Nyave’s alternate story ending implies that Allison ruling the heavens could be worse than Jagganoth wiping out the universe.
Allison’s limited 35-year mortality is the only assurance she can give Nyave.
I don’t think it’s silly at all, it’s just the natural result of long-term thinking and good leadership!
Obviously, the most important goal that can possibly be accomplished right now is to stop Jagganoth’s total destruction of the universe. However, a good politician is rarely ever focused on a single goal, or committed to a single outcome. To put it another way, Nyave is a civilian leader first and foremost, not a military one, and thus her main concerns are not about winning battles but rather about what happens after a battle is won or lost!
If Allison & her crew fails and Jagganoth really does destroy the universe, Nyave would like to ensure that as many people as possible are able to live out relatively secure and happy lives in her Empire for the brief period before that happens. But more importantly, if they WIN, there’s going to be a hell of a lot of really impactful decisions to make! If nobody puts some thought into those decisions beforehand, and Allison is just left to do whatever she feels like doing in the moment once she’s Supreme Ruler of All Reality, that could be…bad. REALLY bad. Nyave is being very courageous and responsible right now by voicing her very grace concerns to the lady literally named Kill Six Billion Demons, and I’ll thank you not to disrespect her!
The demiurges have been an excellent object lesson on how the power of the throne of heaven is maybe never all that great for the little people. Allison is a good person, but a person doesn’t make a good god. The best god, KSBD seems to suggest, is an absent one.
“Instead of a Dark Lord, you would have a queen, not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Tempestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love me and despair!”
Its an interesting worry. Her becoming the unquestioned and absolute god of the world and reigning for geologic time… would pretty much just be maintaining the status quo. She will not have made things better but they also would not be worse. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
To worry about that overly much means that you are more or less accepting that Jagganoth is right, or would be right if he was actually successful this time around. That anything (and thus nothing in the primordial sense) would be better than… this.
She can’t rule eternally in a few decades and, even if she had a billion years and was an boot upon our necks, that is just passing the buck to some future people.
The point is that seven demiurges ruling different parts of the world have a balance of power. If one of them starts to get too strong then the others will put them in their place. They’re the big fish in the pond but there might be room for some smaller players to give them tribute, or maybe flee one of the worse empires into one of the less worse ones.
With one goddess, there’s no balancing. You can’t escape her even if it would be to go into the arms of another tyrant. The world wouldn’t really be the same as it is now, at least from a political standpoint.
That doesn’t mean that Alison SHOULD be feared or that the universe under her rule would be worse for normal people than with the demiurges. It’s just that for a politician it’s probably a little intimidating to think of a political situation completely dominated by one maybe fallible person.
I do not mean that everyone is a scumbag or any pessimistic shit like that, I mean that everyone makes mistakes and if you have all the power then the repucussions of those mistakes will reach far and wide.
This seems super stupid: what if you, the person who has not explicitly stated they will destroy all existence, wins? Like wtf? Unless Alison plans to make an infinite torture machine for everyone to go in, I think rule under her is better than Jagganoth annihilating all reality.
Death is a rest, until you are pulled from it.
But here, Time Is Cyclical, thanks mainly to Metatron…. So death is just a break until the big M hits the reset button.
So it’s more like “Someone who cannot imagine a fate worse than annihilation is either ignorant of how horrible life can be made or not particularly imaginative.”
Yeah, infinite tyranny would result in less people immediately dead. Doesnt mean its guranteed to be better for anyone. They dont just want to mitigate harm, they want to make things better.
Well… actually, all the speakers above seem to forget that currently the Wheel IS an infinite torture device, which reloads every time after Jagganoth destroys it. Which the Red God admittedly tries to break, but fails one time after another. So it’s all pretty convoluted.
…ok, I know I talked about pretty much this exact topic in another comment up above, but I’d like take a different tack this time.
All that Nyave said here, EXPLICITLY, was that she gave Allison a welcome that was “less than warm”, and that she and others are “frightened” of what may happen if Allison wins. Some people may think that this implies a request, because if one says one is frightened of something, i.e. Allison’s victory, than that implies one would rather it not happen. These people clearly know nothing of War or Bureaucracy. If they did, they would know that Fear is not merely something to be avoided, but a complex landscape that must be explored, cultivated, and utilized to its maximum potential.
That Nyave – and basically everyone else in the universe – is afraid of Jagganoth’s victory should really be something that goes without saying, an underlying assumption in all significant discourse since the Great War began. And it can, in fact, co-exist quite amicably with the newly-stated fact that she is ALSO afraid of Allison’s victory. No matter who wins, Nyave’s still going to have to deal with the fallout! And maybe, if she voices this particular concern to Allison, the demiurge will be a little more thoughtful when the time comes, and the fallout Nyave will have to deal with will be a little less severe. …Or maybe she’ll just get decapitated for having the audacity to question her new demiurge. But that’s a risk she’s willing to take.
And being decapitated for questioning would itself be an answer here. Seeing Allison’s reaction to having her motives and goals questioned will tell them a lot about how she will act as essentially a god.
