Webcomic / Kubera

"This is a war with no villains, only victims... and a story where someone, in the end, will have to cry."

Kubera Leez is a happy-go-lucky girl who has never left her isolated village for all of her life. Everything changes on her 16th birthday when the village is destroyed, and she gets taken in by Asha, an enigmatic and unfriendly mage. It soon becomes clear that she has found herself embroiled in a battle spanning space and time over the mysterious "power of the Name," a battle with players among gods, sura, and humans alike. And it just so happens that Kubera was herself named after a god, a detail that has made her one of the key pieces in a cosmic war without villains, only victims.

One Last God: Kubera is a fantasy/action Korean Webtoon about the ordeals and destiny of a girl with the name of a God. Names of deities and elements of Hindu Mythology were borrowed to create a distinctive and original fantasy setting. It is being serialized here in Korean. The author's blog is routinely updated with new information about the world and the characters; it contains major spoilers for those who have not caught up with the story yet.

Official translations have begun here, with updates on Monday.

The author has written a side-story taking place many years before the main story, called The Finite. It follows the story of the supporting character Kasak's parents, a human Quarter named Ian Rajof and Taksaka the Destruction Dragon.

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Provides examples of:

• Action Girl: Female fighters and many magicians are capable fighters.
• Actually, I Am Him: While wandering around looking for the Priestess of Chaos (to kill her and take down the barrier), Gandharva is taken in by Teo Rakan, a wealthy young Quarter who slowly becomes the only human he has ever sympathized with. Then he asks who the Priestess is, and she casually says she's sitting right in front of him.
• Affectionate Nickname: Ran calls Leez "Chickie". He eventually explains why: He was close with her father Rao Leez, so calling her by her name is somewhat uncomfortable for him.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Averted with Superior Sura. While they are Animalistic Abominations with Little Bit Beastly human forms, they use their humanoid forms because it's more practical for them. In the case of Rakshasa and Nastika, it's their birth appearance.
• All There in the Manual: The author's blog gives a few more background details that aren't necessary for fully understanding the series, such as the birth attributes of minor characters, more details on gods mentioned offhand, and so on.
• Almost Kiss: After Yuta develops to third stage, he tries to kiss Leez. She pushes his face away, and he uses the opportunity to lick her bloody hand.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: The sura (and by extension, Halfs) have skin tones of green, blue, and pink, in addition to the more normal shades ranging from pale to brown.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Rana delivers one to Ran. He finally understands that she might like him after they have an argument about his relationship with Leez. She runs off, thinking that he's fallen in love with Leez, and he hugs her from behind and asks if she likes him. She responds no… she loves him.
• Anti-Magic: The Chaos Clan's trademark. Look into their eyes, and all your magic shuts off like a light. The stronger ones can even permanently seal individual transcendentals. Human Chaos magic users used to be able to dabble in this sort of thing, but with the disappearance of the primeval god Kali, the Chaos attribute no longer exists. Or does it? Teo is shown to have used Chaos silent magic in her fight against Pingara (final chapter in Enmity arc), alarming Sagara, who claims that it should be impossible.
• Apocalypse How:
  • Class X (Planetary Annihilation) has occurred multiple times in the past. Several hundred years ago, when humans cut ties with the sura and swore allegiance to the gods, the sura destroyed planets in retaliation. More recently, the planet Carte was destroyed; how and why this occurred has yet to be revealed. As of season 3 now we know that Carte and possibly others were destroyed by Sagara's faction and allies in order to kill the humans with the name of "Kubera".
  • Class Z-2 (Universal Metaphysical Annihilation): The season 3 opens with lots of Taraka clan suras attacking both the human and the sura realm, drving both races up the wall and evetually with Leez plainly telling Brilith that the universe is indeed ending, the kicker is that this is not the first; and by virtue of the primeval gods always being able to make a new one; probably not the last one that has existed, bringing home why they seem to care so little in the first place.
• Arc Words:
  • "The power of the Name" seems to be the reason for the entire plot.
  • "Those who live long also love long" and variations of such also pops up quite a few times.
• Art Evolution: Just◊ look!◊
• Art Shift: Some flashbacks and imagination sequences are drawn in a gritty, limited palette style similar to crayon art.
• Bad Future:
  • Every vision of Leez' future so far has implied this, showing her alone in a vast wasteland fighting endless hordes of Sura; one of the earliest Foresights we get of her future is her telling someone that she would have been happier if she died as a child.
  • The arc Enemy focuses on one of these; after going back and forth in time for a while, Ran and Maruna end up returning to a timeline where they and Leez never returned earlier, leading to Disaster Dominoes that kill half the population of Willarv, including most of the main cast.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: The gods and the sura can.
• Bifauxnen: Asha. When she was younger and wore short hair and boy's clothes, it was understandable. But she is still constantly mistaken for male even when she has longer hair and a skirt. Ran just thought she was a male trendsetter.
• Big Brother Instinct: Ran for Leez, and to a lesser extent for Yuta as well.
• Big Eater: Yuta, who has to eat sura many times his size to survive. Leez also qualifies.
• Bishōnen Line: Inferior Sura start out as entirely-inhuman monsters, but gain the ability to turn human as they age and grow more powerful, thus becoming Superior Sura; the more powerful Rakshasas and Nastikas are born with a human form, which means that the ability to turn human is a sign that a Sura is extremely powerful. It's averted, however, in that they need to transform into more inhuman One-Winged Angel forms to use their full power.
• Black-Hole Belly: Yuta. Special mention goes to Season 2 Chapter 9, where he seems to absorb vaporized blood.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: The official translation is quite infamous for this, to the point that a number of people prefer to read scanlations due to this, when season 3 rolled around there was an improvement but then after a hiatus not only the quality went back to the one from first and second seasons it's actually gotten worse, among some mistakes include but are not limited to:
  • Inconsistency of terms, sometimes from one chapter to another.
  • Some pretty literal translations like "Upheaval" instead of "Cataclysm" or "closed space" instead of "barrier"
  • Grammar and syntax mistakes abound making some of the dialogue very awkward to read.
  • Some character's names are misspelled or their gender pronouns change also from chapter to chapter, particularly egregious considering most spellings are confirmed in the author's blog.
• Breaking Bad News Gently: Mirha plans to do this with Leez, but it is ultimately subverted when Leda jumps the gun and gives her all of the information that Asha hid from her.
• Breather Episode: The "Isle of Myths" arc is much lighter in tone than the previous and following arcs. And then the "Falling Petals" arc happens.
• Brick Joke: Ran borrows a pair of magnifying glasses from a random magician in Kalibloom and promises to send her a new, upgraded pair. Later, the same magician can be seen trying on the new glasses and admiring herself in a mirror instead of paying attention to the meeting she's in.
• Broken Bird:
  • Given all she's gone through, it's surprising that Leez can remain so cheerful. When the facade cracks it's sad to watch. And according to the real Kubera, things are only going to get worse for her.
  • Asha may also be a candidate, but it's rather hard to tell under the tough shell she wears.
  • Teo was broken at one point, but seems to have put herself back together and makes a habit of trying to do that with others by adopting waifs and strays.
• Broken Pedestal: The revelations of Asha's murder trial causes many of her fans to become disillusioned with her.
• Bullying a Dragon: Half-bloods suffer terrible prejudice despite their superhuman stats.
