Sousou no Frieren - Vol. 3 Ch. 22 - Scales of Obedience

[Eliminateur]

yay for the loli-ancient mage, calm and collected vengeance

 

[Acolytus]

So I told Aura to kill herself and she actually did it. The absolute madwoman.

 

[magnatrout]

Such a manager

 

[Grahav]

When the villain starts crying in fear and frustration
😇

 

[Jachinz]

kys

 

[LoLyeah]

Damn...

 

[Jojeke]

Even in the end, true to her name, she chose the guillotine to kill herself.

 

[Yeesun]

Yoooo, what if this is precisely the cause of the demon king wanting to genocide the elves. He feared that in their immortal lifetime they would eventually be at a point where their mana would be like the sea to a demon's drop.

 

[zanonyn]

@rrolo1
My point is that, unlike Flamme ( and the author, apparently ) thinks, if you go to nature and see the societal structure of animals that have the kind of societal structure he proposes for demons, the individuals in there do not behave like demons do in here. Powerful ones for sure flaunt their strenght, the rest ... not, to avoid that the powerful ones feel tempted to prove their superiority on them.

Emphasis added, this is where you're going off the tracks a little bit. Nature provides good analogies and specific purpose tests, but at the same time we should never forget that there is no actual version of this in nature. We haven't even actually seen individualistic apex predators evolve sentience. We definitely haven't seen (yet) AIs reach sentience, completely unbounded by normal evolutionary natural law (which would be the closest equivalent to "magic"). At the end of the day, the basic material and thermodynamic inputs/outputs for the natural world all impose certain inherent constraints. But monsters (or programs here) with magic can defy thermodynamics, and have completely different lifecycles, so there is only so far we can take analogies before having to get into more theoretical game theory.

More, and exactly because of that, younger ones will usually feign weakness in the front of powerful ones to gain time for them getting themselves the skills and stength to do their bid for power, because if a powerful one sense a young one budding into someone that can topple him, he will feel tempted to get rid of him while he can do that easily. Note how diferent that is from the "can't limit their mana bacuse their society depends on it" that Flamme states.

Demons though aren't just animals, the pressures that drove them to their current point also have resulted in pride and forms that have their own pressures. Further, you've neglected something this chapter specifically covered: unbound by normal lifecycles, demons have no particular care for the young anyway. You've applied your own sense, implicitly assuming that if a powerful one doesn't sense a young one budding, they won't get rid of them. But that's not true here, on the contrary if a demon thought another was weak, regardless of age, they'd use/dispose of them that way without hesitation. Hiding power constantly means a lower chance of survival itself, because the bottom tier will just be used as fodder or whatever. And if they're actually strong, well it'll by definition become obvious because they'll be thrown into battle and survive.

So it's a constant struggle, which doesn't leave much room for locally suboptimal strategies. The strong directly gain more opportunities for more strength. In contrast, humans don't just use up "the weak" at random, people can have time to develop.

It's so interesting precisely because it's easy to see how a local optimal choice naturally can bubble into a long-term suboptimal one, and vice versa.

 

[spicypepperpasta]

And no witnesses to report her true power level. Nice.

 

[EnderWin]

How the hell do magic work in this univetse anyway?

 

[Fushiginiku]

@rrolo1 gotta disagree about nature social orders. There are cases of much greater complexity than 'one strongest, the rest act weak'. Wolves definitely choose out an order (or actual, two, one for each gender) and sort out the place of all members according to strength. That is why, in any pack, in addition to alpha male and beta female there is an omega (either male and female), the designated first to go and last to get the food. The rest are also strictly sorted out according to strength, mostly by way of play-fighting.
They show themselves as subservient to those above them by actions such as rolling to show their belly and throat, but they immediately show strength against their own inferiors, whether the alpha is watching or not. It is extremely important in a wolf pack that everyone knows exactly where everyone else fits at all times. This is my model for demon society as well, and I suspect it is also the author's.

 

[lelouch4705]

That was so god damn good

 

[AnotherMMD]

Spoiler

i think it would be more hummiliating to Aura if Frieren didn't show her true size of mana

 

[Magaso]

You can hear the "donk" of the scales tipping.

 

[OKT]

get rekt

 

[Oukishi]

People in the comments are seriously comparing the demon structure to animals lol

 

[ponpoing]

Fuck, that was brutal. Love this work!

 

[Red225]

@Fushiginiku the alpha/beta/omega thing was discredited long ago, and doesn't happen in the wild.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_(ethology)#Canines

The reason why there was such "alpha, beta, omega" roles found was because the wolves were a bunch of random animals who didn't know each other. Such a social behavioural grouping wouldn't occur in anywhere except human prisons, where the pecking order doesn't arise in the wild because the "omega" of the group would just leave if he's treated like shit.

 

[Monky]

Incredible chapter
I never thought the clichéd line ”kill the demon king” would elicit such CHILLS