Chapter 85: Malice

The chapter plays out as a recovered memory that Denken and Frieren examine together. It opens moments after Lernen's opening shot lands near Macht, with the two trading blows in the air while Edel works from a safe distance to mend the damaged Stone Bracelet of Servitude. Lernen offers to buy whatever time she needs, baiting the demon into a drawn out exchange of spells.

Macht quickly senses that the mage is holding back, aiming to stall rather than kill, and demands to know his real purpose. He shrugs off the effort to restore the bracelet as pointless, since Edel confirms the device already works as intended. When Lernen marvels that an entire city could be gilded without a shred of ill intent, Macht replies that demons carry no notion of malice and cannot feel it at all. Edel adds that deceiving and slaughtering people comes to their kind by instinct, needing no emotional motive.

Claiming he only came to gather information, Lernen moves to pull back and uncorks a glass bottle that holds a golem. Macht refuses to permit the retreat, cleaving through the construct and wounding him. Edel then slips in from his blind side, touches him, and reads his memories before collapsing from the strain, caught by the reforming golem. Lernen praises her and unleashes a far larger golem, which Macht turns to gold mid swing, only to find both mages gone when the dust clears.

The prolonged fight pitting Lernen and Edel against Macht reaches its end. Edel succeeds in the difficult feat of extracting the demon's memories, and in the present day Denken and Frieren wrap up their first pass through that recovered fragment. Frieren observes that prying into a demon's mind is grueling work, since their mental makeup differs sharply from a human's. With evening drawing near, Denken steps away to attend a private matter, disclosing that he has been paying regular visits to Macht to talk with him.

Released on March 9, 2022, the chapter carries the title Malice and belongs to the ninth collected volume within The Golden Land arc. Its events take place inside Weise, the city Macht transmuted into gold. Frieren credits Edel as a remarkably gifted mental magic practitioner, explaining that a demon's alien mental structure makes sifting through its recollections both arduous and painful.