Battle for 5th strongest High 8-C (Toujou Karuna vs Taylor Hebert)

[DontTalkDT]

Toujou Karuna vs Taylor Hebert
In the last thread, someone told me she was the strongest Parahumans character, so same game.

Speed Equal
SBA
High 8-C Keys

Who takes it?

 

[DontTalkDT]

Ok so, for reference, Karuna's Standard Tactic in this fight would be somewhat different than in the last for two reasons: 1. His Danger Sense would immediately be over 9000 2. His Standard Tactic against armies (and similar) is different from his usual one.

With his Danger sense going off he should open by taking multiple actions at once. Parallel Thinking makes it possible.
He obviously isn't going to appraise the entire army, but quite possibly will appraise Taylor as his main target. Additionally, with his Danger Sense going off strongly, he probably would kick in further information gathering skills such as his precognition.
Additionally, getting serious should mean he uses skills such as thought acceleration.
As usual, he should use the information he gathers to decide on appropriate actions.
Lastly, he should kick up his standard tactic against armies. He has demonstrated 2 of those. In chapter 36 he used his fear aura to incapacitate a 100k man strong army in one hit. Meanwhile, in chapter 145, when fighting the army of the evil god, he just used instant death on the entire army and killed all of them in one hit.

 

[Duedate8898]

Honestly, from looking at her profile I don't really think she has a way to stop the fear or death manipulation so I'll be throwing my vote towards Toujou for now. It is noted she's controlling a lot of things at once though, so if anyone she's controlling can somehow handle the above it would be nice to know.

 

[Randomlamdom]

Taylor's first move would be thought based portal so he would be in her mindhax range, so toujou would need to do something to kill her immediately

 

[DontTalkDT]

Taylor's first move would be thought based portal so he would be in her mindhax range, so toujou would need to do something to kill her immediately

As said above, that's basically exactly what he would do. Instant Death on the entire bunch.
Also he could counter the technique, just to put that option out there.

 

[Randomlamdom]

What do you mean by counter the technique, what would it do?

 

[DontTalkDT]

What do you mean by counter the technique, what would it do?

He could, for instance, close the portal with his own space manipulation, stretch out the distance between himself and the portal via his space manipulation or use inversion extremity to change the target of her mind control technique unto herself.
Or he could invoke time manipulation.

 

[Tllmbrg]

Eh okay so my question is how exactly is Taylor's High 8-C "Key" works exactly under SBA
Because she only gets to that stat through her army she mind controls, so how is it laid out lol

 

[DontTalkDT]

We are talking optional equipment, so SBA doesn't really apply for that.
So it's more on what the Top 5 Strongest... standard is. I would guess she gets her entire mind-controlled army.

 

[DontTalkDT]

bump

 

[ShadowWhoWalks]

Khepri is not going to charge in; her first move would be to hide in an other universe, organize her parahumans into groups and sub-groups optimally (aided by the Thinkers she is controlling), and then use gureilla tactics to either take Toujo down or keep him busy while she studies his capabilities. Note that Khepri also has access to multiple capes with precognition, clairvoyance, and danger sense, so she is definitely not going to charge in blindly and will know which plan is bound to fail or succeed.

Khepri can teleport bombs (including ICBMs) from multiple universes and precisely send them at Toujou with telekinesis, have her tinkers create giant superweapons to nuke Toujou (a weapon a single tinker created on her own without help in 40 minutes is an upgraded version of a weapon that can knock the moon off orbit), have her every Blaster simultaneously fire at a portal that leads to Toujou for a focused attack (coordinated by her Thinkers), etc.

Unless Toujou has some high-level rapid universe hopping skills and is immune to precognition, this is a win for Taylor.

 

[DontTalkDT]

Khepri is not going to charge in; her first move would be to hide in an other universe, organize her parahumans into groups and sub-groups optimally (aided by the Thinkers she is controlling), and then use gureilla tactics to either take Toujo down or keep him busy while she studies his capabilities.

Can I have some quotes on that being her absolute standard tactic? Karuna has some good supernatural luck, so unless it pretty certain that she uses a good tactic she likely won't.