• Came Back Wrong: It turns out that being brought back to life by Hoti Visnu does not restore the original soul to the body, but a different one altogether. However, the new soul is likely to be unaware of this due to possessing the body's memories unless they are outright told the truth of the matter.
  • The 5th-Zen Gods going to the "top" can result in this. They are able to leave whatever emotions or memories they deem undesirable to continue their mission to help sustain the universe. But if what they choose to leave behind are empathy and guilt, like Indra, or even care for their loved ones, only keeping a sense of duty, like Vayu, they might continue to uphold their goals, but their methods become terrible.
• Cast from Lifespan: Summoning magic works this way, even if it doesn't necessarily succeed. Saha, from instance, lost a great chunk of his lifespan after failing to summon Surya three times. Agni also mentions that he can use his summoner's lifespan if she runs out of enought vigor.
• Cast of Snowflakes: All the sura have unique physical appearances and confusing any of the many characters is difficult. Even the twins Riche and Ruche are almost impossible to mix up.
• Casual Interplanetary Travel: Used to be common; this is no longer the case since most of the nearby planets have been destroyed.
• Casual Interstellar Travel: The Nastika were capable of this before they were exiled to the sura realm.
• Cataclysm Backstory: Around the time Leez was born, all the sura clans suddenly went to war with the gods, with halfs getting caught up in emotional resonance and going berserk as a result. Bonus points for the event actually being referred to as the Cataclysm.
• Central Theme: Several:
  • Freedom of Choice: What meaning do choice have against the powerful forces arrayed against you? In particular what worth do choices have versus beings who can predict the future and travel through time?
  • The nature of sin. What are the worst of crimes, and can their perpetrators be redeemed? If not, what they can do to make up for it? Gandarvha, Maruna, and Asha are some of the key examples, but there's plenty more.
  • And combining the two, how much blame should one carry for being manipulated into sinning? if you were manipulated like Asha, by a being that can read your thoughts and see the future no less, to take advantage of your nature and fears into becoming a murderer... How much blame do you carry? How much of it is on the manipulator, and how much on you, for being the kind of person who could be manipulated?.
  • The nature of a soul. Why are Menaka and Teo acting different, for example, despite sharing the same memories and body? What makes them "them"?
  • And finally, from Leez's perspective, Existentialism. why should she insist on living, when the entire universe conspires to make her life a living hell?
• The Chosen Many: Everyone with the name of a God.
• Clingy MacGuffin: The Sword of Return is immediately summoned to whoever its current wielder is whenever they wish it. When the wielder dies, it returns to its original position at the Temple of Chaos in Kalibloom.
  • Summon to Hand: As detailed above, this is one of the benefits of being the current wielder of the Sword of Return.
• Combo Platter Powers: The Golden Knight has a lot of powers, mostly unrelated beyond being powers of God Kubera's which it absorbed by being near him:
  • Power Limiter: Its original purpose.
  • Amplifier Artifact: Although it serves as a Power Limiter, it also lets you raise your strength beyond normal by expending Vigor, and also vastly increases your divine affinity simply by wearing it, to the point of allowing someone who was otherwise utterly without magical skill to serve as the Priest of Earth.
  • Auto-Revive: Regeneration will bring you back from the dead if you die, though this expands all your vigor.
  • Attack Reflector: Counterattack can reflect transcendental attacks if you can pay vigor proportional to their power.
  • Razor-Sharp Hand: Perforating Hit allows you to cut people in half with your unarmed attacks.
    • Razor Wind: Some users managed to use Perforating Hit like this.
  • Dishing Out Dirt: Earthquake does Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • And finally, Pushforce allows you to send everything and everyone nearby flying away from you.
• Conditional Powers: Certain trascendentals can only be activated once certain conditions have been met. These conditions can be having a certain Source/Hereditary attribute, to being in a certain form. However, gods and sura have enough easily-used transcendentals that the conditions aren't typically an issue.
  • The series includes quite a lot of other conditions and limitations, which allows beings that can destroy plaents, galaxies, or even more to interact with humans and keep some semblance of suspense, for both sides.
  • Nastikas are unable to take sura form in the human realm ever since the cataclysm. This massively reduces their threat level, making 5th Stage Rakshasa (who are able to take sura form) more dangerous than most Nastika in the human realm. That said, the very top Nastikas are so powerful their human form is stronger than even 5th stages.
  • Nastikas can absorb their environment if their attributes are present, for example a Wind nastika absorbing strong air currents, or a Light nastika going closer to a sun-like star to absorb it's light. Stronger nastikas can absorb larger volumes of "attribute" faster, but either way it can give a huge advantage to fight in a favorable environment, making some of the Nastika-vs-Nastika fights more complex then who is normally the stronger one.
  • Ran takes this up to eleven. all the powers of his Heart of Yaksha can rapidly deplete his lifespan, but the drain can be greatly reduced if he's in an environment favorable to Yaksha's attributes, namely water and light. This means at his weakest he's a very impressive human magic user, but at the right conditions he's at the level of the upper echelons of Nastikas and capable of planetary levels of devastation.
• Cosmic Chess Game: It is heavily implied that quite a few major players have manipulated both people and events across the plot for their own ends. It's the primeval gods, specifically Visnu and Kali who are always at odds with each other due to their opposing domains, but the more and more is revealed about the schemes the more implicated Brahma seems to be getting, putting into question how neutral she actually is or has been in the past, the only exception is Shiva who has apparently abandoned the universe since the Cataclysm.
• Courtroom Episode: Asha's murder trial in the Falling Petals arc.
• Covered with Scars: One of the gods' Insights shows an adult Leez with a back full of scars.
• Crapsack World: You have immortal gods on one side, powerful sura on the other, and poor humans caught in the middle. Whole worlds have been destroyed by their feuds.
• Creator Cameo: The author's Currygom character (an orange, curry-colored bear) makes multiple appearances in random roles. See here for a glimpse at every appearance during season 1.
• Cryptic Conversation: Anything related to Asha's backstory or ultimate goals, the Power of Name, or Ananta's death is discussed entirely in these terms, even in situations where everyone present knows exactly what's going on. Enforced with Asha; her discussion with Yuta implies that there are things she's physically unable to talk about for whatever reason, though Yuta says he's smart enough to fill in the blanks. Even then, we miss the important parts of the conversation, preventing us from doing the same.
• Curtains Match the Window: Most of the main characters. Leez has teal hair and green eyes; Asha has light gray-blue hair and blue-gray eyes. Word of God says most humans have matching hair and eye colors.
  • Even pointed out in-story: when Maruna briefly snatches Agwen in a failed attempt to use her as a hostage against her father, he notes that her hair and eye colors are different so she was probably a Quarter and therefore should be related to Kasak.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Leez abandons her happy facade after she finds out what Asha's been hiding from her, and the fact that many of the people surrounding her only value her for her name or connection to her father.
• Dangerous 16th Birthday: Leez' hometown is destroyed on her sixteenth birthday; it was also the point at which she was allowed to take another name. These things are implied to be connected.
• The Dark Arts: Both silent magic and fiendish magic are (or in the case of the latter, were) variants of this. The former requires a desire for power and utter ruthlessness to properly utilize to its full potential, while the latter was said to have often backfired on those trying to borrow power from the sura. Having said , some gods are safer than others to call upon for powers... but, if one of the biggies offers you great and very rare oomph, it's best to read the very tiny print and the context: Equivalent Exchange comes in nasty shapes, right Asha? Gods' agendas may trample yours.
