Overlord IV – 11 – Knocked Back

After a solemn scene of King Ramposa mourning Zanac’s sure demise and excusing the palace staff in hopes some might get away under cover of night, Ampetif Cocco Doll joins his fellow Eight Fingers, and notes that all of them look all gaunt like “they’re on some fad diet” or “demons wearing the skins” of his former colleagues.

Turns out they’re that way because of what they’ve endured. Shalltear arrives, matter-of-factly gathers the Fingers and their 1,000 men and stows them someplace for the time being, and then it’s Cocco Doll’s turn to undergo the “baptism” Hilma and the others have already been through. But hey, at least now they’re under the protect of His Majesty the Sorcerer King.

As the twins and Cocytus lead his armies to certain victory, Ainz and Albedo (looking menacingly hot in her full black armor) await the ones who defeated the Death Knights. Our old-boy Azuth of Drop of Red is first to arrive. Aiz orders Albedo to take him on but not kill him; this is about information-gathering first and foremost.

Azuth flies off but Albedo stays with him, fully aware he’s leading her away from Ainz-sama on purpose. When he finally unleashes both physical and magical attacks, they bounce off Albedo like nothing, and when she strikes him, she notes that he’s “like tofu.” So, decidedly not the biggest challenge for the good Prime Minister.

Azuth’s chum (?) turns out to be far more formidable. A knight in platinum armor surrounded by four spinning weapons, he introduces himself as Riku Aganeia. He’s able to actually strike Ainz with his axe, and while it does no damage, Ainz is impressed enough to propose a deal. If this Riku Aganeia fellow becomes his subordinate, he’d be inclined to cease the destruction of the Re-Estize Kingdom.

Riku ain’t having it, and a wonderful little duel ensues, with Ainz never looking like he’s in trouble but nevertheless enjoying the bemusement and novelty of an opponent who won’t just die by, ya know, standing too close to him or something. Heck, Ainz can’t even break through the World Isolating Barrier Riku puts up.

While Ainz is keeping the proverbial kid gloves on, he decides to test the limits of this opponent’s power by first summoning a Doom Lord, who trades slashes and strkes with Riku’s four weapons and gives Ainz time to think. He then unleashes an “Elemental Skull”, which we unfortunately never get to see in action but is exquisite in its simple yet dread-inspiring design.

When Riku raises his giant sword to strike Ainz down, Ainz suddenly acts more like the human narrating his thoughts, even getting down on the ground as if groveling. He tries words with Riku, asking if it’s really so wrong for a nation to respond when its food supplies meant for the Holy Kingdom were stolen; Riku simply says he’s gone too far, and must now perish as punishment.

Naturally, that ain’t happening, and Albedo comes crashing through the barrier like it’s made out of stunt glass and starts whaling on Riku, enraged by how he spoke to Ainz-sama. Ainz orders her to stop, and then once more asks Riku to become his subordinate. Instead, Riku teleports away.

He later meets up with a thoroughly defeated Azuth, who laments that the kingdom will surely fall now that they know the strength of their enemies. Ainz’s hunch that Riku was controlling the armor remotely is proven correct; the one pulling the strings was Tsa, a powerful Dragon Lord.

Tsa uses terms like player and NPC, and while he may have lost this round, he believes there is a way to defeat the Sorcerer King, and is going to give it some serious thought. As for the “Ainz” his puppet fought, it wasn’t Ainz at all, but Pandora’s Actor posing as Ainz (with Albedo doing a bang-up job acting like he’s Ainz-sama).

Pando certainly gave up the game when he acted all goofy for that one moment, but it was still a nice surprise. I love how the battle we saw was between two proxies of the two far more powerful entities sitting back and collecting the data. In this case, neither know their counterpart’s true power, only that of the proxies they fought. We’ll see how their next encounter shapes up.

Overlord IV – 09 – Baking a Softer Biscuit

After chastising a courtier for interrupting her, Albedo cuts to the chase: The Sorcerer Kingdom is declaring war on the Re-Estize Kingdom, but they won’t deploy their forces for a whole month, and Ainz promises not to use any “large spells” like the one that killed 200,000 on the Katze Plains. Brain knows Ainz is planning something (duh).

A month later, and Ainz has already taken steps to ensure a swift invasion of Re-Estize, focusing on destroying the villages near the borders in order to prevent outside forces from interfering. But he’s loath to reveal to his always-gung-ho generals the fact that he’s holding back on purpose, resulting in some humans surviving and escaping.