Note that Khepri also has access to multiple capes with precognition, clairvoyance, and danger sense, so she is definitely not going to charge in blindly and will know which plan is bound to fail or succeed.

I mean... both kinda have that, so that's going to be some chaos. In the short term, she has a bit of a tactical disadvantage due to the fact that she needs to communicate with her underlings to make them use powers. She has one or two steps more to take to use these powers than Karuna. Also, her multiverse travel is via portals, right? These have the disadvantage that one actually needs to move through them, meaning they are not purely thought based.
(And he could probably teleport through the portal as long as it is open)

Khepri can teleport bombs (including ICBMs) from multiple universes and precisely send them at Toujou with telekinesis, have her tinkers create giant superweapons to nuke Toujou (a weapon a single tinker created on her own without help in 40 minutes is an upgraded version of a weapon that can knock the moon off orbit), have her every Blaster simultaneously fire at a portal that leads to Toujou for a focused attack (coordinated by her Thinkers), etc.

Karuna can't be physically killed. He has two abilities that in combination allow him to revive infinite times. Unless these bombs destroy souls they won't do anything.

Heck, considering that Karuna has the ability to recreate any object he has ever seen, using weapons against him is a terrible idea.

Unless Toujou has some high-level rapid universe hopping skills and is immune to precognition, this is a win for Taylor.

Kauna can technically summon the goddesses of reincarnation which should be able to work over such range. And his precognition can counter Taylor's precognition.
In any case, leaving Karuna's range is not a winning move. He has time manipulation, including the ability to go back into the past. If Taylor's present self flees Karuna can just kill her in the past.

 

[ShadowWhoWalks]

Can I have some quotes on that being her absolute standard tactic? Karuna has some good supernatural luck, so unless it pretty certain that she uses a good tactic she likely won't.

This is literally the first thing she did in her fight against the final boss, who has powerful AoE and is immune to precognition (so the precogs have to indirectly predict whether an area will be destroyed or people will die).

Now for the clin- the clincher. The ultimate strategy.

We ran.

My number one priority was to keep moving, keep active. Things were easier so long as I was moving towards a goal.

I had to get myself sorted. Wrap my head around the tools at my disposal. For that, I needed time. I needed to put distance between us and Scion.

Stepping up the tempo, have to distract Scion.

I reached out to Ash Beast, a living force of nature. It had originally triggered in Matruh, Egypt, and had been roaming since, making its way across Africa. All of the destructive power of any class S threat, tempered by the fact that it usually traveled on foot, and people could see it coming from miles away. When it reached a settlement, that settlement was usually evacuated.

[...]

I moved Alexandria, Legend, Moord Nag and the others on the frontline through doorways as the Ash Beast struck the golden man. Golden light tore into flesh that had been forged of fire, and more flesh was created to replace it. The Ash Beast tore into Scion, and the flesh was replaced just as quickly.

I created more doorways, moving people out of Gimel in an orderly fashion. Here and there, I changed the portals around, dictating different exit points to break up groups.

Ranged attackers in one group. Brutes broken up into several sub-groups. Thinkers, tinkers, defensive capes… there were a lot to sort, a great many who had powers that needed a half-second to a few seconds to figure out, in terms of classification and application. With scores of these capes, it added up.

Every cape had a place to be. There were capes who needed something to harvest, who needed materials, and I gave them access to their materials. There were capes who needed others nearby, and capes who were better if set apart.

I assigned precogs, thinkers and danger senses to the various groups.

Decentralize, I thought. If Scion was the established force with superior weapons then I had to be the guerrilla army. Different groups moved to remote locations, different worlds. I couldn’t let him destroy too many of us in one good hit.

The difference is that Khepri has much more fire power here, but she will be alerted that getting close to Toujou is dangerous from the large amount of precogs and danger senses. Taylor is cautious and mainly uses long-distance fighting (like multiple blocks away, seeing through her insects) to begin with, so she wouldn't get close even without the Thinkers alarming her, and she has been constantly teleporting to collect capes so no need to stick around since she has cosmic awareness.
Otherwise, the Fear Aura is useless against the army as they are explicitly incapable of displaying or expressing their fear, and instant death can be bypassed by Breakers who transform into forms made from energy or non-living matter, and by Trumps who can give others power immunity and power nullification protection. Tinkers can also produce machines for close combat.

