Hakai no Miko Chapter v241 Discussion

This is my first ever review, but I had to make an account to defend this book. This book is an absolute masterpiece. There's no denying it. It has a melodic flow and a smooth pace that is calming and steady even in the most intense situations, which is absolutely because of how hard the translator worked to bring it over to English. The book itself is interestingly original. It takes the overused concept of "Traveling to another world" and made it it's own. Where instead of getting some kind of overpowered ability, he gets cursed and has to build up the power of his subordinates to literally survive, making his own empire and freeing s*aves in the process. Spoiler

Eventually leading to the slaughter of thousands after an unknown event causes his mental breakdown and subsequent revenge.

[collapse] I'll now go over the things that make this novel so good:

1: It does this thing every so often where the chapter splits off into a historical viewpoint, looking back at the time where the main character was still alive. I find this exciting because it leaves a lot of questions open for discussion that we won't know the answers to until the later chapters. It also concludes the technological advancements the MC made during the previous chapters, allowing the plot to move forward without dwelling on the specific reactions of every inhabitant on the planet. They occasionally go like: "Soma made this advancement using some kind of unknown techniques that were way ahead of their time period, which eventually causes a massive s*ave revolt in this city this many years into the future. This kills thousands of people in the process, making many historians question and theorize that this was the ultimate goal of Destroyer Soma in the first place."

Spoiler

In one chapter it said that Souma influenced the dwarves into making cannons. Since his knowledge was lacking on how to make black powder, he wasn't able to bring firearms into existence, but because he left behind the basic concept, the future dwarves were able to conquer a large amount of territory using superior technology they learned from him. What I find most interesting is that they called Souma their ancestor, meaning he isn't hated by the non-humans as much as it seems in the historical records. In the historical records (which are presumably written by the humans, Souma's enemies), Souma was painted (literally lol) as a monster hated by every creature on the continent. This also obviously includes his own people.

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2: Souma deals with interspecies relationships really well. The dwarves had a long history of being hostile with elves, so to solve that, he has to act as a diplomat between both races, solidifying their loyalty to him in the process. This goes even further when he needs to learn the customs of the tribal Zoan so that he can use them as part of his army without them doubting his capabilities as leader. The customs of every race is very detailed, which totally adds to the overall Worldbuilding. The beliefs of the races also hinder the development of technology, which means the MC needs to destroy them to progress forward. This obviously paints him in an even darker light as history twists it to look like he was trying to destroy all culture not his own. (For example: People won't use manure as fertilizer because a guy in the legends did something that made him suffer eternally, with the Gods throwing him into a quagmire full of shit.)

3: The strategy is actually strategy. Souma has a lot of knowledge from LN's and Manga. But as mentioned by him, the books never go over the processes and steps needed to pull off those strategies. This means he needs to come up with his own plans, using what is basically "historical teachings" as the foundation. He also knows that to understand the enemy he needs to understand himself, which leads to quite a funny moment where he offhandedly mentioned that he knows how to defeat all of his solders and understands their every weakness. Insinuating to his advisers that he is actually their most dangerous opponent. Now, there aren't many glaring flaws to this novel. However, there were parts where I wasn't sure if it was a mistake that author left in, only to have that question solved a volume later with Souma questioning the exact same things we were. Spoiler

In Volume 1, after Souma bought the Dwarf s*aves, he ends up speaking the dwarven language without realizing it. It was never talked about and glossed over, so I thought it was a plothole and just made up my own reasoning. However, in Volume 2, we realize that Souma understands all languages and naturally could understand all the races. Of course, we also learned that he won't be able to read and write which tarnishes his future image, but at least that was solved.

[collapse] Now, that could be seen as a mistake but really it just adds onto the pro's of the book. You might think "This doesn't make sense", only to have it be explained later on. There are a lot of things to talk about in this book. Future Souma, the development of cities, the historical flashforward'sand what they mean, the plans of the God's and what Aura will do to destroy Souma's resistance to Her, why there seem to be no Gods in the future, and why Souma is called "History's worst Destroyer", etc. But we can't do that because the book isn't getting very much attention. This also means that it's not getting translated as often, ultimately lengthening the amount of time we'll have our theory's and questions unanswered. In conclusion, you should give Hakai no Miko a shot. It's different from many books, which I've noticed is a turnoff for a lot of people, but I'd like you to take my earnest plea into consideration. Give it a shot.