While not wholly his idea, since Ainz is, deep down, just a regular human gamer, he’s both more empathetic and respectful of the opinions of fellow “lowly” humans, or in this case, slightly-less powerful underlings, like Albedo’s older sister Nigredo (who is missing her face skin…if she ever had it) and the dog maid-themed Pestonya. They urge their overlord not to snuff out a race as innovative as humanity too rashly.

The Sorcerer Kingdom’s latest target is the seaside town of E-Naeul, who have contracted the mithril adventurer group Four Armaments, led by a cool beauty and including a slightly perverted mage. Like many new Overlord introductions, this four-person party brings an immediate lived-in quality with their easy banter and subtle swagger. At the end of the day, they’re professionals, and if their job is to hold E-Naeul as long as they can, they will hold.

The zombie rabble that constitutes the main Sorcerer Kingdom force isn’t particularly intimidating; the onna kishi who leads the Four Armaments is far more concerned about the two giant Death Knights, wondering if only two were sent because that’s all it was assumed would be needed to cause the town to fall.

After provoking the Death Knight to charge the front gates, The onna kishi has her partymates buff her up with attribute enhancements, and she conjures a doppelganger of her hand axe so every strike counts twice. More than anything, she doesn’t flinch even a little bit in the face of a massive undead warrior getting all up in her space.

While she’s not taking any damage thanks to her superior speed and agility, she’s not really causing any to the Death Knight, and when the dual-wielding Death Warrior catches up with its companion, it starts to look like even one of the more renowned adventurer groups in the kingdom is going to start experiencing what the “stick” in Ainzs’ carrot-and-stick plan entails.

But then, suddenly, the Death Knight’s head is blasted off, and the knight crumbles into a pile of ash. The shots came from high in the sky, where a figure in a high-tech red metal mech suit is brandishing an equally anachronistic machine gun. The Death Warrior does its best to deflect the red one’s shots, but eventually falls as well, and the red one simply gives a friendly gesture and flies off into the wild blue yonder.

With the biggest enemy threats removed, it’s highly likely the Armaments and town forces will be able to repel the remaining zombies and prevent E-Naeul from falling. But when reports come back of the Death Knights’ defeat, Ainz shocks his Guardians by remarking that he expected this. So who is the one in red, who is identified by the Armaments as an adamantite adventurer…and will Ainz eventually have to fight them?

Overlord IV – 08 – The Dumbest Noble

The Dwarven arc is…done, I guess? Moving on, we return to the Re-Estize Kingdom, where royal siblings Zanac and Renner discuss what to do about the Sorcerer Kingdom. Renner wants Zanac to be installed as king ASAP, but also suggests that declaring themselves a vassal state like the Empire might not be the worst idea.

Meanwhile, much further down the line, Baron Phillip Montserrat is already half in the bag at a maid bar while chatting with a couple of his baron bros. Despite being cordial with Albedo, when he learns how the Sorcerer Kingdom is making bank with its agricultural exports, he proposes that something be done about it.

That something happens, a report is filed that finds itself on Albedo’s desk, and before you know it, Ainz and his Floor Guardians are all back in Nazarick. I guess with teleportation it’s not that crazy; it’s just been a while. Hilma Cygnaeus is brought before Ainz, and she does a pretty good Albedo impression.

Ainz dominates her mind and determines she wasn’t directly responsible for the attack on his merchant convoy, but learns that Montserrat was. This is when Ainz sits back and lets Albedo, Demiurge, and the others explain the situation to him (under the guise of explaining it to the other Guardians). The byproduct of his passivity is all the Guardians agree that the Kingdom should face severe punishment.

This results in Prime Minister Albedo arriving in the Kingdom to have an audience with the King, Zanac, and Renner. The King asks what she’s there for, but he already knows. Rather than give the Sorcerer Kingdom Montserrat’s head, however, he offers his own, surprising kids, court, and Albedo alike.

There’s been a lively pace to geopolitical developments throughout Overlord IV, and this episode is no different, checking in on players we hadn’t seen in a bit while giving us an always-welcome Guardian reunion at Nazarick. Through it all, Ainz is going with the flow, trusting his people to offer him sage council and continuing to let them think he’s five steps ahead when he’s actually catching up.

Overlord IV – 07 – Why Didn’t They Show Us First?

