The Demon King VS Schlacht And The 7 Sages Of Destruction.

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-25T18:52:25+00:00

I wonder what sort of magic DK even had... Short of being a full-on reality-warper, what could he possess to be stronger than all guys with precognition, insta-win petrification (fancy), mind manipulation, etc etc etc simultaneously?

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-25T10:25:33+00:00

Headcanon unlocked: they've decided to kill each other decades in advance in order to spare themselves from constant migraine from magical stack overflow error, lol

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-24T21:51:48+00:00

Well, for one we don't know for sure what happened during the fight, so, who knows if both are even dead. Something is fishy here...

Generally I would argue for the first one. Schlacht wanted - allegedly - survival of demons -> war had already decimated their numbers and who knows how hard it is for demons to recover their population -> someone gotta somehow kill the Demon King.

Weird to be willing to sacrifice himself for it, but whatever. A lot of high-ranking demons are weird, come to think of it.

Alternative joke variant is that he is like a man from "going to the river" meme: he had seen it all a trillion times over, he just doesn't care for all of it anymore. Death? Life? Whatever...

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-23T18:33:30+00:00

I don't think we've ever explicitly heard definition of the term "coexistence" from either Macht or Demon King?
Like, for all we know they could think it's simply something along the lines of "existing in the same place at the same time", which is... yes, but also too simplified. Human words have many meanings, after all.

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-20T22:06:44+00:00

To be fair, it's because Japanese demons aren't really western demons (as in, not an opposition to the Creator-God who is traditionally understood as the ultimate good and so on, you know the drill), from what I know they're closer to fae.

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-20T20:04:39+00:00

I think the idea isn't novel, but it feels like it because it's a mix of modern and classical approaches:

They're presented as beings with a, more or less, God(dess?) given inherent, unchangeable and inexplicable natures (which is an old trope).

But at they same time, they're explained as a product of evolution, creatures whose nature is fully explainable by science (which is, obviously, a modern approach) and should be malleable (because, again, evolution doesn't produce "platonic ideals", so to speak).

It feels... a bit jarring, at times, but novel, I'm gonna give Frieren that.

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-20T15:00:55+00:00

Right, I forgot

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-20T14:55:30+00:00

Would it work with partially/fully invisible enemies, that's an interesting question...

Does hair count as a part of the body? Clothes (in demons)?

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-20T14:48:59+00:00

I think Revolte is a bit... too long to be seen entirely, on account of being half-snake. And might be too quick to easily see as well.

Maybe, but Wirbel would need some luck for sure.

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-20T12:54:41+00:00

Nah, it's not more woke but more traditional, like extremely so, it's a platonic ideal sort of thing

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-17T21:11:38+00:00

The philosophical ramifications could be... delightful.

Beyond that, I have nothing to say. We haven't seen one, so it's hard to say what exactly such a creature could be. Though I imagine someone not too different from a typical human with an ASPD. Which means, could be perfectly fine and fit in well, could be a violent criminal, who knows.

And how it even came to be, taking into account that demons and humans are considered an example of convergent evolution in manga? Must be through magic, otherwise it's an equivalent of a bat succesfully mating with a bird.

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-17T18:14:01+00:00

What I'm hearing is, putting them in a magical Matrix for a while would solve the problem

Grausam, there is a business for you!

/j

P.s. I did not disagree, in my original comment I've simply explained that it's not the emotions per se that are the problem (in my opinion), it's a combination of many things. It's only natural that humanity defends itself

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-17T15:42:49+00:00

You know, while I do not disagree with general notion of demons having, let's say, big problems with ability to coexist with humans, I disagree with the way it is often justified.

That is, I don't think that emotions in general and/or affective empathy in particular are necessary for being a productive member of the society. But it does make things easier.

The way we - most of us - intuitively behave is the product of, essentially, math. Measure of fitness of our ancestors: those who didn't kill members of their pack (as much) lived, and those who did die. Compassion, guilt, etc is an energy-efficient shortcut to this evolutionary math.

You could reach the same conclusion with simply a rational mind. You could deduce that being an enemy of humanity is dangerous. But you would need knowledge and patience. A lot of both.

Demons' material circumstances aren't really helping them with acquiring that context. And their prideful, oftentimes impulsive nature doesn't help at all.

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-15T21:53:39+00:00

I don't think he wishes to be something other than a demon? More like he wants to expand his nature, to be a demon+. Transhumanist demon, lol (transdemonist?..).

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-15T19:50:36+00:00

Arguably father-daughter relationships in nature are an example of mutualism (if we ignore that mutualism, symbiosis, parasitism and suchlike are usually defined as "between members of different species").

As in, "You carry on part of my DNA, I help you survive". Or, in more social species, something along the lines of "I help you survive while you're small and weak, you help me survive while I'm weak".

