King of Swords 6-54
Chapter: 6
There is only one way to be a pure master of sword law. This is to allow your body to become absolutely soaked with death.
Death is always in the body at all times, but happier people are able to let it live only in their skin, or on the surface of their eyelids. They may easily wash it off from time to time and carry on with their lives.
When I tell my students to shave their heads, partly it is so they cannot rid themselves of death so easily. Those who do not bathe in death regularly will forget it is there, and that is a very stupid thing to do when swords are involved.
– Meti Ten Ryo
Welp that’s gonna give me nightmares
YIKES.
No Reasonable Offers Refused, Preem Pillar, is not just a fantastic sales pitch.
Oogh I see why Incubus got to be such a powerful demiurge… Atleast I’m sure this is Incubus.
Nah, this is just a coincidental look-alike. He will never appear in the story again after this scene and will have no bearing on anything whatsoever.
Doubt that
I’m a little confused by it, honestly. I thought Abaddon said that Incubus didn’t have a mentor? If that’s the case, I doubt this is going to last.
I covet a more precise bibliography, if you can produce one.
Add this to the list of reasons that Pree Incubus is *NOT* the student Meti takes him for.
A match made in hell.
…
I see her eyes there, well done.
BLOODLUST
…
Yes… both their eyes have turned blood red.
i…
live…
in…
their…
hearts…
I.
Also.
Live.
In.
Their.
Hearts.
It’s a time share.
NO U
Once, near the time of the last Conquering, I met a great sword saint, half dead, upon the side of an abandoned fortress. He was broken. Dying. I held his head steady. I cleaned his wounds, and shaved his beard. We both knew he was dying, but I needed him to be presentable if I was to sell his gilded carrion as a reliquary. As the razor touched his neck he told me:
“The Demiurges are no bloody barbers, you old fool!”
How prophetic.
Not only is that extraordinarily poor shaving technique – I do not believe that the scalp is supposed to come off with the hair – the imbecile has distracted everyone around him, disrupting the flow of commerce! Think of the bargains that had been struck, before you distracted everyone with your inferior mortal meat-blood. For shame, usurper!
Do you not recognize the deal that has been made, before your very eyes? Its import, and the price?
Indeed I do, the advertisement read
“Don’t end up a bloody mess – Visit preem Todd’s barbering emporium for a professional finish”
I hear his pies are also rather good
Preem Draco, hearing of your improved circumstances has indeed lifted my spirits, also one pallet of replacement photocopier paper. May your mercantile efforts be blessed with success.
Thank you, Preem Roadscum. My own spirits have never been higher, and by the next update of the holy webcomic I will have an appointment to have my circulatory system refilled with gold! Thank you for standing by my side, even in my decrepit state. Thanks to your friendship, I shall soon step from my elevator and into the world!
There’s a banker, here’s a thief
deals with one result in grief
the other will provide relief
What deals? That market was very much a shadow of its former self. Those traders who remain appear resigned to perhaps doing the occasional deal, but the vibrancy is gone. Even the desperation — the merchant’s first recourse in a downturn — has deserted the place, except for Meti’s new student.
Well, a sword makes a poor razor. He’s still got his scalp, and hair stubble, and about a billion cuts, which is why he looks like he just took a shower in an abattoir. Head wounds bleed like crazy.
I believe the page quote for Wielder of Names 2-30 is relevant:
“The power drawn from strength is mighty indeed. All men respect the sword.
Greater still is the power drawn from ultimate weakness. When a man has nothing to cling to, he has taken the first step to becoming Royalty”
-Words of Dyon, Knight Mendicant (est. third century post second-conquest)
“There is a power that commemorates and grieves, from whom nothing is taken, but who cannot be deceived. You might expect to be able to crush him in your hand, into bird-bone fragments.”
–The Invocation of the Ivory Dove
CUT US INTO NEW SHAPES
Ha. I was right.
Its quite like this card game where one player is the emperor and the other the slave. The emperor can kill any card in the game while the slave can kill none. However the slave can kill the emperor because he has no use for money and has nothing to lose, meaning he can win.
I see. It appears that Incubus was just a hairy tomato all along. Look at all that juice. If you blended him you’d be well on your way to one Hell of a Bloody Mary.
now, this makes you wonder what makes him hate her so much?
Maya is the one to whom Incubus directs his scorn. His feelings towards Meti are unknown.
Ah it’s truly a sad thing to see such long locks to be cut off from one so young, but it is expected given we long expected someone to lose their hair in this story. Still to see such beautiful thing destroyed to obtained the amazing power to subjugate the people of the wheel is another part of the divine paradox.
On the upside, Little!Incubus probably solved his lice problem.
To quote a charming sorcerer named Sindri Myr, “All power demands sacrifice… And pain. The universe rewards those willing to spill their life’s blood for the promise of power.”
Rewards them with useless power and acute blood loss. I’m not a fan of a deal where I get to make my own life miserable in exchange for making other people’s lives miserable or over. Nothing good comes of it, practically by definition.
Blood is Pain and Pain is Life
Preem Ocean observes the first rule of Sword Law. Recall, however, the second. The undefeated swordsman must be an -exceptional- fool.
Venerate the Lord of the Pit. Whose foolishness is supreme. And whose failure is all the more total for its presence.
Tests often serve a purpose beyond the immediate.
Remember well, the sword of maybe was given rusted and dull.
To shave your head truly one must dedicate yourself to care of the blade to bring a true edge from one so weathered.
Do not forget this lesson of sword law so hastily.
It is as the great teacher meti herself once said; a sword is a ugly, useless hunk of metal that can build nothing and must doom all who weild her to destroy orbe destroyed, by echoes of every cut made.
The first step in the path of the sword is to cast aside the sword and seize a brush.
It is always interesting to see how many there are who are willing to lay down their lives in the name of death and destruction.
I suppose there’s also something to be said about the “shave your head with a dull sword” prerequisite being good for weeding out those who lack commitment. If you cannot destroy your own vanity (and the integrity of your scalp), how can your master trust you aren’t just wasting her time?
On another note, she probably figures that a fool willing to do this to himself might as well be made into a warrior, so he can get himself killed faster. Sparing the normal folk of his idiocy. On the flipside, a person who balks at such an act might just be convinced that learning the blade is not worth it, and instead follow a less stupid vocation. Such as a noodle vendor.
Compare the last panel of this page and the previous page – no more snakey pointed teeth, cute button nose – Incuboy has suddenly turned from a horrific sharklet into a cutie pie!
Incuboy it is!
Well named o Fist-Of-Goo.
Cut yourself into a new shape. Fifteen percent off, up to twenty if you’re careless!
He looks so happy! Apparently, that doesn’t last.
And of course, this sets the stage for Maya to play catch-up.
And so two each get what they want.
For now.
Bargain accepted and made.
Royalty is to cut, of course.
bruh if you wanted a haircut, all you had to do is ask, smh
This little one has mastered the law of the fast. Given the choice of life giving sustenance, he chose the way of death. Subordinateing the physical and its passions to a greater end is a path to great spiritual power.
So… Meti and noodles are opposites. Death Dealer and Life Sustainer united in one slurpy feast? I like it!
“Yeah, I’ll teach the batshit crazy mutant kid. What could go wrong?”
*Internal Screams Intensify*
ABSOLUTE
OBEDIENCE
Inhaling like the fighter’s tricks
Connor doesn’t move too quick
I don’t want to buy your sticks
shorn of the earthly garment as bade
the seeker shall receive the sacrament of the blade
the first cut is the deepest and rends reality
slicing serendipity