When the Frost Dragon learns that someone is coming who may be able to cause some trouble, he first holds council with his three wives, and then decides to send his son Hejinmal to face the threat. Hejinmal, who normally wears glasses, is not the fighting type, but is hopeful that his mere presence will be sufficient to intimidate the intruders to flee.

That…doesn’t happen. The arrival of Ainz, Shalltear, and Aura literally makes Hejinmal piss himself. He knows intrinsically that there’s no opposing this Ainz Ooal Gown. When he escorts him to his father, Ainz uses Grasp Heart to immediately neutralize the frost dragon, then uses a special magical key that can only be used seven times to unlock the dragons’ vast treasury.

As he takes care of the dragons, Shalltear and Aura are left to deal with the Quagoa, and as you’d expect, they have absolutely no problem reducing their numbers from more than 60,000 to just 10,000. Shalltear and Aura follow their orders to the letter, and the Quagoa and their lord are never anything but a mild annoyance, wishing they’d known from the start how powerful their adversaries truly were.

One dragon decides to try to oppose Ainz, but like Hejinmal’s dad falls victim to Ainz’s Grasp Heart. The bottom line is that they are now all subordinate to Ainz. He praises Shalltear and Aura for their good works. He then throws a big party for all the Dwarven runesmiths headed for his capital, and then brings Demiurge in.

In the end, rolling up on the old Dwarven capital turns out to be a cakewalk for Ainz and his Floor Guardians, who don’t even break a sweat upheaving the balance of power in the region. Part of the ease of Ainz & Co.’s victory is due to the fact that the threat of a fellow player doesn’t materialize.

Like Aura, we already knew that the Death Knights were simply defeated by the undiscriminating force that is gravity. With the Dwarven capital about to be restored to the Dwarves, it looks like Ainz is poised for another major diplomatic and geopolitical victory.

Overlord IV – 06 – Runes for Revival

Feo Jera is about to be besieged by the Quagoa, and the Drawves’ scant military contingent prepares for the fight of their lives, but their general is suddenly informed of another visitor: an Undead wanting to discuss the Quagoa. When the general meets Ainz Ooal Gown, he recognizes that time is of the essence. He doesn’t consult with the Regency Council, but asks for Ainz’ aid in this immediate existential battle.

Of course, it’s just a dawdle for Ainz to summon two Death Knights to go out and slaughter the Quagoa. It’s only the fact that they start crossing the bridge across the Great Chasm that the Quagoa’s commander Lord Yohz cuts the ropes and sends them plummeting. With his forces decimated, Yohz and the survivors flee, concerned that the Dwarves have managed to tame Golems.

When Ainz senses his Knights have been eliminated, he assumes someone powerful, perhaps even a fellow Player to be the culprit, not mere gravity. But the Dwarves’ Regency Council (a colorful, hairy bunch) give him an audience, and he states his case: in exchange for reclaiming the Dwarves’ Royal Capital, he not only wants to open trade routes, but also claim all of the Dwarven Runesmiths and bring them to the Sorcerer Kingdom.

As Gondo mentioned, Runesmithing is on the decline even among the Dwarves, so while it’s an unusual request, the Council ultimately decides to agree to Ainz’s terms, even if they don’t think he can drink alcohol and thus can’t entirely be trusted (Ironically, Gondo is the rare Dwarf who doesn’t enjoy alcohol).

Ainz meets the assembled Runesmiths personally (with Shalltear bearing choice hooch), showing them a twenty-rune sword (made by a former Player) and inspiring them to reverse engineer it and revive runesmithing to the time of its heyday.

Gondo volunteers to be Ainz’s guide as he, Shalltear, and Aura head to the Royal Capital. The “three dangerous areas” are crossed with effortless ease thanks to Ainz’s Mass Fly spell, while even the poisonous labyrinth is neutralized when he protects the non-undead Gondo and Aura with magic.

Ainz is operating under the mistaken impression that he’s dealing with an adversary capable of dispatching his Death Knights, when in reality Yohz relied entirely on luck (and a super-deep chasm). But even with an abundance of caution, there’s little doubt he’ll be successful in reclaiming the Royal Capital and even defeating the Frost Dragon.

But as with so many battles Ainz and his Floor Guardians happen to fight in Overlord, knowing the end result is victory isn’t a bad thing, it just makes the process by which they arrive at those victories that much more engrossing and fun.

