Do you remember what happened last volume? Because this chapter mostly seems to deals with the aftermath. To sum up the most important points:
Ch 69 synopsis
Last chapter Kifuri tricked and captured the escaped brim hat Engendil. Now he just dropped him off with the guards at the castle. Not at all sure this is the good idea, btw. The current chaos in the castle might give him another opportunity to escape, plus there’s still the problem that the king is looking for someone to teach him magic, so this time he might finally notice that Engendil exists and might be up for a deal.
Next, there’s a short flashback that shows how K-dog won the fight. He used the mystery object Eathis gave him 4 volumes ago, which turned out to be some sort of foldable instant spell circle that amplifies magic cast within it. This raises the question of why Eathies thought K-dog might need something like that.
K-dog then brings Koko to the Medical Tower because of her head injury. They run into Beldarut who just arrived with the king (I don’t think the slapsticky scene where Beldarut let the king ride on his legchair is very important).
Koko gets her wound treated and immediately feels good enough to continue searching for Kustas, but K-dog is too worried about her and makes her stay with Beldarut at the med-tower while he leaves on his own. Beldarut starts to get emotional about Koko, because he sees her as his “grandstudent” and he wants to do her a favor. So he teaches her to create a miniature replica of herself that can follow K-dog around. It’s the same technique he usually uses when he leaves his own frail body behind in bed and walks around as a replica.
So, mini Koko and K-dog have some more touching dialogue, and now they’re off to find Kustas again.
I got all that except the spell amplification part. I am just having trouble remembering the names of the minor characters. I was slightly exaggerating in my previous post to be funny though. I did skim the previous chapter so I at least had some idea what was happening.
The fairy koko is a bit over the top IMO. That also means that Beldarut will see everything K-dog does, which seems more of a huge risk than anything else given that koco probably doesn’t want him to understand her current situation with kustas and handicapped boy.
Wow, I have zero recollection of this. When and why did Ississ give him that?
And I’m not completely sure I understand how it helped. Didn’t he just create an illusion to fake being hit by one of Engendil’s spells and then attacked from behind? When did he set the scroll down? How could Engendil not notice? He’s the one who initiated the encounter, k-dog couldn’t have set it up previously.
The scene @Micki posted was on the day they opened the festival stall. It’s been mysterious ever since what that object was and it’s still unknown why Eathies gave it to him. My best bet (which is not very good) is that since Eathies clearly suspects Koko of being a brimmer, he gave this to K-dog to defend himself in case Koko backstabs him.
As for how it was used, as far as I remember K-dog summoned a sand-dome the size of this circle around Koko to protect her and shield his real body from view, so I guess the amplifier helped with that?
Yep. I was wondering when to post this, but this scene was actually one of the ones I thought of when I complained about the series being too light-hearted with not enough serious concequences on the vol 11 thread. I think it was you who observed that many people call it dark, but you’ve never been able to see it that way?
So, thing is, I do occasionally see it. E.g. we’ve had all that body horror stuff with the perp, the lighthearted mood of the festival turning to the streets running red with the blood of the citizens in an instant, the sexual abuse stuff in the backstories of some characters, etc. Times like these are probably when I like the story best, and vol 12 was my favorite volume so far. But then it always takes some turn where it starts to feel too much like a children’s story where everything resolves itself too conveniently and hard work and enthusiasm always win the day.
And the last two chapters were such a turning point, with Koko catching a deadly projectile magic attack with her head but being all fine and dandy immediately after, Engendil going down too easily, and now they’re heading for a situation where they’ll have to ask Beldarut for help with the Kustas situation and…well, we’re entering spoiler territory, but I’m not hopeful that it won’t all turn out overly convenient as well.
I agree, volume 12 in particular was markedly more hardcore, which I guess makes the contrast with “fairy koco” all the more jarring.
Yeah that was weird. When they showed her bandaged face I immediately expected that she would have lost an eye which would have made for an interesting development in her story: she could be even more pissed at the tongari for not allowing her to fix it with magic, it would bring her closer to K-dog given that they would then share the same handicap etc…
But no, apparently it’s just a bit “swollen” and we’re immediately back to slapstick shenanigans. Okay then. Good thing the extremely powerful mage Egendil decided to throw the equivalent of a beach-ball at her when he was apparently willing to cut her down with his saber 5 minutes later.
A tremendous amount of stuff is happening right now but none of it feels very weighty because of the lack of severe consequences to anything.
The bandage hasn’t come off yet, so there’s hope for complications (feels weird writing that ). Maybe she will at least have to wear an eye patch for a while, so she can go full 中二病, magic powers and all
On a different note, when Qifrey told the people that staying put in the castle would be the safest option it occurred to me that the castle is the only place in the realm where you can’t use magic items, so the king definitely has to poop into a bucket, while the common folk can have their excrement be whisked away to the cosmic abyss…
). Maybe she will at least have to wear an eye patch for a while, so she can go full 中二病, magic powers and all 