Chapter 3

Twenty-six years after the hero's passing, Frieren and Fern travel the Turk Region of the Central Lands, taking small jobs that pay in peculiar spells: warming tea, souring grapes, stripping rust from bronze. A village herbalist hires them to scrub down a neglected statue of Himmel, who once defended the place from a monster. Once it gleams again, she muses about ringing it with flowers, and Frieren settles on blue-moon weed, a bloom native to Himmel's hometown that she has never actually seen.

The herbalist explains that the flower vanished from the region generations ago. Frieren decides to hunt for a living specimen so she can learn the magic to grow it. Half a year of searching turns up nothing, and Fern grows restless, privately telling the herbalist that Frieren is squandering her gifts chasing a ghost. The old woman hands the girl a pouch of seeds from a kindred species and urges her to speak honestly with her teacher.

Fern relays her worry, and Frieren agrees to give up soon. Then a seed rat snatches the pouch and bolts, leading the pair to an abandoned watchtower swarming with the creatures. Spotting a stray petal, Frieren recalls that the rats hoard food and forget their caches. She flies to the summit and discovers a dense crop of blue-moon weed waiting there. Memories surface of Himmel crowning her with flowers and promising to show her the bloom one day. After analyzing a sample, Frieren plants the flowers around his statue and sets a woven crown of blue-moon weed on its head, mirroring his old gesture, before the two move on.

Frieren and Fern restore Himmel's village statue. Frieren commits to rediscovering blue-moon weed, long thought gone from the continent. A fleeing seed rat leads them to a watchtower where the flower grows in abundance. Frieren analyzes a specimen, reviving the species and acquiring the magic to make it bloom. She crowns the statue with the flowers, echoing a memory of Himmel.

The herbalist had been a young girl when Himmel rescued her village. His statue is cast in bronze, and according to Frieren he once spent eighteen hours choosing its pose. The seeds the old woman keeps come from a medicinal relative of blue-moon weed. Seed rats stash their food in scattered spots, which is why they so often lose track of it. Viz Media rendered the chapter title as Blue-Moon Weed rather than the earlier Blue Moonweed.