Chapter 103: Time for Retribution

With Denken's condensed Zoltraak landing and the old mage collapsing from the strain, Macht calls the duel a tie and withdraws to regroup, aware that Frieren is still alive. He staggers through the alleys of Weise, smearing blood along the walls and waving off the frightened citizens who ask what has befallen him. Then he comes upon Solitär's body, and a conversation from hours earlier returns to him.

After the Golden Land's great barrier had fallen, Solitär had offered to help him despite rejecting his dream of coexistence. She explained that she hoped to change his mind, having watched the Demon King chase that same ideal and bring her friends to ruin and her race to the brink of extinction. When Macht noted she could simply kill him, she confessed she had come to do exactly that but was too afraid to risk herself for demonkind. Her parting jab stung: however strangely he reasoned, he remained a demon like the rest of them.

The memory shames him. The Stone Bracelet of Servitude had led him to believe he would welcome death so long as he first felt the emotions he chased, yet here he is, still clutching at survival and fleeing. He stops, smiles at the absurdity of fleeing nowhere, and walks instead toward Glück, the man he had earlier turned to stone. Kneeling before him, the two share a smoke while Macht admits he never managed to grasp a single one of the feelings he sought.

Glück apologizes for failing to keep his vow to follow Macht into hell until that search succeeded. When the battered Denken stumbles into view, Macht threatens to take Glück hostage, but Glück simply calls him beyond saving and steps aside, asking Denken to end his suffering. Denken's spell scatters Macht into dust, and as the guards arrive, Glück hails Denken as the savior of Weise. Over the demon's fading mana he names Macht a friend and says he treasured their time together. Only the Stone Bracelet remains.

Macht's death resolves the central question of his character. His final, involuntary flight proves Solitär right that no amount of unusual thinking lifted him above a demon's instinct for self-preservation. The brief truce with Denken ends not in combat but in a mercy killing that Glück himself requests.

Glück's farewell reframes the whole relationship between the two. Rather than a captor and his hostage, he speaks of Macht as a genuine friend whose company he valued, leaving the Stone Bracelet of Servitude behind as the only trace of the demon who wore it.

The chapter spans eighteen pages within the Golden Land arc and was first published in late 2022 before its collection in the eleventh volume. The Stone Bracelet of Servitude, the artifact tied to Macht's pursuit of human emotion, persists after his body dissolves into mana particles.