Monster 080
└ posted on Tuesday, 24 January 2017, by Novil
- Caption: The day Lilith teleports her friends.
- Eldor: Very good.
- Lilith: Shall I learn Wallfire next?
- Eldor: No, that spell is useless. But you now know everything one needs to know for learning how to break a time suspension shield.
- Eldor: For that, though, we have to go to Greendew.
- Lilith: Greendew?
- Eldor: Yes. Conditions that make it possible to learn the spell only prevail within a radius of 100 meters from the Great Tree.
- Lilith: Strange.
- Lilith: What about my friends?
- Eldor: They’ll come along.
- Eldor: I’ll prepare everything in Greendew Castle. I’ll be back in an hour or two.
- Lilith: All right.
Huh, everything continues normal ?
No further attempts of suicide or tutoricide ?
I guess this is the point where she decides to send them away of Eldor’s grasp instead of keeping them in uncertainty (Eldor’s mood or any spell going wrong).
Lilith looks very, VERY calm in these panels. No reactions at any point there, not even when learning she’s almost done with everything.
@ Ore:
Consider the way they said she didn’t actually look like Lilith, or her behavior before teleporting them. I don’t think she teleported them away on purpose, or it wasn’t really Lilith.
perhaps last page, she learned something that Eldor did not intend, and that will be how she disperses her frineds… his retaliation may be painful.
A useless spell identified by name? Foreshadowing alert!
The only question is whether Eldor is intentionally trying to lead Lillith away from it (for example, it is key to breaking his defences) or whether he is unaware of its importance himself.
So, um, is Eldor Bhaal, on avatar thereof? He’s working to reach something that was hidden behind a barrier “long ago”, the ordeal “almost destroyed the world”. The “woman” is dead (Gaia did sacrifice herself to create the Tear), and once the barrier (The planet, as everybody is guessing) is broken, he’ll have to kill “zero” people, because everyone will be dead.
Sorry, I was just rereading around Monster ~60, and felt I had to note this publicly for future reference, even though I’m guessing this has all been suggested.
Arky wrote:
“Lilith, do not learn the Wallfire spell. Now, I will go away for a few hours and leave you here with all the books.”
Eldor knows what Lilith thinks of him; a day or two without an attempted homicide or suicide doesn’t change anything. If he isn’t being entirely oblivious here, I would say he either actually doesn’t care about the spell, or is trying to assure that she DOES learn it, and uses it at a moment when she thinks he wants the opposite.
(Of course, he knows how smart Lilith is, so using such a transparent ruse is kinda risky. But then, she KNOWS that he knows how smart…damn, I gotta go have a beer.)
“Come along” – there it is again…
So what is now going through her head?
With how much magic she has now, I’m surprised Eldor is still able to remain as in control as he is. Also, I just noticed the last stipulation on the posting rules; kind of an odd requirement. Is there a reason behind that?
@ Gallavitt:
Her friends’ safety is the only thing keeping her in check. If not for them, it’s likely she’d drop the gloves and fight him til one or the other quits moving.
Gallavitt wrote:
Google is your friend.
Um… I’m not the only one who notices that Lilith doesn’t have any color in her eyes, right? It gives her a look like her will is broken. It’s a bit creepy…
Sorynt wrote:
I would not say that. More like she’s in a trance — the effect of studying that book for a solid month I should suspect.
She is still capable of independent thought. Later this day she sends her friends to at least three different places, none of which is Greendew Castle where Eldor wishes to take them. AND I would be willing to bet she deactivated the homing devices implanted in them as she sent them on their way. That strongly hints that her will has not been entirely broken.
I’m beginning to think that Eldor may live to regret making Lilith so strong. Clear back in RH-3 we learn that Lilith has been working on reading minds. Was that what she was doing last page when she was giving him the stink eye? She’s had a full month living in close quarters with Eldor to learn how to delve into his head. If so, what has she learned that Eldor doesn’t want her to know? The purpose of the Tower in the Sky and its location, perhaps? The fact that Midgard is now infested with invisible shadow beasts? Eldor’s manipulations of San? That he doesn’t realize Viviana is a “touched one”?
Remember that magic book she requested of Alissa clear back in BAB-140? Alissa gave it to her during the time Eldor had confiscated Isaac’s book (Mon-67) so Eldor didn’t know about it. What has she been studying on the side without Eldor’s knowledge, I wonder. How to read minds, perhaps?
@ Falkner:
hes just saying, in this case anyway, that her friends will come with them
I think the spell is genuinely worthless for Eldor’s purposes. Might be something to do with defeating fire and heat-based barriers, considering the name. Or maybe a heat-based attack to accurately melt holes into literal walls, since Breaking All Barriers is presumably also a book on how to utterly annihilate mundane walls. Either way, he has little reason to use such an unconvincing ruse.
I like how people call Eldor “evil” when he’s just a strict tutor.
I don’t get it. He’s like a less fun version of Elminster, or Vangerdahast.
@ Veyraa: Well earlier on if I remember he was completely willing to kill a few innocent mages to accomplish his goal. He certainly isn’t cruel, but he’s shown himself to be willing to do anything to accomplish his goals.
PMark wrote:
Tv Tropes is your friend.
@ Veyraa:
Do you remember him killing people? Because he totally did that, like, a lot.
Does anyone else think “Wallfire” is the very spell she used to destroy everything to find her friends and TP them away?
PMark wrote:
No, I think she could ‘read’ what Eldor was writing on that paper. She might have understood a part of his plan.
