I’m not done yet. 🙂

I know it’s a projection. I like the series because I identify with the main character and I project a future for the character that I hope to have personally. It’s fucking obvious, after all. I mean, you have a character who wakes up as a demon larva in a total shithole, and understands that she needs to get stronger if she wants to be more of herself, and I project a future where she gets her old memories and self back, only upgraded by her new experiences. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what I’m doing here. Of course the main character is nothing like me in many ways, but I don’t care as long as I see the main trend of similarity; basically, someone threw you into a pit, you have no memories other than the desire for something you feel you should be but can’t access, and it powers all your efforts to dig yourself out. And, of course, the stronger the soul, the stronger the drive.

Also, I somewhat envy the simplicity and clarity of the system. To Salvos, you just need to kill progressively stronger enemies, and you level. Of course, you need to make choices that determine what kind of a person you end up being, but still, it’s incredibly straightforward. Here, it’s all vague, unclear, indistinct, and the actual method of spiritual evolution is hidden under seven veils and I had to figure it out myself; everything everybody thinks is superficial and more harmful than useful. So, it’s much harder than merely killing monsters 20 levels above you, which is why I envy the system from the books and this envy feeds the appeal.

I also like that the author doesn’t sexualise it. In lots of modern stuff I encountered everything seems to be about sex, and everything else looks like merely ways to package sex. It’s boring, and it hides absence of actual ideas. Here, this part was marginalised and this brings everything else to the surface – the way characters think and feel about all sorts of things. Conversations aren’t merely a way to get to the romantic part; they are the actual point. When someone like Orgaf admires Salvos, he does so because of her achievements – she killed the Lich of the Plaguelands. He saw her fight a Hellabomination that was an evolution and over 40 levels above her. He saw her turn back time in order to land a hit on Belzu, he saw her endure and keep fighting after almost getting killed, and after he himself almost gave up. He saw her kill Ira, whom he fought and lost badly, barely surviving the casual encounter. He saw how she spent the last drops of her potion of regeneration to revive him after he was almost killed, and they were in a rough spot at the moment, where he knew her secret and it wasn’t certain to her that he would protect it; it would have been so easy for her to just let him die or finish him herself; instead, she had him nurtured to full strength and left Willy to care for him. The characters are admired for their actions, and when a meritocrat like Orgaf, who spent his entire life killing monsters in various dark dens, searching for treasures to loot, and who is known for speaking about lvl. 100-149 people as “those useless Diamonds” is fangirling over Salvos, you know he has good reasons for it. Also, when Helena Warshade (I internally call her Helena Ravenclaw for obvious reasons), who is Clayton’s equal in magical power and one of the two highest ranked human Mages, and who actually doesn’t like Salvos very much and is very skeptical of her, teams up with Orgaf and Salvos to deal with shit, you know it’s been earned. There’s no stupid artificial sexual tension or jealousy or rivalry interposed in the plot to cloud the important matters. I mean, sure, it exists, in case of Amanda who has a crush on Daniel and is jealous of Salvos and it’s completely obvious, but it’s very localised. It has a function within the plot; the plot isn’t a mere instrument to sell you the sexual content. That’s very realistic, in fact, despite the modern opinion that sex is the main thing people are concerned with, and everything else is merely a way to package it. I am honestly glad to have found a piece of modern literature that contextualises sex and romance properly, instead of drowning everything in it, the way processed food is drowned in sugar. It’s there because somewhere in the margins Edithe is having a romantic relationship with Hadrian, Daniel has a crush on Salvos which she takes nine books to figure out and only with Amanda’s help, and so on, but it’s one thing among twenty, and prioritised below top ten. The important parts aren’t when someone had sex, they are when they figured something out, overcame something important, when something was revealed that changes everything, or when someone saved a friend from mortal danger at great cost and hazard to themselves. The scenes when Salvos is half-dead from pushing a Skill too far and is completely incapacitated and in excruciating pain, and her companions carry her, protect her and deal with shit for her are much more important and telling. For instance, the journey of Edithe from “Demon! Let’s kill it!” when she first met Salvos, through hostility, guarded tolerance, cautious friendship, to profound friendship that developed in the Plaguelands, where Salvos kept saving her life every moment of every day and twice brought her back from the brink of death and mortal danger at extreme cost to herself where she lost her wings, an arm and almost her life fighting an almost unkillable foe because he had Edithe hostage and was going to kill her the way he killed all those other redheads over the centuries. It starts with Edithe being very reluctant to put Salvos on guard duty, because Demon, to Edithe carrying the wounded Salvos in her arms and protecting her with her life. It’s stuff that develops over nine books of material, very gradually. You don’t get cheap stuff here – no easy rewards, no deep emotions that develop overnight for no good reason. You have deep history between the characters who don’t start as friends. Things don’t just happen. Salvos’ roommate in Mavos Academy wants to kill her when she finds out she’s a Demon, and it takes quite a lot of work for Salvos to get past the dangerous point, and after that there’s lots of suspicion before they get to the point where Saffron would throw herself into fire for Salvos. It takes multiple books to get there. They get to know each other and become friends in book two. By book nine, Salvos is the point of inspiration of Saffron’s entire family; they all look up to her and try to live up to her example, after she saved their lives multiple times with acts of outright heroism. It’s not cheaply earned acclaim; it’s someone flying into the heart of the worst battle in the world at that point to save your family from certain death, and then gets you all out and stays to deal with things, and then things like that keep repeating until you all owe your lives to her ten times over. It’s earned, it’s solid “show, not tell” writing style over multiple volumes. Salvos didn’t just accidentally get famous over one event. It’s multiple instances where she fought, lost, fought again, and barely won, saving people who watched and told stories later. For instance, there’s a group of three adventurers she meets in the second book, and whom we follow through the books at the margins of events, who are so inspired by her that they keep looking up to her and doing more daring things to rise up, because next time they meet, they want her to be proud of them; she, in return, saves their lives on multiple occasions because she remembered them.

