Chapter 43

Laufen slips away with the stolen Stille just as Frieren picks up her trail. High inside the barrier, the first trial's overseer Genau shares tea with Sense, who will run the second exam. He shrugs off her charge that his choice of undetectable quarry dooms promising candidates, insisting the dead were never promising and that luck is simply one facet of a mage's strength. He expects roughly a third of the field to survive and rates Denken a near-certain pass.

Below, Denken and Richter confront the Second Party. Denken knows at a glance that he stands before Frieren of the legendary band that felled the Demon King, and he hungers to test himself against her. Richter, baffled that his partner ignores the coveted privilege, announces he will simply murder Kanne or Lawine to disqualify the team, but Denken forbids it and tells him to merely put the pair to sleep. Richter explains the privilege for Frieren's benefit: Serie, the near-omnipotent founder of the magic association, gifts any first-class mage a single spell of their choosing, a temptation he says warps such mages into monsters.

Richter then walls Frieren off from her companions with an earth-shaping spell, leaving her alone with Denken. The old mage dismisses the privilege entirely, declaring that chasing magic for its own sake is the deepest joy there is. His words drag Frieren back to a meeting with Serie, who once offered her any spell she desired. Frieren refused, giving the very same reason, prompting Serie to dismiss her as unambitious. Flamme countered that warmongers could never topple the Demon King, and named her pupil a mage built for an age of peace, destined to open that path. Returning to the present, Frieren tells Denken his answer is exactly how a mage ought to think.

Laufen gets clear of the grounds with the Stille. Genau and Sense survey the field and trade views on what makes a worthy mage. Richter raises a plateau across the Grobe Basin to split the Second and Thirteenth Parties, pairing Frieren against Denken and leaving Kanne and Lawine to face him. The chapter also marks the first appearance of Serie, seen in Frieren's recollection.

Privilege, written as Tokken, first appeared on March 24, 2021 and is the longest entry in this stretch at twenty-one pages, collected in volume five. Part of the opening stage of the First-Class Mage Exam Arc, its scenes were spread across the twentieth and twenty-first anime episodes. Notably, Richter casts without any staff in hand.