Arky wrote:
Yeah thats like the whip attack you learn in Megaman X that is useless (until final boss)
Excellently Behaved Cultist wrote:
I think its an “offensive” defensive spell. Basically that thing we saw where the walls of the building got eaten up by … nothing. For the purposes of use against time dilation, it moight very well be useless (how Eldor thinks, he is straight up pragmatic and probably does find it useless). However, as an attack or defense ability, in the hands of an inventive mage like Lilith, it can probablybe used as a spell that can be used to attack and/or defend. There’s a chance Eldor isn’t actually alive when we see Lilith have creepy eyes and stuff.
Veyraa wrote:
Because other people believe Eldor is evil, based on his actions in the first three chapters. People who kill a majority of students and teachers at a school are widely seen as such. Among his other plans.
I dont believe Eldor is Bhaal. This would be far too obvious for a story where someone with holy power is a control freak. I do, however, see him as a misguided type who probably wants to do something, damn the consequences.
@ Samantha:
But… ‘holy power is a control freak’ is pretty obvious itself, isn’t it?
@ Samantha:
i always thought sometimes people just pack attacks in metroidvania rpg’s such as castlevania or even similar sidescrolls such as mega man with useless weapons and attacks because of simply asthetics, not that it is loaded with those skill or weapoms, but you’ll definitely find atleast of ofthose in rpg games, weapon which is like “sup, i am here cuz i am beautiful, s*ck its up beeches OuO”
Lyrusi wrote:
That’s totally possible.
On the other hand, sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar. Maybe the spell won’t be mentioned again and it’s just Novil messing with us (red herring). We’ll see.
Ravelate wrote:
Less obvious than you might think. Typically if one has light powers, it is from a deity (different here, since spells are science). This implies the favor of said deity, so barring a psycho deith that enjoys white magic (also hard to come by) holy spells arent normally granted to evil control freaks. Extremists, yes, but not dictator types.
Which begs the question about what we really know about Gaia. Maybe Bhaal is the one that actually supports life, and Gaia is evil?
@ AndiJN:
Then again, it wouldn’t be much. The spell was hella scary but it just destroyed every wall-like structure like it corrupted them. I think it’s to find her friends as soon as possible and teleport them, or an epic fail when learning it. It could be a simple mention, and not overpowered overpoweredness of overpoweredity, just regular OP instead.
In a way, it would make some sense: this spell supposedly breaks barriers. She’d make Eldor at least temporarily lose some leverage by acting quickly and getting her friends to safety.
Interesting, a spell that requires getting to the root of things to be learned. Must be a square one they have to be near.
Lyrusi wrote:
Sometimes the greatest of heroes are not as apparent from the vision you see of them. Sometimes a being must act in a way that makes them wholey ‘evil’ to truely do or be capable of what needs to be done.
“Sometimes to do some good you need to be the bad guy.” After all. Sometimes, its also about sacrifice, where no one ever knows that your intentions were good, when all they can see is the evil you were forced to cause.
If ya want a comic book example of this look at Dr Doom. Another example is The Boss from Metal gears solid 3 Snake eater. SURE the dude looks like a villian, acts like a villian, and even talks like one. But it might be because he has to.
By making Lili MAD, forcing her to learn the magic this way, he is sure she will learn it all.
Well I guess we’ll finally find out what happend to Sandril. And dear god I hope he’s alive.
@ belmontzar:
I can’t agree to that logic. If you need to do evil stuff for your “good cause” the good cause will get lost among the way? How can anything good come out of evil actions? That simply doesn’t make sense. With that logic you can say that Light from deathnot was actually good. He totally sacrificed his soul and sanity to create a better world by killing people who committed crimes. And it even worked atthe end of the series the crime rateo ver the world dropped significantly. But does that make him a good person?
I don’t think so. Doing Evil deeds will twist you so that in thje end nothing of the good intentions is left and worst: Even wif you manage to coem through, get yyour goal, than you still are this powerfull person but without any morals. Where will you stop?
@ belmontzar:
There is a saying – “The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”
Meaning, basically, if you have to start doing evil for the sake of good, you have basically taken the path to evil itself.
There’s another saying – “The end does not always justify the means.”
Meaning if you sacrifice your soul, sanity or ethics to achieve a goal, no matter how noble, you are most likely to be counted a villain instead of a hero.
I think he’s just self-centered, intent on getting revenge and something that was taken from him, without considering why it may have been taken from him in the first place. His ability to plan and scheme is great, but his foresight into the consequences of his actions is very myopic.
Hmm. She’s acting too docile, our beloved wizard is definitely up to something. I wonder if the glare in the last page was her spying on Eldor’s calculations or subtly messing with them.
Hey!
I saw the page 81 a few minutes ago! where did it go?
Please give me a hint, Powree. Does Eldor die a preferably extremely painful and well deserved death at the end of all of all of this. Because you are doing a great job of evoking hatred (toward him) from me over the course of reading this comic.
“Now don’t learn “The Spell of Cathartic Destruction” while I’m gone, even though it would make you strong enough to kill me.”
Btw, a google search for “Wallfire Gaia Webcomic” leads to this page. Along with the current page.
http://www.sandraandwoo.com/gaia/2016/04/01/breaking-all-barriers-160/
Coincidence?
Gallavitt wrote:
Amusingly, that would actually forbid linking to other pages on *this* website, if taken completely literally. 🙂
(It’s a totally reasonable rule in spirit, though.)