Awesome / Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation

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Infancy Period

• Roxy earns Rudy's ever-lasting and undying respect, not by acts of great and powerful magic, but by teaching him the kindness and courage to enter the world outside that in his past life he had locked himself away from for many years.
  • Although, the magic also helps. Rudy’s graduation exam is to learn the Saint-rank Water spell Cumulonimbus. Roxy takes a 2-hour horse ride to out to keep the conjured thunderstorm from damaging the town. Rudeus not only casts it on his first try but alters it so that the storm can maintain itself without continuous magic input, which Roxy hadn’t known was possible.
• Having been bullied so badly that he became a shut-in during his past life, Rudeus finds a bunch of kids (bigger than him) picking on another child and chases them with mud balls. Then he gets home to find that someone told a one-sided version to Paul, who starts scolding Rudeus until Rudeus shames him with the full story.
• The Greyrat Emergency Family Meeting. Paul cheated on Zenith (while she’s pregnant!) with Lilia, and now that Lilia has also become pregnant it’s all coming out.
  • Lilia makes no excuses for herself and states her intent to finish helping Zenith give birth, then resign and return home to bear her child.
  • Zenith shows equal strength of character by not throwing a furious fit, but listening to what everyone has to say and weighing her emotional pain against her past friendship with Lilia and the consequences of throwing a pregnant woman out on the street.
  • When it looks like anger is going to win, Rudy throws his father to the wolves and pretends that Paul coerced Lilia into it with blackmail, tipping the balance to keep Lilia and Rudeus’s half-sister with the Greyrats.
• We’ve seen Paul be awesome when he killed 4 monsters in seconds, and Rudeus has said that he never landed one hit in their spars, but Paul fighting Rudeus is on a wholly different level. It only lasts long enough for Paul to charge three steps, ignoring Rudeus’s explosions, tracking his moves, avoiding the mud pit, and striking him down.
  • Paul also notes how terrifying it was that Rudy nearly won. If he had needed to take one more step, Rudy probably would have knocked him off-balance and flattened him with instantaneous, silent spells.