Also, there’s the sophisticated arc with the Devil, who looks like a crazy person alleviating his eternal boredom by messing with people when we first meet him; dangerous, deranged, nigh-omnipotent mythical being. He first takes notice of Salvos, then gets to like her, then as he mentors her he develops true feelings for her and adopts her as his daughter, and she’s first annoyed by him but respects him, and then as he helps her develop two grand skills and twenty levels, she feels true gratitude and love for him, and that has so much power that it starts to heal his broken soul, eventually succeeding, and she’s the first person in 50000 years that actually reached him. Also, it’s an arc from book two to book eleven. It’s not some cheap trick, not something that just happens because reasons. She begins by being his dupe, and ends up being his true family.

As I said, “Salvos” is not what one would think it is. It’s deep stuff packaged in shallow nonsense, not the other way around, as it unfortunately tends to be the case with much of literature.

I want to return to the “Salvos” series because I don’t think I’m done with it here.

One of the reason why it’s so good is that the characters break their own mould; they belie expectations. For instance, you would expect that Salvos, as a Demon of Pride, would act in ways a typical prideful person will act, but she’s actually humble. When Willy berates her and she knows he’s right, she will just bow her head, take it and apologise. When Lux Golmi berates her for breaking into its home to kill it for body parts she needs for a potion, and accuses her of being wild, she actually stops, thinks about it and feels shame, because she can understand the “monster’s” perspective and it isn’t flattering. She then offers a compromise and there ends up being no violence. You would expect a proud powerful person to laugh at such criticism, act arrogantly and just take what they want, but Salvos never does. When Haec berates her for hiding corruption from him and doing things behind his back, she again bows her head and apologises. So, her pride is not what people usually mean by it; arrogance, rejection of all criticism, being convinced of your own superiority despite evidence. For Salvos, pride means being great and doing great things and then soaking up deserved praise. Pride is being loved and trusted by worthy people because you are worthy. Pride is not allowing threats to harm what is yours. But when she fucks up and someone gives her a piece of their mind about it, you would expect her to act like those people we all know, who would just arrogantly tell you to fuck off and it’s not your place to say anything. Not Salvos. Salvos believes in reality over everything else. If you believe something about yourself, you have to prove it. If you fucked up and somebody proves it to you, you need to accept your mistakes and do better. Defending your flaws isn’t her kind of pride. Her kind of pride is not having flaws in the first place, and then being admired for it. So, since that’s what she loves, she works on not having those flaws. She doesn’t like being looked down upon for being weak, so she works on being strong. Essentially, she has a constructive approach to things; see what you like, and become the kind of person who deserves it.