They’re proposing deposing one of the eternal immortal dictators of the multiverse, which would leave a power vacuum of the most tremendous size. Allison, as they do not know the true plight of their world, would then be the most powerful entity in existence. What is disturbing about faith in the nature of conquest?
So Zaid is revealed to be what I always thought him to be: a douchebag of omniversal proportions. I am somewhat surprised by Nyave’s betrayal (it really can’t be called anything else), but it’s not the biggest twist in this story, not by far.
Confusing. Zaid was not assigned a task, and I don’t see what Nyave is supposed to do to help. It makes sense for them to stay and maintain order. Are you saying it’s a betrayal because they seem to be in a relationship now? That makes no sense, because Allison and Zaid were never a couple. They also haven’t seen Allison for years and assumed she was dead for most of that time.
Nyave’s speech about their ruling clique (yes, that’s what it is, nobody from outside the usual crew are on the committee) being hesitant about Allison is patently insane. What is the alternative? Shall we rephrase the theme of this comic to “Break the Wheel and Put Democracy In Its Place”? Or how about “Royalty Is a Continuous Voting Motion”?
Yes? That’s pretty much where the comic is headed.
Remember that defeating Jagannoth is the easy part. That’s pretty much preordained, based on the countless prior iterations of the universe. The real problem is that Zoss is observing from…well, somewhere, with his hand on the Reset-The-Universe button.
I’d argue the whole point of the comic is that Zoss has been trying to figure out a way for societies to function without authoritarianism (or tyranny,etc). He couldn’t do it himself, so he’s been passing the buck and making someone else do it (Allison, currently).
In the prior iterations, the Chosen Heir defeats Jagannoth and ascends to take the throne, and apparently Zoss has never liked the outcome. Because he always resets the universe thereafter. Given his speech about having mastered the wheel but being unable to prevent its ruin combined with that, I think it’s safe to infer he doesn’t believe singular individuals with god-like powers will work.
Regarding Allison specifically, she doesn’t seem to be much concerned with governance. She just wants to stop Jagannoth. But it’s not enough to just win. A Song of Fire and Ice (aka Game of Thrones) is a great example of what happens when the “good guys” win but don’t have a concrete plan for managing society thereafter.
So yes, even when Allison defeats Jagannoth, she may not meet Zoss’s expectations. And if Zoss isn’t satisfied, he’s just gonna reset the universe again.
Self-governance may be enough to stay Zoss’s hand, though.
If this comic holds to Kabbalistic lore, Metatron is Kether, the Crown of God, and also the Voice of God. IOW, Metatron is, in fact, the power that Allison wields.
This power has been leading her all along to take things one step at a time and be open to all possibilities that may arise, so that she may choose how to take her next step.
If Allison chooses to rise past the pattern of the old gods and give that choice to everyone, I do not think Metatron would be even annoyed, much less angry. In fact, I think this is the result he would like.
I assume they put it to a vote when they decided if they rescue Alison. Nyave voted ‘No’ apparently. Zaid sided with her while the other three voted to rescue Alison.
It’s been a while but ‘Zaid is the Chosen One!’ while Alison is a weird mistake. Did Nyave want to wrench Alison key and give it to her boyfriend? Zaid their best alternative against Jagganoth if Alison mustn’t be trusted.
They’ve been apart for what, like five years now or something? In all that time they met back maybe four times total? Sure chapter 1 Allison wanted to “find her boyfriend”, but all the actual times they even encountered each other were YEARS after that point, and neither of them seemed particularly preoccupied with getting back together by then.
Just because we haven’t seen them say on-screen that they’re breaking up doesn’t mean they’re both still committed to a relationship. You don’t have to say it out loud for a couple to be over, they literally drifted apart.
And even if we’re somehow still holding them up as a couple, Allison cheated way harder than this, and was the first to do so by YEARS. How is Zaid the one in the wrong here?
Both of them moved on, due to various circumstances. This page is just a clear example of that.
As for why they’re acting embarrassed, I assume it’s less the idea that this is cheating and more the fact that someone barging in on an intimate moment is always awkward, and probably doubly so when the person in question is your ex.
Or, maybe, didn’t feel a war council debating the Omniwar was the time to spill personal tea. They might just not be into PDA.
Allison and Zaid haven’t been romantically entangled for literal years. She went on to have a relationship with Cio, which is fine. She’s said she wanted to help him because it was the right thing to do. He went to pull her from Jadis for the same reason.
how is zaid being a douchebag here? and how is nyave “betraying” allison? she explicity states that she’s not helping allison because the celestial republic needs her… unless it’s about her questioning whether allison can be trusted after she attains Literally Infinite Power, which is a good question to ask I would think
Zaid is boning the only person in the multiverse that Allison could possibly be upset about, except for maybe White Chain and we know that’s not going to happen. After all these years, I’ve come to see Zaid as a horndog comedy sidekick who gets everything handed to him on a silver platter, and this chapter doesn’t change my mind. And I’m not the least bit jealous, or bitter.
