Chapter 68

Twenty-nine years after Himmel's death, the group passes through the Nachricht Region as the air grows colder, signaling that the volcanic country is behind them and the plateau's border lies ahead. After restocking, with Frieren showing off a suitcase that swallows far more than its size suggests, Fern's standing as a first-class mage waves them quickly through the guarded checkpoint. Stark is unimpressed by how ordinary the supposedly deadly highlands look, right up until reptilian creatures encircle them.

A blur of encounters follows, with the trio facing a towering golem, fleeing a serpentine beast, and escaping a winged horror over three sleepless days. At last a village appears in the night, to Fern's relief and Stark's certainty that he is doomed.

A local lends them an empty cabin and asks a favor in return, naming a powerful monster up the road that routed the Chivalric Order and scared off merchants. Frieren accepts, since the party is bound that way regardless. When Stark wonders why the villagers do not simply move south to safety, the man answers that this perilous ground is where his family was born and raised, filled with their memories, and asks how anyone could abandon their home. The conviction strikes Stark deeply and draws a faint smile from Frieren.

Come morning they confront the sword-bearing beast blocking the road. Stark pins it long enough for Fern and Frieren to unleash Zoltraak, reducing it to dust. Frieren warns that countless equally fierce monsters await deeper in the plateau, and a demoralized Stark wonders aloud whether a sea route would have been wiser.

A memory answers him. After the old Hero Party once felled a shockingly strong creature, Frieren herself had suggested they should have sailed, only for Himmel to declare that the danger was the whole point, because so many people called the plateau home and he had become a hero to guard others' lands as well as his own. Frieren passes that lesson to Stark, who concedes with a smile while Fern resolves to do their best, though his knees buckle from exhaustion and she calls him pathetic. Stoltz appears on the cover, and the suitcase's deceptive capacity is noted.