Theory Meryem's max AP (Ant arc spoiler)

[Phantron]

So I was looking back at the Ant arc again, and Knuckles says in order to bankrupt Meryem, Meleoron would need to have lung capacity comparable to that of Morel. We know Gon can hold his breath for 7 minutes, and there's no doubt that Morel is the world's undisputed leader at holding his breath. A search on google reveals that world record for holding breath is around 20 minutes. So let's say Morel can do at least 30 minutes since he's obviously superhuman compared to any real life humans. Note that Leol estimated Morel could hold his breath past 20 minutes, so I don't think 30 minutes is a stretch.

Potclean takes a 10% interest every 10 seconds, so in 30 minutes the interest will be compounded 180 times, which is 1.1^180 = 28 million. Let's say Knuckles lands a 100 AP punch (low by his standards), this means Meryem has a total AP of 2.8 BILLION, compared to an estimated 700K on the Royal Guards (Yupi, but presumably the other two have comparable amounts).

Meryem he praised Pitou for being 'quite strong' (as opposed to Netero, who is 'quite strong for a human'), so while the Royal Guards are clearly not as strong as Meryem, it'd appear the difference between them and Meryem is certainly less than 10 times initially. So this means Meryem's aura consumption ability gives him an exponential increase in AP, since it's hard to see him start out with more than around 5 million or so (nearly 10 times that of Yupi), but after consuming no more than few millions of AP he now has AP measured in the billions.

This also means using aura users instead of a conventional army against Meryem is incredibly dumb as using the same scale, consuming a guy with 1/10th the AP of a Royal Guard would probably at least double Meryem's power.

 

[Django]

There's no way Meruem's max AP can come even close to 2.8 billion, this isn't DBZ. At most, he's between one and five million after absorbing Pufu and Yupi. When Knuckle said "a lung capacity comparable to that of Morel", he didn't mean it literally. It's as if I say : "I'd need to be as smart as Einstein to solve that equation !". It doesn't mean that I actually need to be as smart as Einstein, but that the equation is very difficult and that I'm not even close to being smart enough to solve it. It's the same in this case. Knuckle can't even estimate Meruem's power because it's leagues above what he had seen before, what he knows is that it's too high for Meleoron's or any normal person's lung capacity. Morel is the only one who could manage it, that's why he uses him as an example to prove his point : the task is not possible.

 

[mousiehamster]

Meryem and RG's power levels have always been inexplicable in my mind. Their food source were crappy NGL vegans who didn't even possess the ability to use aura. The only aura user the Queen ate were Gyro and Pokkle. Pokkle is basically trash (the Spider ant was intercepting his fastest nen attack without even being able to use nen) and... Gyro is supposed to be accountable for everything else? Recall that the guy was reborn with his consciousness intact too so just how much of him was spread among the ants?

Togashi has always been bad with math. There's no internal consistency i feel with regards to the nen system and its practitioners and their respective power levels and nen abilities. That's ok: he puts narrative first, but really the construction of the complex nen system as well as the presentation of math in the manga (the whole AP thing) is liable to mislead people. Best not to look too closely imo.

 

[Django]

Meryem and RG's power levels have always been inexplicable in my mind. Their food source were crappy NGL vegans who didn't even possess the ability to use aura. The only aura user the Queen ate were Gyro and Pokkle. Pokkle is basically trash (the Spider ant was intercepting his fastest nen attack without even being able to use nen) and... Gyro is supposed to be accountable for everything else? Recall that the guy was reborn with his consciousness intact too so just how much of him was spread among the ants?

Togashi has always been bad with math. There's no internal consistency i feel with regards to the nen system and its practitioners and their respective power levels and nen abilities. That's ok: he puts narrative first, but really the construction of the complex nen system as well as the presentation of math in the manga (the whole AP thing) is liable to mislead people. Best not to look too closely imo.

There were something like ten groups of Hunters in NGL (Kite's group and Pokkle's group not included) to investigate the Chimera Ants situation, and they were all wiped out, presumably to be eaten by the Queen. And even people who can't use Nen still have aura (aura is life energy, so all living things have aura). Not to mention the "geniuses" who develop Nen abilities on their own. There must have been at least some among all the people eaten by the Queen. With all the humans the Queen ate, it's no wonder why Meruem and the Royal Guards have so much accumulated aura.

 

[mousiehamster]

There were something like ten groups of Hunters in NGL (Kite's group and Pokkle's group not included) to investigate the Chimera Ants situation, and they were all wiped out, presumably to be eaten by the Queen. And even people who can't use Nen still have aura (aura is life energy, so all living things have aura). Not to mention the "geniuses" who develop Nen abilities on their own. There must have been at least some among all the people eaten by the Queen. With all the humans the Queen ate, it's no wonder why Meruem and the Royal Guards have so much accumulated aura.

They must have been shitty hunters though since they all got slaughtered before any of the squadron leaders even learned nen.

 

[Phantron]

There's no way the input matches the output when you're talking about Ants. Knuckles was willing to fight Yupi despite Yupi has more than 10 times Morel (who is presumably stronger than him), but the Royal Guards says the reborn Meryem defies the notion 'victory cannot be determined by AP', which implies Meryem is far more than 10X AP of a Royal Guard. So even if you estimate this conservatively and just do 700K (Yupi) X 10 = 7 million AP, where does this AP come from? Gon has about 20000, so the Queen would need to consume 350 guys on the level of Gon. Do they even have 7 million AP combined in the world of HXH?

 

[Django]

First, why do you take Knuckle's estimation of Yupi's power as fact ? As he himself said, there's no way he can know exactly how strong Yupi is because he can't compare his aura to anything he has ever seen. And as Knov said, people tend to overestimate what they don't know, so Knuckle could be way off with his "ten times stronger than Morel" estimation. I also don't understand how you get to "Meryem is far more than 10X AP of a Royal Guard".
Actually, trying to estimate the King's or the Royal Guard's is pointless. All we need to know is that they are worlds above anyone else.