Board Thread:Versus Battles/@comment-37583355-20190811094542/@comment-25603146-20190814062628

"Erasure of one's being"

This lad literally spent the entirety of Act IV inside a non-existent space, which was also his own Shell (that is, the Vesper), and got the Daathe: that thing that makes one immune to Existence Erasure: so that's kind of a nope, I'm thinking

The Devil on its own would be mundane supernatural theft: it's the Lovers that provides a tether to make something else "a part of him", or for him to rather be a part of it. That's the only reason he's able to wield the Sephiroth in the first place, he can accept other things as an aspect of himself (though I suppose that if the Astral Breaker isn't viable for that/he'd have to try to punch through resistances first, it'd not be worth the bother.)

If he were going to beat Zain, you're probably looking for really unconventional methods, since the Sephiroth in general just kinda tell most weird, esoteric powers to piss off (that being the whole point of collecting them aside from all eleven being needed to free the world), and holes in his defenses get fewer and fewer in number as the Keys progress.

His actual active hax, though, is uhh, not great. His EE in particular is pretty bad, since aside from the Tower (which is supposed to be able to do that potentially but I'm an idiot and didn't list it, aaaaaa) its just a side effect of being defeated by one's own Shell. If something is defeated by their own Shell, and fails to awaken, it drags its essence back into the Daathe due to cosmology shenanigans and so forth. Technically that's higher-dimensional EE within the verse itself, but it's only due to that being the verse rules and not really a thing that Zain himself can actively impose on people. I imagine Olierus's resistances aren't letting that through any time soon.

The only higher-dimensional hax he can actively wield: that is, the Sephiroth's ability to mend Idea Fractures: isn't usually applicable, and is probably something he'd only think to try after he either pops (and regens elsewhere), or Olierus pops and regens (immediately, since it seems to be substantially faster.)

...hmmm.