King of Swords 9-93
Yaun hid. The men roamed about the village, looking for him, two at a time, their feet treading down the soft earth of the smouldering village. Each footfall like a battering ram.
“God and his saints will protect us,” his mother had said, but they hadn’t. His mother had been split from nape to nave by a broadsword. He had never know there was so much blood in a person.
Yaun would have survived, would have stayed in that village, but he was the unluckiest son, and always had been. In among the men came Jantris, tallest of the dead men. He was a star warrior who wielded a vorpal sword art. His brow was clad with precious stones and his clothing was finer than the others, and less smeared with blood. Yaun could feel the heat of his breath even from his hiding place, but his limbs were too frozen with fear to move.
It took them less than an hour to find him, petrified, under the old water trough where he clung to the mud. He had been bathed in that trough, when he was a baby, and played with the pigs.
He was brought before Jantris, and the men laughed like hyenas, and made a motion as if to chop off his head with their bare hands, but they didn’t. Instead, Jantris, tallest of the storm lords, leant down to Yaun. His eyes were bright, like glowing smoke.
“Now you are dead,” he said, and handed him the hilt of a sword.
Baby is a master of an ancient proverb…
“YEET!”
This bitch powerful……YEEEEEEEET
Judo FLIP!
Beware of fatty
Don’t give up , skeleton!
I don’t see a skeleton. I do see a guy getting double teamed by those white skinned blue devils which we also saw previous page. At least I think they could be a variant, hard to tell.
Don’t worry my dude, it’s just another Dark Souls joke
Hmm. I don’t get it. Were Baby and the bird working together to kidnap Allison from the field? Why otherwise would Baby run across the pitch to only throw Allison away?
Whatever their plan was, if they had a plan, it’s gone awry since Allison face smacked birdman.
Narratively though, it’s just Abbadon setting up the scene for the fighters from the contest probably.
It’s a baby, it doesn’t plan, it just acts. Which makes them predisposed to be great warriors.
Your plan can’t fail to survive contact with the enemy if you have no plan. * Head tap meme *
I was wondering about that too. Either they’re hoping to isolate her and get the key, or maybe their priorities have shifted. For all we know, the events at Yre convinced them of her divinity, and they’re tracking her down to petition to become her champions.
Eris Lo-Kai didn’t seem convinced of divinity or petition to become her champion, or particularly impressed for that matter, he looked like he was thinking “This young whelp needs to be taught a lesson or two”.
Also, if they even had a plan (is birdman even in the original or later fights anyway? I don’t recall him being part of the pursuers), they’d have to either have someone be prescient or come up with one FAST.
As far as we know, it could be Abbadon deus ex machina-ing a forced scene change and I guess they were lacking anything already in-scene that could force a scene change.
Moving quick with the updates now.
I’m surprised that the Conan Expy is still alive. It must be his panther-like reflexes.
he is empowered with the
lamentations of women
I don’t think he’s Conan.
I think he’s possibly the younger Cohan, (The Barbarian,) and who lives to be very very old; will to become increasingly irritable and mostly preoccupied with things like a decent pair of dentures and soft toilet paper.
I could be wrong though ?
Big baby YEETS physical god into bird-man during martial arts tournament, we’ll have more at 11.
– GGG News Network
So… he didn’t recognize her?
Pretty sure he did. We still don’t know for certain what happened with the Following Stars after the Aunty deigned to reveal herself. For all that is, they may be Allison’s personal army now.
Or, as an option: Allison’s path would inevitably put her in opposition with other Keepers, Incubus including – and, if Aunty has something to say about it – it would inevitably end with only Allison walking away from the confrontation. Might as well wait a bit, and grab the power left unchecked in her wake.
If he recognized Allison, why toss her off? Why not rip the key from her brow and claim it for himself?
The pursuers are more like troublemakers looking for a fight rather than trying to get the key these days, they’ve stopped trying to kill each other long ago.
As confusing as Hirotomos actions are, if theres a plan, they’d have to had come up with one FAST. Maybe we’ll find out what Hirotomos reasoning was (other than maybe an odd deus ex machina to force a scene change), but most likely not.