Overlord IV – 05 – Field Trip

I love it when Ainz isn’t around and the Floor Guardians just shoot the breeze. When Demiurge arrives to find Ainz is away, Albedo asks him why it’s so important he meet with Ainz-sama in person. Demiurge earnestly replies that he wants to be praised, and Albedo gives him a wry, approving look. She gets it.

Different they may be, they’re alike in their undying love and loyalty to their Overlord…as well as their completely overblown opinion of his greatness. Demiurge had his own plans for the Empire stewing, but is in awe when Albedo presents him with its offer to become a vassal state…all after a three-day visit.

That may not have been Ainz’s plan at all, but how others in the world interpret it is what matters. As for where Ainz is, intrigued by his introduction to the Runes of this world he prepares a light procession to bear him to the Dwarven Kingdom to open diplomatic relations.

He enlists the help of the Lizardman Zenberu, and has Aura and Shalltear as bodyguards and lieutenants. Cocytus offers himself as a chair, enraging Shalltear, but Ainz can’t help but be oddly comfortable.

Let me just say how great it is to be in the presence of Shalltear once more after she took the first four episodes off. While she alone could obliterate any country, Ainz’s reason for her coming along on the trip is to expand her horizons and gain some experience in the field. Even the magical equivalent of a strategic nuclear weapon needs to stretch her legs.

There’s a grandeur to the ensuing journey, with the show skimping neither on vast landscapes the party traverses nor the bombastic orchestral score. When Ainz finds a good spot to “make camp”, he basically summons an Isengard in which to spend the night.

As he contemplates whether another player of Yggdrasil taught the Dwarves rune tech, and expresses his confidence in Albedo and Demiurge handling the empire’s request, Aura notices that Shalltear is taking notes … of everything. She tries to get Shalltear to realize that her role isn’t simply to observe and report. After they part ways, Aura fears she’s gained a “dumb little sister”.

The next day, the procession stops at the entrance to the cave that leads to the Dwarven Kingdom, according to Zenberu. Ainz deploys his ninja-like Hanzo to investigate why there are no guards to be found, and they determine that the entire city has been abandoned.

Aura goes in and takes a look around, and meets the latest in a long line of Overlord characters who almost immediately feel fully-realized and dimensional: Gondo Firebeard. With some efficient yet natural exposition, he explains how he is one of a dying breed of Dwarves who still appreciate and treasure Rune carving, the older (and cheaper) way of infusing things with magic.

Despite being descended from a great Runesmith, Gondo considers his smithing abilities to be lacking at best. That modesty is a big part of his instant appeal, as is the fact he’s basically a big old rune nerd, which is right up Ainz’s alley.

He vows to give Gondo all the assistance he needs to revive the old ways…provided of course he pledges his undying loyalty to Ainz Ooal Gown. Gondo is fine with that if it means his father’s legacy will endure, and he’ll be able to pass what he learned to his children.

But a more immediate problem than cultural erasure is upon them once they exit the cave: Shalltear reports a horde of violent Quagoa are all over the place. With fur hard as metal armor and animal ruthlessness, the Quagoa are the reason the Dwarves abandoned this city for a different one.

Ainz gives Shalltear a simple mission: capture the Quagoa and gain information on them. After all, if Ainz plays his cards right this could be a valuable gesture of goodwill to his future Dwarvish allies. With a nod of her head, Shalltear is off, and we get to see her in her impossibly cool grand red battle armor…only not brainwashed this time!

As you’d expect, she makes quick work of the Quagoa, capturing them while her support troops prevent anyone from escaping to expose Ainz’s presence. I particularly likes when Shalltear was surrounded but not one of the dozens of the Quagoas’ blows hit her; the difference in level precludes them from causing her any damage at all.

That said, once detained, the Quagoa leader is in no mood to spill any information … until Shalltear uses a charm spell, and then he’s her best bud. He happily tells them that they work for the Clan Lord Riyuro, tasked with killing any dwarves who escaped in their direction. He says the dwarf city is probably already being attacked and its inhabitants slaughtered.

Once Ainz gets a location, I have no doubt he’ll put a stop to that, making for a heroic introduction to the Dwarven Kingdom. After last week’s stripped down arena fight (which was nevertheless packed with world-building), this episode proves Overlord is just as deft at rendering grand adventures into new lands.

Isekai Quartet 2 – 11 – The Show Must Go On

The school festival is on, and immediately attracting characters from a sixth isekai anime, Cautious Hero. Sadly for Ristarte, Seiya deems it too risky to enter school grounds. While he may not be aware that an attack on the school by Mobile Fortress Destroyer is imminent, he’s not entirely wrong to be wary, but he surely possesses enough power to defeat such a boss.