100%
It can’t be the relationship or the fact that they’re expressing concerns that literally any non-immortal god-slaying super saiyan would be feeling in these circumstances. Because both of those factors are 100% valid and reasonable, unless one were to drag their own baggage into the comic enough to basically be reading a different story.
Why would Allison be upset about Zaid banging Nyave? It makes no sense.
What they were afraid of, was that Allison might see their unwillingness to directly participate in this “final mission” as a betrayal. They were afraid that she might think that they were putting their relationship above saving the universe.
“Oh, so you’d rather stay here being all lovey-dovey, playing as king and queen while we risk our lives to save the universe? Such nice friends I have”
Of course someone needs to stay behind. The people need someone to keep things going while everyone else is off to save the universe
WHY would Allison be upset about Zaid hooking up with Nyave, specifically?? I also don’t understand the comment about White Chain – we have no reason to even think she experiences sexual attraction in the first place, but if it were revealed that she did that would hardly be a surprise. I don’t think Zaid’s her type anyways considering how straight-edge she is, but it’s not an impossible development like you treat it to be.
I don’t understand this weird reading of the character that views Allison as a posessive bitch who would be mad that two of her friends hooked up, as though they should have ran the idea by her for approval first (during a time they all thought her to be dead, by the way).
As for Zaid I don’t get the hate. He was absolutely a stereotypical college fuckboy from what we can tell in the opening pages, but then he spent THREE VOLUMES being a literal damsel in distress with no agency or characterization. He is VERY obviously a subversion of the gary stu trope you seem to see him as (and I don’t think he’s cracked a joke even once in the entire series, so not comic relief either). He became a somewhat badass ninja after being saved by Allison and being given a 3+ year timeskip to train on that, and even then he needed to be saved by Allison again immediately after giving her a pep talk.
Gods forbid that the … “guy on her college to-do list” find love. They weren’t in love, She wanted to have sex with Zaid simply to prove to herself she wasn’t a loser nerd (her view). She didn’t even really seem to WANT to have sex with him. Then she went off for more than five years with in a lesbian polycule sorta arrangment and left Zaid to rot, when finally meeting him again, it was just “Hey, whats up?” not “Oh my love! My beloved!” Gods forbid Zaid actually becomes his own person, with his own desires, rather than a sort of trophy boyfriend to the main character.
I’m sorry, but how exactly is smashing her way through the personal places of power of two demiurges following her only lead on him, then losing that lead and training because she knew she was not strong enough to do more than blindly stumble around with an excess of power but no way to reliably utilize it after having shucked off Incubus’ influence, and only finding out it was Solomon who had him when Gog-Agog told her to get her into the tournament, which she promptly rushed off to, “letting him rot”?
Allison/Zaid hasn’t been a thing since at least Book 3 and she’s been assumed dead for a number of years by this point. She’s far past being into him my dude.
I do not believe most mortals would qualify this as “betrayal,” and more importantly I don’t believe that Pree Allison, Pree Naeve, or Preem Zaid would consider it such, not to any significant degree.
Allison and Zaid’s relationship was never particularly deep, or long-lasting. Allison has observed that she sought to rescue Zaid less out of a sense of specific romantic love and more out of a sense of general compassion. She also had a much lengthier relationship with Cio, which was also more recent, especially from her perspective given her lengthy coma. It does not seem to me that she’d particularly mind whether Zaid had made another relationship in that time, especially considering the larger issues that she has to focus on.
Meanwhile, Zaid and Naeve have been working together for close to four years, unsure of whether Allison was even alive. It is far from implausible that they would develop romantic feelings in that time, which is considerably longer even than Allison’s time with Cio. They both may have had some mixed feelings about a relationship given their mutual ties with Allison (Zaid’s former lover and Naeve’s friend). But given her more recent relationship with Cio and the fact that she was missing for several years, possibly dead, I think it’s quite reasonable for them to conclude that that shouldn’t be an obstacle to something they both wanted.
Similarly, since this relationship appears to be entirely consensual and since Allison was known to have moved on to her relationship with Cio, it does not seem to me that most mortals would qualify Zaid’s actions here as emulating a bag of douches, regardless of the proportions.
Oh Nyave… In the span of a few years you’ve already gone from “the seven are just people and have no right to do anything they’re doing” to “at least with the demiurges there was counterbalance”? If so, you’re already part of the system that needs upending.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s one or the other. We can recognize that the demiurges were all uniquely powerful, uniquely awful people…who would have likely been MUCH WORSE if any one of them were the only sovereign power.
She seems to be just worrying about Allison being that worst-case scenario – a tyrant with no competition, as opposed to one at contest with others.
I’m surprised at the amount of bad readings of this page.
Nyave is NOT saying that the Seven were good. She’s making the point that Allison as the sole ruler of all reality has the potential to be far worse, simply by the nature of being a sole rule holding literally ALL power with nothing to counterbalance her will.
She is NOT saying they should return to the system of the Seven. She is NOT saying Jagganoth should win. She is NOT saying that Allison taking the throne isn’t their best course of action. And she sure as hell isn’t saying that she’s sure Allison will turn out bad on the throne.
