This whole Lancelot homing magic theory sounds like a reach, especially when it comes to the self-targeting stuff. My money is on Hazy Moon's gimmick being related to its power output. When Lancelot attacked the Lady of the Lake towards the end of his lake training he collapsed from exhaustion after a single Shining Road. It's normal to get low on magic after using multiple big attacks but as far as I can recall Lancelot is the only character who has ever managed to empty out his reserves in one blow. That's weird and could very well be what makes his magic so special. It's why he's able to hit so hard and why his weapons break from the strain.
You can think of it like RPG where a character can cast a fire spell for 10 MP in order to deal 30 points of damage. If the character has 100 MP this means they can cast that spell every turn for 10 turns before running out of MP, dealing a total of 300 damage over the course of those turns. Lancelot can skip all of that and just cast one spell that costs all of his 100 MP to deal 300 damage in one turn. Normally this wouldn't be too broken, but Lancelot also uses cheats to give himself infinite MP so he now deals 10 times more damage than normal and he can do it every turn.
Ultimately this is all a very convoluted way of saying that Lancelot without the help of the LotL would be a one pump chump. Guinevere is not going to be pleased.
Running about and facing stronger and stronger oponents IS what usually constitutes a gauntlet run, which is what you imply if you think he'll eventually fight the Behemoth and the Archangels later. That Nakaba may also use the opportunity to waste the goddess realm in the process as an info dump to new and old readers will not change that fact. So yeah, I still think this IS quite obvious. If something else utterly unexpected hsppens you can colour me surprised. But I'll believe it when I see it.
My point was that the Archangels can't be used in the same role as Zeldris because they still haven't been introduced and thus lack the necessary buildup for the kind of drama we see in this chapter. Any sequel-only readers, for whom Nakaba has stated he wants the series to be accessible to, would just be confused about why these random characters are showing up like it's a big deal just to then get slaughtered. Whatever further opponents Chaos-Lancelot will face have to be established figures, which is why I mentioned Behemoth as the obvious option since it was already featured in the earlier Demon Realm arc. Skipping all of that and going straight to Britannia for the conclusion of this plotline works too.
The Grace is an integral part of Escanor's power and identity as well. And Gawain has an obvious connection to it with her Dawn magic. There's a greater potential to let it remain outside of the GC, and explain various aspect of this power and its connection to humanity. Specially now that SD is defeated and the only remnants of her power can be found either in form of the Graces (if they didn't cease to exist after her defeat), or within Merlin's Aldan because she was actively messing with SD right before her demise.
Knowing Nakaba, he can ruin all the potentials, give Grace back to Mael, and ignore all the mysteries regarding this power. I just seriously hope he is wiser than that!
Sunshine WAS an integral part of Escanor's power and identity. Then he died and his soul ended up inside a random dinosaur doll. It makes sense for the Grace to return to its intended wielder now that Escanor can no longer made use of it, especially if the other Archangels are going to come back with theirs as well since that way the group will be uniform. I get your desire to learn more about Sunshine and I think that could very well happen considering Nakaba's reveal about the Archangels eventually being revived by their Graces. There's no reason to bring them back if they have no further role to play, so I'm expecting the Graces to eventually end up being stolen by some future villain or perhaps getting fused together to manifest the SD.
Dawn clearly has a connection to Sunshine, but the two also appear to be different because Gawain's strength doesn't depend on the time of day, which is actually quite strange when that is such a key trait for her namesake in the legends. My working theory is that Dawn is either an artificial replica cooked up by Merlin based on her previous studies on Sunshine or an ember of the Grace left within Escanor's essence that was used to create Gawain. It's essentially like a seed that has yet to sprout, hence it being named after the time of day when the sun has only just begun to shine. With how Anne's magic evolved from Truth or Lie to Interrogator it's plausible that Gawain's magic will similarly change its name when she finally awakens it fully, perhaps to Noon. You seem to want Gawain to simply be the third user of Sunshine, but I believe it's critically important for her ability to be something unique to her that allows her to stand out from and surpass the previous masters of the sun. Mael can keep playing with the old and busted Grace, in fact having him showcase his power like that could serve to highlight whatever makes Gawain superior.
The story heading towards the future the grail knights come from doesn’t remove the tension because we don’t know anything that lead to that future, all we know is the 4 knights have kids and that’s it. If the grail knights actually knew what happened to the other clans or how this chaos Lancelot situation is gonna end and told us then I would agree with you but the fact that they literally know nothing imo means we’re going to find out in real time what happens and what leads to their future.
It wouldn’t make sense to have their future completely avoided or changed and we never find out what happened in their timeline or what lead to it. They obviously can’t tell us what happened, so the only person that could is maybe Guinevere. If she tells us what happens that leads to their future then I’ll agree that it might be changed but if she still says nothing then I think that implies the story is heading to their future as the end point and it won’t seem as bad as everyone thinks because we’ll have full context on everything that’s going on and not just bits and pieces that make their future sound bad
We don't just know that the KotA are going to have kids, we also know they themselves are doing well and the same goes for Arthur, Camelot, Anne and presumably Guinevere as well, and those are just the names that have come up during the relatively few remarks the Grail Knights have so far made about the future. The only negative element they mentioned is the mysterious incident that led to the other races disappearing, which is presumably related to what Lancelot is up to right now. That business was said to have been wrapped up before any of the GKs were born and that's important because Guinevere's prophecies that foreshadowed the events of parts 1 and 2 suggest there will still be two more parts after those. If the only negative event to happen in the GKs' timeline occurs in part 2 then what are the remaining parts even going to be about? There's no conflict.