Groups within the verse, such as the Yàngbǎn, are based on copying powers into their members, so if instant death is nullified, Brutes can be teleported in immune to it as well via. power sharing tricks.

I mean... both kinda have that, so that's going to be some chaos. In the short term, she has a bit of a tactical disadvantage due to the fact that she needs to communicate with her underlings to make them use powers. She has one or two steps more to take to use these powers than Karuna. Also, her multiverse travel is via portals, right? These have the disadvantage that one actually needs to move through them, meaning they are not purely thought based.
(And he could probably teleport through the portal as long as it is open)

She doesn't need to communicate (in fact her basic communication skills is broken as Khepri); it is the same principle where she can control millions of insects and see what each one of them is sensing, she was capable of this level of multitasking before the Rise of Khepri, and now she has cosmic awareness and can control humans. So as soon as a precog she is controlling gets a vision for example she will immediately know about it, and hundreds of Tinkers will have perfect coordination and shared information. She is basically a hive mind for people with super powers. At a time, most of the people she is controlling will be on autopilot, but she still knows what every one of them is doing and what they are thinking and seeing.

Toujou is at a massive tactical disadvantage from the distance alone, since the starting distance is 4 km per the SBA, but his detection range is 3 km, while Khepri is almost omniscient for planet Earth across the multiverse.

The original portal creator could open a portal at the speed of thought; not only can Khepri open portals faster but she can open thousands of portal simultaneously.

Doormaker was capable of opening the doorways at the speed of thought. I had multitasking abilities. I could open them faster. Not one after the other, a thirtieth of a second passing between each, but simultaneous.

I didn’t target people this time. Portals opened across the sky in that foreign Earth that Scion and the Faerie Queen fought in. As many portals as I could fit in that Earth’s sky.

[...]

There were perhaps two hundred Earths in easy reach that had military technology worth talking about.

Two hundred earths with bombs. Every bomb that hadn’t been in some secure housing, every bomb that was small enough to drop through the doorway, to plummet to the ground below Scion.

Some would be duds, no doubt, missing an integral component that would be put in place before a bombing run. But a handful, I suspected, were bound to be nuclear bombs.

And while the travel is done through portals instead of instant teleportation, the portals can be created close enough that it takes a small step to travel to an other universe, and Khepri used telekinesis (and later, spatial manipulation) to shove the people she is controlling through portals or to help them dodge attacks. She also used rapid universe hopping to prevent getting tracked.

Karuna can't be physically killed. He has two abilities that in combination allow him to revive infinite times. Unless these bombs destroy souls they won't do anything.

Heck, considering that Karuna has the ability to recreate any object he has ever seen, using weapons against him is a terrible idea.

Toujou can be killed, but he will be revived once pre day and he can load to a previous save. He is perfectly killable permanently as long as he is killed twice in rapid succession before he can load, which is doable with the massive fire power Khepri has. And if he does load, the various Thinkers will be able to figure out that he is using time travel and adjust their strategy accordingly (if the various precogs and clairvoyants didn't learn this already).
She can simply coordinate Legend into sniping Toujou kilometers away with a speed of light attack, and have him sniped again the moment he is revived. Or vaporize him with a miniature sun that is hundreds of meters wide, and let him revive inside that sun. Considering that Toujou once died due to being speed blitzed, this is perfectly feasible when faced with multiple precogs.

I assume Toujou creating technology requires a work shop instead of something created mid-battle, but Khepri can have hundreds of Tinkers creating them in the background, and it gets created extremely quickly.

Glaistig Uaine. She had four spirits with her, and three were working in concert. One to form raw materials, two to fashion them into objects, a telekinetic to manage it all by holding Eidolon immobile in the sky while launching the bombs in Scion’s direction.

One bomb was creating spaces of alternately accelerated and decelerated time. Another was distorting space to the point it was painful to look at.

Also, nothing technology complex or powerful enough to threaten Khepri is needed or is likely to get used.

