Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26006155-20190617222636/@comment-26006155-20190706145003

Person, you're oversimplifying Undyne and Asgore's training a bit.

At first Undyne couldn't score a single blow on Asgore, even when Asgore refused to fight back. Even fighting the Boss on easy mode, she couldn't hit him.

After years of personally training with Asgore himself, Undyne finally "knocked him down."

This doesn't mean that Undyne was suddenly, instantly, stronger than Asgore. It means that after playing 999 games of Street Fighter 2 with him, she finally won Game #1000.

The text does not say she could consistently beat Asgore at this point, merely that after trying an excessive number of times, she finally got in a lucky hit.

We don't know when Undyne began to gain her Determination, or how long she's been eating the Pink Glop Alphys has been making (or how long Alphys herself has been eating it), but rather than quickly melt her into mush, she not only seems quite solid still, but has a massively boosted power level.

Sans has a human SOUL, so it makes perfect sense for him to be several orders of magnitude strong than Asgore.

But Undyne is a mundane monster.. who somehow gained a power level that almost rivals Sans, and certainly exceeds Asgore.

Undyne was able to actually throw Toriel off the throne in some of the bad-leaning neutral endings, "with her strength", according to Sans. Toriel, who herself was able to take out Asgore with a single fireball, somehow lost to stick-figure Undyne in a real battle, not a sparring match.

That's amazing.

Undyne does not have a more powerful SOUL than Asgore or Toriel. Her power must be coming from another source. And the energy of Human Determation is a natural, easy explaination for this.

Before we talk about The Fallen Down Monsters and Illness, I want to note that the passage you quote about "Unfortunately, monsters are not experienced with illness." is one of the hidden messages inside Undertale's code itself, putting it on par with True Lab Entry 17 in terms of lore power.

And the wording is very important:

"Monsters are not experienced with illness." Doesn't mean that monsters can't become ill.. it means that monsters HAVEN'T been becoming ill.

For whatever reason, there is only one known health affliction that monsters have to worry about: Falling Down. Something that only happens at the natural end of their lives.

If an old monster like Gerson fell down, it would seem perfectly natural.

But Shyren's young cousin should have been far too young to die of old age.

Yet she and Aaron, who was literally as healthy as a horse, are both part of the Amalgamate "Lemon Bread".

Old Age did note claim these two. Or, perhaps, many of the others as well. Something caused them to fall down, that wasn't a natural process.

And rather than turn into super soldiers like Undyne.. they quickly turned into mush.

The entire purpose of the exericse was to collect the SOULs from dying monsters to gradually store enough to break the Barrier. But Alphys never succeed in collecting a single SOUL from any of The Fallen.

So what made Undyne's experience different from all of the other monsters that gained Determination?

My theory is that she was the only one who still had her SOUL.

And I don't think Undertale would make a point of making absolutely sure that was know that Undyne Has Determination, unless her example fit into the puzzle somewhere.