She is saying that when they were suspecting she was still alive, they made a conscious decision not to go look for her, for fear of the outcome that she might win. (A decision Zaid ultimately defied, now we know why he said “I wasn’t even supposed to come here” when they last met.) She is saying this even with the balance of the seven having already been shattered, and the most likely outcome in Allison’s absence being what — total annihilation as promised by Jagganoth! That’s really saying a lot.
No, she says there “was a discussion,” you’re drawing your own conclusions after that. She says nothing about any sort of decision to not find Allison.
As for the Zaid quote, I hunted it down and the rest of his speech bubble there says: “But when I had my suspicions – ”
That suggests he came as soon as he or anyone else began suspecting that Allison was alive. Why he shouldn’t have come is also entirely ambiguous; even if it was AFTER the group discussion, it could have just as easily been to avoid provoking an all out war immediately, like what happened when Allison broke into Yre to rescue Zaid, pretty much the inverse of what he did in Book 5 for her (and probably what motivated him to try anyways).
It’s like they all have forgotten Zoss.
Before the 7 there was Zoss. Supreme and powerful. The 7 barely counterbalanced him. When Zoss vanished was when the worst of the excesses of the 7 started.
Probably.
But Zoss may not want to interfere- or be able to.
Metatron is doing something with time, and while Zoss has been shown to be aware of it, he may have been ensnared by a subtle trap.
Every fortress can fall if someone manages to sneak in to sabotage the gate or kill those within as they sleep after all.
technically they were always at Allison’s mercy. It’s pretty stupid to even bring this point up it’s more like they’re coveting their new found authority
I think the reality of it just sunk in/hit them. Almost dying, seeing everything else obliterated and having to deal with fall out, knowing it will likely end so soon, will do that to a person or nonperson.
I get what you mean. She talks about how there was at least some counterbalance with the 7 demiurges, even if it wasn’t perfect. But that counterbalance is long gone with Jag’s attack and killing of two of the Demiurges.
But I don’t think it’s a stupid question to ask anyway. Sure, they’re either at her mercy or at Jag’s mercy and Jag is aiming for killing everything. But Nyave is still the ruler of the empire/republic, so its right of her to ask what will happen if they win. She might begin making other preparations depending on Allison’s answer and not necessarily preparations to overthrow Allison or kill her afterwards but things to mitigate damage or problems and ensure smooth running.
GET IT NYAVE
she really is going directly for his ass
Can ya blame her thoooo??
uh yeah? why wouldn’t she go for his tits???
why not both? she has two hands.
As she should
Called it. Omfg. Mr and Mrs Nyave Anyadis.
Good for them
alt: Alea Iacta Est
for those wondering, this translates to “Alison is milk”
oh wait thats not a lowercase L its an uppercase i…eh, probably doesnt affect the translation much
it definitely does lmao.
actual translation is “The Die Is Cast”
That is the joke, my unfortunate friend.
the *what*?!?!?
The yolk, of course.
wait, what does “iamo” mean?
But *I’M* Milk!
“The Die has been Milked”
Zai really needs to vioer up his… “dice”
FLOWER ATTACK GO
BLOOD FLOWER CURSE
YOU CAN’T FACE ME FOOL
「二枚舌花びら波状攻撃」(DUPLICITOUS PETAL WAVE ATTACK!!!)
Shut up Non-Royalty
「ゴーゴーガジェットフラワー」
(PETAL STORM)
I see that cheeky hand, girl, getting all up in there.
Damn Nyave, you let your boyfriend walk around in public with those things hanging out?
You keep a sample of the goods on display, but keep the premium stuff in the back
Haha! Favourite comment.
Lilies?
Yuri confirmed?
“No worries, I am going to be dead in 35 years. I don’t care about being a king until then. I think I might try to open a coffee shop.”
She’ll be the uncle Iroh of Throne
Wasn’t aunt Maya the Iroh of Throne?
They’ll set up on either end of whatever the throne equivalent of a strip mall is.
Go girl
Go get that royalty/ass
Royalty is a singular grabbing motion
Continuous. Royalty is a continuous grabbing motion.
Luckily he’s got enough bonk in that donk that she’ll never run out of ass to grab.
Oh poor naive Nyave… you’re already at Allison’s mercy
nyave going for that zass (zaid ass)
Nyave’s alternate story ending implies that Allison ruling the heavens could be worse than Jagganoth wiping out the universe.
Allison’s limited 35-year mortality is the only assurance she can give Nyave.
Frankly seems like a silly concern to have unless she’s got some specific ideas about how that could possibly be worse.
I don’t think it’s silly at all, it’s just the natural result of long-term thinking and good leadership!
Obviously, the most important goal that can possibly be accomplished right now is to stop Jagganoth’s total destruction of the universe. However, a good politician is rarely ever focused on a single goal, or committed to a single outcome. To put it another way, Nyave is a civilian leader first and foremost, not a military one, and thus her main concerns are not about winning battles but rather about what happens after a battle is won or lost!
