Comic for Monday, February 14th, 2022
This page is a bit later than expected and breaks the model of this chapter of having half the page follow Peter and Kally as I had originally decided to cut this page/conversation as there will be a better explanation of how gates actually work/what they do later, and then decided to uncut for other reasons, so it went through a few redraws/relayouts (...which may be obvious from some of the panel text layouts, lol)
A few minor things to note with the page.
When Mium points out that its easier to end the functionality of a human with physics than magic, he'd include using magic to leverage physics (such as launching a rock at someone really really fast). He's just pointing out that its fairly hard to just use magic to cause a human to become inoperable directly by modifying their data.
Neither Mium or Arron are directly the ones operating the gate. Mium is the one that set the data for the spell, essentially connecting it to a gate under his control on the Malsan side, but the gate here is essentially part of a large autocaster run by centralized casters that simply execute the equation. While it would be hard for them to understand the exact coordinates, if Mium had entirely botched the calibration (exceedingly unlikely for obvious reasons) the gate would probably just not work. People being dumped into non-reality (such as the spirit world) through a routine gate transfer would be pretty uncommon (to the point where it generally doesn't happen). Arron's concerns here more akin to people that afraid of flying. Sure, sometimes it goes wrong, but for the most part its pretty safe all things considered.
Well, that, and more metaphysical things. The concepts of worlds and dimensions are things Arron's knows a lot about, given he's a high ranked member of the IDS. He knows more than people in the IDS, and nearly anyone somewhere like Malsa. Many, particularly people that predate the wide spread use of magic like Arron, accept the Eidos exists and generally understand the ramifications and how it intersects with physics and reality, but don't necessarily like the idea of trusting their existing on it (even if it underpins said existence in practice).
I still haven't forgotten the Q&A, I just haven't had a chance to get caught up yet. It'll come eventually.