Juvenile Period

• Stretched out over a few years, Rudeus starts off being chased and beaten by a furious Eris and ends up succeeding where multiple schools and adult tutors failed, teaching her reading, math, magic, and the good manners to get along with people.
• Ruijerd is unfairly feared because he’s a Supard race and has Laplace’s transferred Curse of Hatred, but when he does fight an enemy his combat skills are incredible. The number of times he fails to kill an enemy with one spear strike, usually through the throat, is a mere handful over their three years together. He was the head of Laplace’s Imperial Guard, 400 years ago, for very good reason.
• Many people spend their entire lives unable to control Demon Eyes, which is why a powerful character with a Demon Eye can usually be identified by their eye patch. Rudeus gets his Foresight Eye under control with one week of training, letting him walk around without an eye-patch, and he uses it to beat Eris in a no-magic sparring match without a scratch.
  • Other epic characters who fail to match this feat of control include: Ghyslaine, Hawk Eyes Baribadomaru, Cliff, and 5th ranked world power Death God Randolph.
  • Later on, Rudeus gets a second Demon Eye, the Eye of 1,000 miles, and uses both eyes with no issues.
• Ruijerd is brought to the Millis continent by smugglers, and he’s about ready to go berserk at the end because the smugglers have kidnapped Beast Race children to sell as slaves. So Rudeus lets him out of the chains and gives him his spear. When Ruijerd piles up all the bodies to be burned, Rudeus comments there are more than he expected, and they were all killed with a single stab to the throat.
• Gyes (who incidentally is Ghyslaine’s brother) is on a rescue mission and mistakes Rudeus for one of the kidnappers. One use of the Beast Race’s voice magic, and Rudeus goes down, totally paralyzed.
• Rudeus tries to fly with magic and crashes down, suffering bruises, bone fractures, a concussion, and half drowning. Then, a horde of C-rank monsters attacks him because he landed in their nest. Rudeus continuously kills them and keeps piling up the bodies until after sunset, then since he’s lost in the forest he just freezes everything as far as he can, more than a mile in all directions. Warriors come running to find out why the village is freezing over, and are freaked out by the piles of frozen monster corpses.
• Any person in the Seven World Powers is this. Demon God Laplace who unified the Magic Races and led the largest war in recent history, is ranked number 4, while the Grandmasters of the Sword God style and North God style are 6 and 7, and the Water God doesn’t even qualify.
• Silent Fitz, Princess Ariel’s white-haired magician guard, first appeared after the Fedoa Mana Catastrophe by single-handedly ending a monster that got teleported into the palace and killed the previous Guardian Mage. He can cast a number of chantless spells, and we are introduced to his combat ability when he takes out an assassin – “Night Eye of the Crow,” who terrorized Asura Kingdom nobles for the past decade – with two spells before he detoxifies the poisoned wound he got.
• Rudeus reuniting with Paul in Millis. A misunderstanding about a kidnapping has the two fight it out without realizing who the other is until the end. Rudeus holds off Paul (admittedly, he’s drunk) and two support mages, only slowed down by not wanting to kill them, while all three adults are not holding back. When violence breaks out again later, Rudeus effortlessly flattens Paul after the first sucker punch, using a judo throw, pinning, and then pummeling him.
• Eris’s goblin subjugation quest in Millis shows just how far above the norm even the weakest member of Dead End is when she stumbles onto an attempted assassination. An elite assassination squad of six already killed off three guardian knights with poisoned daggers, but Eris jumps in and cuts down four attackers in seconds without receiving a scratch.
• Cliff is a child prodigy who reached an advanced rank in Healing, Detoxification, Summoning, and offensive Fire magic by 13.
• Zanoba, the third prince of Shirone, is a miko with a supernaturally powerful body. It’s really creepy that he only cares about dolls, and ripped off the heads of his baby brother, his wife, and multiple royal soldiers… but when the creator of the Roxy doll is held prisoner by Prince Pax, Zanoba single-handedly kills a lot of Pax’s guards, kidnaps Pax, and overturns the situation to make the other princes agree to free Rudy. He never stops smiling pleasantly, even when covered in soldiers’ blood and threatening to rip off Pax’s head.
• Walking along a mountain path, Dead End meets a man who terrifies Eris and Ruijerd just by being there and pleasantly greeting them, despite them not knowing him. Then Rudeus mentions Hitogami, and the stranger Orsted changes from amicable to murderous:
  • Ruijerd defends Rudeus, but Orsted out-maneuvers Ruijerd in less than ten seconds, suffering no damage and simply countering every attack barehanded to knock Ruijerd unconscious.
  • Eris charges in next, and he simply catches her strike with his palm and throws her.
  • Orsted crushes Rudeus’s lung to stop him from chanting, not knowing Rudeus can use chantless spells, so Rudeus retaliates with a rock bullet that draws blood from Orsted’s fist. Orsted uses Disturb Magic to stop Rudeus from casting a fire spell, and the First Dragon Gate in a failed attempt to drain his magic when Rudeus can still generate shockwaves.
  • Finally, Orsted shoves his hand through Rudeus’s ribs, and with that fatal wound, Rudeus is left to die, until Orsted’s traveling companion suggests it might be better to let Rudeus live.
  • End Result: an unconscious conversation about how Hitogami can’t see Orsted, and Rudeus wakes up in Eris’s lap. Congratulations, Rudeus, you just survived an encounter with the Second Ranked World Power, Dragon God Orsted.
• After she and Rudeus return to Fedoa and hear the situation from Alphonse & Ghyslaine, Eris seduces Rudeus that night and then comes to a few life decisions afterward. She goes off to train on her own and become stronger but in true Greyrat fashion she steals Rudeus’s underwear as a memento.