Kauna can technically summon the goddesses of reincarnation which should be able to work over such range. And his precognition can counter Taylor's precognition.
In any case, leaving Karuna's range is not a winning move. He has time manipulation, including the ability to go back into the past. If Taylor's present self flees Karuna can just kill her in the past.

Not sure about the goddess' authority extending to a multiverse, but unless this is a tactic Karuna weaponizes, summoning the goddess would be outside interference, kinda like a space marine requesting orbital bombardment. Not being immune to precognition and overpowering dozens of precogs would require feats to show for it. Significant time travel seems to be restricted to saving and loading, which would be limited to the beginning of the battle here.

 

[DontTalkDT]

This is literally the first thing she did in her fight against the final boss, who has powerful AoE and is immune to precognition (so the precogs have to indirectly predict whether an area will be destroyed or people will die).

But is that the only strategy she would use against an opponent of unknown capabilities? As said, Karuna has Supernatural Luck. This being one of her strategies isn't enough. It needs to be her only strategy.
Also, reading this quote it sounds like transferring all the people took many many separate actions. She can't afford to spend that kind of time in a speed equal match. Karuna would slaughter all of them while she is busy with that.

The difference is that Khepri has much more fire power here, but she will be alerted that getting close to Toujou is dangerous from the large amount of precogs and danger senses. Taylor is cautious and mainly uses long-distance fighting (like multiple blocks away, seeing through her insects) to begin with, so she wouldn't get close even without the Thinkers alarming her, and she has been constantly teleporting to collect capes so no need to stick around since she has cosmic awareness.
Otherwise, the Fear Aura is useless against the army as they are explicitly incapable of displaying or expressing their fear, and instant death can be bypassed by Breakers who transform into forms made from energy or non-living matter, and by Trumps who can give others power immunity and power nullification protection. Tinkers can also produce machines for close combat.

Superior fire power is... irrelevant against someone operating virtually entirely on hax like Karuna. He can stop time or invert target to block attacks regardless of strength and survives by resurrection.
Only the breakers would survive instant death that way and only when they have already activated that ability. What kind of power nullification protections do Trump gives... and is it relevant for that matter? Karuna will use instant death as the first move. A precognitive seeing that it will happen, Taylor evaluating that, Taylor giving an order to a Trump and the Trump then using his power is 3 steps to slow. Given that Karuna's instant death is a thought (technically even just will) based action without travel time Taylor (and everyone else) can only take 1 thought based action without travel time in the time needed for it to take effect.

(and once Karuna activates thought acceleration he will think faster than everyone without such a boosting skill at that)

Also, remember Karuna's target is mainly Taylor. Killing her alone is enough to win.

Groups within the verse, such as the Yàngbǎn, are based on copying powers into their members, so if instant death is nullified, Brutes can be teleported in immune to it as well via. power sharing tricks.

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. Although I'm not sure if skills and shards can be equalized in a fashion that allows power copying here.

She doesn't need to communicate (in fact her basic communication skills is broken as Khepri); it is the same principle where she can control millions of insects and see what each one of them is sensing, she was capable of this level of multitasking before the Rise of Khepri, and now she has cosmic awareness and can control humans. So as soon as a precog she is controlling gets a vision for example she will immediately know about it, and hundreds of Tinkers will have perfect coordination and shared information. She is basically a hive mind for people with super powers. At a time, most of the people she is controlling will be on autopilot, but she still knows what every one of them is doing and what they are thinking and seeing.

Ok.

Toujou is at a massive tactical disadvantage from the distance alone, since the starting distance is 4 km per the SBA, but his detection range is 3 km, while Khepri is almost omniscient for planet Earth across the multiverse.

Yeah... but only once they actually get really far apart. Before Karuna's thought based teleport should get him close enough with one jump or so.

The original portal creator could open a portal at the speed of thought; not only can Khepri open portals faster but she can open thousands of portal simultaneously.

And while the travel is done through portals instead of instant teleportation, the portals can be created close enough that it takes a small step to travel to an other universe, and Khepri used telekinesis (and later, spatial manipulation) to shove the people she is controlling through portals or to help them dodge attacks. She also used rapid universe hopping to prevent getting tracked.

