(L) Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? [WN]

[Arkeus]

Originally Posted by kari-no-sugata II

Not sure what you mean by that. Potimas is saying that a god's utility is a combination of the amount of energy it has plus the knowledge it has. In System terms, "energy" = MP and "knowledge" = magic related skills.

He seems to think that Gods are only brute force, and have no subtilty/utility abilities. His plans are extremely straightforwards and also very easy to counter.

Basically, he thinks that Gods are limited to the same magical abilities one would see in the system.

He is like a noobie that think he is very smart to think of cheating until he realises that no one has ever existed that didn't cheat.

Maybe he doesn't but even if that's the case he would still need to "spend" energy to create the same effect internally. Potimas's plan is basically "make the opponent run out of energy" - it's very simple and very "boring". It would be very effective if the execution has no "holes" (loopholes, flaws).

Like this assumes that he would need to have a spell that uses energy to breath, instead of thinking that gods have spells that use energy outside to breath, or that their bodies are simply different enough that they don't breath, etc.

[Amuris]

I wouldn't call his methods straight-forward but you do have a point. He's basically making the assumption that they must constantly use energy to create effects. Meanwhile, if you look at just the magecraft that makes up the system, you'd see that they can use magecraft to alter the structure and genetics of an organism into something new. So one of the first things you would do when you become a god is to alter the basic structure of your body so that it is immune to the weaknesses a living organism would have, such as taking away the need to breath.

Here's where that goes wrong though. How would you change an organism so that it doesn't need oxygen to breath? A large organism, particularly it's brain, cannot be supported by something like anaerobic respiration and even that needs you to gather outside resources. You would have to come up with an original biological system that would somehow be able to manage without external resources, which would defy our basic understanding of what an organism is. If you can't do that, then you must still supplement your functions with energy, which is precisely Potimas's point...

In short...Potty's actually on point with this...

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by Amuris

I wouldn't call his methods straight-forward but you do have a point. He's basically making the assumption that they must constantly use energy to create effects. Meanwhile, if you look at just the magecraft that makes up the system, you'd see that they can use magecraft to alter the structure and genetics of an organism into something new. So one of the first things you would do when you become a god is to alter the basic structure of your body so that it is immune to the weaknesses a living organism would have, such as taking away the need to breath.

Here's where that goes wrong though. How would you change an organism so that it doesn't need oxygen to breath? A large organism, particularly it's brain, cannot be supported by something like anaerobic respiration and even that needs you to gather outside resources. You would have to come up with an original biological system that would somehow be able to manage without external resources, which would defy our basic understanding of what an organism is. If you can't do that, then you must still supplement your functions with energy, which is precisely Potimas's point...

In short...Potty's actually on point with this...

Potty has a point on the Gods/HigherBeing requiring energy but he has a blindspot on how gods/HB acquire their energy. It is one thing to get in a war of attrition and make your enemy run out of energy but if you don't know how your enemy generate their energy in first, that tactic is doom to failure if you can't prevent them form replenishing their energy.

[J4n1]

I think it's dangerous to assume that gods even require anykind of physical body.

[Amuris]

Then what form of energy generation would actually work here? If you can alter your respiration to use carbon dioxide, then you need constant access to water and energy to make it into something usable. If you rely on consumption, what can you consume? If your using something like gluttony, would it still work while the magicraft jamming field is still up? Shiro would be able to manage but only because she can breakdown the jamming itself. Besides having so much energy you can just break out by force, you can't really just bruteforce(endure in this case) your way through.

@J4n1

From what we've seen of Shiro, she actually does require a body to function. Her ability to think/use magecraft is directly related to the host brains she has access to. If a brain becomes damaged, her ability to use magecraft decreases. If she gains more, it increases.

[J4n1]

Shiro has been god for less than two decades.
It's quite possible that she could learn to ditch her physical body completely in time.

As for energy generation, where do gods get their energy from?
It can't be from food, they'd have to constantly eat to do the things they do.
Do they leach energy from the universe?
Have a set amount of "fuel" like a star and burn it steadily (with ability to get more fuel)?
They probably can pull energy from the System as is, but that might be stopped by Potimas's anti magic field.