Youth Period

• Rudeus “the Quagmire” distracts and ‘kites’ a Red Dragon away from 20+ fleeing teammates, survives its flames, traps it when it tries to run from him, and single-handedly kills an A-S rank monster that usually requires two-dozen top class adventurers.
• As his entry exam into the Magic Academy, Rudeus duels Princess Ariel’s bodyguard, Silent Fitz, who can also use chantless magic. …It isn’t even a fight. Rudy uses Disturb Magic, and launches with a Rock Bullet warning shot that nicks Fitz’s cheek, drills through the protective barrier, and shatter the anti-magic brick wall around the battleground.
• For stepping on Roxy’s figurine, Rudy leads Zanoba on a revenge crusade against Rinia and Pursena, stopping their voice magic with a choking dust cloud, a bog, and rock bullets to the head. They don’t scratch him.
  • The fighting hierarchy in Ranoa Magic Academy: Zanoba was defeated by Rinia and Pursena the Beast Race princesses; Rinia and Pursena have previously been defeated by Fitz; Fitz was beaten by Rudeus in a friendly match, while Rinia and Pursena were stomped in a grudge match.
• The Beast race’s mating season arrives, and as Rinia and Pursena’s Boss, Rudeus gets a line of over 30 Beast race warriors challenging him for the right to court them. He just gets annoyed as he keeps swatting them one after another until he hides out in the library. Rudeus later comes out to find them all beaten unconscious: Kishirika’s fiancé, Demon King Badigadi has arrived to challenge him.
• Rudeus fights a duel with the Immortal Demon King Badigadi: a muscle-bound hulk with near impenetrable flesh, six arms, epic Touki, and several thousand years of combat experience. Badigadi is also immune to demon eye powers. How does the fight go? Rudy’s lone Rock Bullet splatters Badigadi’s torso across the arena, and Badigadi declares him the winner after his immortal body starts pulling back together.
• Roxy got trapped in the dreaded Teleport Labyrinth and survived with only a satchel of food for about a month (36 days). Repeatedly ambushed by groups of 20-30 monsters, forced to navigate by trial-and-error through teleport traps, Roxy ended up going in circles with her magic slowly decreasing, but she never gave up even as the monsters became smarter in their strategic ambushes. Even at the last encounter, Roxy killed a bunch of high-level, organized monsters until her magic ran out.
• Rudeus reuniting with Roxy. The ambush of several scores of high-level monsters that had finally worn Roxy down? Rudeus arrives in the nick of time to freeze the monstrous army with a Frost Nova spell that Roxy confuses for being emperor-class magic (four levels above what it is). Braced for a death that fails to arrive, Roxy opens her eyes to a world of ice, with the monsters all turned to frozen sculptures, and the young man responsible walking through with all the confidence of a stroll in the park.
• The boss of the Teleport Labyrinth is a hydra. A nine-headed hydra twice the size of a Red Dragon, the most generally dangerous species in the world. On top of that it’s immune to magic because its scales are crystals that have a Disturb Magic effect. The Malatite Hydra is a creature even one of the Seven World Powers might have trouble with.
• Paul is at his most badass in this Hydra boss fight: when he sees Zenith behind the hydra, he charges immediately, and where Roxy and Rudeus’s spells don’t scratch it Paul effortlessly cuts off three of its heads in as many seconds, faster than Rudeus’s Foresight eye can follow.
• Using Hercules as inspiration, Rudeus develops a strategy to kill the hydra: Paul beheads it as the only person who can, Rudeus scorches the stumps at point-blank range so his magic isn’t canceled, Elinalise and Talhand defend them from the other heads, and Roxy heals when needed.
• The Malatite Hydra shows more intelligence than most monsters:
  • It pretends it can only coordinate three heads at a time, but suddenly moves five when it sees an opening, and it nearly eats Talhand with the consecutive attacks, mangling his leg.
  • The hydra bites off its own cauterized neck stumps when it loses too many heads, allowing the heads to regrow in seconds and resetting the heroes’ progress.
  • When the stumps are re-cauterized, it rises on its legs to put the remaining necks out of reach, and launches a three-headed Dragon Breath attack that Rudeus only barely blocks with magic.
  • As a last ditch effort, the Manatite Hydra swings its eight headless necks, thick ropes of muscle covered in layers of sharp scales, like flails before diving in with its last head at an off-balance Rudy. If Paul hadn’t kicked him away Rudeus would have died, and Paul died instead.
  • The hydra even had one more trick left, suddenly growing a horn with some magic power, but Rudeus kills it before anything can happen. Even so, the hydra is so strong that its eyelid cut Rudy’s hand off like a guillotine. Roxy had to cauterize the last neck stump because Rudeus couldn’t.

