In the first half of the episode, our trio takes a pit stop in a city in order to help old man Fass fulfill a lifelong dream. For two hundred years, the dwarf has been on a quest to locate the Boshaft, an alcohol that is legendary for its supposedly exquisite taste. It has become an obsession; this alcohol is his white whale. As it turns out, Boshaft is terrible. It’s not exquisite. It’s not divine. It is cheap swill that they produced and served en masse for big events like coronations. So where and how did the alcohol even get its legendary reputation? Apparently, from a particularly prankish elf.

Fern is carefully choosing her outfit and making sure her bangs are in tip-top shape, ’cause that’s what you do when you prepare for dates. You want to look your best. You want the person you’re dating to find you attractive. But that leads to a natural follow-up question: does Stark even care how she looks? I’m not asking whether or not he finds Fern attractive, because in order for him to answer that question, he needs to know that it exists in the first place! Fern’s probably thinking, “I hope he thinks I look cute in this dress.” Meanwhile, Stark looks slightly concerned as he waits for Fern to arrive for their date. He’s probably dreading the fallout if the date is unsuccessful.

Frieren’s been teasing an onsen since the first episode of the new season, but her sense of time is so different from ours. Her “[it] used to be here” could mean anything. Girl, be specific. Rather than “Where’s the village?” how ’bout we start with “When’s the last time you’ve been to the village?” Ten years ago? Twenty years ago? Well, in this specific case, only “over thirty years ago.” But that still means the village is long gone by human standards. But for some odd reason, Stark remembers hearing a thing or two about the legendary hidden hot spring deep within the mountains, so… all hope is not lost? I dunno, I don’t really care about hot springs. I don’t really care about seeing these characters get naked and jump into one either.

In the first half of the episode, Frieren and company are hired to once again polish a hero’s statue. Naturally, we assume that it’s another statue of Himmel. After all, they did go on a 10-year journey, and Himmel saved a whole lot of people. It just makes sense. At the same time, however, I can’t help but wonder if they ever failed, and if they did, how often? That’s probably not the sort of thing Frieren wants to remember, but failures due tend to feel more… hm, vibrant in our memories? Maybe that’s not the right way to phrase it. Still, it might be a nice change of pace to see that the party doesn’t always succeed. So far, most of their “failures” have had a positive spin. For instance, them running away from danger in last week’s episode. Or when Himmel failed to pull out the hero’s sword. The only time I feel like they’ve truly failed was when they allowed that demon child to survive a little longer than necessary and thus take an extra life.

Frieren finds a magic-nullifying stone that is supposedly worth a fortune. As you can imagine, something like that would render her and Fern rather helpless. As a result, Fern wants them to get rid of stone as soon as possible. My first thought is, Isn’t that a bit drastic? I mean, they do have a warrior capable of slaying a dragon. Why not rely on Stark to protect them until they can properly sell it? But Frieren turns the crystal into a light show before quickly following Fern’s advice. Unfortunately, they can’t avoid the crystals that easily, because the party soon stumbles upon an entire cave network full of said magic-nullifying crystals. It’s practically a gold mine. And also, the women have no choice but to rely on Stark now.