It took around 7 years, but Count Bindewald's dream has finally come true! Rozemyne is now in Ahrensbach using her vast quantity of mana toward the betterment of the duchy!
this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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PrePub - Ascendance of a Bookworm
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- Ascendance of a Bookworm
- Honzuki no Gekokujou
- 『本好きの下剋上』
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Truly a splended day for the late count!
Perhaps Roz can visit the late counts family, and share the good news
I'm sure Fraularm would be delighted by such a visit. ^^
I thought he's still alive in an Ehrenfest prison somewhere?
I thought that was Bezewenst? Or I could have it backwards. These noble names are so hard.
"Late" can mean deceased or former. So you were correct to say late count as he is the former count—although he is not deceased, but rather imprisoned.
Bezewanst, aka Evil Santa, is the executed former high bishop. Count Bindewald, the fat toad, is an Ahrensbach noble, so Sylvester couldn't execute him. Bindewald is still in an Ehrenfest dungeon.
I have a feeling that "betterment of the duchy" was not on his mind though. ^^
„Hurry up and dye already!” - what a nice pun, thanks u/quof
I wonder if Lanzenave knights will try to escape through the gate or teleport to Adalgisa villa.
Even in this release we were told of Lanzenavians who stole coaches to try to get back to their boats, so a definite yes for the former. The latter however is the interesting question, should even a single messenger manage to get through.
Detlinde is surely quick to jump to the conclusion that the messenger is a panicked idiot and should just be ignored, because there's no way their Lanzenave elites with their undefeatable silver equipment could possibly be overcome by some primitive Dunkelfelger ruffians.
Though I very much doubt that either the Lanzenave king or Raublut will be foonish enough to listen to her, so what will they decide? Will they move up their timetable to do whatever they are trying to do in the Sovereignty, gambling it all on one card, knowing full well, that their only line of retreat and supply line has been cut off? Or will they send some of or maybe even the entirety of their force back to Ahrensbach to launch a counter attack to win back said lines? Or will they consider their mission a failure and try to fight their way back out to their ships to retreat entirely?
In the latter two cases, will Raublut trust that his cover is still intact and remain in the Sovereignty, to keep on scheming, or will he consider the risk of being exposed too high and join his liege in the counter attack/breakout attempt?
Roz may have to apologize to that "go close the gate" badger after she finds out where Letizia is headed...
I doubt Rozemyne would charge off to the inner country gate, even if she knew Letizia was on one of the ships. Even without taking her target fixation into account, saving Ferdinand inside the mana replenishment hall is something only she can do, while taking the ships and freeing hostages is something plenty of other people can do... and in fact can probably do better than her. As such she would at most ask Hannelore to send some of her knights after the ships.
But I don't think that'll be necessary anyway. Dunkelfelgerians are well schooled in strategy and tactics, so they will know not to let any enemy escape, if they can help it. Also the ones that are currently out in the streets to hunt down the fleeing Lanzenavians are going to run out of targets in the streets rather quickly, making very likely that their attention will be drawn to the shiny silver ships as a place for more potential prey.
So far things are much easier than expected, which is itself rather worriesome. Hopefully the quietness is due to Lanzenave's presence, and not due to a growing vanguard in the Sovereignty or Ehrenfest. We almost lost Rozemyne as she entered Ahrenbach's foundation - wouldn't have been good at all x-x
Next chapters will be Ferdinand taking potions, and then likely him being escorted somewhere to recover. Even he must have his limits, and after being poisoned, having his name stolen, and being drained of mana, I'm sure that must be a limit for him for some period of time.
Also, thank you JNC for 4 chapters this week. You truly spoil us! 🙏
I feel bad for Dunkelfelger. They got all hyped up for practically no action so far. Maybe next week they'll have something to fight.
We don't know where the sovereign knight commander is, so there may some threat there - and maybe that's in the sovereignty or academy?
Why would the charm against physical attacks work against a silver knife? Did it only look silver in the moonlight, while being made out of regular steel?
Or maybe the handle was wrapped in wood or leather and that was enough to activate the charm, so it was the handle that was deflected, naturally taking the connected blade with it?
What if it measured the movements of the user to determine if an impact occured.
