Hoo boy, power levels. You may have just gone and overcomplicated things for yourself with that one.
With the introduction of power levels, the entire physics of your world must see a complete upheaval and a total departure from reality such that we would scarcely be able to recognize very many - if any - occurrences within it. The dominance of this system of Fulgurians would be the primary feature in warfare and likely industry and economy as well. Given this unavoidable aspect of the world in question,
Occam's Razor is ready to do a number on some of the highly implausible elements that exist within it.
If I wanted to sass you, I would ask a few questions like "How many Fulgurians would it take to survive a volley from a 150-man musket line," "What is the amount of high explosive necessary to dismember a five-hundred-Fulgurian person," or "How many dump trucks do I need to drop on a ten-thousand-Fulgurian man to squish him like a bug?" Well, I'm sassing you about it now, because I can guarantee you that your audience will be doing it while they are reading your story. The moment you introduce them to the capabilities of a high Fulgurian level in a single combatant, they are going to be perplexed by the existence of such an obsolete entity as an "army" in such a world. Why would any king raise an army of, say, ten thousand pikemen - all with hungry bellies, unwashed bodies, and bad morale - to conquer his enemies and defend his territory when the far superior option would simply be to go the way of
Saitama until nothing can possibly outmatch him? Why bother paying all those salaries when one guy could just sweep your entire force aside with a single anticlimactic punch?
What is a Fulgurian, and how is it measured? Is it a weight of mass, a speed of movement, or a unit of energy? How does a Fulgurian compare to the release of energy caused by breaking apart Adenosine Triphosphate? What is the size of a Fulgurian, and how can a single humanoid body be capable of storing either one or ten-thousand of these things without bursting at the seams? If the power in a Fulgurian is such that a single human body containing ten-thousand of them could destroy an entire army of men, has anybody thought to construct an engine fueled by Fulgurian power sources? Are there power plants staffed by high-Fulgurian people who use their power to light entire cities at night on a daily basis? Are there tanks, planes, and ships powered by high-Fulgurian crew in their engine blocks? Have nations developed intercontinental ballistic missiles whose warheads contain high-Fulgurian kamikazes willing to use their powers to flatten the cities and fortresses of their enemies?
What are the social implications of such incredible disparities in Fulgurian power between people? Do the mere one-Fulgurian peasants fall to their knees in daily worship of the ten-thousand Fulgurian gods who could exterminate an entire army of them by merely exerting half of their ten-thousand Fulgurian might? Are there temples constructed to honor such massively powerful creatures and rituals of appeasement conducted within them? Are there national holidays dedicated to these gods among men, and do people regularly sacrifice goats, crops, and first-born virgins to them?
Why would anyone ever conceal such power? Who would dare to oppose such an unstoppable force? What would prevent a person who is ten-thousand strong in Fulgurium from simply anointing himself as the king of the world, save for another ten-thousand Fulgurian rival? What could he possibly have to fear from something so piddling as an army? What piddling army would even bother to oppose him when defeat is so certain?
This creates a narrative problem slightly larger than an Xbox controller. How could any reader possibly relate to such a godlike creature as the story's protagonist? What struggle could he be required to overcome? What adversity could conceivably stand in the way of his goals? How is the audience expected to see him as anything but a big bully stomping around in a world of ants? What tension could be found in a story whose protagonist is possessed of such godly power?
I'm brought to recall
Maji de Watashi ni Koi Shinasai! One of the characters, Kawakami Momoyo, is depicted as being so insanely powerful in combat that she regularly defeats, with little effort, entire gangs of hardened thugs and martial artists who have dedicated their lives to their training. These developments left me to wonder why anybody in Majikoi's world even bothered forming gangs in the first place, or why they would undergo rigorous training - clearly, the true path to power is to be an attractive young woman who has a close relationship with the protagonist. It's silly, it breaks immersion, prevents the audience from becoming invested in the characters or what happens to them, and every plot development, especially combat or competition related, simply comes down to a matter of "time to figure out which of his own characters the author likes better."
In
Elfen Lied, a rare new type of human, the Diclonius, makes an entry into a world that is otherwise similar to our own. Diclonii are horned people who have invisible appendages which can reach out several meters to grab, slice, and crush anything in their radius. The setting immediately addresses these capabilities by having the world react to them in a plausible way. Diclonii children often murder their parents while they are testing their powers out of playful curiosity, and are either killed by police or captured and brought to extremely high security installations where they are monitored under extremely careful conditions. Diclonii spread by contaminating people they come into contact with, causing them to create more Diclonii when they reproduce. Again, the world responds by placing both Diclonii and those affected by them under strict quarantine, given the extreme threat factor they represent to ordinary people. While Elfen Lied does not flawlessly execute the implementation of a supernatural element into an otherwise mundane world setting, it gets a lot of things right - the world would not simply go on largely unaffected by such a tremendous change to its internal rules.
I would urge you to consider very carefully how strongly your power levels would change the sociopolitical dynamics, technological progress, and even the entire physics of your universe. You run the risk of ejecting your audience from their willing suspension of disbelief, at best.
) Any ideas for me?
