Director: Kōzō Kaihō
Writer: Masato Matsune
First Aired: 29 September 2023
Adapts: Volume 3, Prologue and Chapters 2-3
In a flashback, Carlos Whitrow recalls their first meeting with Ophelia Salvadori: finding her stomping flowers in her front yard, before asking them if they were the next "man" she was expected to mate with. They recall embracing her out of a wish to be her friend and see her happy.
The Sword Roses and Miligan continue their trek through the second layer, having at some point entered an area more resembling a jungle than the temperate forest we saw in "Duty". After a Travel Montage, they stop for a break because Nanao's stomach is grumbling, and Miligan is astounded at the travel bread that Guy baked for them before they left. Oliver leaves to refill his canteen from a nearby pool, and reveals he knows Teresa Carste has been tailing them. Gwyn and Shannon told her to bring him back if he went after Pete—but she says that she obeys Oliver's orders: he, not the Sherwoods, is her liege. So he commands her to scout ahead, a role she is only too enthused to take on.
The rescue party continues on, beginning a climb up the Irminsul at the center of the layer. Near the treetop they find the lair of a gigantic ape, which Miligan refers to as "Westsider". Miligan attempts to ward it off with her basilisk eye, then draws her athame when it refuses to back down—but Nanao stops her, staring the ape down, and lays down her sword in front of it to show it they mean no threat. The ape settles down, and Nanao explains that Katie told her many magical creatures can sense hostile mana.
Hostile mana, such as that coming from the Slaying Mantis that appears moments later. One of Ophelia's chimeras, it decapitates Westsider and attacks, and Miligan tells the Sword Roses to try their hand at fighting it. Oliver, Nanao, and Chela swing into action, and just like Miligan showed them in "Possibility" work out through trial and error how to wound it. Miligan gets a scare when Oliver slides underneath only to be targeted by a barrage of spikes—only for Oliver to reveal he used a fragment of exoskeleton as a makeshift shield. He disables the monster with a strike to its vulnerable belly, and finishes it off with a stab into its head, conducting a lightning spell directly into its innards.
The rescue party continues on through another Travel Montage, culminating in battling their way through an army of skeletons. In the meantime, we learn that Stacy Cornwallis is also making her way through the second layer, having roped her older maternal half-sister into helping her rescue Fay. Lynette Cornwallis seems to be spending most of the trip griping at her, irritated at Stacy's obsession with Chela in favor of the siblings she actually grew up with, and not understanding why she's so determined to retrieve Fay, when as a Cornwallis she could get any boy she wanted.
The Sword Roses and Miligan finally stop for the night. Nanao and Chela are sleeping, but Oliver is too worried about Pete and Miligan offers him some tea. She wonders why they would take such a risk for Pete when they've barely known him for six months. Oliver recalls how in "Ceremony", despite being a Mage Born of Muggles who barely knew anything about magic, still risked his life for Katie with the rest of them. It made him and the others happy that Pete would put his life on the line for someone he didn't even know. Then Miligan decides to dig a little further: she's figured out that something must have happened to Oliver in his past to get him to the level he's at now; otherwise a totally average mage like him could never keep up with the natural gifts of Nanao and Chela at his age. Oliver doesn't answer, and Miligan decides not to pry any further than she already has, but says his behavior worries her.
Meanwhile, Pete has succeeded in waking Joseph Albright up. Kimberly's resident Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy is too drained to fight, so he puts his trust in Pete: he tears his own stomach open, revealing he's managed to conceal three magical orbs there as Emergency Weapons, and tells him to use them when he gets the chance.
This episode provides examples of the following tropes:
- Abusive Parents: The Salvadoris are revealed to stand head-and-shoulders above the many horrible mage families we've encountered so far: in the opening scene, Ophelia is about 12 and has already been pregnant multiple times in service to her mother's eugenics experiments.
- Artistic License – Botany: Miligan says that the fact the Weird Sun never sets is what makes this a paradise for plants. In actual fact, most plants in fact do require periods of darkness, but in this case we're probably safe in assuming A Wizard Did It.
- Call-Back: Oliver refers back to the troll incident in "Ceremony", specifically that Pete, despite being a Mage Born of Muggles who barely knew which end of a wand to hold, still ran towards the danger rather than away, putting himself at risk to save Katie.
