TTKM

You think the takeaway of this fight is "We technically lost the battle, but there's a silver winning. We now know we have a chance." That, despite Knight getting away with a cheap shot, there is hope. That, despite Susie dropping the ball by lowering her guard at the end, we almost won. But that's not how the game frames it, not in terms of tone. There's a reason Toriel's peaceful dream turns into a nightmare after this specific scene.

Picture Sisyphus overcoming a great challenge to finally secure his boulder atop a hill... only for him to look over the peak and realize he's actually still at the mountain's foot. That's what happened here. The whole sequence ends with Ralsei, visibly mortified, outright saying so: "You… You were so brave… and yet… In the end… our struggle… It's only beginning, isn't it…?" It's a defeating, hopeless moment after a very exciting, hopeful battle, showing that things are gonna get a lot worse from here.

The Knight's final attack isn't framed as a cheap blow to knock us down while we're distracted, it's framed as a scary display of oppressive power. The music pauses, Susie mocks the Knight just long enough for us to start feeling uneasy, and then... We don't even see an animation, just a black screen and a still frame of a giant gash spread far across the black, once again held on just long enough to feel like something's broken. It's accompanied by an ear-shattering impact sound and a reaction of utter shock from Ralsei, who can't believe the Knight is even capable of this.

This is posed in direct response to Susie's overconfidence. She thought we had beaten the Knight, we thought we had beaten the Knight, and then the game tells both of us "Calm down sweetie, you're getting ahead of yourself. You did good, but you've got a looong way to go." That was her mistake—not just getting cocky, but thinking we were actually winning after we accomplished an admittedly very impressive, yet ultimately not-very-impactful, minor victory. This is a tried and tested trope. We made Chtulhu bleed: wonderful! ...But it's still Chtulhu and we're still not, and now it's pissed at us: not a great situation to be in.

About the final attack:

You suggest that the Knight used up all its energy after that move and that's why it was left defenseless afterwards. But here's the thing: the narration doesn't actually say it was left defenseless. It says something way more specific: "It suddenly dropped its guard!" As in... it stopped paying attention? It got distracted by something? It lowered its stance and stopped protecting itself? It was taken aback.

The Knight thought we would lose there, but when we didn't, the Knight was surprised and confused. For some time, its focus wasn't on the battle, and that time allowed us to deliver a particularly powerful attack. This attack shook the Knight's physical form in some way; whatever the Knight is, it seems to struggle with maintaining its body under a lot of damage. Susie took that to mean we won. But the Knight was still at full power. And now it was taking us seriously and really wanted to put us in our place, something we weren't ready for.

This lines up with other final attacks. Jevil and Spamton weren't weakened after their Neo turns, they just used them at the end because everyone uses their strongest attacks as a last resort. Jevil actually becomes faster and crazier after his TRUE AND NEO CHAOS, "pulling out all the stops." They didn't suddenly drop their guard when we survived their strongest move because they didn't dismiss us the same way the Knight did.

In conclusion,

Our fight against the Knight isn't a power struggle between two titans, it's a story of an underdog being underestimated by a titan and getting farther than they should in such a seemingly one-sided battle. It's a testament to their (our) determination, but also a testament to the sheer gap in strength between both participants.

It's easiest to explain with a metaphor: a child challenges a professional boxer to a match. The boxer's initially not taking the kid seriously. He throws lazy punches and just kinda stands there because he knows the kid has no real shot of winning. But then the match starts to last strangely long. He thinks "Wait, why aren't they on the ground already? What are we even doing here?" He's starting to get annoyed, so he thoughtlessly takes a hard swing, and the kid dodges. He decides this charade has gone too far and prepares a real punch—a genuine, strong strike meant to knock them down. And they dodge again. This shouldn't be happening. He doesn't know to react, and the kid uses that chance to trip him over. They celebrate, having toppled a giant. But before the referee can count to 5, much less 10, the boxer stands back up, and he has no more patience for a brat. The following scene isn't pretty.

I still ultimately disagree with parts of this, but I think this is also a reasonable interpretation of events.

I do want to be clear: In my eyes, We did not "almost win". We got the Knight down to 80% health and then it oneshot us. I ultimately believe the circumstances of that OHKO are rather specific and only because Susie got overconfident, but, still. The fact remains, as you point out, that our struggle is only just beginning- we proved that it's Possible to win but we were still a far cry from actually doing it. We didn't even get it to half health. We didn't even get it to 3/4s, we got it to 4/5ths health. There's still a LONG way to go. But, the fact is that we proved on principle that victory is possible, even if we weren't yet mature enough to achieve it.

In theory, if Susie didn't let down her guard, we... could have kept the fight going for as long as it needed to. (Though, the Prophecy would have something to say about that- and it did, I'd say.)

The Player's determination is what makes them a "titan" in this matchup in my eyes. The ability to try over and over again, to overcome the impossible, that significantly compensates for our lack of physical strength. I'd agree the player is absolutely the underdog here but I do still feel I would describe this battle as a clash of titans, just two very different ones.

We get the Surprise Attack on The Knight (it did not expect us to survive that, the hell?)

The Knight gets the Surprise Attack on Us in return.

Home away from home - Deltarune fancomic.

Despite hiding it well, Susie's anxieties catch up to her.

Read the full comic below!

One of the less discussed aspects of this game's deeplore is the "other side of the lake". Its an area that has only recently become relevant as of the chapter 5 weird route, in which Noelle attempts to cross the lake using our commands as the Soul to break through the boundaries of hometown's map. Where this is going is for know unknown, but there are two camps:

The first and most popular is the bottom of the lake: The idea that the Depths, a route to the Shelter or some other mass of darkness is below the lake has been popular for some time, and the Weird route having us go down into it is promising. That being said: very little supports this, namely:

Noelle at the start of this sequence "(that if I stayed by your side any longer, you were going to drag me down with you. Drag me down somewhere no one is supposed to go.)". While metaphorical this parallel's the walk, as both Kris and Noelle walk deeper into the lake.

