This one is real dialog heavy… though I imagine the dialog it does have seems a little… odd… hmm. Probably nothing to worry about there.
I’m a little behind on the next comic, but it’ll be on Patreon by Friday, can’t say 100% it’ll be up tomorrow as work is pretty busy – my current project really seems to be ending on Friday, so from there it’ll be a brave new world. I used to change projects every month or so, but I’ve been working with the client the majority of my time for over a year. Can’t say I’ll be sad to see it go though…
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It seems like I can make out two separate boost engines, one on the “tank’s” side and one on it’s inner arm. If we assume that this configuration is symmetrical and that the separate engine on the extremity holds true for all extremities, we are then counting at least 6 boost engines on the tank compared to the one on a suit of armor. This may be one of the things that makes boosting a tank significantly more difficult than a simple set of armor.
Also of note, one of the boost engines is destroyed during MIUM’s blocking of the punch, so a simple boost engine is not enough to stop his disintegration. Considering that boost engines mimic normal boosting, and that normal boosting is used to make the human body far more resilient than it normally is to both physical blows and magic, we now have good proof that MIUM could likely disintegrate a normal person if he wanted (though this might not hold true for a properly trained mage). That’s something a bit scary to consider.
I would note that neither fingers or, for that matter, a knife, are typically capable of severing an arm cleanly and effortlessly, yet they seem to have that effect for MYM. Not sure if that ties into the last point there… hmm… just seems like it might be related. 😉
This means, among other things, that MIUM was telling the truth when he told Rovak that he “wasn’t really trying to kill him” (back during the fight on the roof). This could simply be due to the “no killing without explicit permission” rule, but it seems doubtful that, considering Rovak’s apparent threat level, he wouldn’t fall into an exception clause somewhere. Then again the mission wasn’t intended to end in confrontation, and Rovak at that time wasn’t a direct threat, so maybe not.
Either way, it does still mean that MIUM could almost certainly have cut Rovak in half, making any defensive action MUCH more difficult; so MIUM was telling the truth about not actually trying to kill him.
Wow!!!!!
Worthy on note: Mium has not done anything offensive yet! Everything can be justified as a defensive action… he COULD have tried to cut Kardus in half: but only cut his arm off (you know: “I was trying to cut his arm off, and whoops, overkill, cut him in half… sorry!” (OK, so maybe that excuse doesn’t fly when you’re an AI and supposedly more accurate than that)).
I wonder what the tank driver was thinking when, after his/her sword (?) disintegrated upon attempted contact with the F10, they then try to punch the F10… (OK, heat of battle, new OP equipment, stupidity setting in… but trained combatants really should know better – must’ve skipped that day of training (the “keep calm & don’t do anything rash” day)). At least the way I read the panels, the tank driver does stand there (for a moment) looking at there sword arm, thinking “Huh, that did not go as I expected. Um, let’s try punching it!”. Oh wait! I get it: they’ve trained at the Naomi school of fighting: if at first you don’t succeed, PUNCH HARDER!
I mean, there is some degree of logic to how Naomi’s tactics work, so thinking like Naomi is not inherently just a bad idea, it just usually only works if you also happen to be Naomi.
The tank is considerably harder to just magic than the metal beam it was carrying; it’s not something that really has been delved into too much, but normal tanks suffer the problem of that they just aren’t that magic proof, which is one of the innovations of putting a boost engine on a tank – mostly we just see them on sets of armor, as it takes a lot more resources to equip a whole tank with them, as well as some more details we haven’t seen yet.
Not saying that trying punch the F10 was a good idea… just that there is a reason to believe it would might work better than the metal beam.
Things like this can be hard to determine, because certain characters tend to bad at following the rules of how things usually work. The most prolific booster we see is Naomi, and we frequently see that just random things she’s holding become much stronger than they should be (like a tennis racket), but that’s not exactly standard for boosted things.
So who breaks more rules: Mium, Kally or Naomi?