Many of this week’s visual gags come in the form of the ridiculous costumes, in which none of the animal masks fit over the chibi-fied characters. Ainz in particular is just Ainz with a horse head plopped on top. Still, Raphtalia and Filo think Naofumi looks cute, while Albedo & other followers of Ainz are no doubt that much more smitten by his new look.

The issue becomes, how can the MCs participate in the play when Destroyer is out there, ready to…destroy? Simple: by relying on their friends, or in this case Albedo, Emilia, Visha and Aqua. Everyone mostly hopes Aqua won’t undermine the efforts of the other three. Tanya and Ainz then use reverse psychology to get Megumin to play the Fairy Godmother in place of the indisposed Aqua. Everyone has their roles, all that’s left is for the curtain to rise!

Isekai Quartet 2 – 10 – Who Killed Mr. Archie?

The Cultural Festival is approaching, which means Class 2 must choose a play and a food stall. The play chosen is Cinderella, with Ram(!) in the lead role and Rem(!!) playing the Prince. We also learn Naofumi will be Class 1’s Ugly Duckling.

The four MCs, meanwhile, will play…horses. They probably don’t mind stepping out of the spotlight in this instance, but Shalltear is not happy about her master’s lot. Master of food Visha spearheads Class 2’s choco-banana stand.

In the midst of lively preparations, bouts of destruction take hold on campus, starting with the hutch sheltering Hamusuke and Death Knight. While Reinhard and Beako are stumped for the moment, we Konosuba watchers know the culprit is the massive robotic spider known as Destroyer.

One wonders how such a huge foe is keeping itself hidden from everyone, but its next victim is “Mr. Archie”, Aqua’s affectionate name for the hand-painted arch it would seem Kazuma mostly worked on. Fretting over how long it took and how little time remains until the festival begins tomorrow.

Aqua has an extended temper tantrum, and can only be snapped out of it by a determined Rem, who substitutes Aqua for Subaru in an abridged reenactment of her seminal “Return to Zero” scene from Re:Zero episode 18, a rare instance in which we see both her eyes.

I knew as soon as Aqua said “step one” that it was coming. As for the faculty, they seem to know a lot more about why they’re all here, and leave it up to the students whether it was the right choice or not. Between those words and Destroyer, something big is on the horizon during and/or after the festival.

Isekai Quartet 2 – 09 – Filo Finds a Theme

Finally, a character from Shield Hero is featured on a mini-ep! To be precise, it’s Filo, who is tasked by Naofumi to ask around school for advice on what the theme of the cultural festival play should be. Unsurprisingly, everybody likes the cute and energetic bird-girl…except Beatrice, who doesn’t like much of anybody.

Beako does seem to be investigating how they all got to this chibi world, asking Mare about how her crew got there. No doubt if and when she discovers the means by which they were transported, she’ll start working on a way to get them back. The good news for her is that Re:Zero season 2 has been pushed back to July.

Another great trait of Filo is giving everyone a personal nickname based on their appearance or presumed age (Skeleton Guy, Wolf-Lady, Black-Haired Ladies, Old Guys), or borrowing someone else’s nickname for that character (Beako). As a pure, guileless character, Filo is a great breath of fresh-air among all the wisenheimers and cynics.

Filo stumbles upon the theme of The Ugly Duckling when Tanya’s subordinates cross paths with the famously human-hating Narbarel Gamma (getting some rare screen time with Alpha and Beta). Her reflexive insults will prove useful in a play where the main character receives verbal abuse. Come to think of it, Ram will be perfect in that role, too!

Isekai Quartet 2 – 08 – The Things We Do for Lunch

Hidden by the vertical sign: Ristarte from Cautious Hero!

Lt. Viktoriya Ivanovna “Visha” Serebryakova was a reliable source of comedy in Youjo Senki, but both she (and her seiyu Hayami Saori) been generally underutilized in Isekai Quartet. This week the doe-eyed beauty gets a spotlight of sorts, as the rest of her class wonders where she rushes off to after school. Turns out she’s working multiple part-time jobs around town to earn enough money to indulge in the ¥30,000 “Special Menu” at the cafeteria.

