Scarlet looks pretty gleeful as she readies a haymaker for her dear prince. I suppose she’s been waiting for a good opportunity to punish him. At the same time, however, aren’t her words here tantamount to a confession? What then follows sounds like a series of irrational accusations, but in reality, Scarlet is relishing the opportunity to… well, “flirt” with her prince. For instance, she can’t help but wonder if Julius allowed himself to be charmed. Like a stereotypical jealous lover, Scarlet then asks if Julius prefers women like Terenezza. But it’s “flirting” nonetheless, because some people like that sort of thing. They love it when their partner gets jealous over them. The logic here is that it shows they care. Not my jam, personally. If you deliberately try to make me jealous, I’ll just walk away. Nevertheless, it seems like Scarlet can only be honest about her feelings on the battlefield.

For better or worse, the early part of this episode is very video game-like. The party descends into the deep, dark dungeon full of traps. Ooh, what scary encounters might they face! There’s even a falling boulder that Scarlet has to fist out of the way. As you might have expected, our heroine makes short work of everyone and everything in her path. Eventually, the party makes its way to a large room full of Palmian adherents, so it’s time for a multi-stage boss fight.

When we last left off, we were told that we have an emergency on our hands: the negotiations with Falconia can’t proceed as planned. Well, it turns out the negotiations are in shambles because our newfound allies, the dragoons of Vankish, are a bunch of combat-thirsty battlemongers. As a result, Nanaka and Dios can’t get close to the elves hiding out in a nearby forest. They of course run to Scarlet for help. She then passes the information along to Alflame, hoping that he can rein his men in. Instead, he turns his body into a living nuke and genocides a bunch of mobs. Sure, it gets the job done, but this is why he’s always going to lose to Julius when it comes to winning Scarlet’s heart. At least the prince can serve as a counterbalance to our heroine. If she goes with the meathead instead, then it’s just too much of the same thing. Their kids would also be combat-thirsty battlemongers.

When we last left off… um, well, Scarlet sums it up pretty succinctly in the screenshot above. So what are we going to do now? We can’t exactly punch nations… unless… but first, the story insists on holding a strategy conference to discuss the state of the realm, and I’m already groaning internally. Uh-huh, we’re being invaded on multiple fronts, all hope is loss, yadda, yadda, yadda. Can we just cut straight to the heart of the matter already? This is when Julius introduces Alflame, that meat head from so many episodes ago, to the party. The prince of Vankish has a proposal for Julius and Pallistan, which quickly gets everyone else up in arms. Their distaste, especially Scarlet’s, is understandable, but considering Pallistan’s current predicament, at least hear the meat head out before outright rejecting the proposal. But much to her brother’s chagrin, Scarlet tends to punch first and ask questions later.

We kick things off with a glimpse into Diana’s past when she was only known as Sanya, a plain ol’ village girl from the country. We even get to see the exact moment she got her saintly powers. But why did the goddess pick her of all people? Was Diana an exceptional child? All we get to see is that she had a fight with her childhood friend Mary. Beyond that, there’s too little to say whether or not Diana was even a good or bad child. If the goddess operates on meritocracy, we sure as hell ain’t seeing it. And maybe this is a sign of things to come. Maybe we’ll get to see just how human Diana really is, i.e. flawed. I mean, she has a crush on Leo, so that’s already a major flaw. I kid, I kid… maybe. But more importantly, we’ll get to see that the motivations of gods and goddesses are often quite inscrutable.