As for Dead Ends, I touched on that as well. Mostly the Nico specific one. MC loses too much for not fighting the Asura for it not to mean anything. It's probably not going to be as severe as I believe it to be. At least, it wouldn't lead into an immediate dead end but likely sets up one in the next update.
Another Dead End would be Cole. While I'm confident current MC can beat him, I feel WW isn't going to make it that easy. Realistically, from what we've seen of Cole and his power, MC completely counters him. Now you might be wondering how it would lead to a dead end then and I would say Cole may secretly have a trump card in his power kit. That or he Evolves mid fight and that leads to one, if we're too cocky.
Killing too many people. I feel like there's going to be bait kills next update. Basically, like the Charlie one but with Ella's Lieutenants and other important people. Jared might not escape his death next update but he might wound the MC with some secret weapon Xanthe's son developed that leads to a dead end. Since he is working with SIN.
The unlikely to happen but possible dead ends are ones involving monsters. MC running into Goliath as it recovers. I doubt child thing and Aglaecwif will be there but that could happen as well. We'll probably see Nyx's Monster types and get instant killed by their negative energy. Hex could also do his dimension dump trick on us again too. We might even run into completely different monsters from the 9th - 12th lines.
That's what I figured is going to be some of the dead ends next update. At least for the SIN Initiation. I can't think of where it goes after that so that's up in the air.
WW likes to taunt us. Doesn't let us kill Jared when he kills Laurie, if we try to kill him during infiltration it leads to a deadend. He also seems to be integral to the plot, with the whole "1 year magic pebble search" so I don't see him dying anytime soon, other than a deadend like you described.
As for the special bolts, I had an idea a few weeks back. I think it's common knowledge by now that MC has a weakness to electricity. If Ella was willing to tell Langdon about memory powers, she probably has told him about his weaknesses too. It fits the whole "I expose you to force you into conflict" mentallity.
I think MC will get trapped, fighting for his life and Jared will shoot him with an electricity bolt to "seal the deal". At that point MC will figure out how to use electricity to his advantage and turn the tables up to a certain point (as foreshadowed during MC vs Jake, electricity made him break Jake's control easier and regenerated faster).
Note that they could damage his base form, consistent with him being C-Class, and he was invulnerable when armored.
That said, as a C+, he is as dangerous as a B Class. Which is consistent with his performance after manifesting the armor.
Yeah, this explanation makes a lot of sense. I think Valravn is a bit peculiar, perhaps not the best example to explain the +- ranks. It makes a lot more sense to me in Hydra Deryl's case, based on the teacher's description.
At some point he says that a level 2 can generally deal with a C Class, but if the encounter is C+, he may have trouble, and that's why HERO likes to send agents in pairs. I could see a pair of levels 2 dealing with Hydra Deryl (considering that his defenses were based on the red light working against MC's organic projectiles), but against Valravn? One well placed slash and both of them would die. The difference in combat ability seems extreme.
