King of Swords 5-49
Chapter: 5
“Many fools admire the Gods, thinking them admirable and wise, praising their virtues, and asking for their boons.
I’ll tell you one thing friend, there ain’t nary a pious farmer who comes up short when it’s time for burnt offerings. He’s always got a lamb ready. He may not know it, but he remembers why the Gods are Gods in the first place.
You can ask for harvests all you like, but never forget they sup on fire and blood.”
– Mars Pallatrix, Belligerent Knight
Finally! Some solid Solomon action! And poor Gog needs another head, tsk.
I am beginning to look forward to the event when Mottom gets her head exploded by Gog-Agog. That would be pretty satisfying.
Gog is eventually going to do something more than sit there and get her head sploded and I AM SO READY FOR IT!!
Excellent composition, that first panel
Oh yeah. I am reminded of “Promethea” again in a strong way. A pity I don’t currently have time for proper rereading.
God the Father, God the Son and God the Allison-So-Not-Actually-God-Also-The-Only-One-Who-Can-And-Will-Kick-Your-Ass-All-Twenty-Ways-To-Monday.
God’s act high and mighty, yet they do not see us ants that scurry below. Take this to heart and burrow deep. The gods’ harvest comes swift. A rare piece of advice from a friend.
Dude, talk about yourself, I’m the one that makes the guest list and booooy are these guys invited.
A simple yes would suffice, Lord David
Yes you can destroy a table everyone in the room can do that. Now please answer the question. Can you keep them apart?
It’s not that he can destroy a table. It’s that he can effortlessly destroy a table *with his pinky finger*.
Betcha if he gets riled he can’t break nothing. Like in White Chain’s lesson to the Sorority Girl. A true definition of “lose it”.
And that is just a ONE point strike. A full ten-point would easily neutralize … well, they weren’t using that city, nor the surrounding districts, properly anyways.
It’s like banging a gavel in a courtroom. A call to order.
Solomon: Come again, bitch?
Indeed, old Solly sure does love his power moves. All the better for him that dread Ki Rata seems to consist of such in its entirety.
With every flex of his pride, a thing that is somehow balanced between being entirely earned and dipping into impossibly overweening arrogance, I long for the Circle of Strength more and more. More than any lust for blood, I await the day that I get to see the Conquering King relieve the Emperor Celestial of long held delusions of superiority.
I
HUNGER
for that glorious moment when we see the God of the Frozen Form realize that a young woman from Los Angeles has spilled just,
A Bit,
more than a drop of his blood.
And yet of the Demiurges he seems the most reasonable so far. Why do you hunger for the blood of one who could settle issues with discourse? Who seems to have the concept of honor, order, and self-expression through hard work and relative virtue? Of all the mad gods he seems to be the closest to the human ideal. He is a man confident, and rightly so, not some arrogant blowhard who deserves to be unseated for daring speak words he cannot possibly have earned. Surely confidence is not worthy of hatred?
Confidence is what lead to Infinite Worlds being raped, Throne becoming a shell of the concept of glory, and the current issue of the multiverse being ruled by a seven-part gang of bloodthirsty fools.
Confidence lead to the universe being humbled, is what made a barista from the City of Angels the only hope we have.
Heaven was reached through violence, and we find it strange when all we found was a nightmare and a hell.
He has the fairest appearance and the most peaceful subjects, but there can be no doubt that his heart belongs to violence the same as all the rest. His appeals to culture and sophistication nothing more than a well constructed facade.
I get the feeling that he will be the LEAST open to negotiation with Al-Yisun, perhaps for reasons we have yet to see.
Confidence is one thing. He has sat untouchable, save perhaps by his peers in the early years of peace when such a notion as peace was tested more earnestly, for ages and ages. Confidence has fossilized into contempt, in the case of Emperor Solomon.
The weak often despise the strong and confident. Insecure about their own lack of strength, they spend their time fantasizing about tearing down those they perceive as their betters. It has always been so.
Did I STUTTER?
Yes. The table is built very poorly but you haven’t answered the question dude.
Flex on em
Weird flex, Solomon David, but I can dig it.
ONEPUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNCH
Prana Of The Utmost Mystery: You Know I Had To Do It To ‘Em
Hail to the King.
good question nadia, but you see… the thing is i’m healthy and swole without pillaging and murdering thousands and thousands of people and also my pinky finger can do this
any other questions?
A theory of Gog. It isn’t as powerful as the others but it is nigh indistructable. A singe worm and it will survive with its key. So it’s less that they fear to reach for Gog’s key and more that they realize the impossibility of obtaining it.