Also, one would expect that her pride would demand her to always want a leadership position, but that’s not the case. She’s perfectly satisfied to be the most powerful person in a group, and have someone else lead; whether it’s Helena or Clayton or Haec, it doesn’t matter. She’s more interested in getting things done. On a superficial level, she likes the concept of a cheering crowd or having minions who worship her, but she would get bored of it very quickly, and she usually prefers a much different environment – a company of equals who each have a say, who have opinions, fears and desires she acknowledges and accommodates. She doesn’t want power in order to be a tyrant like Regnorex; in that sense, she’s very much like Samuel, who made a kingdom of equals, people who were joking and messing around with each other and who all had great power, but nobody saw the power of others as a threat that needs to be controlled, the way Regnorex doesn’t allow his minions to evolve to Primordial because he fears being deposed. Samuel’s kingdom was full of Primordials, and they absolutely loved him. They worshipped the ground he walked on. He gave them safety, purpose, peace and hope where there used to be chaos, despair and death. When Trico betrayed them and everything collapsed, including Samuel’s heart, they hoped for 50000 years that he would return to his kingdom and lead them all again. Samuel didn’t need fear to rule, and neither does Salvos.

Even people who barely know her, like Bertrugil, trust her and feel safe with her because they see how she deals with things. They feel safe enough to whine and complain to her. Nobody feels safe with Regnorex that way. People walk on tiptoes around him and constantly bow in submission to appease his ego. Nobody does that around Salvos; instead, Aemula feels safe enough to complain that Salvos doesn’t believe her when she says she can see solid ground, and Salvos is careful not to hurt her feelings. Mind you, Aemula is a lvl. 108 Archdemon. Salvos is at that point a lvl. 165 Lesser God. They are all in Salvos’ pocket space, travelling between the folds of Nexeus, and everybody feels perfectly safe. Aemula whines about not being taken seriously and then rubs it in Salvos’ face when she turns out to be right, Bertrugil sleeps, Taburas broods, Haec is having his evolution in peace. They are all within a construct of space magic created by a Lesser God and they are not walking on tiptoes around her. For a supposed Demon of Pride, Salvos has almost none of what people would call “ego”. Sure, there’s pride in her own achievements, there’s a desire to be great and to be seen as great, to be admired by worthy people who see her greatness and acknowledge it, the pride of truth being said about it and this truth being high praise. Most of it, however, is constructive. She did have some detours into the pathological, such as when she was tutoring other kids and it went into her head, but for the most part, it’s pride of the kind where she doesn’t allow people she loves to be harmed, where she doesn’t allow there to be a power higher than herself that could take all she loves away from her. That’s why the character and the writing are interesting; you don’t expect the Demon of Pride to act mostly as a Goddess of Love.