• Description Cut: Played for drama. Saha On, discussing how his fiance, Lorraine, inadvertently helped Asha commit murder, says that she must be full of grief at the moment. Cut to Lorraine helping Asha break out of confinement.
• Did You Just Romance Cthulu?: Yuta, son of Kali, prince of the Taraka clan, is completely smitten with Leez.
• Disappeared Dad: Rao Leez. When Leez was growing up, her mother constantly told her that her dad was still alive out there somewhere. Last time he was seen was on a refugee ship, crying over how he'd never be able to hold his daughter. He mysteriously disappeared on the way to his destination.
• Divine Conflict: The gods don't always get along, and the main story is a part of their conflict.
• Divine Parentage: Yuta's true mother is the primeval god Kali. Taraka is just a simulacrum she left behind to provide some stability to her child's life and to protect him from anyone who didn't want to risk letting Kali's "masterpiece" grow into a threat. Not without good reason, given Kali's off-screen record of destruction as the god of chaos.
• Don't Split Us Up: Issues with the Power of the Name necessitate Garuda splitting up his children. He sends Maruna with Gandharva, Yuta with Shuri, and Kalavinka with Visnu.
• Drama Bomb: Asha's murder trial.
• Dramatic Irony: When Teo looks up information on Gandharva, the book goes on for ages about a lot of meaningless statistics and history which have no relevance to the plot; it also mentions, in a footnote, that Gandharva has a daughter who is so weak and unimportant that even her name is not recorded. Of course, since in the present day all of Gandharva's actions are centered around the hope that she might be alive, the reader knows that Gandharva's daughter is in fact the single most important part of his biography.
• Dreaming of Times Gone By: Leez sees Ananta in a dream. Notable in that Ananta in the dream seems to be talking about what is happening outside of the dream... despite the fact that he's been dead for a long, long time.
• The Dreaded: Gandarvha, back in his prime, was feared for his power and temper. Surprisingly, the other first generation kings aren't similarly feared, as while people respect their power they're also generally reasonable and empathic individuals and thus aren't treated with the abject terror you'd expect of beings capable of destroying entire galaxies.
• Driving Question: Quite a few. Some of them were answered in dramatic reveals, some slowly unveiled over time, some remain unaswered, and some were added.
  • For the first and second season: What is The Power of The Name? Why is Kubera's name more important? What are Asha's goals?. Asha's goals are revealed at the climax of season 2, with the rest being revealed much later in season 3.
  • Later in season 3: What do the Primervals want? What does Kali? What will happen if Ananta is ressurected? What kind of being is Yuta?
• Dual Age Modes: Gods and Nastika (top sura) can change their apparent age at will.
• Emotional Maturity Is Physical Maturity: A quarter, half, or rakshasa will have matching emotional and physical maturity. However, it is noted that they tend to be more worldly than a pureblood human of equivalent physical age due to accumulated experience.
• Equivalent Exchange: All over the place. To use any sort of magical powers, one must use their vigor in exchange. Asha, in special, has an unique case of this, as she has to give up a bit of her existence every time she casts Hoti Visnu, due to said god not being a part of the universe after the Cataclysm. However, this isn't valid only to spells or transcendentals: the "rules" that govern the universe are not absolute. They can be bypassed as long as one can take the penalty for doing it. This is mentioned after Gandharva takes sura form in Kalibloom, which should be impossible; the resulting penalty from doing so damaged him permanently, and weakened him severily. According to Brahma, Menaka also went through this when she revealed to Agni her deal with Kali; Brahma says that talking about it to a being below Kali herself must have cost her greatly. Certain actions result in a certain amount of "sin"; in the backstory, Menaka sealed a deal with Visnu (actually Kali in disguise) to accept Gandharva's sins in his stead, as she knew his numerous atrocities would result in severe punishment for him one day. As a result from bearing said sins, her lifespan was cut short, and she died a few centuries before the Cataclysm.
  • interestingly, this comes up in a non magical way as well. Vishnu told Asha she will have to pay a price for her increased magical power, with the price implied to be her the happiness she would have had with Rao. But it wasn't magicall enforced. The reason she couldn't be happy is that her own actions, by following through on orders from Vishnu, resulted in Rao no longer being present to shelter her.
• Escape Pod: Transport ships have these, although they function more like drop pods. Leez finds herself trapped in one while on the way to Aeroplateau.
• Eternal Recurrence: The Primerval's game in a nutshell. The universe is a recurring experiment for them, with each Primerval having different goals for the experiment. It was destroyed and remade by them any number of times, even ignoring the current universe, which was destroyed in alternate timelines and resetted thanks to time powers such as Ananta's.
• Exact Words: Before his identity is revealed, Asha frequently reassures people that Yuta is a Half. From a certain point of view, he is... but neither half is human.
• Extra-Dimensional Shortcut: The Crescent Gate transcendental allows you to cover ground very quickly like this; unfortunately, Hyperspace Is a Scary Place.
• The Faceless: Done in several ways. Characters are shown as their full silhouettes long before they are properly introduced within the story. Panels that tell a story within the story usually feature the characters with their faces in shadow. Minor characters are often drawn with their eyes hidden under their bangs multiple times before they are truly introduced to the audience. Future and past visions depict the characters from the back. Then there's Haas Lehn, who is drawn as a blue stick figure in most of his appearances.
• Fanboy/Fangirl: In-universe example. Asha collects them like stamps wherever she goes, whether she wants to or not. Brilith has a few herself (Agni pretended to be one when he was caught in the Temple). It's hinted that any Priest or top-grade magician gets a following.
• Fantastic Racism: Against "Halfs", half-sura half-human creatures. "Quarters", who have between 50% and 25% sura blood, are treated as equals by humans. It's eventually revealed that the reason for it is because Halfs are affected by the mindset of the leader of the sura clan they are born from, to the point that it can totally override their personality in extreme situations. During the Cataclysm, every single Half went on a horrifically murderous rampage as a result.
  • Then again during another attack during the story. Sagara intentionally baits Gandharva about his daughter, causing the Gandharva Halfs to rampage during the attack on Kalibloom.
• Feminine Women Can Cook: Played with. It's subverted with Leez, who despite her tomboyish nature, is described as a competent cook. It's also played straight with Teo Rakan, another tomboy who can't even peel apples right.
• First Kiss: Between Yuta and Leez. It quickly goes south when Yuta ends up eating her face, quite *literally*. Fortunately the Golden Knight auto-revives her from death but it's still nightmare inducing, including for Yuta who is immediately horrified by what he's done.
• Fisher King: The mood of the king or queen of a Sura clan affects both Halfs and lesser sura, so a weak or emotional king can cause widespread devastation simply by being king. In N0, this contributed to worldwide catastrophe as every Half went berserk, which contributes to much of the racism against Halfs today.
• Flashback Nightmare: Asha has one about her offering everything she has for power, and Kubera killing an unknown woman on Carte.
• Floating Continent: The city of Aeroplateau, which makes sense because it's the city where he Temples of the Sky and the Wind and their respectives priests are located, this also has the side effect of disabling all earth-related magic and trascendentals.
• Foreshadowing: Constantly.
  • The Neutral Bow was shown in Season 1 chapter 64, more than forty chapters (and nearly a year and half in real-life serialization) before it was introduced in the story.
