There\u2019s an important part of the \u201cSalvos\u201d story that is easy to overlook, simply because it isn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n
You see, it\u2019s easy to see Salvos as superior to other characters in the story because she doesn\u2019t struggle anywhere near as much as they do. However, it\u2019s a good question if she would have done anywhere near as well if she had their problems.<\/p>\n
For instance, Daniel experienced catastrophic emotional loss on Earth when his girlfriend died. His entire life collapsed, and then he got whisked away into another world, where he was deceived and manipulated by his summoners, adding another layer of emotional trauma.<\/p>\n
Edithe got her entire team killed, including her lover Paul. It was literally her mistake \u2013 she got cocky, she led them into a fight with Lucerna, and they all died, mostly saving her. That was in addition to her childhood as a child of a nameless prostitute who got sick and died and she ended up being raised by a temple priest.<\/p>\n
Willy was used as a temple prop for centuries, and when he actually started living for real, his Cyclops friend got a brilliant idea of going into the Bloodied Gulf, where she got killed protecting him from the Centinels, and he got stuck there, depressed.<\/p>\n
Rachel was an unwanted child of divorced parents in a violent marriage and her father sold her to the cultists to be used as human sacrifice.<\/p>\n
The Devil was an absolutely brilliant person, at least Salvos\u2019 equal, who created the first Demon Kingdom, which remains the best system of government Demons ever had. He was betrayed by his mentor of 1000 years, and the result was the catastrophic collapse of the structure of the world, and the fall of his kingdom, which completely broke his heart.<\/p>\n
Hartia was a nice Fairy who specialised in space magic and became Fairy Queen\u2019s architect. He had a girlfriend Ivory, who was everything to him since they were children. He made a mistake with construction of Realityspace, it broke into corruption, and the entire structure of a new world collapsed, killing tens of thousands of Fairies, including his girlfriend and a mentor he greatly admired, Lotus. After that, the Fairy Queen blamed him and attempted to execute him by throwing him into the void, which he survived being a skilled space mage, but his heart broke and he never recovered.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy for Salvos to look good in comparison. She never lost a companion. She never experienced true betrayal. She didn\u2019t make a terrible mistake that caused deaths of important people in her life. The worst things that happened to her were separation from Haec, which was honestly the best thing that could have happened to her, and the fact that she was surrounded by Humans who hate Demons and she felt unaccepted. Imagine a situation where she led her companions into Plaguelands, and they both died to the Lich, and she had to escape, defeated and in disgrace. Any of the close calls could have ended like that. She could have gotten people killed with her cockiness and lack of proper planning. That she didn\u2019t is more due to luck than anything else, but she always takes the credit for it. Rachel imitated this attitude, and she got Sally killed. Salvos\u2019 plans don\u2019t always end well. She got two Legions killed, around 200000 Demons, when she freed them from their commanders, and they were caught in transit by Jofis; her clones were not powerful enough to protect them, and Jofis killed them all instantly. To her, it wasn\u2019t very important because she didn\u2019t know them and they were merely peripheral characters. However, her plans could as easily have ended badly for people who actually matter to her. I think she lacks the maturity necessary to understand the gravity of consequences.<\/p>\n
The purport, I guess, is that it\u2019s easy to look awesome when your burden is light. She looks at her troubled friends and it\u2019s easy for her to see ways where they should get their shit together. However, would she even be able to survive being in their place? For instance, that she got Edithe and Daniel killed the way Edithe got her team killed? That she got Haec killed by straying into Lucerna\u2019s territory, instead of merely getting him captured? Would she be able to shrug that off? I don\u2019t think so, and I think she can thank good fortune for that, because I don\u2019t think she would be able to make so much progress in such a short time. That\u2019s why I consider Belphegor a much more virtuous person than Salvos. He experienced terrible personal loss. His kingdom fell, his world broke, his partner went insane, and it was partially his fault, because he felt something was off and he didn\u2019t stop it. However, he spent 50000 years trying to contain the damage in hope that he will be able to buy enough time for things to be set right at some point in the future, and even without hope, in total despair, he still works, incessantly. Salvos almost fell apart feeling some of his pain in Truth Divination. He continued where everybody else would have either given up or died.<\/p>\n
Everybody compares Daniel to the likes of Alexander and Melissa, but never in their formative years, only at their peak. He always falls short in those utterly unfair comparisons, but he matched Salvos in her growth. In some five years, he went from level 16 to 181, and is currently the second highest levelled Human, after the Watcher who\u2019s been around for a century or so. For someone who keeps trying to find reasons to keep going, one day at a time, he\u2019s doing incredibly well. Edithe, too, after having emotionally recovered from her first disaster, then having lost the ability to summon and ending up stranded in an evolutionary cul-de-sac, having to re-invent herself by fighting up-hill battles as the weakest of the three companions, always feeling like the weak link, she became a legendary person in her company, one of the most famous people in the world, and now she\u2019s integrated with the Archangel which initially had a huge probability of ending terribly for her, and now she might actually and up being one of the highest levelled people in the world. It is true that this is largely to Salvos\u2019 credit, since she pulled them out of the gutter and helped them realise their potential with her combination of optimism and risk-taking, but considering how emotionally wounded they were, and how Salvos wasn\u2019t, the fact that they managed to keep up is fascinating. Basically, it\u2019s like comparing a healthy unburdened person with someone wounded and carrying a sack of cement, and the burdened wounded person almost keeps up. That makes them incredibly admirable. Having in mind that Daniel is lost in a foreign world, after his girlfriend died, his life broke apart, and he was friend-zoned by Salvos who is his love interest, and he still managed to reach lvl. 181 by merely gnashing his teeth and living in memories, that makes him actually more admirable, not less. Also, he is being compared to a legendary God King who lived for at least a thousand years, and he\u2019s approaching his level in the first ten years or so of being there.<\/p>\n
Apparently, it\u2019s all relative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There\u2019s an important part of the \u201cSalvos\u201d story that is easy to overlook, simply because it isn\u2019t there. You see, it\u2019s easy to see Salvos as superior to other characters in the story because she doesn\u2019t struggle anywhere near as … Continue reading