Chapter 10
Start Date: November 02
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I feel Sheska’s pain here - I used to work in a library, and it’s so hard to work without just reading all the books.Turns out Armstrong was wrong in the first panel of the chapter, though.
For a fun, and slightly1 spoilery, fact :
Teh spoiler
This panel is almost the last we see of Sheska for the entire remainder of the manga. Considering this is the sort of manga where every single character who even has a hint of a name shows up again at least once, this is kinda concerning. And scary. 
1 “slightly” in that it covers some future events in the manga but not the storyline in any respect
Teh spoiler
and you call that a “fun” fact?!
Seriously though, I totally expected her to be a recurring character indeed… too bad.
人攫いか… あのおっさんは…
(learned another new kanji there 
)
I liked this chapter, by the way. Lots going on, a pretty good storyline and some good cliffhangers.
The running gag that people know about the 鋼の錬金術師 but always assume it’s the huge armor and not the small guy next to him is funny but also so perplexing.
Clearly they’re famous enough that people talk about them, but nobody mentions “oh by the way it’s crazy, he’s a super small guy and his little brother’s soul is trapped in a giant suit of armor”. Wouldn’t it be the very first thing people would know about them?
Aside from the fact that Al being just a soul in a suit of armour is a secret (because his mere existence is a crime), they’re probably famous as “the Elric brothers, one of whom is the Fullmetal Alchemist”.
I guess those are the drawbacks of context-heavy languages…
Yeah that was a good chapter, I won’t complain too much this week.
I still feel like the chapters are slightly too long for the book club format, 4 chapters per 単行本 is a bit wild pace-wise. My stamina is improving but I feel my focus dropping after ~20 pages. Fortunately this chapter was fairly light on lookups for me unlike some of the previous ones.
ch10
Turns out that へのへのもへじ was the key all along.
Lots of story arcs crisscrossing! Happy to see some of these threads finally move forward.
It’s still same-face even if they wear glasses. Admittedly the librarian was different, credit where credit is due.
I enjoyed the slapstick comedy with Sheshka. That felt very “dungeon meshi” in a way.
I found the reveal that “soylent green is people” slightly underwhelming, because, well, duh? Given the build up and the willingness of this manga to do really messed up stuff (like the chimera) I was expecting something truly vile, but that was fairly tame in comparison and somewhat expected. I mean they stressed the importance of the law of equivalent exchange multiple times until now, it made sense that the sacrifice required to get a philosopher’s stone would be tremendous.
Still interested to see how this will change their plans, it’s a good source of conflict.
Not enough 我輩, 2/10.
ch11
I really liked this chapter. The idea of using death row prisoners to research the stone is creepy but makes a lot of sense. And recruiting the soul of the murderers to turn into guards is also quite a fun twist.
The dialogue was pretty funny too, especially the self-loathing line and of course everything Armstrong.
Generally fairly easy to read too I thought.
7/10 decent 我輩 showing but could have more 我輩.
All those low res panels make me happy I got the physical manga 
But I don’t have vol 4 yet, so might have to switch to digital soon…
It really makes me sad that they can’t just improve the digital quality
Well… “can’t” is one possible word for it, sure…
Right, “can’t” 
Man, there are so many series I skipped because of the resolution, that surely it would be worth it to… I don’t know, rescan the manga? I also don’t get why they can’t don’t want to use the original files they used for printing. Did those get lost or something??
I feel you. For a lot of more generic looking manga I don’t mind the scans, but for anything with a bit of artistry to it the quality is often unacceptable.
It’s the last full chapter of this volume! 
Next week is shorter extra content.
Hope everyone enjoyed! I will make a poll for the start date for volume 4 some time next week
One almost feels sorry for Barry, for winding up with Al as an opponent. Though that sympathy goes out the window when he triggers this series’ most annoying (and fortunately shortest) plot arc.
Page… 150? I dunno, I need page numbers. But whatever page it is, Barry’s 我殺す、故に我在り is, of course, Descartes’ famous cogito, ergo sum ( 我思う、故に我在り) with modifications.
That ending was such a classic “The murderer is… *grk*” moment…