Young Man Period

• Water King class magic: Lightning. It’s all the power of Cumulonimbus compressed down to a point for a single, instantaneous strike. When Roxy demonstrates, it’s likened to a pillar of light that leaves its target reduced to nothing but charcoal.
• Two Sword Saints fight to determine who is granted the title Sword King. Nina attacks from a high stance, moving first (and she usually is faster with swinging), but Eris still strikes her first by intentionally using a fast but sloppy slash. As she says, “You don’t need more power than what’s necessary to knock someone down.” It not only earns her the King title and one of Gull Farion’s swords, but Eris becomes the first to receive ‘Menkyo Kaiden,’ (the license of having mastered the style) from Sword God Gull Farion as well.
• Armor Dragon King Perugius. He lives in a 50-story castle in the sky filled with world-class artwork and is attended by twelve familiar spirits who each possess King levels of ability. Rudeus is more than a little scared of him, and Perugius easily displays more knowledge and perception than just about any other character in the story.
• Immortal Demon King Atoferatofe Raibaku is another walking moment of awesome. She’s Badigadi’s big sister and a master of the North God style, as well as possessing an immortal body and the ability to give her guards such immortality as well. She cuts off her own arm to escape a grab, wields her BFS with ease, and in 5,000 years she’s only been soundly defeated by Demon God Laplace and North God Kalman Raibaku the first.
• Maybe it’s because he got time to prepare while she was fighting other people, but Perugius flattens Atofe. They promised the late North God Kalman I to never kill each other, but he uses the Second Dragon Gate to drain her magic and fighting spirit before cutting her in half with his hand and blasting the halves across the horizon. Though it still wouldn’t kill her, that took her out of the fight.
• Abominable as his actions may have been, no one can deny that Future Rudeus was a total badass, albeit a broken one. Gravity magic, multi-decade time travel, keeping ahead of multiple national militaries for the purpose of killing Hitogami. Even a near-omniscient being that could see the future wasn’t able to predict or stop him.
• In hindsight, Hitogami’s long-term plot was epic. Rudeus noted that he generally might have gotten similar results without Hitogami’s advice, but the steady flow of supportive advice got him to trust Hitogami in the end. Because Roxy’s fate was such that Hitogami couldn’t kill her or stop her from eventually having a daughter with Rudeus, he sped it up so that Rudeus would trust him, and then gave Rudeus a request that would result in Roxy dying during the only time she was vulnerable: her pregnancy. If not for unprecedented time travel it would have worked, and it did work in the first timeline.
• Rudeus attempts to assassinate Dragon God Orsted. He spends months working with his friends to pile up every advantage he can bring to the table: magic armor that gives him superhuman combat abilities, a Stone Cannon Gatling Gun, poison, traps, and a series of high-level spells that exhaust even his magic. It’s enough to successfully surprise and injure the Second Ranked World Power… but not enough to kill.
• Orsted pulls out a sword and is forced to fight seriously after receiving wounds. When he does, he carves through Rudeus’s armor like so much butter, uses Voice Magic to almost knock him out, cuts off Rudy’s right hand, ruptures Rudy’s organs through the Magic armor with a kick, and is about to kill Rudeus when help arrives.
• Who pulls off an epic Big Damn Heroes and makes even the Dragon God pause? Eris Greyrat, that’s who. Tutored by the Sword God, she uses calculated strategy, unexpected North God style techniques, her own peerless skill, and calm patience, all to stall Orsted and draw his full attention until Rudeus is healed. When Rudeus still isn’t able to fight more, she resolves to die fighting while the others flee with him. Only because Orsted stops fighting does anyone walk away that day.
• Hitogami gets an even nastier kick in the teeth than the interference of Future Rudeus. Orsted has always been seeking to kill him, but never stood a good chance of succeeding. Orsted recruits Rudeus, who is immune to the Curse of Hatred. Hitogami’s two most dangerous enemies, Rudeus’s line and the Dragon God, are now united against him.
• In Asura, Orsted shows off his badass credentials as the Dragon God again. When Water God Reida has revealed herself as Hitogami’s Apostle Orsted paralyzes the entire room and engages her in single combat. He parries the Water God’s sword with his hand faster than eyes can follow, taking three steps without being scratched, and kills her with a strike through the chest.
• North Emperor Auber holds off two Sword Kings and Rudeus for a time. He dies in the end, but he severs Rudeus’s leg, poisons Eris, and inflicts multiple other wounds along the way. It’s suggested that if he weren’t hesitant about fighting his former student Eris, he would have killed at least one of them.
• Fifth-ranked World Power, the Death God Randolph. He was a candidate for North God (currently #7) before he went off on his own, and he fights using acting skills, psychological warfare, diverse tools, and ridiculous combat capabilities. Zanoba, Rudeus, and Roxy attacked him seriously, and no one other than Randolph himself will ever know how well they did.
  • He nearly killed Roxy if not for multiple protective items that got shattered in her place, and that happened because she pushed Rudeus out of the way when he bluffed Rudeus into turning his back.
  • Randolph had Manatite gloves to cancel out Rudy’s Stone Cannon, and faked taking several hits to lure them off guard, using psychological warfare to ward them off while he recovered from the genuine wounds.
  • He repeatedly tanked Zanoba’s blows and hit back hard enough to shatter Zanoba’s armor and smash him into the ceiling.
  • He’s an Unreliable Narrator, but if he told the truth Randolph didn’t even use his Sword of Bewitching skill in the fight, and he would certainly have been drained from using a Demon Eye to maintain a barrier that stopped a besieging army in its tracks.
• It all went wrong in the end, but Pax Shirone legitimately won the heart of a princess, bettered himself to be worthy of her, and performed a near-flawless coup d’état of Shirone. Even Death God Randolph wasn’t there on orders, but because he genuinely liked and wanted to help Pax. If he hadn’t committed suicide, Randolph, Zanoba, Roxy, and Rudy could probably have brought him victory in the struggle.

