1700 years ago, the hero Granville Rozzo proposed an alliance to demon lord Luminus for the sake of a better future for humanity. This has created a prosperous country in Lubelius, but with the scheming of the Seven Days Clergy in the past few seasons it’s easy to see that the cracks are there as Luminus is too engrossed in her own obsessions. She does remark that it’s strange for someone in Granville’s position to have aged the way he does, as he shouldn’t have aged at all after joining forces with her. My early – likely wrong – guess is that he strayed from their original pact and lost the anti-aging abilities granted to him by Luminus. 

After the opening credits we see Rimuru, Hinata, Diablo, the children and the musicians that impressed Luminus during the Tempest Founders Festival all teleport into Lubelius. Luminus herself is mostly absent until she shows up in a maid outfit that seems to fool Shion but I doubt even she is that daft, right? She informs us of the core of the upcoming problems. Granville is plotting something and it’s not going to be good for Rimuru. He’s sending off his fellow elders – and himself – to die for the cause of humanity, but throughout this entire deal that end goal has been very vague. Humanity seems to be doing quite well at the moment and it feels like throwing away everything you’ve built to deal with one demon lord who at least seems to want to coexist is just so stupid. There’s the argument to be made that Rimuru could end up becoming an unbeatable threat, but so far he has shown none of that. Perhaps this is just the same attitude as a cop who shoots a teenager because “he might pull a gun”, but I wonder if there’s something more to it.

Next up we learn a little bit more about heroes in this world. Where you only become a true demon lord after awakening through the process that Rimuru went through, you also only become a true hero by hatching from the hero’s egg, which presumably is a similar ritual but probably involves a lot let genocide. Maybe that’s the part that Granville is hung up on, Rimuru did genocide allmost all of Falmuth’s army. Their leadership deserved it, sure, but seeing what Rimuru is capable of has got to be scary for other humans. We see a little bit of the original trio striving for this goal, which includes a young woman named Maria and what looks to be a demonic android of sorts named Razul who fights alongside them. Their goal is to unite all of humanity and defeat the demon lords. The hero and the demon lord came together to create a better place for humanity, and it seemed to work. The hero now fills two roles, one within the holy church and one with the state of Seltrozzo. 

And now we get a little bit more insight into why Granville hates demons so much. He seems to believe that a demon killed Maria. To be fair, it is a demon who caused all the strife that happened at his daughter’s wedding, and the human who ended up stabbing Maria was only doing so because a demon enticed him into it, but still. It poses an interesting question for the story though. From what we see, many demons, dragons, devils and demon lords are either full on evil or at the very least would be classified as chaotic beings. Veldora most of all embodies this chaos. No matter how well Rimuru gets along with people like Veldora, Milim and Diablo, they are still forces that can and will destroy entire nations on a whim. Both Veldora and Milim have done so before and Diablo has also played a huge role in the downfall of Falmuth. Rimuru’s intent might be pure and good – and I think some of his friends and allies do not mind sharing that ideal – but if Rimuru were to fall, the western nations would be razed to the ground. That’s both an argument for and against killing the slime demon lord. Either way, it looks like the death of Maria brought the hopeful dream into the realm of desperate plight. I’m skipping ahead a little bit here, but we see here that the aging is likely from providing some sort of life force to Maria’s body, that he still has in his chambers. Kinda weird, old man.

And with that explanation it seems like Rimuru is finally clear on the fact that both Granville and Yuuki are going to be pretty big roadblocks for him. But screw all of that, there’s a music festival coming up and that is much more important. Also Alice just drops a freaking bomb on us with her line about fish in an aquarium. Lubelius felt overly managed before, but now it’s starting to feel more like something out of Big Mom’s whole cake island where the feeling of equality is more important than any actual freedom and equality. The people here all work and are equal, but they are only so under the oppressive force of their god. We know by now that Hinata is a good person and Luminus seems like a decent sort too despite some of her shortcomings and creepy basement dwellers, but the children really shine a good light on the fact that this way of life is only manageable until it’s not. Hinata realizes that, but she’s a soldier, not a leader, and she simply takes orders from the one she’s put her trust into. That’s the biggest difference between someone like Hinata and people like Rimuru and Yuuki. For better or worse.

I believe we didn’t get a full confirmation that Chloe is Leon’s little sister – or at least a Chloe that looks just like the one in Tempest – in the last episode although it was all but certain then. Now we see the truth in full and it is in fact Leon’s goal to bring back his lost little sister. Turns out he might be a good person after all, but how much of the “means” can you justify by having a noble end goal? EXCUSE ME???? Leon is an otherworlder? That completely caught me by surprise. I thought his sister vanished or disappeared at some point, but instead it appears that they were both transported to this world but separated in the process. That explains a lot. Tensions are rising with Jaune disappearing (joining Rimuru) and someone telling Leon that Rimuru is selling the children to Lubelius. Luckily Leon isn’t stupid and realizes immediately that the information is likely faulty or planted. This entire thing looks like a complex web of subterfuge involving the Rozzo’s, Yuuki, Leon, Rimuru and the eastern merchants. We’ll dive into that a little bit more next week, as this post is already getting quite long. As always, I enjoyed this episode very much and I’m looking forward to next week. Thanks for reading!