They’ve stopped trying to kill each other, yeah. But how do you know that they have also stopped trying to get the key? As far as we know, that’s always been their goal. And just a few pages ago, Eris Lo-Kai was fighting Allison in deadly earnest.
From a can can orange brew
Not iron but still strikes true
You’ll know when the taste hits you
The benefit of designing dudes that get exploded a page later is that you can go wild with the design and the detail, since you won’t have to draw them for long.
The other benefit is that you get to draw a dude exploding.
Please support my new web comic “explode six billion dudes”.
Best comment ever.
Disagree, “ask your Vatra” back then under Gog-Agog’s tempting Allison was greater, methinks.
Pretty hard to miss the key in her forehead. Though it seems like it’s the pursuers (of those that are fighting anyway) are the only ones who actually know 100% for sure that it’s a key, otherwise everybody in the arena would be trying to target her.
edit: That was supposed to be a reply to Arianod, not sure how it got attached to the next post below them.
In one of the earlier chapters, a group of mages mistook it for a more mundane key after getting a much better look at it in far calmer conditions. It’s probably obvious that it’s a key of some sort, but that doesn’t mean it can easily be recognized as a key, I don’t think other people can easily tell if it’s a single key or a full key, let alone the master key. In fact, I’d recon that most people don’t even know Zoss made a copy of the master key.
It’s not a copy. Zoss lost his head, remember? What Allison has been seeing is probably a spirit or consciousness hidden within the key itself
Am I the only one who’s side-eyeing the Pursuers hard? First Eris and now Dontos just throws her without even giving her a squeeze.
Considering how brutal Allison’s previous opponents could be, it’s a very strange change of pace. Maybe it’s just authorial fiat but it feels like they’re going easy on her for an unknown reason.
Eris Lo-Kai did seem to be sort of playing around with her and teaching her a lesson. Though he did seem intent on skewering her with the sword. It’s unknown what Hirotomos intent was here.
While it’s plausible that Eris greatly underestimated her, Hirotomos actions do seem odd.
One thing is for sure, you don’t throw someone gently at the only visible high-flying individual in the arena by accident.
Many questions raised by my fellow KSBD fans… yes !
It would indeed be interesting to learn more about the various motivations of the Pursuers. We know they are all elite fighters with diverse specialties. Are they all seeking to capture Allison for their Guild masters ? Do some want to take the key for themselves ? Or do some of them have their own agendas ? Have any of them made temporary alliances with each other ? Are some of them already sworn enemies ? Stay tuned !
Since we haven’t heard word one out of Hrotomas, I’m guessing that he knows perfectly well who Allison is, and hopes to capture Allison intact and away from Solomon’s territory. If that were the plan – then throwing Allison out of the ring would disqualify her from the Tournament – and keep her alive. Then Hrotomas would just have to drop out of the Tournament to resume the chase. Allison’s presence in Solomon’s home territory is probably a big worry for all of the Pursuers.
They are, in a word, Basic.
Remember, these are opponents from waaaay back.
They were scary then, being fully trained bounty hunters, but now they’re rolling off the learning curve.
Al being constantly tripping herself up with questionable judgment is the only reason they’re even a threat.
Case in point, Gog had picked Eris to be an easy win for Al.
Everybody was surprised at how closely Al scraped by what should have been a shoo-in.
Just because Gog Agog thinks it’s an easy match doesn’t mean it actually is. The tournament proves Allison’s current level of power isn’t all that high in the KSBD universe if she’s getting her butt kicked and barely scraping by in “totally easy” matches.
This isn’t an anime where Allison instantly gets weaker or stronger based on how determined she is. She’s been training and making use of that training regularly and she still gets her ass handed to her by KILLBOSS.
And considering all the participants have made it to the latest round just like Allison did, and Hirotomos just wades through them like a child in a ball pit, outruns Allison, and overpowers her easily, clearly they’re not the “basic” dudes you say they are.
I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over how Basic an interpretation of “overpowers” it is to just throw someone pointlessly through the air.
Eris at least had weapons that could harm Al.
Baby doesn’t even know what to do with an enemy.