  • Way back in the very first chapter, someone mentions how they were disappointed that Rao Leez's only child was a daughter, since they thought it meant the world missed out on another great warrior, but was satisfied when they saw Kubera Leez's great strength. A copy of Rao Leez's book is also shown within the first few panels. Just how great and famous a warrior Leez's father was, though, isn't revealed for over a hundred chapters.
  • All of the gods have a power called insight, which allows them to read human minds and see their future. Almost every time Leez meets a god, they have some insight about her future, foreshadowing the overall plot; most of these, unfortunately, are of what seems to be a Bad Future.
  • Claude practically swims in foreshadowing. A couple of early scenes in s2 show people acting weirdly chipper and with a cynical humor, giving oddly plot relevant instructions to the main cast, way before we find out who Claude is, and far far before we learn that his Bhavati Yama magic allows him to take control over people and act through them, and how he tends to use it to deceive people into acting as he needs them to.
• Foregone Conclusion: The time-travel arc when Maruna and Ran are sent back in time; the reader already knows all the important points about how this ends, since we both already got a summary of the relevant history and saw Maruna and Ran when they came back; we know from the beginning that Maruna advances to 5th stage, the first humans are annihilated by an alliance of the gods and Suras, and that only Brilith and her child survive.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Leez starts out as a typical Sanguine, but eventually progresses into a Phlegmatic, Asha is Choleric, Ran is Sanguine, and Yuta somewhat fits Melancholic.
• Four-Philosophy Ensemble: Asha is the cynic, Leez the optimist, Ran fits realist, and Yuta is the apathetic.
• Functional Magic: The magic that humans use is power borrowed from the gods. Apparently they used to be able to borrow power from sura, but that stopped when they renounced the suras in D0, a thousand years before the Cataclysm.
• Funny Background Event:
  • Season 1 chapter 42: Lorraine using creation magic to materialize mallets, and then hitting a bickering Airi and Ruche over the head with them.
  • Season 1 chapter 60: Leez and Yuta are grilling meat, and Yuta is drooling over the meat. Leez turns away for a seconds, and when she turns back Yuta has already eaten it all.
• Future Badass: What brief hints we've gotten of Leez's future is she's going to become a force to be reckoned with; they include visions of her fighting massive hordes of Sura alone, and threatening to kill a god if he doesn't leave her alone.
• Genre Deconstruction: The webtoon is largely a deconstruction of shounen action comics, and The Hero's Journey-type fantasy in general.
• Girliness Upgrade: Surprisingly, Asha, before the series began. She used to be much more of a tomboy.
• Glad He's On Our Side: Yuta. Considering his ability to nullify any magic or transcendentals, along with the fact that he can read minds and teleport past city barriers, it would be very bad for humans if he were against them.
• Gravity Master: "Mister" (the god Kubera) and, by extension, anybody using transcendental magic related to the domain of Kubera or just of the element "Earth". Slightly more justified than most examples, seeing as he does seem to actually manipulate the density, resistance, regeneration and mass of localised physical bodies, rather than "gravity", as such. The Required Secondary Powers of Made of Iron is the whole point to the Hoti Kubera spell, as well. It's useful should you accidentally flatten yourself or launch yourself into orbit when using other spells.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: There's a reason the tagline is that "this is a war with no villains". Some sides may be more sympathetic, but rarely is anyone acting For the Evulz.
• Half-Human Hybrid:
  • Halfs are humans with 50% or more sura blood. They age at a quarter of the rate normal humans do, have no divine affinity, and are capable of using transcendentals. Their being so closely related to sura also makes them susceptible to getting caught up in emotional resonance.
• Hard Head: Ran Sairofe. Falling rocks break when they make contact with his head.
• Hard Work Hardly Works:
  • Anyone born with a low divine affinity, no matter brilliant or hard working they are, cannot be a magician. Just ask Asha, who made a Deal with the Devil to escape this.
  • It's lampshaded when, in the past, Brilith advocated for Asha, citing that Asha deserved a high ranking not just for her natural talent, but because she obviously still had to work hard to be that skilled. It struck a chord with Asha, who's used to people assuming that as a prodigy, she puts zero effort into her work.
• Harmless Freezing: Chapter 18 of the first season: Gandharva freezes Agni.
• Healing Factor: One of the easier transcendentals the user of the Golden Knight has access to allows the wearer to recover from mortal damage (provided that they have vigor at time of injury).
• Healing Magic Is the Hardest: The method of calculating Asvins-attribute magic is so fundamentally different from normal magic that even people who don't need to calculate for other spells can't cast it without calculations.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Yuta, after he realizes that the sura who destroyed Leez's village was his half-brother Maruna. Also after he realises that Gandharva has taken sura form in the human realm, something that should be impossible. He'd been tempted to eat him earlier. Happens again when he loses control of himself and bites Leez.
  • Leez when Asha reveals that she went to Leez's village to kill her. It descends into a full-blown Freak Out when she is forced to confront the fact that Asha had been isolating her and hid the fact that her friends were alive in order to keep Leez dependent on her.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Early in the second season, Yuta lets himself get caught by the Hide of Bondage to protect Leez. Asha rescues him later, though.
• High School AU: The "Daily Life of Goobera" chapters feature the characters in Korean high school with their abilities stripped down to within what is possible for normal humans. Mostly. The first chapters were published online whenever the author was too exhausted to draw normal chapters, but later chapters were included in the published books as a Print Bonus.
• Hindu Mythology: Though it seems it is more Vedic than Hindu - ultimately, those two mythologies share a whole lot anyway, so it's the same difference.
• Horror Hunger:
  • Yuta, as well as any other Chaos Clan sura. They're known for eating anything and everything, preferably alive.
  • Any sura who is not a Nastika can suffer from this if they've been using their transcendentals a lot. The only way for them to regain vigor quickly is to eat sentient beings big and powerful enough for a boost, as, unlike the Nastikas, lesser sura don't automatically regain vigor just by resting.
• Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: The Crescent Gate transcendental, which Kasak uses for fast movement, apparently involves traveling through a realm controlled by the Chaos clan of sura, making it potentially very dangerous.
• An Ice Person: Gandharva, along with anything to do with water. His rival and Astika counterpart Varuna is the opposite, preferring water but being fully capable of using ice as well when the situation arises.
• I Know Your True Name: The Human Search System can be used to track any person provided you know their real name. Only AA ranked magicians are allowed to use it, which is why Asha wanted to be an AA so badly.
  • Saha uses the HSS to figure out that Asha is killing people named Kubera, and cries upon realizing that one of the other AAs must have used it for her.
• Inept Mage: Ran, since he has a tendency to do magic without running through the necessary calculations first.
  • Subverted, his habit of using magic without calculations only makes him appear inept. When he finally gets his magician's license, he becomes the 2nd ranked AA.
• Inherent in the System: The precursor humans were tolerant, equal, peaceful, and generally all-round lovable. They get slaughtered by rampaging Sura (acting on the orders of a higher being) over a period of centuries, slowly embittering them and forcing them to bear fangs until they're finally exterminated by the overpowered gods. Their 'successors' are shallow, selfish, manipulative, occasionally-monstrous jerkasses who have managed to survive and outwit the wrath of an endless slew of immortal, overpowered gods.
• Immortality: Comes in several different flavors for the sura and the gods.

• Innocent Flower Girl: Shakuntala. Gentle personality, dissuades conflicts, has a weak constitution, almost always seen sitting in a field full of flowers, gifts hand-made flower wreaths... the whole package.