If Allison & her crew fails and Jagganoth really does destroy the universe, Nyave would like to ensure that as many people as possible are able to live out relatively secure and happy lives in her Empire for the brief period before that happens. But more importantly, if they WIN, there’s going to be a hell of a lot of really impactful decisions to make! If nobody puts some thought into those decisions beforehand, and Allison is just left to do whatever she feels like doing in the moment once she’s Supreme Ruler of All Reality, that could be…bad. REALLY bad. Nyave is being very courageous and responsible right now by voicing her very grace concerns to the lady literally named Kill Six Billion Demons, and I’ll thank you not to disrespect her!
grave concerns*
The demiurges have been an excellent object lesson on how the power of the throne of heaven is maybe never all that great for the little people. Allison is a good person, but a person doesn’t make a good god. The best god, KSBD seems to suggest, is an absent one.
The best RULER is an absent one. More accuratly, even the best single ruler would be made a tyrant regardless of thier intent.
We could call this the Galadriel conundrum:
“Instead of a Dark Lord, you would have a queen, not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Tempestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love me and despair!”
Its an interesting worry. Her becoming the unquestioned and absolute god of the world and reigning for geologic time… would pretty much just be maintaining the status quo. She will not have made things better but they also would not be worse. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
To worry about that overly much means that you are more or less accepting that Jagganoth is right, or would be right if he was actually successful this time around. That anything (and thus nothing in the primordial sense) would be better than… this.
She can’t rule eternally in a few decades and, even if she had a billion years and was an boot upon our necks, that is just passing the buck to some future people.
The point is that seven demiurges ruling different parts of the world have a balance of power. If one of them starts to get too strong then the others will put them in their place. They’re the big fish in the pond but there might be room for some smaller players to give them tribute, or maybe flee one of the worse empires into one of the less worse ones.
With one goddess, there’s no balancing. You can’t escape her even if it would be to go into the arms of another tyrant. The world wouldn’t really be the same as it is now, at least from a political standpoint.
That doesn’t mean that Alison SHOULD be feared or that the universe under her rule would be worse for normal people than with the demiurges. It’s just that for a politician it’s probably a little intimidating to think of a political situation completely dominated by one maybe fallible person.
All people are fallible.
I do not mean that everyone is a scumbag or any pessimistic shit like that, I mean that everyone makes mistakes and if you have all the power then the repucussions of those mistakes will reach far and wide.
Henry Kissinger once said that power does not corrupt. What corrupts is absence of consequences. That applies to anyone and everyone, demiurge or not.
she’s 35? how do we know this? she looks the same as she was in the beginning age wise
No, it’s that she has 35 years left to live if Jadis’ omniscient prediction is true.
She’s not 35 – this is a reference to Jaddis telling Allison that she’ll be dead in 35 years.
I sincerely hope that that flower was not Gog-Agog; I know not the limit of the Worm’s talent for mimicry.
Huh, It seems Jadis gave a boon to Allison. With her preordained death in a mere thirtyish years, the potential for absolute tyranny is limited.
The real issue is where the Key of Kings will go after she dies. To the Factorium? Hidden away? Destroyed?
dibs
Very, *very* interested in seeing how Allison responds. Can the king of swords cast aside her blade?
i love nyave’s little grey streak, she’s not that old but the stress of the job must be getting to her.
Rulers age in dog years, democratic ones especially so.
Standing Tit to Tit you love to see it
Allison doing her best Spike Impression
::Bang::
This seems super stupid: what if you, the person who has not explicitly stated they will destroy all existence, wins? Like wtf? Unless Alison plans to make an infinite torture machine for everyone to go in, I think rule under her is better than Jagganoth annihilating all reality.
“Doomed is he that cannot imagine a fate worse than annihilation.”
– Some Guy, Probably
Death is a rest, until you are pulled from it.
But here, Time Is Cyclical, thanks mainly to Metatron…. So death is just a break until the big M hits the reset button.
So it’s more like “Someone who cannot imagine a fate worse than annihilation is either ignorant of how horrible life can be made or not particularly imaginative.”
*Allison, rapidly sweeping her ‘Perpetual Torture Device’ blueprints under the coffee table*
Whips out the Femur Breaker
At long last, she can create the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus
Yeah, infinite tyranny would result in less people immediately dead. Doesnt mean its guranteed to be better for anyone. They dont just want to mitigate harm, they want to make things better.
Well… actually, all the speakers above seem to forget that currently the Wheel IS an infinite torture device, which reloads every time after Jagganoth destroys it. Which the Red God admittedly tries to break, but fails one time after another. So it’s all pretty convoluted.
…ok, I know I talked about pretty much this exact topic in another comment up above, but I’d like take a different tack this time.
All that Nyave said here, EXPLICITLY, was that she gave Allison a welcome that was “less than warm”, and that she and others are “frightened” of what may happen if Allison wins. Some people may think that this implies a request, because if one says one is frightened of something, i.e. Allison’s victory, than that implies one would rather it not happen. These people clearly know nothing of War or Bureaucracy. If they did, they would know that Fear is not merely something to be avoided, but a complex landscape that must be explored, cultivated, and utilized to its maximum potential.
