Continue from the last volume : Jatice, along with Luna, Chase and captured Maria, go to the underground ritual site, where he started a ritual to summon “Innocent Darkness” using Maria and “The Forbidden 13th Song”, a song in angelic language that Luna was taught but she doesn’t know it’s purpose since it doesn’t do anything (except activating this summoning ritual).
This reveals another conspiracy hidden in Rokudenashi’s world, Rezalia Kingdom is an extreme monotheistic kingdom that worships a conceptual god, which is a totally different entity from “the actual gods” that comprise a variety of extraterrestrial/extradimensional beings that physically exists. These “actual gods” are the beings that got featured in the history of ancient magical civilization, known for affiliating themselves with the “demon king”. Rezalia is also a kingdom that executed Roland, a person who wrote “The Mage of Megalius” fairytale, due to his book raising possibilities that these actual gods exist. So it’s ridiculous and irony for Rezalia, of any kingdom, to secretly own a knowledge to summon beings that will reject and debunk the very existence of their god and ultimately destroy the foundation of their religious belief (“Innocent Darkness” are spawns/minions of one of the “actual gods”).
After the ritual started Jatice then frees Chase and tells both him and Luna that they are free now and that they should run away immediately. Chase instinctively feels that Jatice was right and tried to persuade Luna to run away but Luna, overcome by her bottled anger from getting used by Jatice all this time, order Chase to attack Jatice together with her.
However three of them are interrupted by the sudden appearance Ferodo Berif (again, I don’t know how to spell this guy’s name in English), the young puppeteer who made cameo in Vol.12 & 16 and “The Great Prophet”, true leader of Research of Divine Wisdom, along with Pope Fresnel (look at the summary of Vol.16 to know who he is), real name Pauwell Fune, Albert’s target of revenge, self-proclaimed the strongest and oldest demon summoner and also the no.2 of RODW. Pope Fresnel revealed that he orchestrated the whole event that lead to the creation of Luna as an artificial angel and was the one who taught her “The Forbidden 13th Song” in order to use her for this summoning ritual for himself. He then proceeded to seemingly kill Chase (RIP) and heavily injure Luna. The two big bosses of RODW then turn their attention towards Jatice and question his motive of usurping their summoning ritual, stating that Jatice should’ve fully known that doing so will prompt both of them to directly come to finish him off and that he has absolutely zero chance of getting away alive against two of them.
Jatice then laughs maniacally and tells them that that’s exactly what he wanted : Jatice has been live broadcasting this interaction to the whole Milano and now all important figures from Alzano, Rezalia, and other representatives from other kingdoms that came to witness the peace treaty will know the true identity and motive of the most important members from RODW, essentially exposing them to the world. The most problematic part for any country of dealing with RODW until this very moment has been the identity of it’s leader, whose existence has been doubt on the level of “Is he actually exist?”.
Per Jatice’s statement, if RODW’s elusiveness continues to exist they’ll be free to continue their plan without worry and the world will be doomed before anyone knows what to do. But thanks to Jatice’s grand scheme, now the world who are their true enemies. TGP then gets pissed off and promptly sends Jatice to an alternate dimension using a spell similar to the one Rumia’s used in Vol.10 in her fight against a demon general. However, as Jatice was falling towards the other dimension, he simply keeps laughing at both of them and mocks them for “underestimating humans way too much”, the very reason that leads them into this situation where RODW’s victory is not anymore guaranteed.
After Jatice was sent to the shadow realm, Pauwell and TGP then discussed what changes are needed to be made on their initial plan. Pauwell displays concerns that with this Queen Alicia would be able to rally every nation to stand against RODW and this would render one of the main objectives : To allow a massive bloodshed to happen on the land of Alzano, moot. They state that this summoning ritual once started there will be no more turning back on their plan so RODW must find a way to force their enemies to use the land of Alzano (Milano is also counted as Alzano’s ground) as the ground for the final showdown, which will happen on the next month, the time when the summoning ritual will be completed. However TGP is certain that they will be able to force their enemies to fight on Alzano’s ground since he’s sure that Duke Azel Le Ignite will make his move and thus indirectly help RODW by buying them some precious time.