To completely walk through a portal is probably going to take multiple thought based actions worth of time none-the-less.

Toujou can be killed, but he will be revived once pre day and he can load to a previous save. He is perfectly killable permanently as long as he is killed twice in rapid succession before he can load, which is doable with the massive fire power Khepri has.

She has no way to figure out that she needs to do that in the first place (and if time resets they will forget they did that)... and you underestimate how hard that is. Karuna needed to use quick reviving on two occasions, both against opponents that were so powerful that they could blitz and oneshot Karuna. Karuna always reloads the instant he revives.
The second occasion of that was the final boss, who was not only much faster than Karuna, but even retained his memories when time was reset. Despite that Karuna literally outlasted him with repeated revives.
Basically, Karuna times the revives and loads close enough that killing him in rapid succession is no option in a speed equal scenario.

And if he does load, the various Thinkers will be able to figure out that he is using time travel and adjust their strategy accordingly (if the various precogs and clairvoyants didn't learn this already).

How exactly would they do that? They forgot anything happens because time is reversed. And because time is reversed for everything there isn't any indicator that it happened. Looking into the future doesn't help either, because the future they would see is the one where Karuna didn't rewind time.

She can simply coordinate Legend into sniping Toujou kilometers away with a speed of light attack, and have him sniped again the moment he is revived. Or vaporize him with a miniature sun that is hundreds of meters wide, and let him revive inside that sun. Considering that Toujou once died due to being speed blitzed, this is perfectly feasible when faced with multiple precogs.

A simple sniper shot would be precoged. I don't see a feazible way to use that the precogs precog the precog to outdo the precog either, when Karuna can use a skill like inversion extremity to defend. In the first place, this is speed equal. So no speed of light sniping.

As for the sun: I don't think that works although I can't quite say why. Basically, if it would work that way then someone punching off Karuna's head would result in him respawning with the fist still stuck in his head. And we know that doesn't happen. I would say the revive either waits until the area is vacant to be spawned in again or revives him in the closest possible spot. That's speculation, though.
What isn't speculation is that Karuna can think in the time between dying and being automatically revived. So he can activate skills to safe himself in the time.


In any case, this would only happen if they knew he is going to reverse time and I don't see yet how they would know that.

I assume Toujou creating technology requires a work shop instead of something created mid-battle, but Khepri can have hundreds of Tinkers creating them in the background, and it gets created extremely quickly.

Also, nothing technology complex or powerful enough to threaten Khepri is needed or is likely to get used.

Can't she be killed by normal physical weaponry?
Yeah, Karuna probably needs some work to build something, but... time magic.

Not sure about the goddess' authority extending to a multiverse

They are the goddesses of reincarnation. Sending things between universes is literally their job.

, but unless this is a tactic Karuna weaponizes, summoning the goddess would be outside interference, kinda like a space marine requesting orbital bombardment.

That's how he defeated the final boss. By summoning 100 goddesses to kill it.

Not being immune to precognition and overpowering dozens of precogs would require feats to show for it.

I'm not saying he can do either, but having precognition himself levels the playing field. It will be quite a nightmare to make effective use of precog in this fight, as the future will constantly change.

Significant time travel seems to be restricted to saving and loading, which would be limited to the beginning of the battle here.

Unless Karuna sets a safe point at the beginning it wouldn't be. Time would reverse to when his last safe was, which would be before the fight.

 

[ShadowWhoWalks]

But is that the only strategy she would use against an opponent of unknown capabilities? As said, Karuna has Supernatural Luck. This being one of her strategies isn't enough. It needs to be her only strategy.
Also, reading this quote it sounds like transferring all the people took many many separate actions. She can't afford to spend that kind of time in a speed equal match. Karuna would slaughter all of them while she is busy with that.

She has multiple precogs and danger senses with multiversal range, and in-character Taylor is analytical and preps if she has the opportunity. She only has to take a single step into a portal and she is in a universe where Toujou can't follow her (as he's never been in that alternative earth), and she can nuke him at her leisure. She has no reason to stay, as she is in no position to fight directly, and some of the capes she is controlling are dangerous to those around them (such as Ash Beast).