I agree with you that it wouldn't make sense for us to never find out about the world the GKs come from and I'm not worried about that outcome. To me the whole point of bringing up that future in the first place is to contrast it with what is actually happening, exactly as what was already done through Guinevere's prophecies earlier. In the original timeline the Chaos Knights' attack in Wallnack ended with them not accomplishing anything, but in our timeline Cath's meddling in those events resulted in Jade's death that was not supposed to happen. Guinevere warned that defying fate like this would result in an even greater price to be paid later on, which seems to be the most important detail here, especially in the context of this current conflict. In the GKs' timeline Lancelot being corrupted is presumably what resulted in the disappearance of the other clans from Britannia along with the Sins, but I don't believe for a second that Nakaba would be willing to remove such a major part of the setting at this point in the story. Instead what I expect to happen is that the KotA will manage to avert this upcoming tragedy, only for the act of defying fate to backfire on them later and causing an even bigger calamity. If this was a Hollywood movie there would be a character saying "what are they, some kind of knights of the apocalypse?"
So how was the monster calmed through the spirits? Besides having a power identical to the spirits of life, possessing an energy that gives vitality to demons and at the same time death, yes, Behemoth is 100% a life spirit in the body of a monster.
The reason why Percival calming down the spirits caused Behemoth to calm down as well was because the spirits were what was driving it wild. I dunno how it feels to have the spirits within you going crazy, but you could maybe compare it to something like painful stomach cramps. It's the kind of thing that will make you restless and agitated, which probably goes double for animals that don't have the intelligence to understand what is happening. That's why you should always be careful with injured animals since the pain can make them more aggressive.
I know Mael appeared but I don't remember anyone saying his name.
I checked and it was Thetis who brought him up in one of the volume extras,
here.
I'm afraid that "Hazy Moon" and "Nova" are just "thematic labels" rather than "actual standalone innate abilities". What Lancelot did against the attacks of the Perils is unmistakably identical to the mechanism by which the Lake "swallowed" the combined magical attacks of the 7DS. Also, every description by which Lance's magic was described is "wated-based": "Stream, Vortex, etc."
For Tristan, he only used Nova in "Heal Nova" so far, and it doesn't seem to me any different from "Be Well!" or "Invigorate" that the GC members use all the time. That's why I won't rule out the "thematic labels" possibility at all!
The water-based descriptions are a product of Lancelot using the lake's power, either on its own or in conjunction with Hazy Moon. Shining Road is an energy beam that has nothing to do with water and the same is true for the big moon attack he used against the fodder knights. Those techniques presumably utilize some kind of moon energy just like how Percival and Gawain use life and solar energy respectively. By that same token Tristan's Nova involves buffing his other techniques with star energy, perhaps explaining why his Heal Nova was like a massively amplified version of his normal healing.
I mean Zero Sign itself used to considered part of Snatch , it was described as Ban "Snatching" the perception of others.
I'm pretty sure that was just a fan theory.
I think what people are most confused about regarding Hazy Moon is Lancelot's strength and why he absorbed the lake in the first place.
However, it all clears up if you just accept that Hazy Moon's default target is Lancelot himself, meaning he has pure magic flowing into his body.
In the 7DS / 4KOTA universe, magic is separate from the body; characters don't enhance their physical strength using raw magic like they do in Hunter x Hunter, Dragon Ball, or Naruto.
This is a special case for Lancelot. That's why he's the strongest and most special of all, and why he managed to contain the lake inside his body.
The reason why Lancelot was able to absorb the lake is unlikely to be related to his magic. To begin with, absorbing the lake's power is something anyone can do, as shown through Jericho. The thing that makes Lancelot different from all of the LotL's other victims is that he didn't lose his mind from doing it. The key here is mental resilience. This is why when Lancelot ultimately jumped into the lake the narrator listed all the things that were driving him forward while not saying a single word about his magic.
The message is clear. If Lancelot did not have all of these things giving him the strength to carry on then he too would have become another victim of the lake. The most important factor was the heroism he had inherited from his father, the man who managed to overcome Purgatory itself. People often forget that Purgatory wasn't just very dangerous to the body but also to the mind, hence why Merlin's very capable father went completely insane after his relatively brief trip to the realm. In chapter 268 Ban himself explained that the place eats away at your soul and will turn you into a wandering beast if you ever lose hope, which almost happened to him too before thoughts of Elaine managed to break him out of it. What this means is that the reason why he was able to survive the ordeal was not only because of his immortal body but also because of his unbreakable will. That is the heroism that he passed down to his son, which eventually allowed Lancelot to consume the lake.
This interpretation was recently reinforced further by the Lady of the Lake's remark in Lancelot's inner world.
She's not surprised that Lancelot is able to resist Cath's malice because he had already demonstrated the ability to subsume all of her power. This makes perfect sense if we assume that Lancelot drinking the lake was the product of his mental strength, because that same willpower would also help him withstand Cath's influence. In fact Cath himself mentions it in this week's chapter, saying that "Lancelot was suppressing the malice with every piece of his will". If Cath says that Lancelot is resisting the malice with his mental strength and the LotL compares resisting the malice to subsuming her power, then subsuming her power was also a matter of mental strength. If A = B and B = C then A = C.
The last thing I want to bring up is that the scenario I'm outlining here is much better for Lancelot's characterization, because it means that his impossible feat of absorbing the lake infinite magic was the product of his personality traits and sheer will. In contrast, if Lancelot was able to do what he did because he had simply been born with the right magic that solved all his problems for him, then it means there was no real effort involved. He just got lucky and didn't earn any of his strength. That's not very heroic.
