Hector turned the shield over in his hands again, wanting a good look at the front. It was lustrously gray, apart from the four bars of tungsten carbide that Sazandara mentioned before. Those were a bit darker, but Hector wouldn’t have been able to tell that they weren’t simply paint if the reaper hadn’t told him. They fit so seamlessly into the shield that he couldn’t see even the slightest physical crease between them and the rest of the lighter-colored metal.
‘Before you use it, a couple of warnings,’ said Sazandara. ‘As soon as your skin touches it, the enhanced soul defenses will take effect. When you’re wearing gloves like you are now, no enhancements are granted to your body.’
“O-okay.”
‘Additionally, you will notice that touching the shield directly causes immense physical pain. That is a side effect of your body being made stronger than it is prepared to be. Garovel will therefore need to numb the pain for you whenever you intend to wield it barehanded.’
“Ah... and then I’ll feel the pain later.”
‘Naturally.’
Hector nodded. ‘Figures,’ he remarked to Garovel.
‘The shield will also take a toll on you, Garovel.’
‘Me? Why?’
‘The defensive increases are made possible by interfering with the soul-synchronization between the two of you. The shield functions as a catalyst, and through it, your souls are stretched beyond their limits in an effort to equalize themselves with the shield. And because the reaper is very much the “battery” of the relationship, this experience will gradually drain you.’
‘I see.’
‘How long has Hector been your servant?’
‘About three years.’
Hector’s expression flickered. He had to consciously keep himself from staring at Garovel. It hadn’t even been eight months.
‘Quite young,’ said Sazandara. ‘In that case, I would advise Hector not to wield it barehanded for more than thirty minutes per day.’
‘Understood,’ said Garovel. And then privately, he amended her number to, ‘Six minutes per day. Remember that, if you can.’
Hector wasn’t sure he understood the point of lying to their allies like this. Even if Sazandara somehow ended up betraying them, wouldn’t it be better if she thought they were weaker? Something to ask Garovel about later, he decided.
‘Is there anything else we should know?’ Garovel asked.
‘No, that is everything.’
‘Alright. Thank you for explaining. We appreciate your hospitality. Once things settle down, I’d like to invite you back to Warrenhold with us. I’m sure even Haqq would be able to enjoy himself there.’
‘Ah. I will keep that in mind.’
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every night at midnight PST by ~400 words.
So, I'm in the same boats hector, why lie? Is he unusually strong for such a shirt period of time as a servant? Would that make people more wary/less trusting of him? Is it because him and garovel have the power of friendship :p and are well synchronized?
ReplyDeleteHes been constantly been getting in fights and achieving emergence. Hes definitely a LOT stronger then he should be.
ReplyDelete"He had to consciously keep [his] himself from staring at Garovel." The his is too much in the sentence.
ReplyDeleteAnd again Garovel is lying about the duration of the servant relationship. First was to Roman (I think he said 5 months when it was barely 1 or 2) and now it's 3 years.
In that context: does soul synchro go up in a linear fashion? We already know that soul synchro only increases over time and there is no way around that. But we never knew the "growth rate" of that. But now we can take the usage time as a meter for growth. 3 years = 36 months = 4.5 * 8 months. And 6 minutes is 1/5 of 30 minutes... which would mean a very linear and proportional increase over time. With that said, we will never see Hector permanantly soul empowering something or passively defending against servant abilitys without the shield... at least not without a major time skip in the story. Which IMO is unlikely ^^
Enjoy this weapon that will kill you permanently if you hold it for more than five minutes and will make an Iron Maiden feel like a waterbed when it's done!
ReplyDeleteit's probably safer for him and the reaper that he's with if he doesn't seem like he's accelerating towards power. gavorel probably doesn't want his age known either.
ReplyDeleteIIRC, it was said that the older the reaper, the faster they gain power, and the big names (sermung, dozer etc.) were only 600 years old.
I mean, if certain older reapers can supercharge people quicker than others, it stands to reason that the younger but more powerful servant owning reapers maintain their monopoly.
Iron Maiden??? EXCELLENT!!!!
ReplyDeleteFixed now, thank you.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's linear.
Oh I understand he's had an accelerated growth rate due to all the combat, but the greatly inflated time periods garovel is giving......even money says it comes back and bites them in the ass lol
ReplyDeleteI like seeing the lies in the story, it sorta drives home the point how absurd hector is. At first the lie was about 3 times longer then the truth (indicating he was three times stronger then someone like roman was after a month or so, since roman did passive training mostly), and then he fights off someone much older then himself, and then fights him off again with the other guy getting a bonus resurgence. And then he at least stalls Harper. He stalls Mr. Insta-kill. Now he's telling people that hector is over 6 times stronger then he should be? So what, in a span of 5x he becomes 2x stronger then the normal linar projection says. So 40 months he should be 12 times stronger or so. 3 years and change, stronger then a 40 year. 200 months and he would be about a 400 year. Assuming the trend holds without some big change (like having to fight a Harper to the death and winning), which would make it faster. So yeah, lie away while you can Garoval. You're on track to be the strongest set in the world in less then thirty years.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that, regardless of how good he is with iron, anyone with better synchronization can just rip through it. The whole soul deal is what allows strong servants to amplify their physical abilities and not... die immediately because someone's filling their body cavities with molten metal. The shield is a very double-edged method of getting around the second, but the first comes with time alone.
ReplyDeleteHowever, when most of the bad guys can wipe away Hector's iron like rain off a windshield, he'll need to get extremely creative with how he approaches fights. Right now, he'll work best by hanging in the back and controlling the battlefield from a high vantage point using iron constructs as distractions while the alteration and destruction users take potshots and the transfiguration and mutation guys go in as infantry.
What he needs is some practice with making hot, cold, and moving iron.
Can an element be created at a particular density and state, but with a temperature far above what would normally be possible for that, so that it basically explodes immediately?
Different state yes but not density I asked the density question of Mr Frost previously in regards to extremely dense iron balls.
ReplyDeleteThe Servant Emperors are about 600 years old, yes. I don't remember anything being said about the age of their reapers, or anything about older reapers getting stronger servants.
ReplyDeleteSo I've been thinking. Hector can materialize a pretty friggin' enormous boulder of metal, right? So couldn't create a big dome around someone (big enough that they couldn't escape it before it formed completely, since materialization isn't instantaneous) then just fill that dome to trap them under a small mountain of metal?
ReplyDeleteIt seems like it would work better than creating the metal directly on the enemy, since they can just use their superstrength to rip through it before it forms completely and traps them.
i am fairly certain there is a volume limit for how much he can create
ReplyDeleteWasn't familiar with that site. I'll give it a look.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds interesting. My e-mail is george.m.frost@gmail.com.
There's a limit to how much you can compress metal, though, so you end up basically pushing against the whole mass. Even with super strength, straining against several meters of metal is... yeah.
ReplyDeleteI mean, sure, he's not gonna trap Sermung like that, but that doesn't really matter.
Thanks :-) (though I'd edit the comment so spammers can't scrape it if I were you) :-)
ReplyDeleteI'm still in prelaunch mode so I'll send you an email in a couple of weeks.
I would hope we as a fan base are mature enough not to do that.
ReplyDeleteEspecially given that anytime George has to deal with things like that is cuts down on his time. So i imagine his legion off followers of which I am one would consider it a grave offence and NEVER do it.
They are strong enough to punch through the side of a volcano with brute strength.
ReplyDeleteI'm not too concerned. My e-mail has been on display on the bottom right of the site for over a year now. The spam filter is pretty good about catching most things.
ReplyDeletehe could but a strong enough servant will rip though it like a hot knife on butter
ReplyDelete