Episode 17

With word placing Warrior Gorilla in the eastern trade city of Tür, Sein faces a fork in the road. A blizzard stretching nearly a month stalls his choice, which the party waits out in a village while Frieren combs a shifty old man's shop for legendary spells, treasuring such finds as removers of mold and stubborn grease. Once more Sein settles a squabble between Fern and Stark over cold hands, urging each to speak honestly. Over drinks, he asks why Frieren ever invited him along; she confesses she dislikes those who echo her own past reluctance and, like Himmel before her, had hoped to hand him a reason to set out. A flashback returns to Himmel extending his hand to recruit her, the gesture that first lent her courage. When the storm lifts, Sein resolves to follow his friend's trail rather than nurse regrets, and the group parts from him easily at the gorge bridge, trusting that a grown man will manage.

Pressing on alone, Frieren, Fern, and Stark reach the Offen Mountain Range, and there Fern wakes feverish. Frieren digs out herb notes Sein left behind and a Holy Scripture she had been using as a pot stand, then casts a simple Goddess spell to confirm an everyday cold. The cure calls for mushrooms from an Icicle Cherry Blossom tree she once visited with the Hero Party. A cabin owner shelters the sick girl while Frieren and Stark climb after the ingredient, and Frieren keeps holding Fern's hand, a habit that soothed the child years ago, until Fern bristles at the coddling. Stark argues that anyone, young or not, welcomes comfort, and Frieren remembers Himmel holding her hand through a fever, a gesture learned from his late mother. She gathers the mushroom, brews the medicine, and a mended Fern lets herself smile at the held hand before they set off for Äußerst.

After a blizzard drags out their stay, Sein chooses to chase Gorilla toward Tür and splits from the group at the gorge bridge. Frieren admits she invited him because he mirrored her own reluctant past, echoing the way Himmel once handed her a reason to travel.

In the Offen Mountain Range, Fern comes down with a fever, which Frieren diagnoses using a Holy Scripture and Sein's herb notes. She and Stark fetch mushrooms from an Icicle Cherry Blossom tree, and Frieren eases the recovering girl by holding her hand as she did when Fern was small.

This installment kicks off the season's second cour and brings in its second opening theme. Through the snowbound days, all four are seen praying before meals, a callback to the habit they took up with Kraft. Where the manga simply has Sein affirm he enjoyed the journey, the anime sends him out to smoke and look back across his whole life.

The latter half moves the camp from a forest into a cave. On screen the woman sheltering Fern keeps a bigger homestead and is shown tending livestock, with Stark milking cows rather than splitting wood, and her cabin interior was dressed with nods to worship of the Goddess, worked out alongside the manga's authors.