Young Man II

• Brooklyn von Eruzais is a nobody at the Magic University, but he has nerves of steel. After he defeated Zanoba in magic practice and Cliff in the choosing of the Graduation Representative, he then politely challenges Rudeus to a personal duel! It’s no big stakes, just a young man testing how far he has to go to reach the top, but to directly request even an exhibition match with a guy as powerful as Rudy has become takes guts.
• Due to misinformation, Rudeus is ambushed into an 8-on-1 fight against the Millis Temple Knight Order, who have spent more than a week researching his fighting strategies to develop counters. They trap him in a spell-preventing barrier and surround him on all sides with knights who are unanimously Advanced-rank in sword skill, in all four elements of attack magic, and in barrier magic. Rudeus wastes them, never losing his cool and walking away with barely a scratch.
  • He dissolves the barrier with Malatite equipment, briefly tests their defenses with weak Rock Bullets to learn their tactics, repeatedly brushes off counter-attacks of 3-4 simultaneous spells, experiments with using Disturb Magic on their shield barriers, and then he gets serious.
  • The knights thought they could counter Quagmire, but following with Dense Fog knocks them off-balance when they try. They turn the mud to sand after Rudy’s spell Electric fails to hurt them since they warded their armor against it beforehand. But Rudeus hasn’t used more attack spells, so they quickly dispel the fog… and waiting for them is the Magic Armor MK-I.
  • Now serious, Rudeus takes down three dumbfounded knights with as many blows in fewer seconds as his opening move, simultaneously shooting three more with the Stone Gatling. Then he just swats the last knight like a fly, and since their commander is his aunt he decides to be considerately more gentle and hits her with a weaker Rock Bullet. It took maybe five seconds.
• Gisu is an apostle of Hitogami, and has been for most of his life. He explains this in a letter left behind to Rudeus, and straightforwardly declares war and his intent to continue the fight and take Rudy’s head as repayment for the favors Hitogami has done him. Rudeus doesn’t bother to pursue him, knowing Gisu became a S-rank adventurer with no combat ability, so they have no chance of finding him until he wants to be found.
  • This development blindsides even Orsted. He had no idea, never discovered this in the past loops, which suggests Gisu played a part in secretly thwarting him most previous loops.
• Rudeus has a rematch with Atoferatofe, backed up by Roxy and Eris, two King-rank fighters. Atofe stops the Sword of Light halfway by precisely stabbing Eris’s shoulder joint mid-swing, kicks Eris away despite losing most of her head, and then gets hit by MK-I’s Gatling Stone Cannon. When she reforms, she just ends the fight and pouts at the memories of Fighting God Armor it brought up. Remembering her past experiences with the human race’s tools, Atofe gracefully surrenders, formally declaring Rudeus her leader and a Hero.
  • Technically, Rudeus one-shot Atofe, and Moore later reveals that he is the second person (after North God Kalman I) to be recognized from one blow. If there was any doubt before, Rudeus has now reached the level where he could enter the Seven World Power rankings.
• If it wasn’t clear before how exceptional Atoferatofe and Badigadi are, Rudeus meeting the other Demon Kings clears that up. Rather than being violent thugs, most of them listen earnestly to his message, are childishly delighted by his tributary gifts, and begin to panic when they learn Atofe declared him a Hero for defeating her.
• The reason Lara has been totally silent up to now is that she inherited the Migurd telepathy that skipped Roxy lacks and is speaking mentally to people who (other than Zenith) can’t hear her. Upon discovering this, Roxy considers leaving Lara to be raised by Royn and Rokary so she doesn’t grow up lonely. For the first time, Lara expresses herself and struggles to voice her first words: to not separate her from Mom but to stay together.
• When his and Sylphy’s second child is a green-haired son, their immediate fears about Laplace are made worse by Perugius’s immediate request for their presence. Rudeus gears up, hoping for the best but prepared to fight Perugius and all his familiars to the death if he needs to defend his son. It turns out Perugius just is following up on his previous offer to give a name to their son.
• Nanahoshi’s final attempt to return home is on a scale that leaves even Orsted astonished: a three-dimensional Magic Circle fifty meters wide, one meter tall, made by combining 25,000 individual smaller circles. The first experiment is sending an apple to Earth. It works perfectly, even if the last test eventually fails.
• Through his hundreds of repeated loops Orsted has tried in the past many time to cure the Supard race’s plague. He failed miserably every in attempt despite his access to the Dragon Race artifacts, and eventually gave it up as inevitable. Rudeus swore to try anyway, recruited Cliff, and the two of them diagnosed a feasible treatment in hours.