That Nyave – and basically everyone else in the universe – is afraid of Jagganoth’s victory should really be something that goes without saying, an underlying assumption in all significant discourse since the Great War began. And it can, in fact, co-exist quite amicably with the newly-stated fact that she is ALSO afraid of Allison’s victory. No matter who wins, Nyave’s still going to have to deal with the fallout! And maybe, if she voices this particular concern to Allison, the demiurge will be a little more thoughtful when the time comes, and the fallout Nyave will have to deal with will be a little less severe. …Or maybe she’ll just get decapitated for having the audacity to question her new demiurge. But that’s a risk she’s willing to take.
You, good Doctor, clearly understand diplomacy. Let’s hope Allison is still barista enough to know where this request is coming from.
And being decapitated for questioning would itself be an answer here. Seeing Allison’s reaction to having her motives and goals questioned will tell them a lot about how she will act as essentially a god.
Nobody’s saying “maybe it’d be better if Jagganoth wins,” this is such a ridiculous complaint comment that I have to assume it’s intentional.
Alison went chasing after Zaid, only for Zane to end up with Nyave. The best part is that Alison is cool with it.
The fact that her own friends are afraid of her taking over is… disturbing.
They’re proposing deposing one of the eternal immortal dictators of the multiverse, which would leave a power vacuum of the most tremendous size. Allison, as they do not know the true plight of their world, would then be the most powerful entity in existence. What is disturbing about faith in the nature of conquest?
Allison said Let Her Cook
So Zaid is revealed to be what I always thought him to be: a douchebag of omniversal proportions. I am somewhat surprised by Nyave’s betrayal (it really can’t be called anything else), but it’s not the biggest twist in this story, not by far.
Confusing. Zaid was not assigned a task, and I don’t see what Nyave is supposed to do to help. It makes sense for them to stay and maintain order. Are you saying it’s a betrayal because they seem to be in a relationship now? That makes no sense, because Allison and Zaid were never a couple. They also haven’t seen Allison for years and assumed she was dead for most of that time.
Or is it because Nyave is voicing her concerns? I’d hardly call that a betrayal, either. It is not a crime to doubt.
Nyave’s speech about their ruling clique (yes, that’s what it is, nobody from outside the usual crew are on the committee) being hesitant about Allison is patently insane. What is the alternative? Shall we rephrase the theme of this comic to “Break the Wheel and Put Democracy In Its Place”? Or how about “Royalty Is a Continuous Voting Motion”?
Yes? That’s pretty much where the comic is headed.
Remember that defeating Jagannoth is the easy part. That’s pretty much preordained, based on the countless prior iterations of the universe. The real problem is that Zoss is observing from…well, somewhere, with his hand on the Reset-The-Universe button.
I’d argue the whole point of the comic is that Zoss has been trying to figure out a way for societies to function without authoritarianism (or tyranny,etc). He couldn’t do it himself, so he’s been passing the buck and making someone else do it (Allison, currently).
In the prior iterations, the Chosen Heir defeats Jagannoth and ascends to take the throne, and apparently Zoss has never liked the outcome. Because he always resets the universe thereafter. Given his speech about having mastered the wheel but being unable to prevent its ruin combined with that, I think it’s safe to infer he doesn’t believe singular individuals with god-like powers will work.
Regarding Allison specifically, she doesn’t seem to be much concerned with governance. She just wants to stop Jagannoth. But it’s not enough to just win. A Song of Fire and Ice (aka Game of Thrones) is a great example of what happens when the “good guys” win but don’t have a concrete plan for managing society thereafter.
So yes, even when Allison defeats Jagannoth, she may not meet Zoss’s expectations. And if Zoss isn’t satisfied, he’s just gonna reset the universe again.
Self-governance may be enough to stay Zoss’s hand, though.
It won’t be enough to stay Metatron’s though.
And that angel both lives AND is pulling a sneaky one with Time.
If this comic holds to Kabbalistic lore, Metatron is Kether, the Crown of God, and also the Voice of God. IOW, Metatron is, in fact, the power that Allison wields.
This power has been leading her all along to take things one step at a time and be open to all possibilities that may arise, so that she may choose how to take her next step.
If Allison chooses to rise past the pattern of the old gods and give that choice to everyone, I do not think Metatron would be even annoyed, much less angry. In fact, I think this is the result he would like.
Pree Amoeboid stumbles into wisdom, as so many of us do. But will they grasp it, or let it pass by unnoticed like a winter breeze?
I assume they put it to a vote when they decided if they rescue Alison. Nyave voted ‘No’ apparently. Zaid sided with her while the other three voted to rescue Alison.
It’s been a while but ‘Zaid is the Chosen One!’ while Alison is a weird mistake. Did Nyave want to wrench Alison key and give it to her boyfriend? Zaid their best alternative against Jagganoth if Alison mustn’t be trusted.
Both Zaid and Nyave were clearly hiding their relationship from Allison, so they see the betrayal in it and I agree.
Are we going to ignore the part where Allison has been banging a demon for years?