Example modern smart watches can determine if someone has fallen and call emergency services with an accelerometer.
Maybe the logic was
- impact detected
- hostile intent detected (maybe via mana sense or some other mechanism) -- counter atack to hostile intent.
Idk if this would work. Just a shower thought 🙃
A silver knife is simply a knife made out of a material only available in LN which lacks any mana. The charm against physical attacks blocks well.... Physical attacks, this is anything between a spear created by a schtappe to a boulder filling on your head, so I don't see why it wouldnt't work with a silver knife
First of all there is the test that Bonifatius did. The piece of cloth he tried to cut with his transformed schtappe completely nullified the attack, rather than just refusing to be cut. WIth his monstrous strength, the stand the cloth had been lying on, should by all means have been broken, but wasn't harmed... which strongly indicates that mana based attacks and items should not be able to even move silver cloth.
Second, we've seen Detlinde being hit by explosions from Ferdinand's magic tools and not only not suffering the direct effect, but also not being thrown across the entire room into the next wall, which again quite strongly suggests that magical effects do not work on silver equipment.
Third is the ease with which the Lanzenavians are able to carve through the Ahrensbach knights. Granted, it is not impossible that they used exclusively poison and the three that attacked Eckhart and Angelica just so happened to have run out of poison and thus had to fall back on their weapons to attack them, but that seems quite unlikely.
And finally, even the guy who threw the knife was surprised it didn't work. And while I can buy Rozemyne's assumption that the attacker wasn't aware that magic charms of this specific type existed, I doubt that with the proliferation of magic tools in Yurgenschmidt, especially rich greater duchies like Ahrensbach, he'd be completely oblivious about defensive magic tools existing in general. And yet he seemed quite sure that the silver weapons would be able to overcome whatever magical defenses the Yurgenschmidt nobles could throw at them.
None of the points is definite proof, but they do make a pretty strong case that silver equipment should not be affected by magical effects.
Now if Angelica had deflected it by hitting the flying knife out of the way with her hand, I would have no issue. She's fast and precise enough to hit the flat side and thus get away without injury, even if it can go right through her armour. Likewise knocking it aside with Stenluke should be fine, since a mana blade has a physical core and is not just pure magic given form. But the charm activating seems a bit odd to me. It's nothing that breaks the story or anything, but I would really like to have some answers here. Maybe one of the Fanbooks will have those in the Q&A section.
And Spoiler for the current pre-pub (3/8):
The silver needles go straight through any and all defenses, that the Dunkelfelger knights have, charms, highbeasts and mana armour alike.
That leads me to believe that either, the knife had only a silver blade, but non-silver handle and was never meant to be thrown, it wasn't silver at all and just looked like that in the light of the moon, or the author made a little guff.
Or maybe there's a misunderstanding of how charms work.
If it's wind based then maybe that doesn't count as direct elemental impact? It's not directly acting on the knife?
Anyone else sad that the part left on a cliffhanger 😥
Love the climax in this part. Especially dunks reacted to the no casualties as "meh boring".
"a teleporter that only archdukes could place. It woud take us straight to Kirnberger" Well, guess I worried about the delay of flying to Kirnberger unnecessarily. ^^
I have a potential solution for the downside of this teleportation circle: Feystones. Just prepare a sufficient amount of charged feystones ahead of time (or have the non-combatants who are to remain behind charge them right there and then), that way the knights won't have to expand their own mana. Sure there's the physical exhaustion, that comes from using large quantities of mana from feystones, making it no perfect solution, but it beats being both physically exhausted and low on mana. We also know how Ferdinand's specialized potions that only restore either stamina or mana, kick in very quickly, so they could combine the feystone charging with specialized stamina potions to be fully combat ready in a matter of seconds after arrival. Or might it work to drink slower acting potions before activating the teleportation circle, timed in a way that the effect will kick in right on arrival?
I wonder if Trauerqual could feel the influx of mana into the country gate. It's got to be connected to the foundation of the country, which he is registered with after all. I also wonder if that mana will stay in the country gate alone, or if through that connection, some will flow back into the foundation. And if so... what consequences that will might have. So far Rozemyne only poured mana into the royal academy and shrines, which then got used for the magic circle over the academy and obtaining the Grutrissheit.