Chapter 34: The Statues of Heroes

Traveling the Rohr Road, Sein finally explains his journey: he means to find a childhood friend who set out a decade earlier, a man known only as Warrior Gorilla. The absurd nickname, he notes, is exactly why so many witnesses recall him, and his own boyhood label was Priest Goatee. After crossing a bridge that spans a vast gorge, the party stops in a fork-side town where Sein hopes to gather leads.

A villager points him toward a cantankerous old woman who once knew Gorilla, but she refuses to share anything until the group runs a string of errands. Frieren recognizes the routine from her own hero days and urges patience, hoping to thaw the woman's guarded heart, though their efforts leave her as cold as ever.

The final task is polishing a stone monument to long-lost Great Heroes whose names history no longer remembers. The carved figures bear an uncanny resemblance to Sein and Gorilla, and Frieren recognizes the warrior beside the Sein lookalike as Kraft. Learning that one statue depicts Kraft, Sein drifts into a memory of standing before the same monument with Heiter and his friend in their youth.

In that recollection, Gorilla vowed to grow into a legend no one could forget, the equal of Himmel himself, and took on his outlandish nickname so his name would endure, while Heiter, insisting every hero is forgotten in time, christened the young priest Goatee in turn. Back in the present, the old woman softens enough to reveal Gorilla often spoke fondly of Sein and dreamed they would etch their names into history together.

The woman's warmth toward Gorilla shows he managed to win her over much as Himmel once could, a knack the awkward present-day party plainly lacks. Frieren remarks that a bronze statue could have been cleaned with the de-rusting magic she and Fern acquired earlier in their travels, but the stone left them stuck scrubbing by hand.

Her parting tip sends them in an awkward direction: Gorilla headed for Tür, a trade town in the heart of the Northern Lands and the opposite way from Äußerst, leaving Sein torn over which path to take.