Yeah like what “betrayal” is even here?
They’ve been apart for what, like five years now or something? In all that time they met back maybe four times total? Sure chapter 1 Allison wanted to “find her boyfriend”, but all the actual times they even encountered each other were YEARS after that point, and neither of them seemed particularly preoccupied with getting back together by then.
Just because we haven’t seen them say on-screen that they’re breaking up doesn’t mean they’re both still committed to a relationship. You don’t have to say it out loud for a couple to be over, they literally drifted apart.
And even if we’re somehow still holding them up as a couple, Allison cheated way harder than this, and was the first to do so by YEARS. How is Zaid the one in the wrong here?
Both of them moved on, due to various circumstances. This page is just a clear example of that.
As for why they’re acting embarrassed, I assume it’s less the idea that this is cheating and more the fact that someone barging in on an intimate moment is always awkward, and probably doubly so when the person in question is your ex.
This whole accusation of betrayal is just weird.
also… allison litterally paid him to do.. things
I honestly wouldn’t call him her boyfriend
Or, maybe, didn’t feel a war council debating the Omniwar was the time to spill personal tea. They might just not be into PDA.
Allison and Zaid haven’t been romantically entangled for literal years. She went on to have a relationship with Cio, which is fine. She’s said she wanted to help him because it was the right thing to do. He went to pull her from Jadis for the same reason.
i do not at all see or agree with that assessment?
how is zaid being a douchebag here? and how is nyave “betraying” allison? she explicity states that she’s not helping allison because the celestial republic needs her… unless it’s about her questioning whether allison can be trusted after she attains Literally Infinite Power, which is a good question to ask I would think
Zaid is boning the only person in the multiverse that Allison could possibly be upset about, except for maybe White Chain and we know that’s not going to happen. After all these years, I’ve come to see Zaid as a horndog comedy sidekick who gets everything handed to him on a silver platter, and this chapter doesn’t change my mind. And I’m not the least bit jealous, or bitter.
I feel like this comment has a weird amount of personal baggage that has little connection to the story as told in the comic.
100%
It can’t be the relationship or the fact that they’re expressing concerns that literally any non-immortal god-slaying super saiyan would be feeling in these circumstances. Because both of those factors are 100% valid and reasonable, unless one were to drag their own baggage into the comic enough to basically be reading a different story.
Why would Allison be upset about Zaid banging Nyave? It makes no sense.
What they were afraid of, was that Allison might see their unwillingness to directly participate in this “final mission” as a betrayal. They were afraid that she might think that they were putting their relationship above saving the universe.
“Oh, so you’d rather stay here being all lovey-dovey, playing as king and queen while we risk our lives to save the universe? Such nice friends I have”
Of course someone needs to stay behind. The people need someone to keep things going while everyone else is off to save the universe
“And I’m not the least bit jealous, or bitter.”
Yeah, that’s definitely something people who aren’t a little bit jealous or bitter say. Unbidden even.
WHY would Allison be upset about Zaid hooking up with Nyave, specifically?? I also don’t understand the comment about White Chain – we have no reason to even think she experiences sexual attraction in the first place, but if it were revealed that she did that would hardly be a surprise. I don’t think Zaid’s her type anyways considering how straight-edge she is, but it’s not an impossible development like you treat it to be.
I don’t understand this weird reading of the character that views Allison as a posessive bitch who would be mad that two of her friends hooked up, as though they should have ran the idea by her for approval first (during a time they all thought her to be dead, by the way).
As for Zaid I don’t get the hate. He was absolutely a stereotypical college fuckboy from what we can tell in the opening pages, but then he spent THREE VOLUMES being a literal damsel in distress with no agency or characterization. He is VERY obviously a subversion of the gary stu trope you seem to see him as (and I don’t think he’s cracked a joke even once in the entire series, so not comic relief either). He became a somewhat badass ninja after being saved by Allison and being given a 3+ year timeskip to train on that, and even then he needed to be saved by Allison again immediately after giving her a pep talk.
Gods forbid that the … “guy on her college to-do list” find love. They weren’t in love, She wanted to have sex with Zaid simply to prove to herself she wasn’t a loser nerd (her view). She didn’t even really seem to WANT to have sex with him. Then she went off for more than five years with in a lesbian polycule sorta arrangment and left Zaid to rot, when finally meeting him again, it was just “Hey, whats up?” not “Oh my love! My beloved!” Gods forbid Zaid actually becomes his own person, with his own desires, rather than a sort of trophy boyfriend to the main character.
No! They dated for 2 weeks! That means Allison has exclusive rights to him for the next 5 years – nay, for life!
I’m sorry, but how exactly is smashing her way through the personal places of power of two demiurges following her only lead on him, then losing that lead and training because she knew she was not strong enough to do more than blindly stumble around with an excess of power but no way to reliably utilize it after having shucked off Incubus’ influence, and only finding out it was Solomon who had him when Gog-Agog told her to get her into the tournament, which she promptly rushed off to, “letting him rot”?
Allison and Zaid haven’t been dating since page 9, what are you going on about?