Yeah, I’ve been assuming that since they first got their head destroyed. None of the others could be hurt by an attack so easily, if it were any more lasting harm than a cut fingernail then they would have lost their key long ago.
Abbadon mentioned she would be one of te most powerful if she weren’t so damn crazy
Not one of, in fact, but THE strongest demiurge. That plus the appearance of her court is what makes me suspect the avatar she sends to these meetings isn’t her only body. If she’s countless worms in myriads of bodies, that would go a long way to explaining how she could compete with Jagganoth.
Also suggests that one of these days Mottom is going to do something that _really_ pisses Gog off, and then will be (briefly) surprised.
This is his unspoken answer. All of them are powerful but he is very powerful indeed and sees himself as superior to them.
Blood and fire are all well and good, but personally I prefer noodles.
Mmmmmm, noodles…. *insert Homer Simpson’s open-mouth drooling here*
In which Solomon David demonstrates the Wuxi finger hold.
Dark legends are told of when he once to performed the forbidden Thousand Years of Death technique
The Wuxi Finger Hold?!? NOT THE WUXI FINGER HOLD!!!
(Skadoosh.)
Incubus must be secretly laughing his ass off at Solomon’s assumptions
Yes, your comment resonates with me. I believe that, for ALIS-YUN to pose as an effective pawn of Zoss, she represents a threat, a disruption beyond what is conventional. The Demiurges face something that brute strength and raw power, alone, cannot overcome.
Looks like the Lord of the Pit is not very happy about Solomon’s show of power in that last panel. After all, his plans do revolve around the Rising King’s success. It would put a real dent in those plans for Solomon David to split every atom in her body with a single blow.
Like his dream self doesn’t have the biggest shit eating grin at Solomon’s arrogance right now. Salami Dave doesn’t know that he’s got a dud stashed in Rayuba while Inky has a direct mental link to the True Heir.
Though it is uncharacteristic of him, I suspect Solomon Dave is not so naive, and is in fact concealing his suspicions that AL-YIS-UN is indeed the true Heir. He seemed to imply as much when speaking to Zaid at the beginning of this book.
Given his decision to produce only sons as potential heirs to his empire, it is perhaps no coincidence that Solomon finds it easier to believe in a heir to all creation the consider Zoss chose a Heiress.
His lack of female progeny is not a show of disdain for women, but that in his past life he only had daughters. None will ever replace the ones he lost, and none will ever compete with the memories he holds or the affection that drives him still.
Unlike the others, he doesn’t let himself forget why he took his key.
Despite his world being rebuilt, he keeps a corner of it empty to remind himself.
These things are not incompatible. To revere dead women wile disrespecting living women is not uncommon, especially for Solomon and his like, who poison sincere feeling with ego. Would his daughters wish that he keep his family empty of women in their memory?
People here, dear Paladin, are as corrupt as those courtiers who feast on the ankles of the Demiurges. Rather than parse the good and evil of each, viewing them as people, they choose to believe each one to be some edifice of evil and arrogance beyond their allotment, even though they themselves cannot understand what the Demiurges are or what it took to get there.
You are right, but few are those who will agree with you. They prefer the likes of Solomon to be a monumental devil, full of vice and undeserved hubris. When, compared to his fellow mad gods, he is the most reasonable. He acts no different than any great man we pay homage to in our history books, but on a greater scale.
The greater the man, the more people refuse to see him as a man, and instead as something they wish would topple, simply because they cannot stand the sight of something greater than themselves.
i imagine its not so much that solomon is sexist as that if Zied is the heir and allison is the carrier solomon has outplayed zoss and is winning, but if Allison is the heir and Zied just a decoy than zoss has outplayed HIM, and i think he just cant fathom losing like that
As you say, though, it’s uncharacteristic of him. Vanity and naivety go hand in hand.
Practically every other demiurge has alternative plans and schemes and whatnot- makes sense that Solomon-David is lying to the rest of them as well.
It wouldn’t be the first time he betrayed a group of allies.
I would like Salami now.
I have none.
FATAL FIFTH FINGER
That table will never threaten the heir again. Great job, Salami Dave!
Yes that was a very dangerous table.
Actually, it was an angel.
Or a mimic.
It is very dangerous and can attack at any moment.
So we must DEAL with it.
Solomon David pinky finger win, and table lose.
Salami Dave should do a video series where he shatters various things with his pinky finger.
It wasn’t a table, it was a gazebo in disguise!
Luckily I have this +3 arrow.
Gog-Agog: Do it again, I wasn’t looking!
