Chapter 48

The exam's second trial unfolds inside the Ruins of the King's Tomb, which Frieren's group now enters, and Sense lays out a single rule: touch the deepest chamber before dawn or fail. Each candidate receives a bottled golem that can spirit them to safety, though breaking it also ends their attempt. When Blei protests that no one has ever charted the tomb, let alone walked out of it, Sense answers that conquering the impossible is exactly what a first-class mage must do. She declares that she will tag along as a witness, then starts the exam.

Richter spots several entrances and relays it to Denken, who recognizes it as a leftover from the Unified Dynasty era, riddled with paths that all funnel toward the core. He floats the idea of cooperating, but Ton, wary of being used as a sacrificial pawn, strikes out alone, and Wirbel keeps to his own trio. Frieren leads Fern inside along the safest route, trailed by Sense, who has decided their party is the surest bet. Frieren picks out a trap tile and urges careful mapping, crediting her dungeon sense to Himmel's old obsession with them.

A memory surfaces of the hero insisting they comb every corner of a dungeon before descending, dreaming aloud of slaying monsters, finding treasure, and one day realizing they had saved the world. Back in the present, the final five, Denken, Methode, Richter, Länge, and Laufen, at last head in together. Frieren and Fern come upon a chest, and though Fern's appraisal spell Mikheit flags it as a mimic, Frieren trusts the lone percent of doubt and opens it anyway. A mimic clamps down on her, and as she wails that it is dark and frightening, Fern hauls at her while a worried Sense wonders if following them was a mistake.

Sense reveals the rules of the second trial and gives every candidate a bottled golem as a one-time escape. The examinees split off solo or in groups before heading into the tomb. Frieren guides Fern and Sense along a safe path, recalling Himmel's love of dungeons, and the chapter ends with a mimic devouring her.

The Ruins of the King's Tomb, or Reiraku no ōbo, came out on April 28, 2021 and opens volume six across eighteen pages. It begins the second stage of the First-Class Mage Exam Arc and adapts into the anime's twenty-third episode. The chapter introduces the appraisal spell Mikheit, which reads the contents of a chest with ninety-nine percent accuracy.