Rearranging squads in different universes took time; she was dealing with someone who can casually obliterate continents, teleport his attacks to other universes, and travel to an other universe as easy as can walk. But here she starts outside of Karuna's detection range, and all she needs to do to become unreachable is to walk into a portal.

Superior fire power is... irrelevant against someone operating virtually entirely on hax like Karuna. He can stop time or invert target to block attacks regardless of strength and survives by resurrection.
Only the breakers would survive instant death that way and only when they have already activated that ability. What kind of power nullification protections do Trump gives... and is it relevant for that matter? Karuna will use instant death as the first move. A precognitive seeing that it will happen, Taylor evaluating that, Taylor giving an order to a Trump and the Trump then using his power is 3 steps to slow. Given that Karuna's instant death is a thought (technically even just will) based action without travel time Taylor (and everyone else) can only take 1 thought based action without travel time in the time needed for it to take effect.

Mentioning power nullification is a hypothetical since there is no need to sacrifice capes for distraction, but an example is Usher. Usher was able to protect against Behemoth kill aura, which allows him to generate energy directly inside his targets, which he uses to burn anyone who gets close to him into ash from the inside.

Chevalier could feel a sensation crawling through his body, an energy. It didn’t invigorate, not on its own, but he could feel a kind of relief.

Usher was alive, and Usher’s power coursed through him. With luck, he’d be immune to Behemoth’s power, or at least partially immune. Nobody had received the benefit of Usher’s ability and been brave enough to venture into Behemoth’s kill range.

...

He closed into the kill area, and he could feel the heat touch him. It heated the armor, but didn’t reach him. Usher’s power at work. He tried to inhale, and found no air. Choking, he forced his mouth shut.

He was also able to provide power nullification protection against an existence-erasure blast.

Swansong severed the tongue, and then looked at Ingenue. A blast of her power saw her lunge ten feet forward, as her other hand reached out.

The blast consumed Ingenue, head to toe.

It cleared away. Swansong stood there, head bent, a glare in her eyes.

Ingenue was untouched. She turned her head and saw Usher. Usher could grant an invulnerability to powers.

There are also others such as Monokeros who targets someone with an emotional aura and becomes immune to any harm from her target (stating someone with sharp claws and an existence-erasure blast can't harm her, and she was unaffected after a Tinker tried to blind her with flash gun device).
Hundreds of Tinkers working together with materials readily teleported to them should be able to easily replicate their powers and to clone power nullifiers.

---

Otherwise, she can have indirect fighters, teleport nukes, or use continent destroying blasts from orbit.

I collected some of the capes that were harder to employ, and I began pairing them up.

Halo. Sundancer. A handful of masters with projection powers. A cape with a giant mask.

All powers that made stuff.

A ring of razor-sharp gold that produced forcefields and lasers. A miniature sun. Soldiers of stone. A golden mask. I had each of them make the individual objects as big as they could get.

I retrieved Chevalier, and I did the same with his cannonblade, raising it to its maximum capacity.

Then I accessed Vista. And I made it all bigger.

I pulled the capes out of the way as the various weapons entered the fray. The sun was as broad across as a skyscraper was tall, the halo was only twice its usual size, firing a substantially sized laser. Scion avoided both.

Chevalier’s weapon should have been too heavy to lift, but he didn’t seem to care.

He shot Scion, and Scion was consumed by the sun.

Alongside other hax, such as combining multiple mind control powers to overpower Karuna's resistance (Khepri overpowered someone who resisted her mind control by using an other mind controller and bringing a power enhancer into the fold).

She can bring August Prince, who prevents others from attempting or planning to harm him with no range (blocking his view with butterflies or pushing him are considered harm as they are meant to inconvenience him), and equip him with matter disintegration or matter transmutation weapons. His mere presence will also stop indiscriminate AoE attacks.

And insanity inducing powers, such as Mama Mathers' who knows about everyone who perceives her in some way and can choose to give intense hallucinations and even comas to them, and her power becomes more intense the clearer the perception is, which is a hard-counter to Karuna's sensory ability. Mama Mathers or a clone of her can be teleported 3 km away from Karuna.