It’s a tricky question. I would say the Mium follows a different set of rules, Kally takes the rules to their logical extreme, and Naomi tends to bend the rules.
For Naomi, she sort of remains willfully ignorant of what should and shouldn’t work, relying on the fact that she doesn’t tend to traditionally calculate her magic; things like tweaking gravity or friction to run up the side of a building or reinforcing something you are carrying – it’s known magic, the reason that Naomi tends to be an exception is that she has a habit of doing these things inside the scope of boosting without consciously calculating what she is trying to do. There’s not much she can do that other mages couldn’t do in concept, but typically trying to do magic without fully calculating it just fails; I guess you could say her autocomplete is seriously abnormal, and she just has a huge amount of power to actualize changes that are more tenuous than a normal mage would try.
Kally on the other hand does calculate her magic, and is capable of making calculations of very large scale, but if you notice most of the times she has to calculating quickly, she always relies on the same few spells, despite being a natural magic with very extensive knowledge of the mechanics. For the most part, she’s just a very good natural mage, though she has dedicated a massive amount of her potential to perfecting the Eidos construct for her dragon, which is why people like her brother tend to refer to her as overspecialized. While she tends to be a weight class higher than most of the people we see because of her dragon, she’s not that overwhelming in a straight magical contest using her non-dragon attacks – as we saw in the airball match, forced to use normal nonlethal magic, she’s just very good. The dragon itself is a very specialized tool; the fact that tends to be able to swat and or bite things is almost a joke of its design – that it does happen to be a dragon shaped Eidos construct.
Mium is the trickiest to answer because he doesn’t violate the rules of magic (they wouldn’t be rules if they could be violated) but violates the rules that mages tend to operate under. If he lacks the Eidos key as most in comic suspect, he lacks the ability to actualize a calculation entirely, which should prevent him from doing anything truly construed as magic. Now, it is highly debatable in comic if boosting requires an Eidos key, but the boost engines themselves seem to indicate that the answer is maybe not (we’ve never technically seen someone use a boost engine that did not themselves have an Eidos key, but the boost engine itself is fundamentally not just an autocaster). The obvious question then comes from being “how does he disintegrate things?” where “things” seem to be both “magical effects” and “matter” and even “calculations in progress” which is a question there are some clues for, but I’m not going to fully answer in a comment right now 🙂 . We have seen both null casters and zones of interference (the area around a mage in which other mages magic tends to fail) before, so the idea of interfering with another mages magic isn’t unheard of, just that being as effective as Mium seems unreasonable to other mages; again while he doesn’t violate the rules of magic, he would violate the rules of mages to some degree.
On Mium, I thought you need an Eidos Key to compensate for ‘soft’ variables that don’t exist in a state of Yes/No. So Mium could enforce a calculation it just would be wrong because he can’t/doesn’t compensate for those variables causing it to (I assume) fall apart. Now if you mix that in with an ongoing function…
And I keeping thinking, what with the tron line-ish stuff that happens with Naomi, that she’s less boosting and more weaving an Eidos construct into her body/whatever she’s carrying. It also makes a lot more sense.
I cannot confirm or deny any of the contents of this post. 😉
Mium talks about Ila not being able to “read Eidos data” so my guess as to his abilities is that he’s able to read Eidos data, compute what is being formed, analyze where specifically targetted “mana particles” (I don’t recall what they’re called in-comic just now) will disrupt the construct or solid form and send them there in nanoseconds or faster.
So he doesn’t actually need to be able to trigger or cast a spell, per se, just send targeted mana particles. Since he needed the card from the Kor’s World attacker for his second chassis, it’s not surprising that he can at least send targeted mana particles.
He does appear to be able to do boosting too, not sure how much that’s similar or different.