• Interspecies Romance: Not uncommon before the great Cataclysm. Half-Dragon Kasak Rajof is the result of one such pairing, as was Ran's mother.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: What is going on and the details of the setting can be pieced together through simply observing both obvious details and taking note of less prominent, seemingly unimportant ones peppered through the art and dialogue.
• Killer Rabbit: Yuta. When in human-mode, though: not so much when he's wearing his Game Face. That's got bad news written all over it.
  • Chaos attribute suras are this by default. Normally, they look like typical members of their clan. But when showing their Sura forms, they become a disheveled mass of mouths and teeth. Petupan and Sona, her son are a literal case, having rabbit-like charateristics.
• Knight Templar Parent: Gandharva, who's willing to kill anyone and destroy anything on the chance that his daughter might be alive.
• Lecherous Licking: Yuta licks Leez's hand. She misinterprets this as him attempting Intimate Healing, as her hand had been injured beforehand.
• Living Ship: The transport ships are made from hollowed out sura corpses.
• Lonely Rich Kid: Despite the way he acts, this is one of the cornerstones of Ran Sairofe's backstory.
• Love Redeems:
  • Kasak firmly believes in this, due to how his mother calmed his father's anger.
  • It's outright stated that Menaka's influence made Gandharva go from a cruel and ruthless figure to the more affable, if somewhat unstable, figure he is in the present. However, this is also deconstructed given that not only is it suggested that Menaka approached him with an agenda, but that despite becoming a better person in some ways, Gandharva's previous attitude simply took on a softer, more hypocritical form prior to his Character Development in the present day.
  • Whether this is holds true for Yuta or not is a key question of the webtoon. Since even his fourth stage coupled with his Taraka eyes is too much for most nastika or 5th stages Rakshasa to deal with, him staying sane due to Leez's influence and love is the main thing holding the universe together right now. Those who think his sanity or kindheartedness won't last believe he should be annihilated immediately.
• Love Ruins the Realm: Furthermore, Gandharva's change in attitude only led to others (including members of his own clan, who left for greener pastures) scorning him and the eventual downfall of the Gandharva clan. However, this is also played with in that Gandharva's mellowing by Menaka and Shakuntala may have actually convinced Agni to see him as a potential friend and ally.
• Love Triangle: Lorraine was involved in one with Saha and Lutz in their college days. It seems to be resolved now that she and Saha are engaged.
  • Tragically, so were Kinnara, Vritra, and the original Airivata. The tragic part is that Kinnara did not realize Airivata had hidden feelings for her until billion of years after she murdered Airivata and took her name. Had she known, she might have realized there's no way Airivata is plotting against her. Once she realized this, Kinnara weeped for three days and three nights.
• Magic A Is Magic A: Magic has a very structured system. One's birth attributes define what types of magic one can use, and these attributes along with divine affinity determine the power of the spells. In addition, most magic requires complex mathematical calculations in order to be cast correctly.
• The Magic Goes Away: After D0, humans are no longer able to use fiendish magic. After D1000/N0, humans lost most divine magic and could only borrow power from the strongest gods of each attribute.
• Magic Pants: Justified when it comes to the sura, as the clothes of a human-form sura are actually altered body parts.
• Magically Regenerating Clothing: Healing magic may do this, because it's actually restoration magic - that is, it restores the target back to its 'optimal state'. It's rather hit or miss though, as Asha notes when her sleeve isn't restored when she uses restoration magic on herself.
• Magitek: The technology on Willarv (and likely other planets) is often constructed using magic, and in turn often requires some application of magic in order to function.
• The Magocracy: After the Cataclysm, with the humans left to fend for themselves, magicians for the most part took up the leadership roles filled by the gods beforehand. Even then, it is quickly made clear that magic users tend to have greater privileges, with said privileges increasing with one's rank (like say, being able to use the search system to find particular individuals).
• Makara: Makara is an inhabitant of the Sura Realm. In reference to the makara's status as a vahana, he is the second in command of the Gandharva Clan.
• Mana: In addition to the limit of vigor, magic users are limited to a certain number of uses of each spell per day. They start at one per day, with higher amounts if their birth attributes match, and can increase their max daily usage by repeatedly practicing the spell.
  • This becomes important when Ran needs to heal a test administrator to unlock a temple door. Since he doesn't have any matching attributes and he hadn't been inclined to practice it because it's a difficult spell, he had just one shot to revive the test administrator. It doesn't work, much to Leez's misfortune.
• Mayfly–December Romance: Deconstructed; While divergent lifespan romances are common, they rarely work out. The shorter lived partner will age and mature faster, and tends to feel distant from their lover. As oft said In-Universe, those who live long, love long, and the partner's feelings change quickly in comparison, leading to heartbreak.
  • Any poor human soul who has ever struck it "lucky" with a sura or a god. Or even a Half or a Quarter, for that matter. Currygom has made it more than clear that these age gaps very rarely end well, with broken hearts for everybody involved. Ran's parents are an excellent example, as are Kasak's.
  • Agni and Brilith are slowly and awkwardly moving in this direction, against Agni's better judgement.
  • Leez doesn't seem to be aware that Yuta is interested in her, which would inevitably lead to this.
• Meaningful Name: The Arc Words "the Power of the Name" make it clear that for some characters, their name is more than just a name.
  • Asha means "hope" or "wish" in Hindi, and can refer to the Zoroastrian concept of "truth".
• The Mirror Shows Your True Self: The Lake of Reflection, made by Kali, is at certain times capable of reflecting a being's true nature, although even then one cannot see the truth in their own reflection, and thus have to rely on others to tell them.
• Moral Myopia: Most people in this series, whatever their race, have some form of this going on to a degree. Whether it's Grey-and-Gray Morality Blue-and-Orange Morality, they'll probably also have some degree of "if it's me, it's OK" layered on top. Even the lighter, fluffier Leez is not immune to irrational (only partly justified) sura-hate. Riche, however, takes things to extremes: everything and anything is fine and justifiable, just as long as she, her money and her possessions come out OK... and, she makes a small profit on the side, of course.
• Morphic Resonance: Sura in human form (and Halfs) have a part of their body that retain sura characteristics.
• My Beloved Smother: Taraka to Yuta, who also says his love for Leez is a form of twisted, suppressed hunger.
• The Nameless: It's implied that Kubera literally gave his name to Leez and the other name holders. He tells her that he has no name, and that she should just call him 'mister' - but only if she doesn't attach any significance like a name to it.
• The Needless: Gods and Nastika alike do not need to consume anything to survive, and can survive just fine in oppressive environments like outer space and the sura realm.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Lutz and Tilda ask Yuta to help them in reviewing the security footage from the transport ship. Yuta sees the footage of Asha taking his scarf from the unconscious Leez, which causes him to get so angry that he short circuits the whole system and destroys the footage in the process.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Agni promises to Gandharva that he will not interfere in the human realm as long as Brilith is not in danger. The sura exploit this by planning to destroy Atera but leave Brilith unharmed... until Sagara loses her temper and tries to kill Brilith, giving Agni a free pass to answer her summoning and start attacking them.
• Noble Bird of Prey: Maruna is the most prominent example, but other members of the Garuda Clan also count. The occasional Half-Garuda can manifest wings, but these are very rare.
• Non-Indicative Name: The Cage of Silence only prevents magic from being cast by its prisoner. It does NOT actually quiet them.