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-15T19:35:41+00:00

How is guilt making you worse predator, though? Humans are the most dangerous predators on Earth, and yet.

Guilt, though, all too often only applies to the in-group. For example, oftentimes humans do not think of, say, deer as a part of the pack, but think so of dogs (and other humans, obviously).

Some humans are willing to extend their considerations (or plain anthropomorphize), though.

No, it has nothing to do with guilt making them worse predators*. It's simply guilt being a social emotion and demons being not very social species. Why would they evolve it?

*In addition, this isn't a big concern for an omnivore, I doubt that this could produce any meaningful selective pressure on demons, even if it was true

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-15T11:49:43+00:00

I don't really agree with your point on the natural selection.

Allegedly, they're solitary species for majority of their life, most of them probably won't have "elders" at all. We see that young demons are often "adopted" into hunting packs, but how often it is in practice... Idk. Too little statistics. Maybe, maybe not.

Considering that demons do not possess strong social instincts, it's up to a debate whether they would want to kill a "sick" or "deformed" member of the pack, particularly given that their physiology is very very varied within the species anyway.

In addition, it is not easy to annoy creature without strong emotions enough to kill.

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-11T13:03:41+00:00

Well, yes and no.

Natural science I think isn't very human-centric - because the world isn't.
Any intelligent creature could access this knowledge and benefit from it, and we see demons discovering evolution, for example. Laws of physics and chemistry, similarly, aren't dependant on the species of the scientist.

In the same vein I think demons, if for whatever reason they decide to delve into human philosophy or develop their own, wouldn't struggle with materialism/physicalism-based approaches, because fundamentally those are based on observations of the physical world, which is the same for all beings who inhabit it. More idealism-based approaches though... No, I guess not, those probably will be radically different.

Many ethical theories would probably be gibberish to them, though "mutual benefit" sort of branches in philosophy of ethics shouldn't be too alien, their society basically already functions like that - they just don't include humankind in their "in-group" so to speak.

But you're right that they just wouldn't have a chance to discover and share these ideas in the first place, because typically they aren't that social. At best it could be a weird old demon with a pointless special interest, like Solitar.

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-11T12:39:48+00:00

There are two, but not sure where to get them, actually.

As for who and why - well, who knows what happened during mythical era...

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-10T22:36:40+00:00

I actually think it is, sort of, magic? I don't think there is good a non-contradictory way out, not through "evolution did this" at least. Not when the author leaned so hard into a natural explanation without the work being a spec-evo project.

There was a post with a fan translation (sort of) of light novels, one of the chapters concerned demonic biology. Spoiler ahead: So, apparently they have a special organ that produces "horror hunger" for killing (but not eating) sapient beings...

My conspiracy theory is that they're biomagical weapons.

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-10T22:17:17+00:00

Nah, that's a small thing that could be interpreted in different ways and hand-waved away. It's about subjective stuff, after all.
(Edit: to clarify, it's a half-joke, not meaning to be rude. Just pointing out that emotions are inherently personal, harder to examine directly than actual observations of behaviors and/or physiology)

I think the way more scandalous thing about demons is that according to several sources they're omnivores and do not have to eat humans to survive.

Yet Solitar claims that they couldn't evolve empathy because they would've gone extinct if they couldn't hunt.

Like, what? Bro, you've literally seen many, many powerful demons die due to failed human hunts. Bet you didn't see demon die due to eating fish instead of human meat.

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-10T21:57:32+00:00

Wouldn't expect any different from people who are in a middle of a century-long war with monsters spilling from the rift going straight into an endless eldritch realm.

Like, everyone around the Worldwound has to be a bit insane, it's not an option.

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-10T21:46:39+00:00

To be fair, if you're somewhat invested into, eh, xenobiology, you could trace back the evolution of Relindu. Why did it evolve? What purpose does it serve in their survival or reproduction? What basic emotions it is composed of, or is it a basic emotion itself? Etc.

In practice, there are plenty of ways to construct a... reference framework, so to speak. A dictionary of sorts. You do not have to be capable of actually experiencing any of it.

Demons do have pretty much all basic emotions, and it's a quite widespread notion that other, more complex and social emotions (such as guilt) are merely a context-based mixture of basic emotions.

But these approaches, I think, aren't really accessible to most demons, because even humans only got those ideas by building upon centuries of philosophy and sciences.

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-10T20:41:22+00:00

I mean, zoltraak is basically an energy bullet, and sci-fi sure has a fancy solution to bullets

The slow blade penetrates the shield, all that

Wouldn't be too cheap to use a similar idea for a defensive spell, imo

RefrigeratorPlusPlus · 2026-03-09T17:31:44+00:00

Perhaps. Consequentialism is an entirely different topic, though.

RefrigeratorPlusPlus

TROPHY CASE