She also mentions that all of her workplaces feed her for free, and that, combined with the mystery of the Special Menu, compel others to seek employment (since the Butcher is present at all these locations I imagine this was a scheme on his part to get some cheap labor). Subaru, in one instance, serves the fully-assembled Pleiades combat maids, a rare sight indeed on this show!

The resulting discovery that the Special Menu is simply the normal menu served in ridiculously huge portions is a disappointment to all but Visha, who looks ready, willing and able to consume the food-mountain with ease in one sitting, garnering some unnerved looks from other characters. As for the others, they know to save the money they earned for something else.

Isekai Quartet 2 – 07 – Let’s Get Physicals

It’s a scary time for a lot of people across the world with the outbreak of the Coronavirus, so it’s somewhat inauspiciously coincidental for IQ2 to come out with an episode in which everyone gets a physical. This physical only seems to consist of taking the students’ height and weight, with no injections or other health tests taken.

What this episode does test is my patience with Pandora’s Actor. In the shadow of fellow Miyano Mamoru-voiced character Betelgeuse, PA’s quirkiness seems forced. He’s random and crazy enough to be annoying, but not enough to be fun to watch. Ram seems to agree.

As for the parties who strive to see members of the opposite sex in their skivvies, Rem prevents Shalltear and Albedo from glimpsing too many of Ainz’s bones, while the normally super-lucky Kazuma is a hair too late in initiating his peeping mission.

Speaking of hair, the prominent ahoge of both Tanya and Filo prevent Wiz from taking accurate height measurements, while Darkness is the only girl disappointed that neither Kazuma nor any other men decided to peep on them. The excessive Pandora’s Actor marred some otherwise funny moments in an unfocused outing.

Isekai Quartet 2 – 05 – GIVE ME CHOCO…DEATH!!!

As Valentine’s Day arrives (or to paraphrase Tanya, “the triumph of capitalism over religion”), the concept of giving chocolate to the one you like spreads across the school. Albedo plans to infuse her chocolate with her love, and meets a kindred spirit in Betelgeuse Romanee-Conti.

Initially presented as the Home-Ec teacher, Betel is later booted out as a trespasser. I loved how these two demented weirdos fed off one another’s crazy. This version of Betel is also far more tolerable than his Re:Zero self, mostly because he doesn’t torture Rem!

Capt. Weiss wants chocolate, so he asks Kazuma the proper way to ask, and Kazuma messes with him by instructing him to hold his hands out and yell “GIVE ME CHOCO!”. This results in Weiss getting AL HUMA’d by Rem, shielding Darkness from potential harm Darkness was actually excited about, as Darkness tends to be!

It’s a pleasant enough exploration of to whom all these disparate characters from fantasy worlds would go about giving chocolate. Kazuma is happy to receive chocolate from all three girls in his party (even if its obligatory), while Subaru is happier to get a modest chocolate from Emilia than a huge heart-shaped box from Rem.

Finally, Beatrice is popular with Tanya’s underlings, the battle maids his up a sweets shop, while Yunyun either distributes or receives perhaps the most chocolate. Finally, for all the love Ainz got, he’s unable to eat chocolate.

…DEATH!

Isekai Quartet – 08 – Shopping in a New World

Ainz proposes a group activity during the class field trip to the beach, and Aqua immediately raises her hand in opposition…until she learns the idea was actually Emilia’s, in the interest of the various class members getting along better.

Aqua has definitely been the most antagonistic towards another character—in this case, the undead Ainz—but when Subaru talks about the purpose of a test of courage, joins Ram in castigating him. Still, everyone agrees that the night  activity will indeed be a test of courage; Emilia just needs Subaru to tell her what it is!

The students also need to head to a department store to buy swimsuits. You’d think that would mean they’d actually try them on, which would in some cases show many of the characters wearing different outfits—a rare occurrence to be sure. That doesn’t happen this week, as don’t yet make it to the beach.

Instead, Albedo and Shalltear try to pick out the best skimpy Speedo for Ainz-sama, and when Aqua crosses paths with them again, Kazuma plays peacemaker. He wigs out when he learns Albedo is a succubus (based on his experience in his isekai) but Shalltear drags her fellow floor guardian by telling him she’s still a pure maiden and laughing about it.

For that, Aqua actually takes Albedo’s side; saving yourself for the one you love isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Instead, she inadvertently drags Shalltear by declaring the only thing to be ashamed of is padding your chest, as her fellow goddess Eris—and Shalltear—do. A such, it is Albedo who gets the last laugh.