Not only is this an immensely satisfying page for a) seeing an arrogant warmage being taken down a peg or two, b) seeing M.Y.M. unleashing his power to this degree (he took out the HVW strike earlier, but that was in the distance–this is more fun), but also c) seeing just how far @PastUtopia has come in using perspective. I am very impressed. 🙂
Oh wait. Are there still any conscious observers of this? (Hee~ I’d LOVE to see those reactions of right about now. ^.^)
Still! This is about as one-sided as I’m sure everybody was expecting. And as fun to watch as I was hoping.
You know guy in mech suit, I’m pretty sure Mium would have liked to ‘keep’ that. But now you made him go and delete parts of it, that isn’t going to help your chances.
Also stay away from the super death sparklies.
Also YEAH! Kardus realizing that the situation has just gone UBER SOUTH.
Meh. The tank is clearly Arpon military hardware, and therefore restricted.
That just means when Apron is gone it stops being military tech right
Before Malsa destroys all of these tanks, the IDS will find out about them (they may already have) and classify them as their own military hardware. Even if Malsa destroys all of the others to component pieces, the IDS will insist on taking as much of the remains as they can. After all, there is a significant amount of their tech in these things, and they have been shown to be very possessive of their tech.
So, no, these will not be non-military hardware any time soon.
While I agree with you in general, this is Mium we are talking about. I.E. The person that had a literally tank that was somehow “not military hardware” with a literally bomb inside it that was also “not military hardware”, a trick he followed up a chapter or two later by a missile deployed smoke screen that was also somehow “not military hardware”.
Basically, he if really wanted one of those things, I am sure he would find a way. But I’m not sure he even finds them all that impressive. Ila on her own could basically curbstomp one of them if Kardus hadn’t cheated.
Remember Mium prefers long ranged ways of shooting people in the back. The ranged capabilities of this tank are mostly magic based, which presumably need a human pilot to activate.
I wonder if Mium has progressed to not telling Peter anything unless specifically asked or the situation warrants it. Not in an evil slowly running amok kind of way but more of an analytic decision based on Peter struggling with how to explain when something is okay and the same kind of thing is not okay later. If that makes sense.
Probably going to be some report ‘soon’-ish of the warmage having something that can hinder Ila, and be at least distracting to him. Seems like an important detail.
And maybe some technical details related to be loaded onto the F-10 could be interesting, if not considered super important.
Um, yes, Warren, Mium’s been around long enough debug mode has mostly been turned off.
I find the English language fascinating in how much of it really says nothing, while dancing around the issue that it’s attempting to convey.
I do not have the impression that Mium has started withholding information from Peter when he feels like he can get away with it. It’s also my impression that Peter has provided the various restrictions in a way that have Mium thankful for the direction they provide, even if they are sometimes inconvenient. That having been said, it’s possible that this is a tipping point, as this was a pretty big restriction, and unless Peter clarified some situations when killing could be considered necessary (I would count this as probably one of them), it could be an awkward conversation later.
Last page had the A. A. system started.
From what I could fathom I think finding the excuse to turn that on gives Mium more leeway in terms of how much he damages people Peter hasn’t specifically told him to protect.
Aside from trying to make sure this flexibility won’t come back and bite him later, I don’t think Peter will object to removing witnesses (one being a warmage) to a combination of Ila & Mium kicking this degree of ass. With saving one of her friends on the line and the fact that they were about to murder him while he was down, I don’t think Naomi will take issue. Taki will probably be glad they’re dead. I’m not aware of anyone else Mium would be concerned with.
Are you thinking of another language where the linguistic problem of “dancing around an issue” isn’t present to the same degree? From what I have been told (and this may be completely wrong, since it wasn’t from a linguistic professor or anyone else with verified authority on the subject) English is actually one of the more direct languages out there. Of course the jury is still out on the question of if this is a problem of language being incapable of communicating effectively (either generally or specifically speaking), or if the issue mostly only comes up when each side refuses to adequately define terms or when one or both sides are actively being “difficult” about things.
The other language I’m thinking of here for more directness is actually English.
Some people use it to talk directly most of the time. Others don’t. But there are a lot of stock phrases that are more or less semantic nulls. They’re not *used* as semantic nulls, but if you think about the actual meaning of the words, they are. This is mostly only a problem for those who persist in trying to communicate with me and people like me.
