Wtf Why Heroes? Im unsure of the relevance here. At least for this chapter. Later one, yeah.

“In truth, I fear I don’t play nearly as much as I should. But I did learn the game when I was sixteen, and I’ve played regularly with at least one good opponent since then. Still, I am glad that I can keep up with someone of your caliber.”

…Strange and suspicious.

We know thier nation is filled with great warriors yet they have to devote all of their power fighting one threat, really makes you wonder

We know there are more than just the 2 worlds via the fae though I do think she’s from this one because of her family, but that just makes the fact that all these people are from earth that much weirder, whatever is grabbing people has a direct link to earth for some reason

Their ‘first outing’ was into a demon war zone beyond the wall if I understood it right so that’s not really fair to compare it with

They don’t have faster leveling as far as we are aware, the ones in the blight kingdom do because they got summoned as heros and gain an exp buff from that but we don’t know of any other exp boost they are getting, I think it’s more the experience of being from another world in addition to the difficulty of being from another world that gives them the opportunity to level up quickly

Nope, she wanted to rely on Erin but when she learnt that she took in the noble she cut ties with her, which makes me quite curious about what she plans for the tribe meeting now that both of her investments have failed, one by her own hands

Nope. It’s a hint and foreshadowing. Chess is not nearly so new as people think.

Magnolia isn’t dismissing guns, she’s just pointing out they aren’t the thing that would cause the biggest changes.

A gun can kill a few dozen people at a time, at best. A bomb can kill a few hundreds.

A thousand Antinium running into an army of a few tens/hundreds of thousands of soldiers, with each of those Antinium carrying a bomb, means that army is basically gone. And those thousand Antinium can be replaced in a matter of days/weeks, while the soldiers would take years to replace.

Or you have a dozen Assassins placing bombs throughout a city and leveling it overnight, with almost no way to detect either assassins or bombs.

Or a hundred other easy technologies that would have a far greater impact than guns. Guns would be bad, they just aren’t the worst.