Chapter 64

Twenty-nine years on from Himmel's passing, the trio arrives in the holdings of Graf Dach. Stark is puzzled when Frieren, normally eager to linger in a big town, announces they will resupply and move on at once. A butler intercepts them with the Graf's dinner invitation, pressed as thanks for the old Hero Party that once rescued the domain. Over the meal the noble cuts to business, asking Frieren to recover a family sword carried off by a demon. She accepts on the condition that she receive a spellbook, a bargain the Graf happily strikes.

On the road, an irritated Frieren explains that this line of lords has always been overbearing. During her original journey the band was threatened with prison if they failed to return the same weapon, which they finally located atop the Schwer Mountains. The blade keeps drawing demons because a renowned demon once owned it. She takes the task anyway, reasoning that turning it down would betray everything Himmel stood for.

After days of travel the group reaches a village left in rubble, where a hooded woman claims to be a wandering priest mourning the dead. She guides them to a row of graves and invites them to pray, but Frieren blasts open one of the mounds to reveal it holds no body. The absence of corpses gives the impostor away as the very demon they hunt, who throws off the cloak and draws a sword. It argues that consuming the villagers was simply survival, and Frieren counters that no demon truly needs human flesh. The fight ends almost instantly when she erases the creature with Zoltraak.

A recollection follows of the windswept Schwer summit, where the Hero Party once confronted the earlier sword thief. Frieren grumbled about the cold and the wretched assignment, yet Himmel framed it as a chance to slay a demon and spare many lives, his reason for never turning his back on anyone in trouble. Heiter teased that the truth was simpler, that Himmel just relished a difficult job, and the Hero did not argue.

The party prays at the burial site before returning the recovered weapon to a grateful Graf Dach. As they leave town, Stark asks what the promised grimoire actually teaches, and Frieren reveals it holds a spell that turns red apples green, which he dismisses as useless. The chapter marks the debut of Graf Dach and his butler, and the sword's long history of theft is established through a flashback to the great-grandfather's generation.