By Shigeru Sagazaki and Tetsuhiro Nabeshima. Released in Japan as “Katainaka no Ossan, Kensei ni Naru: Tada no Inaka no Kenjutsu Shihan Datta noni, Taisei Shita Deshitachi ga Ore o Hōttekurenai Ken” by SQEX Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Hikoki.
For the first few books of the series, each one focused on one of the women that Bel used to teach who has now fallen in love with him, as well as dealing with Bel’s phenomenally low self-regard. Now that we’ve cycled through everyone, and Bel has… started to deal with getting more self-confident (he still backslides a lot), we get to cycle through the heroines again, and the theme seem to be each of them dealing with a personal issue. For Allucia it was her sword breaking and her attachment to it, and now we have Surena, who has a much more serious issue (the monster that killed her parents has lodged itself on a mountain and is going after passersby) but who also suffers from being the heroine we care about least. Sorry, but since she’s always off being an adventurer, she’s way behind in the Bel sweepstakes. Still, she tries.
As Bel goes about his day, taking the time to look over Ficelle’s class and see that she’s actually teaching them magic swordplay properly now… not that that makes it any easier to get, as Mewi is finding out… he finds Surena coming to his house. She explains that she’s taking on what is likely to be a very dangerous mission, and she wanted to touch base with him just in case she doesn’t return. A while later, Bel is rather upset to hear she has not in fact returned. and Allucia, who may hate her romantic rival but doesn’t hate Surena the adventurer, swings it so that Bel can “take a vacation” and find out what’s happened to her. And it turns out what’s happened is a tough invisible named monster who’s almost entirely impervious to blades… and who both Bel and Surena recognize.
Speaking of characters we don’t usually see in the narrative, this book actually gets Lucy to leave her office and do something for a change, mostly as it turns out sending non-magical sword users to take on a monster who uses mana to kill its opponents is not the brightest idea. The book also shows off why we usually don’t have Lucy along, though – leaving aside that she’s not attracted to Bell and therefore can’t push the wife question at all (speaking of which, Surena gets little sisterzoned, alas), but it becomes very clear that she’s holding back, partly so as not to cause an international incident, but mostly as she’s too OP for this book. We already have Belgrieve as the very, very powerful swordsman who refuses to admit it, we don’t need a very, very powerful mage who revels in it.
The 10th volume only came out in Japan last month, so it will be a while before we see it here. In the meantime, rest assured, everything is exactly the same with these folks, for better or worse.
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