That, among other things, is why the humans in the Mortal Realm are currently losing their shit over her. They have an expectation of what Demons should be like – Lucerna who rampaged across Nixa, destroying towns and killing people. Belzu who did the same but more effectively, killing millions and razing entire countries. Servants of Regnorex who invaded Inor and Elutra, destroying everything and sacrificing the population to bring in more Demons and eventually the Demon King himself. The fact that the carefree girl who kept destroying all harmful creatures, who was known for killing the Centinels, the undead, the Demons and the cultists who created mischief, who did so many protective and good things that the System gave the Title of “Secily’s Sentinel”, making her essentially the official protector of their world, who fought so hard to defeat the Demon invasion that she brought them all together and didn’t rest until they all focused their efforts to defeat the threat, and was one of their greatest generals and arguably the person most responsible for the victory, the fact that she turned out to be a Demon herself, and not just any demon, but a Primeval Demon who was also a Lesser God who radiated Divinity like the Watcher, Mori Gladius and the Immortal King Alexander – they didn’t know what to do with that. Some tried to argue that it all had to be some deception, but it made absolutely no sense. The alternative was that a Demon can be good, and not just good, but the best person in the world, and that broke their minds even worse because it contradicted everything they knew about Demons. Demons aren’t supposed to have angelic wings, radiate Divinity and make the world safe from threats and evil. The Demons aren’t supposed to have the “aura” Salvos has – something that makes you mildly euphoric, something that makes you want to rise up, earn greatness, leave fears and limitations behind you. Demons aren’t supposed to inspire, elevate, and bring knowledge and peace. Clayton knew she wasn’t human, but his first guess was that she’s a Spirit, because that’s what she feels like. There’s an aura of levity, kindness, protectiveness and inspiration around her, and his suspicion was that she’s either a rogue Spirit, or the Spirit Lord is up to something. Even when he met the Devil in his human form, he felt nothing like what he would expect a Demon to feel like. I honestly can’t imagine what he would have thought; there’s a being that’s extremely powerful, throws one of his professors out the window to prove a point, and then calmly allows Clayton to lead them out of his school without offering resistance, and all the while Clayton is probing him with Identification and who knows what Skills and learns only that he’s the equivalent of a human Elite, but nothing more. The combination of power, mischief and benevolence makes him suspect Spirits, because that’s what people would logically think. Their experience with Demons consists of either Regnorex and his minions, or rogue but evil Demons like Belzu, whose idea of levelling is to raze towns and kill people. When they encounter a Demon whose idea of levelling is to find some wasteland full of wild creatures nobody will miss and kill them, and then go to school to learn magic, their experience offers no guidance that would explain this. And yet, she’s not as unique as they would think; it’s just that Regnorex has been shaping Demons into what they are now for the last 10000 years. The Humans don’t know about the First Kingdom of Samuel the Devil King, who ruled with inspiration, kindness and vision, not fear. Salvos is merely someone who would fit right in with Samuel’s old people, to the point where he ends up actually adopting her as his daughter, and she instantly befriends his viceroy Belphegor when they meet. Humans think Regnorex and his Demons are typical, but they are merely a pathological branch that’s been developing for a long time, and they have a short historical memory.

Humans call the Demons a scourge of the Nexeus, but the Demons used to hang around freely with Spirits, Dragons, High Elves and ancient Humans. They explored sophisticated magic, participated in sophisticated world politics and were seen as merely another species. In fact, Kobolds see Demons as not much different than Spirits; Elves have little to no idea about them, and no prejudice. It’s just Humans that have a problem with… well, everybody except the Spirits, in fact. So, if something is alien but good, it must be a Spirit. Humans, in fact, have a thick wall of prejudice against Demons, that Salvos has to overcome each time with them, but which doesn’t exist with any other species. She befriended a Fairy, a Kobold, multiple Elves, a Spirit and multiple monsters, but with Humans it’s always “Demon! Let’s kill it!” at first. Centina has a similar situation where everybody hates the Centinels, but in both cases, you can’t say the prejudice is unwarranted. The Centinels just kill everything and are completely irrational, and Demons occasionally pop up in the human lands and just kill everyone indiscriminately. Both species are terrible pests that ravage the Human lands. So, why would there not be prejudice against them? There’s 10000 years of history behind the prejudice, and no known exceptions. And Salvos has to concede that. She hates being looked down upon for being a Demon, but when she sees what other Demons are doing there, she can’t blame the humans for drawing the obvious conclusions. Instead, she turns her rage at Regnorex, whose fault it truly is. She’s not stupid the way humans would be, and ask not to be discriminated against as if it were a right. No, she puts real effort into making things right first, and then hopes to be judged fairly.

So, as you can see, it’s this complexity and nuance of the whole thing that I find fascinating.