I feel like that was a Fist of The North Star reference. and I get the feeling this is the first time in a long time any of them has seen Solomon actually back up his talking with a display of his power.
I seem to recall someone actually held a city aloft with their mind power alone for a period of years before driving it into a vastly secure multidimentional vault full of gold – and I am meant to be impressed at a god-like & tough fingernail tap? Well,I am impressed (because it is seriously attractive artwork and pacing) but seriously, in comparison with other actions, it’s merely a reminder of power not actually convincing of the capacity to protect from someone with a key (the 8th key I think?) to the universes.
But that tiny finger tap is but the merest unveiling of Solomon’s power, and it apparently scales up from there super-linearly by at least nine further levels. He was a most formidable opponent even before he gained his key.
She has the *first* key. These bozos (and the red god) share evenly between them keys number 2 through 777,778.
Nope, she has the first-the Master Key- and they collectively have one exact copy that can be split 777,777 ways, but has been amalgamated into 7.
Wait, I read your comment wrong, shoot
That power of will derived from magic. Ki Rata is not magic.Ki Rata is breathing so good you can break tables with your finger. This is a subtle display of mastery. Solomon David does not seek to impress them by breaking a paltry table. Rather, he seeks to remind them of what he *is*, and how he obtained dominion of a seventh part of the universe.
Magic is indirectly applying your will by lying to the universe do it does what you want. Ki Rata is channeling one’s will directly through oneself. With the Art, Mottom have broken the table by convincing the universe that their Will’s are aligned towards the table being broken. With Ki Rata, Solomon David unmade the table because his will was stronger than the universe’s will to keep it intact. He could have unmade more but the pinky finger is a terribly restrictive channel for applying one’s will.
SD is showing that he equates power with kinetic energy. Several of the big guys here do. The sneaky little Bowie guy does not. So, whose definition of power will win out in the end?
Mayas?
In a manner most sycophantic, I very much hope the next page is of the entire Tower of Zoss nearly cracking in two, just to counteract all the snide commentators daring to deny the power of Salami Dave’s ultimate swolness
No doubt he’s swole.
The question, however, is he smart enough to realize when to use his finger and when his threats need to be backed up by something other than force.
And such was the land within a half mile of the table as well
One finger to the table.
One fist to Mottom’s city.
The results would be the same.
Message received.
The way I see it there are two options for Zaid. One he’s a footnote, almost everyone has assume he’s the true heir but hilariously his ultimate fate will be to either get killed or maybe dumped back on his and Allison’s homeworld or something. Two he becomes a powerful ally or enemy to Allison with perhaps Solomon teaching him Ki Rata or something. And while I absolutely do not want him to become Alison’s love interest I personally like the ally option, the comic has subverted certain cliches and for some reason I can’t explain the idea of Zaid going through character development of his own feels like a subversion of sorts.
“Like the ‘damsel in distress’ trope except with the genders swapped” is very much a trope of its own which can be subverted. I hope as well that Zaid gets to do something and isn’t just an irrelevant red herring. The first chapter of this book suggests to me that he’ll be important somehow.
My crack theory is that all the demiurges have Zoss’s plan wrong; he didn’t choose Allison as the heir, or mistakenly give her the key instead of Zaid. He chose both of them to rule together, mirroring the divine division of YISUN into YIS and UN. I think it no coincidence that their names start with the beginning and the end of the alphabet respectively.
Quite interesting. Waiting to see if any of the abundant theories gets confirmed sooner or later makes the wait a little more excruciating, as should be.
I’ve had the exact same thoughts myself. This would indeed be an interesting twist, I think.
My theory isn’t any more backed up by anything than anyone’s else’s, but the situation reminds me a lot of the Twelve Kingdoms anime (not the novels), where the heroine’s love interest is taking along with her to their new world. In the beginning, their goals are aligned in that they want to return home, and in various ways hope to rescue the other/each other, but by the end Youko realizes her destiny is “here” and comes to terms with it, while he can’t let go of his “Earth/Japan” views and ultimately dies a meaningless death for it.
Boy’s named after Henry’s town
will pick you up and let you down
Wear a belt in place of crown
Shit, excuse the grocer’s apostrophe folks
So, that’s “boys” plural instead of “boy is” contraction? Or [i]Henrys'[/i] ‘s with an apostrophe to shew that town is in possessive relation with a group of Henrys instead of a Henry singular? Or “Henrys” is just the town’s name, as in “the town of Henrys”?
It’s the boys that form a pair
named for a town with Henry there
but frankly I’m impressed you care