I’ve tried learning other languages, and the lack of being able to speak directly in many of them is something of a brick wall for me. Admittedly, I apparently have enough brick walls in that direction that one more doesn’t really make a significant difference.
“Kill it!” wasn’t the correct order. “Retreat!” would be more appropriate. Or maybe “Run away!”
Mium severed an arm of a warmage, and didn’t even have a knife that time. I wonder if Ila’s high Psion output is giving Mium more power to work with than normal.
I would assume Kardus is aware of Mium’s status as a warmage killing machine, and is therefore sacrificing the magic-equipped robot to give him a few seconds to try and get outside of the immediate danger zone. How effective that would be given ILA’s supersonic flight capability and ability to do a good imitation of a HVW, remains to be seen.
When MYM pushes ILA back to her chassis, I am sure she won’t be as ambivalent over the warmage’s continued existence as Mium seems to be.
It’s going to be hilarious seeing Illa complain about broken fingers.
I suspect with MYM controlling it, it can probably regenerate. I think that Ila can’t is a flaw with Ila and not with the F10, given that the F8 (a more primitive model) could regenerate extensively (to the point where Rovak acknowledged him as a fellow immortal).
Hmm. Interesting point. I had assumed that Muim’s regeneration was some cool new tech that was added on to the F8 after Peter got ahold of it. But it could also be Muim’s magic. As far as I am aware, we have only seen Muim disintegrate things, not assemble things, but this could just be an AI restriction, and not a physical restriction on Muim’s magic. And we have seen Tyler undo damage with magic….
I thought that MIUM’s regeneration was more a function of his non-centralized contiousness and high memory capacity, such that he could have some “other” body do the regeneration on his body to bring it back to the exact specifications stored in his memory. I’m pretty sure it has been stated that MIUM’s limitation isn’t on spells but rather on the number of psions he can actually put out, a limitation that he overcomes by using extreme calculations and by hacking other people’s implants. Then again, considering that all we have seen him do comes down to what may be eventually labeled “boosting” (using magic to make things stronger/tougher, possibly taken to the extreme of reconstruction) and some form of possibly “anti-boosting” (making things less strong/tough to the degree that they discintigrate, and possibly doing the same to spells around him), he may actually have some pretty severe limitations on the magic he can use. Limitations that he, of course, has not seen fit to make public.
Then again Illa is a robot too, with a chasis that is considerably tougher than human flesh before she starts boosting (and, if you can only have 6 spells, that is DEFINATELY one you would want), so I highly doubt that anything she has done so far will end up with broken fingers.
I’ve read all the words 3 or 5 times over, and i don’t see any spelling errors.
Although the words are pretty small.
Small words for a small mind… that is losing a lot of blood.
Long projects ending is always bitter sweet.
Code should stay solid and error free.
I mean, bits don’t change by themselves… so…
Good luck with that current… project… ending… party?
The bits stay the same. The operating system does not (we hope patches are being applied!) and the humans constantly change the requirements. Business logic changes long after the project is “finished”
Well, in this case its more of hand off than a finish, as its mostly due to b2b contract negotiations collapsing, so… I give it about 6 hours until most of it is irreparably broken, and most of that because its a weekend.
Nothing like a less experienced crew coming in to continue a 3/4 done project to ensure maximum success.
The modern corporate world is so staggeringly efficient at generating huge sums of money for so little effort that they can afford to be horrifically inefficient in how they do it and somehow still continue to make money.
Sounds like I’m going to be extended another week after all though… last day… was so close to freedom*! Hopefully one more week till it’s not my problem anymore, because otherwise it’ll be a real mess as I’m basically the only person that got extended so far.
*The freedom to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.
And this is why you never piss off Mium. When he is no longer under orders not to kill you, he is beyond terrifying.
Goodbye, recently reclassified Kardus. I’d say it was nice knowing you, but it wasn’t.
