I want to know what Cora’s Hard Light Holo-Projection interface looks like that she can spontaneously select a sword and have it appear to grow out of her cleavage, all without missing a beat in her conversation. I imagine her eyes dart around a bit while she’s talking when she does something like that. On the other hand her hardlight limbs are obviously tied right into her motor cortex, and presumably she has proprioception and touch feedback hard wired into her brain as well, so it’s entirely possible that she can just imagine what she wants to happen, then commit to it by flexing her prefrontal cortex just so.

I don’t know a lot about betting, but on Tom’s screen there, he was prepared to bet on Max to win the entire tournament, which of course would be much longer odds than betting on her to win each round, one at a time. Well, statistically, I think the actual mathematical odds would be the same, but I’m sure the bookies weigh things differently and always slightly in their favor than pure math would allow. But really… how do you even set the odds of such a thing anyway? If you had massive amounts of data on all the fighters in the tournament, like a hundred fights against all sorts of different opponents, you might be able to put together some sort of in-the-ballpark statistical model, but “Ixah” is a total unknown, as are a few of the other remaining competitors, so I assume the odds at this point are derived mostly from gut feelings?

I put the odds on her to win the entire tournament at 7:1. She has to actually win this round, of course, then there’s the semi-final against seven more, presumably tougher opponents, and then the final is another 8 person Battle Royale. (I think, I haven’t actually totally finalized that in my head.) But 7:1 is probably pretty generous, even though she effectively eliminated 3 of the other competitors herself by showing off a lot of strength and even a little tactical acumen by neutralizing the singularity spell with another opponents attack. I’d guess at the beginning of the round, her odds of winning just this round would have been at 8:1 since she was an unknown… or maybe a little worse, since the bookies would be favoring UMBRage and Kill-7? Again, I don’t really know how that stuff is figured. But her odds of winning the entire tournament at that point might have been mathematically 512:1, but the bookies probably wouldn’t have given better odds than like 24:1 maybe?

I know the odds in gambling isn’t set entirely by statistical models, the amount of money in the pot also is a big factor, and I think the odds are actually limited by what it’s possible to pay out. At least, in “reputable” gambling forums. If someone bets $10 million on a pot that’s already only $1 million, the odds might shift to 1.1:1 maybe, despite how much of a long shot that three legged horse is to win? Maybe it’s possible the house will actually contribute to a pot, cause they take a fee to process all the bets or something, and that could sweeten the potential payout? I don’t know.

But Cora and friends placed their bets at the beginning of the tournament for her to sweep the whole thing, so they’re going to make bank if she pulls it off. They probably also placed smaller bets for her to win each round, that way they don’t lose everything if she gets knocked out in the semi-finals.

A tournament like this would also have all kind of weird other gambling going on, like wagering on how many total decapitations or incineration or whatever else occurs.

Ah! I thought I had more time till March. I’m bad at looking at dates apparently. The new one is underway. I should have a draft ready to go for the next Monday comic?

Here is Gaxgy’s painting Maxima promised him. Weird how he draws almost exactly like me.

I did try and do an oil painting version of this, by actually re-painting over the whole thing with brush-strokey brushes, but what I figured out is that most brushy oil paintings are kind of low detail. Sure, a skilled painter like Bob Ross or whoever can dab a brush down a canvas and make a great looking tree or a shed with shingles, but in trying to preserve the detail of my picture (eyelashes, reflections, etc) was that I had to keep making the brush smaller and smaller, and the end result was that honestly, it didn’t really look all that oil-painted. I’ll post that version over at Patreon, just for fun, but I kind of quit on it after getting mostly done with re-painting Max.

Patreon has a no-dragon-bikini version of of the picture as well, naturally.

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.