To completely walk through a portal is probably going to take multiple thought based actions worth of time none-the-less.

Not important if Karuna doesn't have feats of danger sense feats from distances longer than 3 km, and danger sense for dangers from other universes. Otherwise, Karuna would be a sitting duck as Khepri opens a portal -> Takes a small step -> Closes portal.

She has no way to figure out that she needs to do that in the first place (and if time resets they will forget they did that)... and you underestimate how hard that is. Karuna needed to use quick reviving on two occasions, both against opponents that were so powerful that they could blitz and oneshot Karuna. Karuna always reloads the instant he revives.
The second occasion of that was the final boss, who was not only much faster than Karuna, but even retained his memories when time was reset. Despite that Karuna literally outlasted him with repeated revives.
Basically, Karuna times the revives and loads close enough that killing him in rapid succession is no option in a speed equal scenario.
...
How exactly would they do that? They forgot anything happens because time is reversed. And because time is reversed for everything there isn't any indicator that it happened. Looking into the future doesn't help either, because the future they would see is the one where Karuna didn't rewind time.
...
A simple sniper shot would be precoged. I don't see a feazible way to use that the precogs precog the precog to outdo the precog either, when Karuna can use a skill like inversion extremity to defend. In the first place, this is speed equal. So no speed of light sniping.

As for the sun: I don't think that works although I can't quite say why. Basically, if it would work that way then someone punching off Karuna's head would result in him respawning with the fist still stuck in his head. And we know that doesn't happen. I would say the revive either waits until the area is vacant to be spawned in again or revives him in the closest possible spot. That's speculation, though.
What isn't speculation is that Karuna can think in the time between dying and being automatically revived. So he can activate skills to safe himself in the time.


In any case, this would only happen if they knew he is going to reverse time and I don't see yet how they would know that.

Clairvoyants can figure out that he has information about the future and that he has a way to get around death from body language alone, precogs can detect changes in the future.
Also, every universe Khepri can open the portal to is Earth in an alternative timeline; it is very questionable that Karuna affects the time in all of them with his save/load. Especially since the intervention of the Entities with timelines creates more universes that can be teleported to.

Don't think speed equalization necessarily applies with ranged attacks; someone's ability is to launch objects he touch faster than bullets while not being a speedster, and an other is to fire light-speed lasers while having much lower combat speed.

Unless the final boss was at blitz speed, the sniping strategy aided by precog should work. The resurrections boon description is that it is immediate (or a moment later), so the sun AoE vaporization strategy can work as well.

They are the goddesses of reincarnation. Sending things between universes is literally their job.

Their job is to send people from one universe to an other universe (as customary of Isekai goddesses). Doesn't mean that a goddess' teleportation/reincarnation authority extends to universes more numerous than there are particles in a universe.

That's how he defeated the final boss. By summoning 100 goddesses to kill it.

Then Karuna should get Summoning as part of his final key, but this would be something he haven't thought of yet.

I'm not saying he can do either, but having precognition himself levels the playing field. It will be quite a nightmare to make effective use of precog in this fight, as the future will constantly change.

Taylor has at least one precog who successfully manipulated events to fulfill what they've foreseen years in advance. She can also snipe/nuke with Glaistig Uaine who is immune to precognition. She also have Thinkers with experience with finding workarounds to other Thinkers and outright blind spots. The Simurgh is a powerful precog who set up events for people to cause disasters months or years in advance, and the PRT has Parahuman specialists who identify and undo these chains of causality. Karuna is completely outgunned in a precognition fight.
Furthermore, a villain in the sequel managed to use Tinker-tech to create blind spots for a precog (who Khepri doesn't have) with path to victory powers (basically giving her the steps to successfully complete any objective she desires, including correctly answering questions she didn't know the answer to).

 

[A_Hero_Long_Forgotten]

Essentially, the Parahuman army is absurdly strong. As someone who knows Worm, I vote Khepri for reasons above.

 

[OmniMagician]

Agreed, Khepri FRA

 

[Naito-desu]

Khepri for reasons above