Presumably the next restriction Peter will add is “MYM is not allowed to reclassify people as not-people for convenience”
Severing the arm is probably non-lethal (to warmages, of course) and stopped him spamming the overload button, so I am not sure Mium has *quite* moved to the realm of removing obstructional Karduses (Kardii?) or removing the head would have been about the same amount of effort…
Remember the Kardus is a warmage. This is exactly how Mium attempted to kill Rovak. Cutting off their head won’t kill them. Cutting off their arm then stabbing them in the brain while blocking their healing will.
That was specific to rovak with his immortality code. Based on our current knowledge and the fact that his cheek is bleeding, Kardus lacks that code. Kardus only has immorality code. Beheading Kardus would work just fine.
Chapter 9, page 17. Rovak’s i-code does not trigger on *any* injury; it takes something significant. And since the 9.17 injury is a few bleeding cheek scrapes, Kardus’ injury before certainly applies to that exception.
As far as we have seen, Mium hasn’t seen the lower limit of what triggers i-code as far as we know, so we can guess he’s just following the same game plan to be sure. Of course, Mium knows Kardus doesn’t have i-code *now*, because what activated it for Rovak did not activate it for Kardus.
We were fairly certain Kardus lacked i-code because of his concern about Rovak kicking his ass. Otherwise, he probably would’ve said that he was reluctant to try fighting Rovak, simply because he was tired of Rovak kicking his ass. But Mium is always prudent, and the prudent thing was to assume Kardus was the hardest target encountered.
Kardus is pretty strong, as he was able to go roughly even with Naomi in a fist fight (granted before she went berserk) and pretty easily took out Arkady and the soldiers.
Rovak, on the other hand, is probably in the top few mages we’ve seen. He has fought with Tyler and Mium, both of who are pretty overpowered duelists, and both potentially counter his immortality (Mium because he knows how to actually kill him, and Tyler because freezing him would presumably render the I-Code moot)… and he’s still alive.
I would put Rovak in roughly the same tier as Tyler, maybe Naomi, Ila, Atter, Elizabeth, the Princess, etc. Really, the only person I think is probably in an entirely different league is Kally. Nathan might be too, but we have not actually seen him do much so far, just that Elizabeth implied he would be able to beat her without any contest, and she had just finished beating the princess to a pulp. Atter is hard to say since we’ve mostly only seen his remote monster fight, and the fact that he can do that might put him in the tactical tier himself. The only person he actually fought in person was Mium, and fighting Mium is, as he notes here, “pointless”.
I am curious if someone like Kally could fight Mium, or if he could just shatter her dragon as effortlessly as he does other mages spells. That match up seems unlikely given they are both loyal to Peter though.
Fighting Mium is somewhat pointless because distributed combatant. Sure you can kill the (very valuable/irreplacable) body standing in front of you but then he just jumps to a bus and crashes it into you, then another car and another. You just can’t kill M.Y.M. with anything that looks like conventional tactics. So its half-way pointless to try, and in an all out no holds barred throw down? Kally would probably lose simply do to exhaustion.
I guess I mean fight one of his prototypes, though I guess it really probably boils down to a question with too many factors to answer, and probably which of them have a longer range.
While it is implied that Mium has a pretty short range to his ability, when he distingrated to the skyhammer he proved that he can overcome that if he feels like, and really, so far we have not seen Mium face a problem that is actually difficult to him, just that require him to spend more effort than he’s supposed to.
On the same token, while we have seen Kally’s dragon energy blast thing, we don’t actually know its range or effect besides that it would be capable of destroying the sky hammer projectile if she’d hit, and that it’s at least a few city blocks.
I’ve noticed that she always so far fires it either parallel or to the ground or upward though, so a) it might go quite far, and b) it might be really destructive (given how everyone who knows who she is generally tip toes around her or tries to take her out without fighting).
Kally shares the same classification as *nukes* do in our world, if that helps clarify how destructive her dragon is at maximum output.