Chapter 87: Affection

From the keeper's hut, Denken lays out his long history with the demon. Macht had served the feudal lord for roughly eighty years, receiving the Stone Bracelet of Servitude only two decades into that span, yet the device never accounts for his gentleness, since he had obeyed Lord Glück without fail from the start. Frieren sidesteps Denken's question about whether she spotted a weakness during the meeting, admitting she has nothing she would call a real chance of winning. She instead offers to help comb through the demon's recollections, which reach back a full century and which Denken has not yet finished reading.

Inside the gilded mansion, Macht turns the conversation over in his mind. He judges Frieren's question a fine one and decides its answer will steer his pursuit of coexistence. Welcoming her to wander through his past, he silently invites her into a contest he frames as a battle for living alongside humankind.

His memory opens on a routine extermination ordered by the Demon King. A village priest, sensing that the demon knows neither malice nor guilt, takes pity on him before dying. The killing leaves Macht unsettled, aware that he grasps such words without ever feeling what they name. He can recognize fear, rage, grief, and bloodlust, but malice and guilt stay opaque to him, and for the first time he wants to understand people. Coming upon two orphaned children, he orders them to kill each other and vows to spare the winner. Watching them, he names the new feeling stirring in him affection, deciding that he has grown fond of humans.

Denken and Frieren agree to jointly analyze and share the trove of Macht's memories. Within those memories, the demon experiences his first stirring of curiosity about humanity after a priest pities him, and he later coins the word affection for the fondness he develops while forcing two children into a lethal duel.

Issued March 23, 2022, the chapter bears the title Affection and runs in volume nine of The Golden Land arc. It clarifies that Macht's docility was never the work of the bracelet, since he served Glück faithfully for twenty years before it was placed on him. The flashback marks the origin of his centuries long quest to comprehend human feeling.