Throwing the enemy that distance would have been an easy win in all the previous rounds, though, so Hirotomos is at last using a pattern that worked before.
Excuse me, dumbass, I didn’t realize grappling someone who has explicitly superhuman strength and speed while tanking attacks from all directions without any kind of armor is “basic.” Maybe if you didn’t take everything you see at face value you might catch some of the subtleties in the story, like Hirotomos throwing her at the single flying character within range without even trying to squeeze being a little suspicious.
I, for one, trust Abaddon’s writing enough to not assume every character is suddenly a complete moron for the sake of plot advancement. If Hirotomos is smart enough to have survived this far, it’s fair to assume he knows how to kill people.
I like the response by White Chain. It is a learning experience for the apprentice. Reach heaven through shitting yourself.
“so much
for clean
underwear”
After being reborn so many times, all White Chain seems to have learned is bitchiness.
And after all that’s happened, Allison, with the basic fundamental Id of a bitchy whiny sorority sister, has learned nada.
It’s hardly ‘bitchiness’; it’s because of their fundamental power struggle enhanced by the fact that White Chain was lectured by Nyave about Allison’s heroic/ royal nature… if Allison is ‘the great I am’ she ought to be able to formulate a plan and carry it through. If she can’t, she needs to develop that skill- instanter. And what better time than now? It’s not like White Chain will just stand and watch as someone crushes Allison’s head to paste, or anything, is it?
Kronar, son of man, yet lives.
But he’s entirely too close to the sentient death spore for my liking.
Apparently, Chain’s body is composed entirely of salt.
Behold, the excrement is ablaze
-Some dude 400 years ago
I don’t know if I like this new direction White Chain is taking. She seems to have decided that Allison is too dangerous to the multiverse for her to assist, so she’s leaving her to survive or die.
A few pages ago she was openly wondering whether Allison should “be allowed to rule” or not.
White Chain may be a mentor figure, but she doesn’t seem at all like Allison’s friend.
Allison made the choice not to be pretty much anyone’s friend. She’s just interested in herself and what she can get from them.
I’m glad some people are starting to stand up to her and realize she’s not really a good person, or a person who’s worth helping because of her random position.
Exactly. Allison’s the protagonist, sure, but she’s not at all a ‘nice person’- she’s self-centred, governed by emotion rather than reason, and as you said treats people like her servants despite having no real conception of ‘royalty’ either in a general sense or one pertaining to the situation in which she’s found herself. She seems to think adopting a de haut en bas, snide attitude where she ‘speaks truth to’ if not power, people who have no reason not to be treated respectfully along with those ‘bad guys’ who DO warrant castigating, will carry her through. With her evident current lack of skill (or at least inability to bring what’s supposed to be great power to bear), she needs to cultivate people who will support her other than because ‘the universe would have it be so’ or whatever.
On the contrary. Allison entered this tournament specifically because she wanted to save somebody from being kept prisoner by Solomon David. Cio didn’t join her specifically because she thought it would be better *for Allison* if she left Zaid to his fate.
Allison being in this tournament at all is evidence that she is, at least in part, a good person.
‘Good’ and ‘nice’ are quite different things…
Don’t worry Allison, the Unspoken Plan Guarantee will protect you!
Bold of you to assume that there is a plan
Ha! My two faves, Centipede Woman and Crazy 8 Guy are facing off in panel 2! Yee haw!
Sheer gold from top to bottom. Hope the story of Yaun & Jantris will have continuation, I sorta miss those long additional tales of old.
And well yeah, I agree with those above who find the sequence in the first frames quite odd.
The amazing character designs.
It doesn’t stop.
EVER.
I absolutely love the little fables that accompany these comics sometimes.
That… is fair.
Doctor Manhattan developed sense of style by the times he hit 50, I see.
Anybody else find it interesting that the number of dots around Giant Baby’s keyhole have been counting down? There are six in the last image, just as Giant Baby gets near, then five when Giant Baby grabs Alison, then four when Giant Baby throws her.
Hrmm… Panel 6, back there behind the Ogre-Magi, looks like maybe the Lord of the Rings is kickin’ up some dust.