Allison/Zaid hasn’t been a thing since at least Book 3 and she’s been assumed dead for a number of years by this point. She’s far past being into him my dude.
What is lil bro blubbering about?
I do not believe most mortals would qualify this as “betrayal,” and more importantly I don’t believe that Pree Allison, Pree Naeve, or Preem Zaid would consider it such, not to any significant degree.
Allison and Zaid’s relationship was never particularly deep, or long-lasting. Allison has observed that she sought to rescue Zaid less out of a sense of specific romantic love and more out of a sense of general compassion. She also had a much lengthier relationship with Cio, which was also more recent, especially from her perspective given her lengthy coma. It does not seem to me that she’d particularly mind whether Zaid had made another relationship in that time, especially considering the larger issues that she has to focus on.
Meanwhile, Zaid and Naeve have been working together for close to four years, unsure of whether Allison was even alive. It is far from implausible that they would develop romantic feelings in that time, which is considerably longer even than Allison’s time with Cio. They both may have had some mixed feelings about a relationship given their mutual ties with Allison (Zaid’s former lover and Naeve’s friend). But given her more recent relationship with Cio and the fact that she was missing for several years, possibly dead, I think it’s quite reasonable for them to conclude that that shouldn’t be an obstacle to something they both wanted.
Similarly, since this relationship appears to be entirely consensual and since Allison was known to have moved on to her relationship with Cio, it does not seem to me that most mortals would qualify Zaid’s actions here as emulating a bag of douches, regardless of the proportions.
damn, Nyave got that cottagecore garden, got that cushy government job, got that degree in mathematics, got that big titty himbo bf
We love to see a girlboss winning
Oh Nyave… In the span of a few years you’ve already gone from “the seven are just people and have no right to do anything they’re doing” to “at least with the demiurges there was counterbalance”? If so, you’re already part of the system that needs upending.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s one or the other. We can recognize that the demiurges were all uniquely powerful, uniquely awful people…who would have likely been MUCH WORSE if any one of them were the only sovereign power.
She seems to be just worrying about Allison being that worst-case scenario – a tyrant with no competition, as opposed to one at contest with others.
I’m surprised at the amount of bad readings of this page.
Nyave is NOT saying that the Seven were good. She’s making the point that Allison as the sole ruler of all reality has the potential to be far worse, simply by the nature of being a sole rule holding literally ALL power with nothing to counterbalance her will.
She is NOT saying they should return to the system of the Seven. She is NOT saying Jagganoth should win. She is NOT saying that Allison taking the throne isn’t their best course of action. And she sure as hell isn’t saying that she’s sure Allison will turn out bad on the throne.
She is saying that when they were suspecting she was still alive, they made a conscious decision not to go look for her, for fear of the outcome that she might win. (A decision Zaid ultimately defied, now we know why he said “I wasn’t even supposed to come here” when they last met.) She is saying this even with the balance of the seven having already been shattered, and the most likely outcome in Allison’s absence being what — total annihilation as promised by Jagganoth! That’s really saying a lot.
No, she says there “was a discussion,” you’re drawing your own conclusions after that. She says nothing about any sort of decision to not find Allison.
As for the Zaid quote, I hunted it down and the rest of his speech bubble there says: “But when I had my suspicions – ”
That suggests he came as soon as he or anyone else began suspecting that Allison was alive. Why he shouldn’t have come is also entirely ambiguous; even if it was AFTER the group discussion, it could have just as easily been to avoid provoking an all out war immediately, like what happened when Allison broke into Yre to rescue Zaid, pretty much the inverse of what he did in Book 5 for her (and probably what motivated him to try anyways).
Yeah, don’t just call me pessimist
Try and read between the lines
It’s like they all have forgotten Zoss.
Before the 7 there was Zoss. Supreme and powerful. The 7 barely counterbalanced him. When Zoss vanished was when the worst of the excesses of the 7 started.
Probably.
But Zoss may not want to interfere- or be able to.
Metatron is doing something with time, and while Zoss has been shown to be aware of it, he may have been ensnared by a subtle trap.
Every fortress can fall if someone manages to sneak in to sabotage the gate or kill those within as they sleep after all.
technically they were always at Allison’s mercy. It’s pretty stupid to even bring this point up it’s more like they’re coveting their new found authority
I think the reality of it just sunk in/hit them. Almost dying, seeing everything else obliterated and having to deal with fall out, knowing it will likely end so soon, will do that to a person or nonperson.
I get what you mean. She talks about how there was at least some counterbalance with the 7 demiurges, even if it wasn’t perfect. But that counterbalance is long gone with Jag’s attack and killing of two of the Demiurges.
But I don’t think it’s a stupid question to ask anyway. Sure, they’re either at her mercy or at Jag’s mercy and Jag is aiming for killing everything. But Nyave is still the ruler of the empire/republic, so its right of her to ask what will happen if they win. She might begin making other preparations depending on Allison’s answer and not necessarily preparations to overthrow Allison or kill her afterwards but things to mitigate damage or problems and ensure smooth running.
Negative Seven Reincarnations?
Ouch.