I still disagree heavily with Darth Zion on Lostbelt Zeus somehow losing to Scion
Speaking of disagreements, I don't agree with your stance on 'all-or-nothing' powers, they might not be NLF but they are clearly superior to other powers in Worm and cannot be countered by any energy release we see in that series. Multiple characters, the narration, and Wildbow has stated repeatedly that they are absolute and cannot be countered by anything.
All-or-nothings are PRT terminology for anyone who’s strong enough that you can’t defend against their attack unless you defend against anything, can’t dodge unless you can dodge everything.
There's a line that sorta appears in the story, where you run into the perfects (perfect defense, perfect offense) and stuff gets fucky - and the rule of thumb is that 'unless your ability beats -everything-, it doesn't beat this'. - Wilbrow
There were capes with the sort of power where it didn’t matter what the fuck they were shooting, they’d put a hole in that something. Damsel’s power was like that. So was Foil’s.
There were capes where it didn’t matter what the fuck was coming at ’em, they’d take the hit and stay in the fight, or do something equivalent. I was one of those capes. Kind of. Our job was to protect the first group
Siberian, Damsel, Scrub, Flechette, and Grey Boy are Worm capes at the 'if anything can penetrate that defense, these guys penetrate that defense' level of attack. Eidolon and Glaistig Uaine have such attacks in their toolkits
Question: Harm is harm. Since there doesn’t seem to be a limit to what powers can actually do, think of an effect that could trump other effects. For example, a sword that cuts ANYthing is something that has occasionally appears in fantasy. Not the “absurdly sharp edge” version but the “name the object of objection and it’s cut” version- Swing it at someone and you could cut off a limb. Or, you could cut off their will to fight. Or their strength. Or their ability to interact with the world. Or anything else of them you could name at all.
Wildbow: But if you’re talking in that respect, you might as well be asking what happens when the unstoppable force strikes the immovable object. You might be talking about exactly this if you’re referring to flechette’s arrows vs. Siberian.
She could do other things, but the primary benefit, the easiest thing to do, was making her ammunition punch through anything.
Another crisis. Similar to the others. Going to announce it to the dining hall,” Naphtha explained. “I don’t suppose any of you feel brave enough to go up against Sleeper? Absolute invulnerability better than Alexandria’s, special brains, absolute annihilation powers?”
The italic emphasis here is from the novel itself, I've only bolded things. They are powers that the story calls
unbeatable by virtue of the sheer violation of physics they accomplish
- a defence that would protect against any amount of force without fail or an attack that penetrates all defences regardless without fail.
As the rule of thumb, an 'All-or-Nothing' power can only be countered by powers that beat everything, and even then it creates a scenario of 'absolute defence vs absolute offence' in which both cancel each other out. There are two ways to interpret this, however-
- We can take their word at face value and assume these powers are hax that penetrate through anything.
- We do not take his word at face value, but compare it with other powers in Worm.
Let's disregard the first scenario since we all don't like NLFs like that and look directly at the second. Suppose, we assume these 'all-or-nothing' powers
cannot trump over any power that's not absolute despite Wildbow, his narration, and all these other characters saying this repeatedly because that would be a no-limit fallacy.
But even then, it's clear that these statements indicate that no amount of raw power we've seen so far in Worm would be able to counter these powers- the author and his narration both confirm that, as I've shown above. So the real question question becomes what is the most amount of raw power that we have seen in Worm so far?
Well, we do know that Entities speak to each other with the force of a supernova-
The pair moved in sync, spiraling around one another in what I realized was a double helix. Each revolution brought them further and further apart. Innumerable motes drifted from their bodies as they moved, leaving thick trails of shed tissues or energies painting the void of empty space in the wake of their spiraling dance, as though they were made of a vast quantity of sand and they were flying against a gale force headwind.
When they were too far away to see one another, they communicated, and each message was enormous and violent in scope, expressed with the energy of a star going supernova. One 'word', one idea, for each message.
We also know that you can create near-infinite energy through Phir Se by abusing time-hax-
He glanced at one monitor, and windows opened to show images of the leg. He was able to draw the crude shapes that represented individual devices even when he wasn’t looking at the screen. A triangle here, a circle there. Another window opened up with a line connecting it to the triangle, and he drew an identical triangle, began filling it with more shapes. By the time he had a fourth subwindow open, he was drawing from previous notes to copy over other schematics of older work, seeing where things could go. Everything could fit together. The waste energy of one system could help power another. Even on a molecular level, there were ways to harness the ambient radiation that was emitted by everything in the known universe. Some was infinitesimally small, but it was usable. That energy could be heterodyned, or redirected into loops long enough that they were near-infinite.
And the greatest amount of energy we see in Worm is the Cycle destroying more planet Earth across the multiverse than there are particles in the observable universe.
With that, the process will begin anew. The same things will occur. This has happened no less than one hundred and seventy times, with little variation. Each time it occurs, realities are left dead, the grace period before resources run out once again is shorter. That the number of worlds exceed the number of particles that might exist in one world's universe is inconsequential; the creatures multiply exponentially.
{...}
Two remain.
They spend time reorganizing themselves, shifting the sheer masses of shards they have acquired into forms useful for another task.
Once they are reformed, they leech all of the heat and energy from countless worlds and concentrate it in a single reality. The energy boils the oceans of silt-choked waters, disintegrates the landmasses.
Their bodies form into a large, complex shape, with only small fragments in this one world. The extensions of those same fragments extend into other realms, in concentrated, specific shapes, made for a purpose: to survive the next step.
The energy is released, and the planet shatters.
The shattering is so extreme that it extends into all other worlds, through the same channels that the fragments used to extend into other realities. Every single one of the remaining habitable worlds is destroyed in the ensuing blast.
And the fragments radiate outwards, shedding and dropping their protective shells as they sail into the black, empty void.
I think I can safely claim that it would take energy greater than these to overpower these 'all-or-nothing' powers without going into NLF since the author, the story narration, and the characters repeatedly mention that. How this measures against Nasuverse or whether Zeus would survive being telefragged by these repeatedly from alternate realities is not something I want to argue over right now, so I'm leaving it at that.
My opinion on this match against Chadela does not change, they win through superior hax.