TGP then proceeds to focus on usurping the controlling right of the ritual & completing it and Pauwell then goes on to make sure that Duke Ignite will buy them enough time. With the ritual started incomplete “Innocent Darkness” begins to spawn and attack people on the city. Luckily Alzano’s 5000-men army lead by Lidia Ignite was mobilized by Duke Azel beforehand and suppress the damage to minimum. Immediately afterward Queen Alicia holds an emergency meeting and quickly makes the other nations to agree on the alliance with her as a leader.
Seeing this, Duke Azel becomes uneasy since if this goes on Alicia’s power and fame will be forever cemented and his plan to become the nation’s, and the world’s hero will fail. So he decides to hasten his plan and initiates his Coup De Grace attempt right away, using his ability to brainwash 5000-men army to quickly raid and capture important figures residing in Milano and uses them as hostages to prevent other nations from intervening. Simultaneously, he also tries to capture Alicia and plans to put all the blame on her and makes himself a hero who rescues everyone.
(I omitted a lot of details and interactions on this part onwards since it’s better to read all of Eve’s stories and backstory (include those in Memory Record Vol.6) first.)
The initial surprise attack nearly succeeded but they failed to capture the queen thanks to Eve’s holding on for so long that Rumia, Re=L and Sistine managed to come and rescue them in time. Albert, Christoph and Bernard were also trying to come to the rescue but intercepted by Pauwell, who proceeded to easily defeat them before retreating. Heavily injured, they became unable to join and were forced to retreat to recover from their wounds. The queen and her army, which got reduced to 150 men, half of their initial manpower, then retreated to a pocket dimension created by Rumia’s power to recover and rethink their strategy. The pocket dimension can only last for around a week and during this time the army will try their best to recover from their wounds with the help of Alzano students.
After many discussions and arguments, Eve proposed a daring strategy to turn the table from their massive gap in manpower (150 vs 5,000) : They will divide their force into 2 units, one will be comprised with elites that have the power to breakthrough and has the potential to get away from Milano, and the other one will turtle themselves within the hotel ground (the location of the pocket dimension). Queen Alicia will then show herself at the hotel ground, forcing the enemy to choose either one of these options : 1. Raid the hotel 2. Ignore the hotel’s unit and use all forces to pincer on the breakthrough unit and 3. Divide their force equally and try to suppress both units.
Eve is certain that Duke Azel will choose the 3rd option since he’s a coward who won’t take a risk, and this will decrease the number disadvantage for Alicia’s side. She also stated that while 150 vs 5,000 seems hopeless at the first glance, Duke Azel actually can’t use all of his 5000 men since he must also distribute majority of those 5,000 to keep containing the “Innocent Darkness” and to prevent the other nations’ armies from the outside from intefering. Then, after Duke Azel seeing that his initial army won’t suffice he will be forced to come to the frontline himself and this will be the chance for Alicia’s side to turn the table by defeating Duke Azel and Lidia to immediately end the war (remember that those 5000 men turned on their queen thanks to Duke Azel’s brainwashing).
Meanwhile, Elsa who’s currently on a reconnaissance outside receiving some messages , addressing Glenn and Eve, from Ilya…
At the final day, just before the pocket dimension gets forcefully canceled out, Alicia’s force initiates their plan and it carries out as expected. After that they finally managed to isolate Duke Azel and Lidia out and Glenn then proceeded to 1vs1 Azel while Eve handled Lidia. After some scuffles Duke Azel used a “red key” upon himself and turning into a demon general whose body is made up entirely of fire, thus renders him invincible to most attacks. Glenn struggles but managed to hold his ground long enough for Eve to come to his rescue after defeating Lidia and regaining her magical ability on her left arm. She uses “The Seventh Garden”’s (first explained in Vol.7) ability to completely control fire to immobilize Duke Azel, exploiting the fact that his body is now entirely made of fire, and with this Glenn finally managed to close his distance and finish Azel off with his sure-kill “Penetrator”(first explained in Vol.10).
The queen then regained her army after they were freed from Azel’s brainwashing and tried to proceed on with the preparation for the final showdown with RODW. But suddenly a shocking report arrived “The capital (of Alzano) has fallen !” (END OF THE VOLUME)