Well, it's clear this was meant to be just another Mule Love vs 20th Floor Baam scenario, so yeah, Baam vs Lilial doesn't destroy the powerscale. Base Baam held back enough to be considered far weaker than a low-level Ranker in spite of arguably being comparable to Top 300 HRs (more akin to CCs IMO).
My problem lies in why going through all this trouble of holding back to such a massive and nonsensically ridiculous extent? I understand that he didn't have any intention of harming her and all of that, but as powerful as he is now, there's a myriad of ways in which he can stop Lilial without harming her and most importantly, without having himself be humiliated and disrespected in the process (Reverse Flow Control for example). I don't know. It just feels to me like SIU is making Baam look like shit for the sake of it.
Like, there's zero reason for Baam to allow Lilial to do all of this to him. Cha and Jinsung needing to step in that room to save his ass too? I mean, come on now... Is current Baam really not capable of doing anything on his own as he did at the start of Season 3? Not to mention, the reasoning behind why he shouldn't beat her is completely devoid of sense. Traumerei already has a rough idea he's capable of surviving High Rankers. He even saw him casually wipe Perseus' reins. It's not like the result of his fight vs Lilial is going to mean anything to him.
I don't have problems with the powerscale, I have problems with the way Baam is treated. I'm not particularly a fan of him or anything, but goodness gracious, the difference between his current self and what he showed at the start of Season 3 is like night and day. He almost looks like a completely different character altogether. Characters being dumbed down for the sake of the plot is something I hate and it doesn't only apply to Baam currently. It's an overall issue the current manhwa has.
And no matter how I look at it, this new proposal of Baam joining the tournament won't bring anything good if it's accepted. If Traumerei accepts this, he'd better bring the most powerful female High Rankers his family can muster, because otherwise, it's not going to be interesting at all and it would be like him agreeing to let the Irregular get away from his grasp (something that wouldn't surprise me really, he's already been portrayed to be quite stupid and/or bipolar in my eyes). At the same time, if SIU indeed brings Rankers/High Rankers in this tournament, Regulars are hardly going to be relevant, and this to me is one of the potential highlights of this meme of an arc that would be destroyed if Baam were to participate (unless the tournament doesn't have anything to do related to fights and power).
Anyways, short chapter. Very little happened and the majority of what happened was not good at all IMO. This arc continues to be very lackluster. To think that out of all the interesting things we could've gotten at the climax of the Nest Arc, SIU choose the least possible interesting way to end it and all of that in order to lead to this mess of an arc...