- Compressed Adaptation: The second Travel Montage includes the encounter with the Battle of Hell's Armies (the test to enter the third layer from the second), but reduces it to a couple of clips without explaining it. This cuts out Pete's contribution in absentia to the Sword Roses' rescue effort: that Oliver was able to recall the historical battle it recreates, and thereby come up with a solution, from something that Pete told him about during a nerd-out session.
- Defrosting Ice King: Albright shows his Character Development since the fight by placing his trust in Pete, and even asking his name, where before he had disregarded him as a "nobody".
- Emergency Weapon: The three orbs that Albright concealed in his abdomen are a blast orb (basically a hand grenade), a smoke orb (smoke grenade), and beacon orb (to indicate one's location to rescuers).
- Fingore: Westsider is already missing two fingers from a previous fight with a chimera, and is acting hostile due to the injury.
- Foreign Language Title: "Noisy Forest" spelled phonetically, with the definitional kanji 賑わいの森 Nigiwai no mori, the name of the second layer in Japanese.
- Growling Gut: Nanao's stomach starts grumbling early in the first half of the episode, so the rescue party decides to take a meal break.
- Half-Sibling Angst: Lynette doesn't seem to understand her younger sister Stacy at all: she's helping her, but spends most of their time together griping at her for taking such a risk to rescue Fay, and wishes she'd pay more mind to the siblings she actually grew up with than Chela.
- Ill-Fated Flowerbed: The young Ophelia is introduced stamping on a yard full of daisies with her feet. This is clearly meant to be Troubling Unchildlike Behavior, seemingly connected to her sex abuse, but isn't directly explained (possibly because the required exposition would have been too awkward to include).From the novel:
- No-Sell: Since Ophelia Smells Sexy, she assumes the seemingly male Carlos will lose control and rape her like every previous male she's encountered. To her surprise, Carlos completely ignores her Perfume and embraces her.
- Off with His Head!:
- The praying mantis chimera decapitates Westsider with a single blow before even entering the frame.
- Nanao severs the head of the skeletal general during the second Travel Montage.
- Rape as Backstory: Exaggerated: Ophelia is revealed to have been a de facto Breeding Slave in her family's eugenics experiments (previously mentioned in "Possibility"), and assumes her encounter with Carlos will be more of the same.
- Slaying Mantis: The praying mantis chimera makes the garuda from "Colosseum" look small and easily takes Westsider's head off when he tries to defend his territory. It can regenerate severed limbs and also fire barrages of spikes at its enemies.
- Spike Shooter: The praying mantis chimera has various arrays of spikes that it can fire at attackers.
- Spotting the Thread: Miligan reveals that she knows that there's much more to Oliver than meets the eye: despite his Jack of All Trades, Master of None image, he's more than able to keep up with the naturally talented Chela and Nanao, something that shouldn't be possible for a completely average mage of his age. She surmises something happened to him in his past to push him to where he is now—an observation that clearly hits too close to the truth for Oliver's comfort.
- Tamer and Chaster:
- Ophelia's backstory of sex abuse was too critical to this Story Arc to cut completely, but in the novel she was visibly pregnant during the prologue scene where she met Carlos.
- In the novel, Vera Miligan briefly came on to Oliver during during their conversation at the end of the episode. This exchange is cut completely.
- The Teaser: The pre-credits sequence consists of Carlos Whitrow recalling their first meeting with Ophelia Salvadori, which starts to establish the backstory to the current Story Arc.
- Travel Montage: Two of them:
- First, just after the opening credits, depicting the Sword Roses and Miligan making their way through the forest and using Guy's toolplants to bridge a ravine.
- Second, after the fight with the praying mantis chimera, depicting them battling their way to the third layer's entrance.
- Treasure Chest Cavity: Albright either sewed the orbs into his abdomen or swallowed them (it's not clear which), and is able to reach them by ripping his belly open. Good thing mages are built tough.
- True Companions: Discussed. After the encounter with Westsider, resolved by Katie's advice to Nanao on handling magical creatures, Oliver reflects on how, even separated, the Sword Roses are still able to cover one another's weaknesses.
- Weird Sun: The "sun" in the second layer is a magical artifact, and never sets.