• Not Growing Up Sucks: Ask any Half or Quarter with a pureblood human parent that they end up watching die in fast-forward from their perspective.
• Not Quite Forever: Invoked in a flashback to a conversation between Gandharva and Visnu. The former remarks that he would be able to shoulder the burden of being king if he was able to hold onto the people he loves for ever after. Visnu however, points out that nothing lasts forever. Cut to the present, where Gandharva has lost everything that he ever had.
• Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering: Referenced by Mirha during Asha's murder trial. She argues that had people known that the sura were looking for humans named Kubera, there would have been endless arguments about whether to protect these humans or give them to the sura to stop the attacks.
• Odd Friendship:
  • Despite being on opposite sides of the God/Nastika divide and the elemental divide, Gandharva and Agni wouldn't mind just hanging out instead.
  • Agni later manages to forge an alliance with Kasak, which he insists on referring to as "Team God-nim and Dragonny." Agni is pretty much just a bro waiting for a Bromance.
• Older Than They Look: Quarters and Halfs age much slower than ordinary humans; Halfs, due to their increased sura blood, age at one-quarter human rate, while Quarters age at one-half.
• Once More, with Clarity: When Kali sends Leez' consciousness back into her old self, we see the entire sequence of events again, but this time with a full understanding of what's actually going on.

• One Degree of Separation: Even the most unlikely of characters are somehow related to each other, either by blood or circumstance. For powerful mages, it seems to be because magical power is hereditary, with most of the key roles on Carte held by a small number of closely-related families. Other times it's implied to be because of Visnu meddling (such as Leez coincidentally running into the half-brother of the Sura who destroyed her hometown.)
• One-Winged Angel: Nastikas and Rakshasas have the power to transform into incredibly powerful (and usually giant-sized) inhuman forms for combat. In the modern era, Nastikas, despite being more powerful in theory, are normally unable to transform in the human realm.
• Only Mostly Dead: Preserving the body of a human who has recently died (preferably in ice) so that their deaths may be reversed with Hoti Visnu is the only revealed method (so far) of bringing back the dead short of asking Yama nicely (or beating the crap out of him if you have the muscle for it).
• Only the Chosen May Wield:
  • The Sword of Return can usually be found planted into the ground within the grounds of the Temple of Chaos in Kalibloom (in fact, said temple was built around the Sword). However, those with the right traits are capable of drawing the Sword. In fact, the latest such contest ends with God Kubera drawing it, although Leez winds up becoming its newest wielder.
  • It is also averted or played straight from a certain point of view due to the usual rules not applying to Yuta. It probably helps that he is the son of Kali, who created the Sword in the first place.
• Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous: Nastika, and to a slightly lesser extent gods, are capable of changing their physical sex. It's not out of the realm of possibility for such beings to literally have been the males or the females of different relationships.
• Our Mages Are Different: It seems like people can simply be trained to use magic, as long as they get the proper schooling in the magical theory and necessary calculations. However, their natural divine affinity affects how much they'll be able to accomplish with their spells, along with the birth attribute multiplier, so there is definitely still a luck component involved.
• Painting the Medium: When the magicians cast spells, the spells are in colored speech bubbles and different fonts to indicate they do something. A spell that didn't work will appear in regular white speech bubbles, so we know it's just a someone attempting (and failing) to cast a spell.
• Parental Substitute: Several.
  • Anna Haias took care of Kaz and Haas Lehn.
  • Gandharva is a mentor, guardian, and scary, nagging adult figure to Maruna.
  • Teo with Elwin.
  • Shess with Leny.
  • Mother-figures for Yuta: Shuri, and Taraka
• Pass the Popcorn: Claude, during a murder trial, no less.
• Pinball Protagonist: Leez, for much of season one.
• Plagued by Nightmares:
  • After the battle with God Kubera and Asha's revelation of what Leez really means to her and what Asha did to her father, Leez frequently has dreams about the both of them and how they betrayed her, causing her to wake up screaming and in cold sweat.
  • Ian routinely suffers from these and tends to shuffle about. Taksaka, for whom being disturbed in his sleep is a Berserk Button, notes that it's the only thing about her that annoys them in their marriage.
• Playing with Fire: Agni, as he is a Fire God. And, by extension, anybody using the Fire magic linked to him.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Ananta's death at the hands of the god Kubera severely affected the Power of the Name, and led to many of the current plot events.
• Plucky Girl: Deconstructed with Leez.
• Poor Communication Kills: Leda gives Leez the information that Asha hid from her without Mirha's knowledge or permission, resulting in her Despair Event Horizon.
• Power Levels: Used repeatedly in different ways.
  • Most traditionally, there is Divine Affinity (measuring a human's ability to call on divine power, and therefore their skill as a magician) and Transcendental value (measuring inherent supernatural power used to activate Transcendental attacks, either innately or via artifacts). Sura, Halfs, and some Quarters have a Divine Affinity of 0 (as does Leez, for unknown reasons.) Meters exist capable of measuring exact values for either, although some are flawed or limited and can therefore give inaccurate values.
  • Magicians are also ranked using a test, using letter values going up to AA; these ratings don't always reflect a magician's true capabilities, either because of mistakes in the test or because they simply weren't trying. Also, a portion of the magician ranking test can only be taken if you have a triple birth attribute, meaning a large majority of the population aren't even allowed to try for AA (due to safety concerns relating to the backlash from maintaining city barriers). Asha is an example of how the ranking system can be misleading because, despite being only A+(+) rank she was able to change the attributes of Atera's barrier, something not normally considered possible. She is implied to be actually better than the elite AA magicians, of which there are only 4 in the world.
  • Sura are ranked according to their generation and their stage of development within that generation.
  • Gods are apparently ranked according to their enlightenment, with 5th Zen gods being the highest (aside from Primeval Gods, which are actually a different order of being entirely.) However, only 5th Zen gods have had more than momentary appearances in the comic so far, so this rating rarely matters.
  • Fighter's guilds apparently also rank fighters in orders of strength, although this hasn't gotten more than an offhand mention.
  • Nastika are ranked by the strongest of their clan, by default also their first King, and going down from there. However, there's some nuance. Environmental advantages may allow an overally weaker Nastika to defeat a stronger one. And many nastikas have unique transecdentals which don't contribute directly in combat, but can massively benefit their user in other ways. For example, Menaka's "peace", which makes it so nobody will intentionally fight her. Finally, some Nastika's fighting style or powers are particularly effective vs others who are usually considered stronger. The most notable case being Yaksha's King of the Land power versus Ananta.
• Power Nullifier:
  • Yuta's eyes can nullify any Transcendental techniques in the range of his vision.
  • The Chaos barrier is also this, disabling all offensive Transcendentals within its range. In fact, Anti-Magic is Chaos' whole area of expertise. Alongside a lesser boost in physical shielding for the not-so-easy to use human Magics based on it.
• Power Limiter: The Golden Knight bracelet Leez ends up with is a combination of this and an Upgrade Artifact; when it's turned off, it drains her strength (though she's still noticeably stronger than a normal human), but when it's activated, it enhances it.
• Print Bonus: The books have some extra panels and small scenes that aren't in the online version, in addition to trading cards with character stats.
• Punched Across the Room: Leez does this to Kaz when he gives her his insulting birthday present, and to Asha when she wakes up to Asha strangling her. Although it's initially played for laughs with Kaz, God!Kubera's later commentary indicates that no, she really is that strong, and any normal human she hit full-force would likely die immediately.
