Topaz's Indie Stats Equal Tournament: Round 11: Animdude vs The Knight (Hollow Knight)

[Topaz404]

Round 11! Woo!
Bracket and Rules

The Creator of FNAF World fights.....something that can be seen as a Destroyer, in some ways
Fight takes place in the Soul Sanctum (place is empty)

The Creator

The Prophesied

Incon​

 

[koopa3144]

Following. So does the Knight have anything it can use to defend itself against Alarm?

 

[DavidTPPM]

So I already went through the profiles for the previous round and I feel like The Knight has the upper hand.

Defensively, the biggest problem for Animdude is that TK resists almost all of his hax. TK has no mind or soul alongside inorganic physiology. Meaning mind, soul, and poison hax wouldn't work. Mega virus is also questionable since it corrupts the code of the opponent but TK is made out of void.
To top things off, TK is extremely skilled at dodging while also possessing the ability to dash through the opponents attacks. Animdude only has attacks that are considered "minor danmaku" while TK has been dodging danmaku mid air even long before gaining the ability to outright fly. So something like Alarm or 4th wall is outright not hitting him. And his healing is just a cherry on top, making any attacks that might land a lot less effective.

Offensively it's also not great for Animdude. TK has hax like soul absorption and (possibly passive) mind manipulation. He's also extremely skilled in both dodging (as I explained before) and attacking, being capable of defeating 2 nail masters at once without half the abilities he has in this key. Animdude himself doesn't really have any canon combat experience and seeing as he's creator and storyteller of his universe, he's most likely never actually fought before encountering the player.

In conclusion, The Knight should be capable of avoiding all of his attacks and healing any potential damage that Animdude might cause. Offensively he should easily outmaneuver Animdude, land hits that absorb SOUL, and in case Animdude survives that, simple finish him off with spells that scale above his normal damage.

 

[Topaz404]

Damn David that was fast

 

[DavidTPPM]

Damn David that was fast

Yeah like I said, I already read the profiles for previous rounds. I also played and finished both of the games so I already had surface level knowledge on them.

 

[DrGreyman]

Alright, I will say, I'm assuming the soul absorption/mind manipulation you mentioned is the soul resource/dream nail? neither of those kills outright, so I don't think those should be a major consideration
it's implied that the soul the knight gets from hitting other bugs is just catching the soul that leaks out of the wounds and the dream nail isn't lethal by itself if I'm not mistaken

 

[DavidTPPM]

Alright, I will say, I'm assuming the soul absorption/mind manipulation you mentioned is the soul resource/dream nail? neither of those kills outright, so I don't think those should be a major consideration
it's implied that the soul the knight gets from hitting other bugs is just catching the soul that leaks out of the wounds and the dream nail isn't lethal by itself if I'm not mistaken

The dream nail is kind of a mystery as we don't know how does it give off soul. I would say that genuinely just may be a gameplay mechanic since non aggressive NPCs don't give off soul when hit by the dream nail.
But TKs regular hits is what mainly absorbs soul from the opponent. It's never said that it does so by absorbing soul that "leaks out of the wounds". Especially since it works on characters who wear armor like the watcher Knights.

Whether it outright kills or not is kidna weird because like, can the target survive with an incomplete soul? Hard to say. I would say that worst case scenario it gradually weakens the opponent and best case scenario kills it. Either way doesn't matter that much because if it doesn't TK just slices him apart. Especially here when he can just turn his hands into blade tendrils and slap the target around.

 

[DrGreyman]

But TKs regular hits is what mainly absorbs soul from the opponent. It's never said that it does so by absorbing soul that "leaks out of the wounds". Especially since it works on characters who wear armor like the watcher Knights.

this is what i was trying to say, I now realise I worded it like soul was something actually falling out of them lol
didn't mean that, just that it passively comes out when the knight hits people

 

[koopa3144]

Mega virus is also questionable since it corrupts the code of the opponent but TK is made out of void.

I think verse equalization means TK is gonna have code that Mega virus can mess with.

To top things off, TK is extremely skilled at dodging while also possessing the ability to dash through the opponents attacks.

Animdude has npi so he can interact with TK while he's intangible.

Offensively it's also not great for Animdude. TK has hax like soul absorption and (possibly passive) mind manipulation.

Iirc Hollow Knight soul absorption can't kill someone outright in a vs match but I'm not 100% sure.

Ngl I'm fine with giving this to TK. I don't think I can argue much for the Animdude's favor here. Once I saw the bracket my only goal for him was to get past Frisk and he did that so I'm satisfied. Also, even if he got past TK, no matter who wins round 12 Animdude would 100% get cooked by both anyway so-

 

[Topaz404]

Well, if Koopa is fine letting TK take it and move on, i guess TK is moving on.
also yeah if Animdude did somehow win this yeah either Apoc Bird or Anna would just wipe the floor with him

But uh yeah, The Knight is moving on (probably for one last battle, Round 12 is basically Clash of the Titans)

 

[DavidTPPM]

I think verse equalization means TK is gonna have code that Mega virus can mess with.

Hmm this is actually a pretty interesting topic. Wouldn't that take away his void physiology which is the in-universe thing that grants him immunity to stuff like the infection. Idk

Animdude has npi so he can interact with TK while he's intangible.

Hmm I didn't think about NPI interacting with intangibility like that. TKs intangibility should be layered then since it can bypass attacks from beings like THK who should have the same NPI as he could hold down the Radiance which is made out if dreams and thoughts.

Iirc Hollow Knight soul absorption can't kill someone outright in a vs match but I'm not 100% sure.

Neither am I. It doesn't kill in-universe but that could literally just be because in-universe characters can live without a complete soul. Afterall the knight itself doesn't have a soul to begin with. Soul manip in general is weird on the wiki and in power scaling in general because different series clearly have different rules for soul based attacks.

Ngl I'm fine with giving this to TK. I don't think I can argue much for the Animdude's favor here. Once I saw the bracket my only goal for him was to get past Frisk and he did that so I'm satisfied. Also, even if he got past TK, no matter who wins round 12 Animdude would 100% get cooked by both anyway so-

Fair enough