if he tore his ACL right now.
“TIME OUT, CHARLIE HORSE!”
Flexing like this for my fans takes it’s toll, bro!
That’d not make him drop any blood, would it? :/
It would bruise like hell, but no.
ONE CROSSED WIRE, ONE WAYWARD PINCH OF POTASSIUM CHLORATE, ONE ERRANT T W I T C H —
“Some have heated together sulfur, realgar (arsenic disulfide), and saltpeter with honey; smoke [and flames] result, so that their hands and faces have been burnt, and even the whole house burned down.” –Oldest known recipe for gunpowder
i hate this, thanks
The wood faces the rising sun.
Sharp, he sees an ugly one.
Shifts his eyes, draws his gun.
So if White Chain is Jotaro, does that make 10 Vigilant Gaze that Purges the Horizon old man Joseph?
The secret of his martial arts, Ki Rata, is time! It’s a martial art that stops ti–
OH-MY-GOD!
Ah, Solomon’s words remind me of the Sharmat, when he manages to slay the Nerevarine. Sadly for Dagoth Ur, the true incarnation of Nerevar Indoril could reload saves. Fortunately for Solomon, White Chain probably can’t.
“”Farewell, sweet Nerevar. Better luck on your next incarnation.”
Dagoth Ur’s words are what I thought of also.
“Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not. Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and conquered, and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe.“
— Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
White Chain is about to go all Mr. Fahrenheit on Solomon David