[Okashira]

I'm roughly guessing that everything the system does (taking energy from people's souls or the planet's life); is something that the gods can originally do, but with varying levels of ease and or resistance or time invested. I'm also guessing that gods sucking juice out of the planet is why there is so much sensibility about a god crossing to another god's territory (it would be like poaching or illegal fishing? every time you go to someone's else land, it's assumed you pocketed something from there without anyone else noticing).

[Amuris]

Being able to completely ditch her body is entirely an assumption. We've never even got narration without a host body.

For energy generation, we get back to an older discussion we had. If there was a quick way for gods to gather energy in proportion to their feats, this game of conserving strength over years for the battle wouldn't have occurred.

[kari-no-sugata II]

Originally Posted by Arkeus

He seems to think that Gods are only brute force, and have no subtilty/utility abilities. His plans are extremely straightforwards and also very easy to counter.

Basically, he thinks that Gods are limited to the same magical abilities one would see in the system.

I don't get this impression from him at all.

He's saying that using magecraft requires energy, which means that magecraft is limited by the energy requirements and that this applies to everyone including gods. That's a pretty obvious and fundamental limitation. Shiro is well aware that she can't waste energy. He also says that magecraft is limited to one's knowledge of magecraft and reality in general and that this also applies to everyone including gods. This also seems pretty obvious and fundamental. For example, Shiro says she could use the System to resurrect someone if necessary but has no idea how to actually do it herself (ie with magecraft).

Potimas is not looking down on gods by saying these particular things - effectively he's stating limits of reality as he sees it. He might be (unintentionally) looking down on gods as seeing them as nothing more than mortals with vastly more power/energy though.

Like this assumes that he would need to have a spell that uses energy to breath, instead of thinking that gods have spells that use energy outside to breath, or that their bodies are simply different enough that they don't breath, etc.

A lot of people seem to be assuming that Potimas's master plan for taking on Kuro depends on carbon dioxide poisoning. But he never says this. He only says it depends on making Kuro (or any god or any being) run out of energy. Given that Gloria Type Ω is specifically designed for very long term battles, he clearly doesn't expect a quick victory from carbon dioxide poisoning. If anything, it seems to be something he came up with specifically for Ariel, to give her a painless death. He might think it could help (in a small way) against a god but he certainly doesn't seem to be depending on it.

[Okashira]

^^ But using only isekai to judge, you need to add extenuating circumstances to the mix : even if it was easy to take out energy out of the planet, Kuro and Shiro wouldn't do it since the whole mess is due to the star running out of batteries; so you can add that as a factor.

Rather, the fact that humans/lifeforms are already using the star's energy and were doing it even without 'clues' giving by the system; makes me think that it's pretty damn easy to get your hands on that and sucking out as much as you need.

[kari-no-sugata II]

Originally Posted by Amuris

Being able to completely ditch her body is entirely an assumption. We've never even got narration without a host body.

We almost did in LN4, when we had some dialogue from Kumoko's Parallel Wills when Kumoko's main body had been blasted into lots of tiny pieces

Anyway... if I had just become a god, I certainly wouldn't immediately start messing with my body. Sounds like a good way to accidentally kill yourself or otherwise cause big problems. Experiment on others first

Also, I think Shiro's usage of clones is better to survive emergency situations. Rather than trying to make an indestructible body, probably better to have a body that can survive being destroyed.

I wonder what happened to Shiro's plans to make poison. She probably hit the same problem as Potimas but I wonder what solutions she came up with. Alcohol? Maybe hallucinogenic drugs

[Amuris]

Did those parallel wills have a host body, like, where they parasitizing the queens?

but, yea, poison is pretty funny like that. Poison, drugs, medicine, it's all very circumstantial. Caffine and Theobromine (from chocolate) are pretty close to cocaine. In fact, we can overdose on them. The whole reason dogs can't eat chocolate (they can actually, about as much as a human the same size) is that they have lower body weights so a smaller dose of theobromine kills them than does a human.