Final Battle

• True to form, Gisu the apostle arranges Rudeus’s assassination perfectly, bringing to bear unbelievable force with Hitogami’s aid and personally developing the strategies to negate Rudeus’s best advantages:
  • First, Gisu lets his chosen assassins get a feel for Rudeus as a person by accompanying him under disguise rings for a short time. He has also given them instructions that, ‘if it’s a narrow foothold, then even senpai won’t be able to use his trump card, (Magic Armor)” and “since senpai uses magic from his hands, it’s possible if you cut the hands from the base, he’ll be unable to use it.”
  • The two assassins then corner Rudeus from each end of a narrow bridge, spanning a canyon in which a horde of Earth Dragons dwell. They immediately cut off his arms, and when Rudeus tried to flee a slash to his back knocks him off. The only reason he isn’t cut in half is that the cheap sword used couldn’t stand up to his unexpectedly tough armor, so both broke.
  • The identity of the assassins Gisu sent is also mind-boggling since he still advises such people to be cautious against Rudeus. To tell former Sword God Gull Farion and current North God Kalman III to be careful of someone, Gisu certainly has not underestimated Rudy’s threat level.
• When he saw Rudeus cut down and fall into the gorge, Doga, who is a North Emperor, jumped right after him, survived, and administered first aid. While waiting 2-3 days for Rudeus to wake up, Doga kills three Earth Dragons that attack. Later, he defeats two more with one axe strike each.
• Eris and Gull Farion fight a duel, both knowing each other’s style and capabilities very well, and Eris relying on Ruijerd to potentially make up the difference. But while he was the Sword God, Gull Farion has other tricks, and reliably deflects Eris with the Water God style. Both are knocked off-balance, but when he swings a second time for her neck, Ruijerd parries, and Eris’s second slash cuts him in half.
  • Ironically, if he’d used Sword God style Gull Farion might have won, but his recent defeat at the hands of his new son-in-law shattered his confidence.
• Kalman III gets serious and deals severe injuries to Rudeus, Kalman II, Eris, and Ruijerd with almost no effort whatsoever, having dominated the fight despite holding back prior to then.
• When Kalman III gets reinforced by the Fierce God, it seems hopeless for the heroes. So of course, reinforcements arrive. Fighting power is one thing, but the fact is, who would have expected Atoferatofe Raibaku to force the Fierce God’s surrender by strategically invading his island and taking hostages? Yes, renowned Dumb Muscle Atofe just used forethought and strategy to non-violently defeat a powerful enemy. Hidden Depths indeed.
• Injured and tired, Rudeus and Kalman III square off for a personal duel in the depths of the Earth Dragon gorge. It’s not quite a Single-Stroke Battle but it ends in seconds when Rudeus copies Eris’s odd rhythm and confuses Kalman III long enough to turn his deathblow into a glancing hit and counter. Thus does Rudeus the Quagmire become the Seventh-Ranked World Power.
• The Fierce God has surrendered, the Sword God is dead, the North God is dead, Dark King Vita has perished, and Gisu has fled. In the few days of aftermath, Rudeus’s biggest concern is who the third apostle could be, and whether they are present in this fight or acting elsewhere. So of course, right when Rudeus is thinking about this subject on the beach, who should come striding out of the ocean with Gisu on his shoulder but Hitogami’s third apostle: Third-Ranked World Power, Fighting God Badigadi.

Last Boss

• Fighting God Badigadi, a being on par with Orsted and Laplace has arrived on a beach with Rudeus and Kalman II, declared himself an apostle of Hitogami, and announced his intent to take Rudeus’s head despite their prior friendship. Then
  Badi: “My name is Fighting God Badigadi! Dragon God’s subordinate Rudeus of the Quagm─”
  Kalman II: “My name is Alex Kalman Reyback! I am North God Kalman the Second!
  “I challenge the Immortal Demon Lord Badigadi to a personal duel!
  “I swear by the honor of the Immortal Demon Clan, accept it!”
  • Kalman II knows he stands a 0% chance of beating his uncle, but Badigadi’s honor as a Demon King will not allow him to refuse a personal challenge, and the time he buys can let Rudeus run out of range and rally their allies to resist/escape.
• Atofe is ecstatic for a chance to fight her brother seriously and leads her Imperial Guard off to battle, closely followed by the Ogres’ Fierce God Malta. When Rudy next checks the situation, Kalman II is already unconscious, while Badigadi – waist deep in the ocean and protecting Gisu on his shoulder – holds off Atofe and Malta with all the effort of playing with children.
