Chapter 18

Carried to safety and mended by a priest, Graf Granat pardons Fern and Stark for striking at Lügner, then grasps that the elf at their side is Frieren of the Hero Party, to whom his family has owed a debt since her side turned back Aura's forces generations earlier. Out on a barren field beyond the walls, Frieren meets Aura amid her host of animated armor, the two trading greetings after eighty years apart. Frieren asks her to stay clear of the town, and Aura answers with a strike she slips aside from with ease.

Granat lays out the root of Aura's dominance: the Scales of Obedience, which weigh her soul against an opponent's and bind the lesser will to her command for as long as she pleases, even past death. Five centuries among the Seven Sages of Destruction have never seen her lose such a contest, though a foe of greater power would tip the balance against her. Frieren, meanwhile, undoes the undead with negation magic rather than raw force, holding back because Himmel once scolded her for it. When Aura sneers that the dead hero can no longer object, the jab strikes a nerve, and Frieren resolves to cut her down without a shred of mercy.

Aura's treatment of those who resisted her scales took the form of beheading, the source of her grim epithet. Several of the animated suits are ones Frieren knows, and one of them bears a necklace marked with the Granat crest. The chapter, titled Fushi no gunzei, was adapted in the ninth anime episode.