• Readings Are Off the Scale: When taking the magician's license exam, Asha's divine affinity is so high (over 10,000) that the machine measuring it is unable to give a proper measure due to lacking enough space for the extra digit.
• Really 700 Years Old: Gods and high-ranking sura maintain a youthful appearance despite generally being centuries old at the low end. Yuta, who looks 12-13 years old, is at least three hundred, while his elder half-brother Maruna is more than a thousand years old but looks like a late-teen. The fact that the nastika adults treat him like a child says much about how old they are. In general among high-ranking sura your developmental stage seems to be considered more important than your age in years; it's also what determines how physically old you appear.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: The 8th sura clan, the Chaos Clan, can nullify most magic when their eyes are red.

• Required Secondary Powers: A strong magician needs three things, a high divine affinity, be very good at mental-math, and calculate quickly. Only the rare, instinctive casters can get around the latter requirements.
• Ret-Gone: This happened to Asha when she was 17. She exceeded her allowed uses of hoti visnu, which caused her to literally cease existing for three years. People more or less forgot about her presence; Saha notes how strange it was that no one looked for her despite being so popular.
  • Happens again near the end of Season 2
• Revenge:
  • What motivates both Asha and Leez. It remains to be seen whether their goals will be achieved, and how.
  • One of the futures Agni sees when using Insight on Leez implies that she will eventually decide that there was never really anything for her to seek revenge for in the first place — though she doesn't seem at all happy about it. Although it's unknown if that future will actually come about.
• Rewatch Bonus: Since information is only revealed in bits and pieces, some scene take on whole new levels of meaning upon revisiting.
• Rotten Reincarnation: The Ancient Human Race wasn't originally this, they had a great system of reincarnation in which they spent their formative years building up their present life's character and then they reached adulthood their had a coming of age ceremony to awaken their past lives memories and their knowledge that was supposed to help them embrace and learn from the past without clinging to it, but then, the Suras started to attack and massacre their settlements and these humans died with unresolved grudges that carried over to their next life, and became obsessed with taking revenge of the whole sura race for their relentless killing. And rather than helping them, the gods took care of these souls by grinding them down to nurture the universe and getting rid of those grudges, but eventually, the problem became too big for it to work, and the increasingly resentful humans were developing weaponry to become equals to them, it was put and end when the gods and suras allying to annihilate them and start anew with the modern human race.
• Running Gag: Leez giving all kinds of junk food and veggies to the carnivorous Yuta. This ends when he reaches his third stage and she learns he is a sura.
• Scary Teeth: Yuta. The first hint of his ...unusual... dental structure appears in Chapter 56. It's a little bit difficult to make out, but he has rows and rows of sharp teeth. You can see this a bit more clearly in Season 2 Chapter 31.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Asha has such good connections that she can literally murder people who she finds morally offensive and have it written off as a magical accident. Later on, this extends to threatening to murder one of the only four AA ranked magicians in the world, one of the most important people on the planet, while calmly stating that her connections will let her get away with it.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!:
  • Riche. Who needs social skills or magical powers when you can throw heaps of money and god-level items at a problem?
  • Riche? Asha and Ran can do this as well, but at least they aren't so damn smug about it. They typically use other methods first.
• Shining City: Eloth is implied to be this. The "City of Light and Creation" is a beautiful metropolis that houses many of Willarv's most prestigious titles, institutions and people, including the general headquarters of the Magic Guild, the Human Search System and the planet's highest-ranked magician.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Leez to Asha, eventually.
• Smug Snake:
  • Riche. Dear gods, Riche: she just oozes self-congratulatory slime, even after Yuta casually breaks out of her torture chamber basement, destroying multiple god-level items in the process (a feat that is supposed to be impossible).
  • Claude is... a debatable case. Doing what he did to Leez wasn't particularly nice. Or well thought out.
  • Sagara is probably an example herself (as well as a literal example). Time will tell, however, since her plans haven't quite blown up in her face yet.
• Stable Time Loop: The setting mostly runs on single-timeline / You Already Changed the Past time travel, so these are all over the place. Most notably, Maruna is the one who gave himself his own name.
• Stalker with a Crush: Yuta acts like this towards Leez.
  • Leez also teases Kubera about being this.
• Supernaturally Delicious and Nutritious: Taraka says that unlike other sura, the Chaos Clan instinctively attack strong prey while they are weak for some reason. She claims that this is the real reason Yuta is interested in Leez; he subconsciously understands she's going to be an unspeakably powerful Future Badass, and wants to eat her NOW, before she gets strong. Worryingly, this gets semi-confirmation when he later spots Gandharva in circumstances that could mimic what she described: Only his epic self-control meant he didn't act on it.
  • However, his interactions with Leez show a lot of care and tender moments, whereas his instincts are clearly to devour her. So while Taraka might have been right that his instincts push him to devour her, it seems his other emotions are genuine, and they're exactly what's stopping him from acting on those darker instincts. Taraka might have known this, and tried to gaslight him into confusing the two emotions as the same.

• Star Killing: Gandharva once ate a red giant star. While Agni was taking a nap on it.
• The Stoic:
  • Asha. If she's ever smiled sincerely, it's never been onscreen. She approaches everything with the same cold, calm demeanor, very rarely dropping the mask for even a moment.
  • The god Kubera has her beat, though. Agni, who has known him for millions of years, isn't sure he's ever smiled. He, too, has moments where he shows emotion, though.
  • Every dragon and dragon-half is this way, since dragons have almost no emotions... although some of them show one emotion very strongly, such as Taksaka's anger.
• Stepford Smiler: Leez. Despite her outward ditziness and cheer, she's actually a Broken Bird after what happened to her village. Gods are generally the only ones who can notice.
• Tempting Fate: Sagara can't catch a break with this. First she confidently says that no matter how angry he is at her, Gandharva isn't a threat because he can't take sura form in the human world. Cue her second in command asking if she's sure about that, as she points to the giant sura-form Gandhavra looming right behind her. Then, apparently having not learned her lesson, she says that it's fine, Taraka sealed his unique transcendentals so he can't use them, which he immediately proceeds to do.
• Tomboy: Leez, Asha, Kalavinka, and Teo Rakan.
• Time Skip: 7 years pass between seasons 2 and 3.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Asha and Brilith, formerly. When they first met, Brilith even thought Asha was a boy.
• Trademark Favorite Food:
  • Leez and curry mushrooms. Agni and persimmons (preferably homemade and flash-dried).
  • The author, Currygom and curry.
• Training the Gift of Magic: The vocal component of spells are pretty simple, really just Hoti/Bhavati [insert name of god here]. However, getting them to work requires calculation and seeing the form of the spell. Hence why an untrained human like Leez couldn't get Hoti Kubera to work just by shouting the words. She'd never even seen the spell in action, much less understand the calculations behind it.
• True Companions: The group Leez, Asha, Yuta and Ran form subverts all expectations of this. Leez looks up to Asha and is protective of Yuta. However, Asha envies Leez, and while occasionally kind, abuses her trust. Yuta has a crush on Leez, but doesn't need her protection, and his true nature complicates his feelings for her. Asha and Yuta share a good deal of mutual respect, but that doesn't mean Asha won't try to use him. Ran likes Yuta, develops some respect for Asha, and wants to help Leez. However, his strong ties outside the group mean that he's easily drawn back into his old circles.And this is before Your Justice And Mine.
