Director: Makoto Sokuza
Writer: Shōgo Yasukawa
First Aired: 15 September 2023
Adapts: Volume 2, Chapter 3
We pick up where the previous episode left off: Oliver duels Joseph Albright head-on, and is clearly getting on his nerves by refusing to lose, while Nanao and Chela struggle to make a dent in the wolfed-out Fay Willock, who has Stacy Cornwallis riding on his back.
Oliver engages Albright at close range. In reply, Albright blasts him at point-blank range with Frigus—and when the dust clears, he realizes Oliver deflected his spell just enough to throw his aim off and has him grappled, just like he'd done to Tullio Rossi. Oliver gradually forces the bigger man back, eventually shoving them both into a shallow pond. Albright starts to worry that Oliver's stamina might outlast his and tries to throw him sideways—and takes a Roundhouse Kick in the solar plexus instead. Oliver follows up with Impetus to finish the job.
Stacy's luck proves no better. Chela's gotten over her hangup and blasts the ground with Tonitrus. Thinking Fay can take it, they charge straight in—only for the spell to conduct straight up Fay's fur and electrocute Stacy. Chela explains she altered her mental image of the spell to improve its conduction. Fay is in no shape to continue, and Chela quickly disarms her cousin—or rather, as we shortly learn, her illegitimate half-sister.
Fay and Chela explain to Nanao that, following an old custom in the mage aristocracy, Theodore McFarlane, The Patriarch, sired Stacy on a woman from a branch family to be a Hidden Backup Princess in case something happened to his direct heir Chela. But the stronger Stacy got, the more she outshone her half-siblings and the more her stepfather was reminded that she wasn't his. She came to the conclusion that she had nothing to work for but to overtake Chela—which she now knows is simply impossible: Chela's too good.
Nanao, for her part, cheerfully calls the idea of Stacy "replacing" Chela nonsense and tells her she should live for herself: she for one would love to get to know the Stacy who gave her all to their duel.
Joseph Albright is also feeling a little nostalgic, it seems. He tells how when he was young, he had a serving girl at his estate for a chess partner, whom he constantly defeated. But she practiced and practiced, and eventually beat him. He was so impressed that he told his father... who spent the rest of the day torturing him for losing, and had the serving girl and her entire family killed. His losses reflect on the family, and thus, he cannot allow his defeat by Oliver to stand. So, he calls forth what Katie saw in the previous episode: a swarm of stinger bees that were nesting in the ceiling!
The other first-years understandably freak out, but Katie, Guy, and Pete weren't sitting idle: they've built a shelter from toolplant seeds that Guy brought with him, and Katie burns some incense to repel the bees. Oliver, as usual, has a plan, but says it's risky—and the other Sword Roses tell him to stick his overprotective Team Dad attitude where the sun don't shine and lay it on them.
Katie switches the incense from repellent to attractant, baffling Albright, while Chela reveals her ace in the hole: she starts to glow faintly, and her ears lengthen. Oliver admits he'd heard a rumor that Theodore McFarlane had an elf for a wife, and here's the proof. And it's more than a neat party trick for Chela to transform: "MAGNUS TONITRUS!" All eight mages blast a gap through the bee swarm as it breaks through the barrier, and Nanao rockets into the air on her broomstick, cuts her way through the remaining bees, and knocks Albright off his broom. He lands with Nanao close behind, and tries to call the bees again.
Something about this monologue strikes a chord with Albright, who breaks into laughter and charges her. There's a clash of steel, and his athame goes flying. It's finally over. The various duelists commiserate for a bit, then decide to head back to the surface.
Which is when all hell breaks loose. In The Stinger, a crashing sound echoes through the second layer, and tentacled monsters snatch first Albright, then Fay, and finally Pete, with Chela holding Oliver back from trying to rescue him. They reach the surface to find Alvin Godfrey and the Campus Watch declaring a curfew. A total of seventeen students have been taken by those monsters, and the culprit is Ophelia Salvadori, who has been consumed by the spell.
This episode provides examples of the following tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Between Theodore McFarlane and Mr. Cornwallis neglecting Stacy, and Joseph Albright's father torturing him for most of a day for losing a chess match, this trope is a recurring theme in this episode.
- Adaptation Deviation: The second half of the episode reorders the events of Albright's Sore Loser routine: Albright summoned the stinger bees first, then told his backstory in the novel.
- Appeal to Force: After losing fairly to Oliver, Joseph Albright tries to use the threat of a stinger bee swarm to get the other first-years to let him erase their memories of the fight so he can say that he won.
- Bee Afraid: The "stinger bees" are Big Creepy-Crawlies roughly the size of a horse that made their nest in the second layer's ceiling. Joseph Albright calls them into his service with the spell Respondeo, apparently having picked this battlefield just in case he lost to the Sword Roses.
- Blasphemous Boast: From Nanao, to get Albright to fight her rather than keep relying on his bees."Look at the person in front of you! There is no one on this battlefield but you and I! Victory and defeat are ours to decide! No one else can take them from us! No family tenet, nor the gods or Buddhas themselves!"