Jackenstein Fight: The Tutu attack has a backdrop of a series of underground chambers connected to a riverbed.

Susie's stone falling, though this seems more important to the other option

The other option is a location on the opposite side of Hometowns lake: And there's a LOT to imply this:

Noelle explicitly refers to wanting to see the other side of the lake, which is what she wants to use the Soul's power for: "If you tell me to, I can do things that are impossible... The other side of the lake. We always wanted to see what was there... Kris, let's go there."

In Man country, one of the aces finds a place at the edge of the world after "TRYING TO SEE AS FAR AS I CAN". The idea of seeing too far is a also alluded to by Spamton in his monologue at the end of his weird route fight. "YOU LOST IT WHEN YOU TRIED TO SEE TOO FAR.... YOU LOST IT...". The area also references breadcrumb glitch, a Mother 1 glitch only otherwise referenced before the Weird Route Lake Scene.

When Susie's lake skip fails, she says "We'll see how far YOU get at the lake next time." The next time either of them are at the lake on either route is at the end of the festival, where the lake scene happens. Susie may not be able to get us there, but someone else can.

The Mantle Game sees us cross a body of water to progress in board 2, one we should usually be bared from besides a glimpse. The other side of the lake remains only a glimpse for characters.

This "other side" is to me the most promising, though it begs the question. What is on the other side of the lake? This is difficult, because not even the characters seem to actually know what's there, but I've tried to document everything that seems to relate to this. Here is everything we know:

1. It is cold:

Noelle comments on the water getting colder as she progresses, from "the water's nice" to "its colder than I thought."

The ocean in Board 2 goes from tropical islands to snowy wastelands as we go further north. Like with the lake, the further you go towards the other side, the colder it becomes.

In the Smile Survey, the phrase "The Place where it Snowed" is the only comment that gets the response "You know that isn't until later.". This seems to parallel Hometown as the "Place where it Rained", which leads into.

2. It has buildings and evidence of a town/city:

"The place where it snowed" immediately compares this place with a town.

One of Noelle's backgrounds on her computer (I think) is "a picture of a far-off, snowy city."

The Ace describes this ManCountry parallel area as "Lousy Real Estate" in English. Iirc, the japanese text more specifically calls it "事故物件" (stigmatized property, real estate where a crime, death, etc. has occurred), leading to:

3. The "place" is regularly associated with evil and especially death:

Nobody seems to be there.

Going there is tied in with Noelle's fantasies about flying away, which appears to euphemistically to refer to death

Its greyscale appearance in Man Country implies a connection with Goners, who's name is a euphemism for ghosts or dead people.

The Ace senses "Nothing but evil from this place".

It is treated within the game as not a real place, perhaps connecting it to the concept of "Going Nowhere".

Another possibility is that this area is related to the city December promises to bring Noelle to, which is paralleled in Cyber World. In the Weird Route (which this "other side" is most associated) we progress by freezing everyone in a city leaving behind a dead city.

So, collectively, what picture does the game paint of this landscape, The Place Where it Snowed. A snowy, plausbily greyscale, urban wasteland, most likely a city though hometown's town hall is referred to as a "city hall", making it questionable. It is a place where where people don't live and people shouldn't enter. And going there is repeatedly associated with death. This is unusual... and this is the only physical space known to exist outside of Hometown, at least during the events of the game.

Looking to other mentions of life outside hometown seems odd. Focusing exclusively on the present, Hometown is isolated from the rest of the world. Nobody has been to the other side of the lake. The internet is out, Tenna can only broadcast the same reruns on repeat since "a little while ago", Alvin only recently has stopped getting letters of condolence from fans of Lord of the Hammer. The Ferris Wheel only goes half way, a detail whose only purpose seems to be to obscure the other side of the lake. This has lead to the theory that the world Deltarune doesn't exist beyond what is visible, be it as a simulation or a diagetic video game. My original theories regarding the Place where it Snowed revolve around this, that it was a diagetic version of a glitched out of bounds area and the weird route being an attempt to restore a long removed "forbidden path" to the game, paralelling the dichotomy between The Legend of Tenna and the Mantle Game.

The thing is, I cannot believe Deltarune is purely a simulation in which only hometown exists... Why? Because (with the exception of the other side of the lake) Hometown's lack of communication with the outside world is very evidently recent. Asgore and Rudy went to college in their youth, Asriel went to college, Susie came from other towns/cities, Asgore has exotic flowers that explicitly don't grow in Hometown's climate. Repeatedly a world beyond hometown is implied to exist, at least in the past...

So Hometown has no contact with the outside world, and this isolation is implied to be an unusual and recent thing. The few crumbs we get of the world outside Hometown portray a cold and lifeless urban environment, one to which the very thought of being within is associated with death.

... an area that sounds like a Nuclear Winter? A dead world that can no longer communicate. ... And what did Gaster want to do with us...

In Short: Deltarune's hometown is "The Place Where it Rained", the only area of the world not affected by some previously unseen catastrophe, one who's affects resemble the aftermath of a nuclear war/incident (though might be a fantastical equivalent that ties better with the game). Gaster's motivation, and the goal of the prophecy, might be to restore the old world in some way. These wastelands on Hometown's periphery might be the fabled "World's Edge" described in the prophecy, but given the "Place where it snowed"'s relation to the weird route, it seems weird

NUCLEAR WINTER THEORY

This is... where my train of thought ends, there are further ideas I have that may be useful, though besides the connection with Snow and Death possibly foreshadowing Noelle destroying the world for good on the B-Side, these don't help form a solid conclusion.