• Unequal Pairing: As romantic as it might sound, when a human or Quarter falls in love with either an Astika, a Nastika, or any form of sura (or visa versa), they're not equal by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it often sucks for both. Keep in mind that, although all superior sura have humanoid forms, they are actually more like Cthulhu.
• Uneven Hybrid: Quarters are those with less than 50% but at least 25% sura blood, as they are born from half-pureblood, half-quarter, and quarter-quarter couplings. Anyone with less than 25% sura blood is considered a pureblood human.
• Unpronounceable Alias: When Leez met Gandharva. "Ketergent": a fine name for a bathroom cleaner that whacks limescale, that.
• Unreliable Expositor: All information in-universe is biased or based off incomplete knowledge, not even counting deliberate deceptions.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Leez has never been to school and didn't study magic, but her punches can send a grown man flying, and she can break walls in her sleep. It is mentioned several times that her full strength will easily kill a normal person, but she has been lucky so far that everyone she punched have been tough enough to handle it.
• Unusual Ears: Seen on some halves and human-form sura. Elwin has bunny ears, Shuri has fox ears, Maruna has ...feathery flappy ear..thingies?
• Vagueness Is Coming: Every Insight into Leez' future is like this, revealing a Bad Future where she suffers some fate horrible enough to wish that she had died instead, but without the slightest detail on what happened. In one of them, Future!Leez is taunting a god for his inability to have foreseen what was really important.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: The higher-ranked sura are capable of shapeshifting between their sura and humanoid forms. Vritra Halfs like Kasak are also capable of taking sura form.
• Villainous Ethics Decay: Well, from a perspective. In season three, the main opposing force is the Taraka clan instead of Sagara. While their approach is similar, the key difference lies in the motives. Sagara & Co., as well as most other suras, have lines that even they won't cross, such as Maruna refusing to harm Elwin because she's a Yaksha half. They also have motivations that could be construed as sympathetic - Sagara is trying to bring Ananta back, the Ananta Rakshasas are helping because they are loyal to her (and implied to be her children), Hura is honoring his clan's alliance and Maruna is trying to help his own by finding his long lost sister. Even God Kubera and Gandharva can be put under the same category: the former is implied to be trying to make up for his past mistakes, and the latter is desperately looking for his missing daughter. The Taraka clan, on the other hand, are mindless beasts that attack anyone regardless of their status as sura or human, have no discernible motivation and even go as far as use other sura's bodies as their hosts. So yes, if you consider that the antagonists went from weird morals to no morals, you have this.
• Well, This Is Not That Trope: Played straight and subverted. Maruna's flashback of Shakuntala has Maruna angrily declaring that he wishes he could skip past the boring parts of growing up, and Shakuntala warning him that he may wish he could have these moments back when he's an adult. In the present Maruna thinks that he wants to go back, but not to the times he had with her.
• Wham Episode:
  • The "Falling Petals" arc in season 2. Of note are the true number of Asha's murders and the truth behind her ridiculously high divine affinity, as well as Leez having a Freak Out after finding out what Asha's been hiding from her.
  • And then, immediately after it, the "Your Justice and Mine" arc. Asha murders Saha in front of Lorraine, then attacks Lorraine herself.
  • A whole bunch in season 3, starting from Broken Birds. Brillith is a reincarnation of a human who has reincarnated billion of years, having been in love with Agni somewhere around the start of the cycle until some terrible tragedy destroyed her race and shattered her belief in the gods.
  • Crime and Punishment chapter is another big one: Kali shows up in person for the first time. Her every word drips with foreshadowing and double meaning, and she's revealed to have time traveling powers just like Vishnu. She uses them, explaining some scenes that previously seemed odd in season 2, and sending Ran and Maruna to a longgg arc of traveling and influencing the past.
  • 'Ananta' chapter: Ananta has time powers, and can rewind back when he decides the present events are unacceptable. But in doing so too many times, he has accumulated too much sin and is at risk of being engulfed by them, with catastrophic implications for the universe. He looks to find someone to shoulder those sins in his stead.
  • 'In Your Delusions' chapter, categorized as a side story, has more wham then most main arcs. the first incarnations of the current universe had a nastika Manasa with almost the same powers of Ananta, including time powers, though somewhat weaker. She loved and educated him into the kind personality we now know, but eventually had to rewind time too much to stop a universe destroying monstrosity implied to be Yuta's true self. In doing so, she accumulated too much sin and became a berserk menace herself, her sura form threatening the entire universe until three primervals destroyed her permanently. Despairing at this, Ananta used his time powers to try and rewind back before her death, but due to Shiva's powers of destruction being absolute, Ananta's efforts literally retconned the universe into one where Manasa has never even existed, with only Ananta remembering her. Ever since, he did his best to protect the universe simply out of respect to her efforts and guilt at his part in erasing her. The universe we know was upheld by a widowed lover, and if he is ever resurrected and becomes engulfed by sin like Manasa did, not even the Primerval Gods might be enough to stop him.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?:
  • All magicians in the series have no qualms about killing sura. The racists have no qualms about killing Halfs.
  • One of the reports from the aftermath of the attack on Kalibloom reveals just how bad Halfs have it, even in relatively Half-friendly cities. A Gandharva Half was killed during emotional resonance and the sponsor couldn't charge the killer with murder; the only thing they could be charged with was property damage.
  • Maruna regards humans as humans would treat ants, but he considers Halfs to be sura, and treats them accordingly.
• White Void Room: In Leez's dream sequence in chapter 22 of season 2.
• With Friends Like These...:
  • Noncomedic example in that Asha was probably the worst thing to ever happen to Leez.
  • The Sura alliance is also this trope. Maruna may be helping the Ananta clan, but he's still eating their weaker members, and the Ananta clan discuss ways to get rid of him when they don't need him anymore.
  • Hura, the only Rakshaka the Asura clan sent to help, is happy when Sagara goes off to fight Agni, because either of them dying is a win in his books.
• Whole Episode Flashback: The AAA Magician arc, in which Brilith tells the story of how she and Asha met.
• Wham Shot: The ending of Season 3, Episode 155. Claude has just revealed that in addition to seeing people's time of death, he can see their true name; his wording implies that he's realized that Leez' true name is Kubera. Then, at the very end of the episode, we see Leez from his perspective and it slowly zooms out to reveal that her true name is Kubera Leez Ananta, meaning that in addition to Kubera's name, she bears the name of the deceased Ananta, the most powerful being in the universe.
• Wizards from Outer Space: While the presence of gods and magic places the webcomic squarely into the fantasy genre, it also features sci-fi elements such as interplanetary travel and multiple universes.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: The Konchez Expedition find a cavern brimming with gold, but ignore it completely. The reasons for this vary from personality (Leez), background (Ran), and species (Yuta and Maruna).
• Your Days Are Numbered: Several characters.
  • Brilith's health has deteriorated significantly due to summoning Agni as a child and keeping him summoned.
  • Claude's Hoti Yama spell reveals that Leez is going to die rather young, sometime in her early to mid twenties. Later, after the timeskip, we get the exact date, which is mere months in the future.
  • Asha's execution via Hoti Yama also reveals that she doesn't have much time left. When the curtain is opened to allow her to speak her last words, everyone is shocked when she appears around the same age but with longer hair. Claude uses this fact to convince Saha to postpone the execution.

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