• When Rudeus blasts Badigadi and Gisu with Lightning, the explosion blinds everyone with sand and mud. Badigadi then drops out of the sky and shatters the Magic Armor MK-I with Rudeus inside. After Rudeus gets knocked out and dragged away, Badi fights off Eris, Ruijerd, Atofe, and Malta simultaneously in a battle that destroys the city of Heilelul.
• Orsted does not know how to defeat Fighting God Badigadi and has never fought such a deadly opponent before. (Remember that Fighting God is #3, above the #4 Demon God who is usually #2 Orsted’s most dangerous opponent.) The Fighting God Armor provides protection, perfect freedom of movement, loss of pain and fatigue, as well as the user’s most fitting weapon, with its drawbacks – draining the wearer’s life force, hi-jacking their mind, and an inability to heal wounds – negated by Badigadi’s immortal flesh. Orsted isn’t even sure that his fighting in co-operation with Rudeus could succeed, only saying, “I haven’t done it before, but it shouldn’t be something we can’t do.”
• Gisu puts himself in harm’s way alone to bait a trap for Rudeus. When hit by a Stone Cannon, he falls, but the distance is too large to confirm the death or Gisu’s identity for certain, and despite his urge to check Rudeus suspects it’s a trap and going to check will get him killed. After watching the unmoving corpse for ten hours, Badigadi steps into view and Gisu gets off the ground with a shrug, having faked the entire time. Two more hours, and Rudeus would have cracked and sprung it.
• With the arrival of the Fighting God climbing a cliff face like a spider without Gisu, Rudeus takes half a second to launch unusual fire magic at the forest Gisu was last seen in, and then the enemy is upon them. They attack Badi 16:1 and maintain that pace with minimal injuries until exhaustion and bad luck begins whittling them down, whereupon Badi deals lethal wounds to Eris and Zanoba at once. Right when Rudeus is facing death, and has received a promise that Badigadi will protect his family from Hitogami, Ghyslaine shows up with Isolte and Sylphy to turn the tides and heal the wounded, reorganizing the flow of battle in seconds.
• Rudeus successfully develops a counter to Badigadi being an Advancing Wall of Doom by tearing off an armored arm with Paul’s defense-ignoring blade and throwing it into a magic circle that prevents both flesh and armor from returning to him.
• Despite all the strategies, Badigadi smashes the MK-0 armor into scrap, and Rudeus is only saved by an intervention from Eris. But her sword breaks, and she’s about face Badigadi and die to buy time without a weapon. So Rudy throws her the Kajakuto charged with his magic, and her sole blow pulverizes and obliterates Badigadi, armor and all.
• Gisu dies quietly despite his protections against earth, water, demon eyes and magic armor, charred by fire magic he never expected Rudeus to use. He’s crying at his uselessness in the end, failing to repay his savior Hitogami, but Gisu at least gets acknowledgement that without holding back or cutting corners, he’s proven the most difficult enemy Rudy has had to face.
• After everything is gone and they’ve cremated Gisu, while returning to the Supard Village, yet another enemy is found by Ruijerd. Wearing the Fighting God Armor, wielding the strongest sword Kajakuto, Rudeus never considered he may have inherited his grandmother’s immortal body… But Kalman III has revived and returned, blowing away everyone in the exhausted group before heading to eradicate the Supard, leaving the heroes alive as a show of gratitude for his improved strength.
• At the empty village, Kalman III throws a fit and is about to kill Rudy until an outpouring of murderous intent freezes them both, and man responsible appears.
  Orsted: “Leave the rest to me.”
  Rudeus: “But, Orsted-sama, your mana…”
  Orsted: “It’s fine, you’ve done enough. I’ve resolved myself as well. … I, too, want to try fighting believing in my comrades for once.”
  …
  Orsted: (to Kalman III) “This is perfect. Possessing the Fighting God Armor and the Dragon King Sword. I assume you’ll have no excuses when you lose with both?”
• What ensues is an epic duel faster than Rudeus can perceive, with Orsted’s life and Kalman III’s purpose for living at stake. In fact, we later learn that Orsted used fully half of his total magic in the duel. The results speak for themselves:
  10 minutes later.
  A fourth of the forest of the valley was annihilated.
  The wilderness had become a burnt area, with a heap of large broken trees scattered about.
  A boy with both of his arms now gone was on his knees.
  A sword was put against that boy’s neck.
  The boy looked in amazement at the wielder of that sword.

