Suddenly… lore. But it’s confusing lore.

— Starting from the top, the third event is about to start. All season long, I’ve been waiting to see Kaede go up against top players. I am interested to see how her build will work against these so-called badasses. They even teased this at the end of last week’s episode! But what do we get for the third event? We get to kill cows… for cowbells.

— And you get to look ridiculous while doing it.

— Oh lord, those hammers.

— So when the event starts, everyone goes their separate ways. The specialists like Kaede and the STR sisters soon realize that their lack of agility is a detriment. Without any speed, they can’t cover as much ground and thus gather as much cowbells. As you can see her, the two sisters can barely keep up with the “cow.” You’d think this would be a wake-up call or something for the girls. Would it really hurt to assign five or ten points to agility? But no, this idea is never brought up.

— Eventually, Kaede takes a tumble and finds this oh-so-mysterious machine cog. See, there’s no real structure to this show’s plot. Kaede never actually tries to do anything. Things just happen to her. She simply stumbles into one lucky event after another. Our heroine’s life is one long series of happy accidents.

— Speaking of happy accidents, Kaede rediscovers the dungeon that she didn’t fully explore in last week’s episode. And within the dungeon, she gets to fight a special boss. And when someone eats you, you just eat them back! And bam, new skill acquired!

— Elsewhere, we see how the top guilds are getting their cowbells. They’re using pretty common MMO tactics, actually. In FFXI, sacpulling was pretty popular. Let’s say you have a big, bad boss surrounded by a ton of trash mobs. You only want to kill the big, bad boss. So what do you do? You let the puller (usually a thief) grab all of the enemies’ attention. As he runs by, the main tank will grab the big, bad boss while the rest of the mobs continue to follow the puller. Thief works best for this thanks to a combination of two abilities: 1) Flee and 2) Perfect Dodge. The former lets the thief run super fast, and the latter allows the thief to avoid all incoming physical damage. The thief will race to somewhere far away from the group and die. The group kills the boss and profit. It sucks for the thief, but that’s what you gotta do sometimes…

— Man, this healer sure jacked up the boob slider in the character creation screen.

— The peanut gallery continues to fret over Kaede… even though they’re in charge of the game. Computer programs only do what you tell them to do. They’re not magic. Kaede can only do what is built into the game. But who knows? Maybe we’ll get some ridiculous plot twist like how this game is (omygosh) more than just a game. Y’know, like how it is with every dumbass MMO anime out there.

— The event ends with Kaede and friends finishing third. So not at the top, but not too shabby. We still haven’t gotten any juicy PvP action yet. It’s kinda lame.

— But already, we’re moving on. After all, Kaede has a new skill to show off to her buddies. Thanks to killing that goatman boss, she can now summon a dark beast of some sort. Not good enough? How ’bout becoming one? Yeah, that’s right. She’s literally goes inside the kaiju-looking thing. She just became an angel last episode, and we didn’t even see her use it in actual combat. But sure, why not throw in yet another transformation.

— Once again, it’s up to Kuromu to sum things up for us.

— Thanks to defeating the giant tree, the group can now ascend to the third level, which is some machine-dominated city.

— Everyone splits up again, and our heroine bumps into an old man who gives her one long spiel about… the machine creator, the second generation, machines with no parts inside them, blah blah blah. Finally, we get some lore, but it’s not coherent lore.

— So after a bit more exploration, Kaede stumbles across yet another boss. I’m tellin’ ya… she just finds this stuff randomly. She’s the luckiest damn MMO player in the world.

— And wouldja look at that! The random ass machine cog that she found in a forest on an entirely different level — and this forest has no relation whatsoever to the machine city — is the exact key item that our heroine needs to activate the boss encounter! Amazing.

— Kaede beats the first form by targeting the glowy bits. If you ever play games, just remember to do the same thing. And as a result… wait for it… Kaede gets yet another transformation.

— C’mon… c’moooooooon, what is this?

— We get one poorly animated fight then the episode ends. Sigh.

— At least Syrup the turtle is cute.