Chapter 12: The Northern Checkpoint

Some twenty-eight years on from Himmel's death, Frieren travels with Fern and Stark into Waal, a fortified town of the Central Lands perched beside the Riegel Canyon. The guard captain turns them away, since the warded boundary into the Northern Lands stays sealed while monster activity spikes, with no telling when it might lift. Frieren shrugs off the delay, treating the forced pause as a rare chance to study magic at her leisure.

Fern grows uneasy after hearing the closure could last two years. Over a tavern's Jumbo Berry Special, Stark turns nostalgic about splitting the treat with Eisen in his youth and grumbles that it looks smaller than he recalls. Reassured he has no wish to stay, Fern joins him to hunt for another route past the boundary, but flying over is hopeless, since the ward climbs skyward to block aerial monsters, and the Merchant's Guild confirms all trade is frozen. Smugglers and the thieves' guild offer nothing either.

Pressed on his restlessness, Stark reveals his own time is running short. Eisen once carried him to this town, showed him the open northern horizon, and filled his ears with the Hero Party's exploits; now Stark wants to gather stories from this rough yet joyful road to repay his master. Rescue comes when the guard captain and Waal's castellan seek Frieren out, apologize, and wave the party through, thankful for her past service and mindful of the troubled north.

The trek north resumes as the trio crosses the barrier amid a grand send-off. Fern wonders why simply naming Frieren had not worked from the start, and Frieren admits she doubted it would. The spectacle moves Stark, who recalls that Eisen had set out for the north under the same kind of celebration, and Frieren too remembers the cheering crowds that once saw the Hero Party off northward.

The Jumbo Berry Special genuinely had grown smaller over the years, though the barkeeper dismisses Stark's suspicion by remarking on time's cruelty. The chapter draws a visible divide between Waal's wealthy and its poor. Stark boasts that he excels at bluffing, which Fern attributes to his thuggish face. Guilds enter the story for the first time here, and the party's festive exit deliberately echoes the parade that once saw the Hero Party off from the same town.