  The wielder of that sword was one man.
  With silver hair and sanpaku eyes.
  His entire body was completely unscathed.
  He was standing spotless as if he hadn’t even fought yet.
  Only his clothes were a little bit torn.
  Orsted: “Will you die here or become my subordinate? Choose.
• Then there's the final conversation between Rudeus and Hitogami where the latter starts ranting as to how he will ruin the former's life and his descendants' lives. Rudeus is relieved at this because it shows that Hitogami is panicking. When asked why he's so calm about it, Rudeus states the obvious answer: he's dead and he can't do anything anymore at this point; plus he can leave everything to his descendants with no regrets if Hitogami is that worried.

Off-Screen Events and Individuals

• It turns out that this entire Human World is an After the End situation as a result of a pre-historic war that destroyed the Demon, Beast, Dragon, Heaven, Void, and Sea races’ worlds, with all survivors fleeing to the Human World tens of millennia in the past. It’s suggested that the Void World also survived – being the center of the cube on which the other worlds were the faces – as that’s where Hitogami lives. The other Worlds may have been collateral damage when the Dragon race first tried to get to the Void World and kill Hitogami.
• Laplace. We never see him in the story, but no single individual, possibly excluding Hitogami, has personally influenced more of the past, present, and future than Laplace has.
  • He was originally Demon Dragon King Laplace, one of the five generals under the original Dragon God during the war that destroyed multiple worlds. He was (possibly) manipulated by Hitogami into turning against the Dragon God and came to his senses in time to flee to the Human World and become the second generation Dragon God.
  • Laplace continued to study, research, and develop magical techniques over tens of thousands of years in preparation for Orsted’s reincarnation, when they would finally kill Laplace. He created Fighting God Armor and dedicated himself to fighting Hitogami’s apostles.
  • 4,200 years before the story, Laplace discovered that Demon Empress Kishirika Kishirisu was an apostle and abducted her. Badigadi was also an apostle, and Hitogami told Badigadi how he could steal the Fighting God Armor to rescue her.
  • Demon Dragon King Laplace and Fighting God Badigadi fought to a draw, Badigadi accidentally killed Kishirika, and Laplace used a spell to vaporize Badigadi despite the Armor, which also destroyed most of the continent to create the Ringus Sea. Badigadi would eventually regenerate, and Kishirika would be reborn, but Laplace was so damaged that he split into two beings: Technique God Laplace who sought to kill ‘God’ and Demon God Laplace who sought to kill ‘Human’.
    • “Hitogami” is a homophone for “Human God,” so the half identities each only remembered half of the identity of their sworn enemy.
  • Demon God Laplace unified the Demon races, recruited powerful warriors, and began the centuries-long Laplace Campaign, which most of the 7 World Powers took sides in and caused the death of more than half the team of heroes who finally sealed him.
  • Knowing the Dragon race’s reincarnation method, a large part of Orsted’s in-story goal is to kill Demon God Laplace when he resurrects a century or so after Rudeus’s birth, while Hitogami wants to keep the Demon God alive. Without killing Laplace and taking the Treasure he holds, Orsted can't get to the Void World to kill Hitogami, and Orsted also can't kill Hitogami if he's exhausted all his magic against Laplace beforehand, so the series' goal is about preparatory battles for making Laplace's defeat easier or harder when he resurrects.
• Atoferatofe Raibaku. The most fearsome and violent Demon King, she's known as 5,000 years old Dumb Muscle with a Hair-Trigger Temper, relying on her immortal body and brute strength to defeat all challengers. Except not. Atofe has some serious Hidden Depths to her: while she's a genuine Blood Knight, Atofe also plays up being a Large Ham with Insane Troll Logic because she enjoys it. She's only of average intellect, but even that can be devastating when she's treated like a moron and does something unexpectedly sensible. Consider:
  • Atofe’s guards are mostly humans with some other races, but she has access to magic that can both enslave them to her orders and give them some version of her immortal flesh. This is magic no other character is shown using, or even understanding; it's ignored in-story but no other character is stated to know how it works.
  • Despite being brutal and lashing out, Atofe lets her guards get away with backtalk, occasionally listens to suggestions, and she was smart enough to appoint the much smarter Moore as her second-in-command, listen to his suggestions, and earn his loyalty so that he will plot and lie to nudge things for her enjoyment.
  • Rather than picking unwinnable fights, Atofe is savvy enough to recognize when another person is even stronger than her, and surrender gracefully. She also was someone who the North God fell in love with, and she loved him as well; even centuries after his death, she still introduces herself every time as "Immortal Demon King, Atoferatofe Raibaku".
  • It was said that Atofe doesn’t use any sword style, just brute force, but that's patently untrue: she was taught the North God style by North God Kalman I, and after his death she taught the style to her children and grandchildren, including Kalman II, Kalman III, and Death God Randolph. Her strike is precise enough to slip between two bones and into Eris' shoulder joint in mid-swing, no easy feat.
  • Although Atofe doesn't obviously use things like weapons, supplies, alliances, and strategy to fight, she recognizes them as forms of strength. Defeating her personal might is just the minimum requirement to acknowledge anyone as strong, and she can supply or bring to bear the others if needed.
  • After recognizing the power of the Magic Armor, Atofe immediately surrenders gracefully and spends a while being philosophical about her past similar experiences, and the nature of human strength. She's mostly talking to herself, but she sounds very much like the wise Badigadi.
  • On their parting, Atofe gives Rudeus a box to help him in his time of need. Rudeus imagines that it’s a gag gift, impossible to open, as the struggle of trying will help him build muscle. In fact, Atofe thought ahead and provided him with some of her own flesh, to heal and protect him when he’s mortally wounded. It also alerts her to the fact that Rudeus is in a huge fight so she can show up and not miss the fun.
  • When she does show up, Atofe immediately supports Rudeus with the goal of winning quickly and efficiently, instead of just losing herself in bloodlust: the two most dangerous enemies are the North God Kalman III, her grandson, and the Ogres' Fierce God. She knows her grandson's abilities and predicts Fierce God Malta would be the most troublesome… so she thinks ahead, sends her soldiers to the Ogre tribe's island to take hostages, and forces Malta to non-violently surrender.
• The pact between Ogre Race and the Beheiril Kingdom originated when adventurers came to the island looking for gold, and instead found a Magic Race oppressed and besieged by the Sea Race. In the name of justice and compassion, the adventurers swore their aid and fought off the attackers, at the cost of all but one member's deaths. The Ogre leader swore eternal friendship with that survivor, the prince of the Beheiril Kingdom, and the two have remained allies ever since.
• The influence Hitogami has cannot be underestimated. Not only has he proven capable of interfering with Kishirika's sight when it was thought he was limited to dream dialogue, but Kishirika reveals that she is a former apostle, and Hitogami once orchestrated the fight between Demon Dragon King Laplace and Fighting God Badigadi. In short, Hitogami's manipulations resulted in the birth of Demon God Laplace and caused the sinking of most of a continent.

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