Honestly, to remove poison, you would have to measure by the amount of a chemical and not what the chemical is.

[Breimn]

She can make her own spaces.
Send enemy there, keep him busy with clones , make space-attribute spider nets to block teleportation once he gets stuck and fill the whole place with poison.

[Obstendro]

I remember shiro saying that even if her main body died she would not died thanks to her clone but she would be greatly weakened

[kari-no-sugata II]

Originally Posted by Amuris

Did those parallel wills have a host body, like, where they parasitizing the queens?

They were attacking the Queen's soul. I'm not sure if you could say if they were hosted there or not but if Kumoko's main body had died for real they would have died (they believe).

Originally Posted by Breimn

She can make her own spaces.
Send enemy there, keep him busy with clones , make space-attribute spider nets to block teleportation once he gets stuck and fill the whole place with poison.

Maybe just tickle the person to death!?

Actually, she almost did that on Kuro - hijacked his teleportation and kept him trapped in a sea of spiders inside another dimension.

Originally Posted by Obstendro

I remember shiro saying that even if her main body died she would not died thanks to her clone but she would be greatly weakened

She's said that she could survive her main body's death, eg in chapter 263. Though I don't remember her saying it would greatly weaken her (and can't find any such reference).

[m4rc0s]

Originally Posted by kari-no-sugata II

She's said that she could survive her main body's death, eg in chapter 263. Though I don't remember her saying it would greatly weaken her (and can't find any such reference).

well; i believe that she becoming greatly weaken once her main body is destroyed is a fair real interpretation without any possibilities to negate; even if we do not have a specify sentence about it in the novel so far like you said so let's look at the events linked to the "dead" of a main body , since we already had this before;
the first time ariel "Killed" her; she was reborn as small spider and took a lot of time and food to gain her strength back; in a way those eggs of her is no different than the clones we have so far; since kumo is a virgin spider without partner so her "eggs' being called a clone is not so far off and we have seen that there is also multiple levels of kumo's clones , so now even as "god" now i do not see it in any way different the end result of her losing the main body; causing her to become greatly weaken at least for short time.
after all we are talking here about "Main" body being destroyed;so let's also take a look at recent chapter and the info dump that potimas have given us about gods because even if he is wrong in some aspect like when he is devaluing the gods too much; he is in fact right when he sees the gods as huge batteries of energy.
so taking both of those events so far even if "all" of kumo's energy in a "normal" situation is being divided between her clones; we can say without doubt that the "main body" one would have the biggest share of that energy; after all is called main body for a reason; so losing it would cause her to become greatly weaken be it by the "energy" that is with that body being gone or in similar way in the process of losing it.
Others could argue that she could "transfer" the energy that the main body contain to the clones before dying and so on; but even so if we take a simple killing of the main body in a "normal situation" without any other interference; she would be at loss since she would still had to fight a lot before "dying" and thus sacrificing a lot of energy in the process.
the "main" body is called that for a reason if she could simple lose it without any penalty she would not be calling it main body; she would be swapping bodies like we swap clothes; and she does not do that she uses her teleportation instead to move around.

[J4n1]

Kumoko's first time being killed by Ariel has no bearing to nature of gods, as at the time she was not a god.

[Amuris]

But we do see her make clones for the sake of increasing her processing power by using their brains once she is a god. So, it's fair to conclude that she relies on the processing power of brains for her magecraft. Even if her power doesn't decrease from having a main body destroyed, all signs show that she still needs a physical brain to think or use magecraft.

[J4n1]

Yes, we do, but we do not know if this is required, or if she could just create immaterial parallel wills.
Shiro does rely on physical bodies and brains, so it probably is easier at minimum (if not required).

That said, what did the parallel will attacking Ariel use to think?
Was it still relying on Shiro's brain, using Ariels, or just existing as independent immaterial intelligence?

[sierra117]

does anyne have full illustrations of volume 5?