WHEEL SMASHING LORD 1-13 to 1-14
Chapter: 1
“Here is a cut I call the Life Cut. It is adapted from my ancient master, who roamed the world when it is young, and taught it to me in a different and weaker form. Listen, whelp. I have improved upon her fragile schemes. Where once my sword hand was held by my master, this cut has a secret art that can roam and strike him. It is the most important thing I will teach you – the blade that cuts its own wielder.”
-Great Blade Hermit Ryam to his student Ryo
It has been quite a while since the last proper training montage. Nice to see it return, no martial arts media is complete without it.
Training montage + exposition = awesomeness.
“A true victory is to make your enemy see they were wrong to oppose you in the first place. To force them to acknowledge your greatness.”
Why don’t I realize that I already won?
As soon as I realize that, I will be back at square one, and I shall have to repeat this all again.
The cycle. Pure. Infertile.
She’s back!!
“A great warrior kills with his weapon, a greater still his hands, a greater still his tongue, a greater still a glance, yet the greatest have no need for killing at all.” – KSBD 3-46
Love the attention to detail here: in the last panel you can even see the scar tissue on her arm forming small ridges. It’s not just a pattern on her skin.
I find myself looking back onto King of Swords 10-139 and finding this to be quite prevalent.
Maya, your soul has tarnished, it is reflected in the corrosion of your blade’s tip.
You must find yourself at the wetstone to grind away the rot form soul and edge.
Now there’s some god-tier hair.
The obvious answer is to smash the wheel, restart the cycle and when the Army of the Dead is created find and kill Yuann as a youth before he becomes Jaggy.
Yep, I like it.
Regarding the monkeys that appear and trained with Allison at her house, Perhaps we can get more on them? Do they have a particular style and..I hate to say ‘how intelligent’ but do they understand Allison/others when they talk?
All this one know about them is that they’ll try to steal anything that isn’t nailed down.
I think Demiurge Maya’s going to want to adjust her top soon unless she wants to flash everyone. Her left strap went from being over her shoulder to sliding down her arm over the course of the last two panels…
I wonder… Given the nature of Allison, which shapes the direction I expect her to take this technique… I wonder if the chain of master and apprentice that reached Allison includes Intra, the King of Swords. His technique is no technique. He strikes idiot’s blows, but not just any fool could follow his example. One needs to be extremely dedicated to foolishness. And what is Allison’s determination to suffer through hell with a smile if not dedicated foolishness? I see a strange kind of symmetry in this. Out of all of the masters of the sword between them, some have diluted the purity of the technique with overcomplications, some have taken it back toward its roots, but only Meti successfully executed the original form. And soon, so might Allison.
Everybody speaks of Maya Ascended, but the real MVP is Mammons Cousin at the back wielding a sword with the mouth. Talk about following the path of the Blade.
I like it when the small Mammons hold stuff in their mouths.
I definitely hope the Kind Person with a sword gets some screen time.
Looking at the entirety of Meti’s teaching and philosophy, I come to the conclusion that she is a pacifist and holds violence in the highest contempt. Only as much as someone deeply familiar with it can.
Look at how Maya speaks of her own teaching – she once tells her apprentice that she will “Not poison them with the sword further.” Look what Meti says about the warring Demiurges – utilising the great power of their Keys “The way a man might use a particularly sharp rock.” And how her teachings are actually goal oriented – if you want to save the rat, kill the one intending to harm it.
As such, I believe the question is “How do I use violence to achieve a state where I will no longer need to use violence ever again?” And thus, as a master of violence (and little else) – “How do I create a world that does not need me?”
This, I believe, is why Maya abandoned her throne, this is why Meti lived as a drunk in a barrel and why she held Demiurges in such contempt – they strove the create a world that revolved around them, a world where the cycle of violence would never stop – because always there would be people hungering for the power of a god. And always a god would need to defend themselves, thus leading to more violence.
The ultimate goal of Meti’s sword art is realising that the world does not need swords and, as a sword master, the world does not need you. Destroy your Ego, the great enemy called “I”, remove yourself from the world. And if you wish to leave a positive impact – remove as many other masters of violence as you can on your way.
This is almost exactly the same as Jagganoth’s philosophy.
‘Why is it impossible to put a USB in the right way up first time?’
King Maya’s skin tone looks quite a lot darker here. Why’s that?
She’s out in the sun more and not spending time in the noodle shops…
Damn. Maya’s got some serious abs under that sumo fat.
We lost because we told ourselves we lost.
– Dead guy
The best part of any training montage: the wine-chugging breaks
Love them bronze-age descriptions of how powerful you are.
At first I thought she meant 50 excellent grade swordsmen at her command, which kind of seemed like a small number. Then I looked closer at her litter and realize she was probably talking about 50 actual swords, presumably for her own use. Did she wield them all at once, or simply select the perfect sword for any given situation?
Swords are near as common as specks of dirt, depending on where you look. Good quality swords, slightly less common, perhaps as common as the stars in the sky. Fine quality swords are perhaps one a galaxy, so still not terribly uncommon.
Excellent quality swords? On average, if you sift through about 17 universes down to the last atom, you’ll find one. This is because it is rare to find someone good enough at forging swords to make one that has not concluded it is a foolish endeavor and instead went about making excellent quality kettles. Excellent quality kettles are the far superior tool, as you can make many things with boiled water, and only corpses with swords.
Corpses also make for poor tea, another mark against them.
I might be mistaking my finger for the moon, but it sure does seem to me like YISUN defeated I by becoming We. So I’d recommend starting the question there, Allison: how do We?