it's a tough thing to convince someone that a character is useless enough to be worth killing off, i think i seriously underestimated how complex a thing that would be to get across. so even if you can intuit that diao will be useful later, it's not the foremost obstacle - or like, if you did conclude "oh, someone has to die" i feel like diao would still remain a pretty strong candidate? up until the point where you confirmed that the second phase existed and was good for dark magic. i dunno. i think i'm gonna have to play around a bunch before i get this one where i want it :P