Score: B+

I’m kind of impressed at how much Diablo is lacking in terms of self-awareness. His entire world has quite literally changed from the times he spent playing Cross Reverie. Diablo absolutely had a harem here and probably shouldn’t be losing his head at seeing another person with one at this point. It isn’t like back in episode 1 when he lost it on that couple that came to challenge him in the game together. While he’s still uneasy and stumbles at times, he absolutely has a group around him that cares about him quite a bit. Beyond even that, Diablo has Rem and Shera who are actively battling competitors to their position in the pecking order XD.

Equipment-less runs are tough

It is kind of interesting how much easier this fight was compared to the fight against Batutta. This was a cakewalk by comparison. Diablo was never in any real danger and basically just ran over Varakness so fast that he didn’t even know what hit him. And this is happening while Varakness is actually at a higher level than Diablo! We’ve finally reached the point of Diablo’s level of 150 being surpassed by an opponent and it simply didn’t matter in the slightest.

Of course this is thanks to several factors. Diablo’s gear is well above anything this guy has. I’m not even sure that Varakness and his wives had any noteworthy pieces of gear. In a gaming sense Varakness was running around doing a challenge of fighting without equipping any good gear. While Diablo is just using the best rare gear he has. But it goes beyond just the gear or the levels. The degree of strategy involved is worlds apart. Batutta lured Diablo into a space where he couldn’t fight as freely as he liked. Then he made him hesitate and try to come up with a new strategy on the fly while Batutta knew exactly how he wanted to fight. Magic reflection couldn’t come into play against physical skills and Batutta’s pure experience let him pressure Diablo.

He’s definitely triggered

Varakness had no idea what or who he was up against until it was far too late. Even though he realized quickly enough that Diablo could use magic reflection it didn’t do him any good. Not attacking isn’t a good strategy to win with. Doesn’t stop Diablo from attacking after all. If I’ll give Varakness any credit in this episode it will be for actually giving a damn when all his wives died. It didn’t do him any good or keep any of them alive, but he did seem to care. If he had survived maybe he could have learned something about arrogantly making out with his wives on a battlefield instead of actually fighting. At least when Diablo gropes a girl during a fight it’s accidental!

Speaking of his allies, they did get some moments to shine here. It was only one short scene each and I think more episodes could have let them expand this fight a bit more. But it still got the point across that while they aren’t Diablo, the girls can jump into a fight as well. Rem’s new gear did a lot of good and it appears her summons will be more effective from here on out. It’s somewhat interesting that both Rem and Shera end up walking away from this situation with rings. Beyond the rings though it was nice to see Shera owning enemies and Rose absolutely demolishing anything that gets in her way. That army offering Rose no challenge wasn’t a surprise of course. Poor dragon last week didn’t stand a chance.

Overall it was a decent episode. The previous episode was probably better overall since there was some legitimate tension before Diablo saved the group. In this episode no one (outside of the regular human army) was ever in real danger. I did like seeing Horn stand up for herself against those people she used to adventure with and hide her gender from. But I kind of wish they had been set up earlier in the arc (and they probably were in the source material) so that the end of the episode as a bit stronger. It was still very much like Diablo to clearly explain that Horn didn’t have to go anywhere if she didn’t want to. He’s got plenty of traumas of his own and those do reflect how he supports those around him that are hurting from their own pasts. Let’s see where the next episode goes.