- Clothing Combat: When Albright throws Oliver, he uses his cloak to conceal his windup for a Roundhouse Kick to Albright's solar plexus. The novel described this as a Lanoff Style maneuver called "Hidden Tail".
- Combat Tentacles: The chimeras that attack the group are pink, furry critters with an array of tentacles that snatch up Albright, Fay, and Pete.
- Disowned Sibling: Downplayed. Chela and Stacy were made by their powerful fathers not to acknowledge the fact that they're paternal half-sisters; they're officially cousins. Chela, however, still loves Stacy and enjoyed spending time with her when they were younger, and deeply regrets the rift that formed between them after Stacy was told the truth about her parentage.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Joseph Albright lost a chess match to a serving girl. When his father found out, he tortured him for the rest of the day for losing and murdered her entire family to cover up the loss.
- Foreign Language Title: "デューティー", "duty" spelled phonetically, with the definitional kanji 責務 meaning duty, obligation, or responsibility—referring to the family obligations that the McFarlane clan pressed upon Chela and Stacy—Chela as the heir, Stacy as the Hidden Backup Princess—and that the Albrights forced upon Joseph: mainly to be an arrogant bastard who isn't allowed to lose.
- The Grappler: Once again, Oliver shows that grappling is king in close combat: Albright has more spell power than him, but he can't use it with Oliver immobilizing his arms, and Oliver is better at spatial magic and more importantly has more patience.
- Green Thumb: Guy Greenwood, a middling student up to now, finally gets to be good at something magical: he grows a cage out of "toolplants" to hold off the stinger bee attack while they figure out how to defeat it.
- Half-Human Hybrid: We learn in this episode that Chela's mother is an elf. Chela normally appears to be human, but can temporarily take on a more elven form which dramatically increases her fighting power.
- Half-Sibling Angst: Stacy was neglected by her stepfather because she was more talented than his children by blood, and got it into her head to try to outdo Chela in order to force their biological father to acknowledge her as his daughter. For her part, Chela just wanted a sister.
- Hammerspace: Where were Nanao and Albright's Flying Broomsticks during all the hullabaloo earlier? No idea: apparently it didn't occur to the animators to depict them until they were mentioned in the bee scene.
- Holding Back the Phlebotinum: Stacy asks why Chela didn't elf out when they were fighting, and Chela explains she wouldn't improve if she just used her Super Mode as a crutch. That, and she was actively trying to drag out the fight because it was the most she'd interacted with her half-sister since they were twelve.
- I Have No Son!: Theodore McFarlane is revealed to be Stacy's biological father, but refuses to acknowledge that because she's the Hidden Backup Princess in case Chela died or failed to live up to expectations: she's forced to refer to him as her uncle.
- Insult of Endearment: Even after losing a second time, Albright can't resist getting in a dig at Oliver, telling him that he forgets people's names easily as a Call-Back to his Catchphrase Insult of "nobody".
- Named by the Adaptation: The Albright serving girl wasn't named or described in volume 2. The episode borrows Sakae Esuno's manga design for her and names her "Emma".
- Parental Neglect: Theodore McFarlane is Stacy's biological father, but ignores her because she's the backup heir for Chela. The fact she's more naturally talented than her maternal half-siblings was in turn a constant reminder to her stepfather Mr. Cornwallis that she isn't his child by blood, so he shunned her.
- Roundhouse Kick: When Albright throws Oliver, he uses his cloak to conceal his windup for a kick to Albright's solar plexus. The novel described this as a Lanoff Style maneuver called "Hidden Tail".
- Shock and Awe: Tonitrus has been a common spell in the series, but it gets much more play this episode: Chela modifies it to conduct along the ground and Fay and Stacy's skin, then leads a group casting of the spell with the doublecant Magnus Tonitrus in elf form.
- Sore Loser: Justified: Albright is literally not allowed to lose by his family, so he tries to use a swarm of giant bees as a threat to get the other students to let him erase their memories so he can say he won.
- The Stinger: After the credits roll, the happy ending of the team battle is overridden by the appearance of chimeras that kidnap three of the boys, and the revelation that they've been taken deep into the labyrinth by Ophelia Salvadori, who has been consumed by the spell.
- Super Mode: Spells with longer incantations in the setting are more powerful, but it's normally impossible for a fifteen-year-old to doublecant. However, that doesn't apply to elves, which allows half-elven Chela to cast Magnus Tonitrus as the core of their counterstrike.
- Supernatural Repellent: Katie burns a kind of incense to hold off the stinger bees, then inverts the trope by burning one that attracts them, in order to make them a better target for the group lightning spell.
- Taking the Bullet: A stinger bee breaks into the barrier and goes for Katie, but Marco the troll shields her with his body and gets a painful sting for his trouble.
- Team Dad: Oliver's tendencies to be the leader and protector of the group get lampshaded by Pete, who outright tells him he's not their dad and they didn't come here just to be constantly protected by him.
- Theme Music Power-Up: "Oliver Seigi"
plays as Oliver grapples Albright, just like it did when he fought Rossi in "Rivals". - Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Oliver doesn't describe his plan with the audience watching, he just says he has one, then the scene cuts to the execution and it goes off without a hitch.
