Episode 40

Waking amid the rubble of the town square, young Loid barely registers what has become of Luwen before his mother hurries him away to her uncle's home in Kielberg. Grief follows them there: his father never returns, the radio reports a widening war, and the boy quietly decides that every adult who promised peace was lying, himself included. When air raids finally reach Kielberg, Loid runs from the shelter to look for his mother and finds nothing where their house once stood.

Years of solitary survival harden him. Lying about his age, he enlists under the alias Roland Spoofy and earns a reputation as a battlefield tactician, all while wondering how many bodies stand between him and daybreak. One night at a mountain post he corners an enemy deserter, Franky, who begs to be spared and argues that the entire conflict grew out of a diplomatic blunder that now forces ordinary people to slaughter each other. Loid, who lays all blame on Ostania, nearly kills him in fury before pursuing soldiers scatter the two men, and the exchange leaves him questioning convictions he never examined.

Rotated off the front to recover, Loid is overjoyed to find his childhood friends alive after assuming they died in the bombings, then shattered when a recklessly planned operation returns nothing of them but dog tags. He concludes that ignorance is not bliss but weakness and sin. A stranger from Westalis military intelligence, having traced his falsified enlistment, offers a choice between joining the agency and facing court-martial. Loid accepts, discards his name and rank, and is handed to Sylvia Sherwood, who is tasked with hammering him into a first-rate operative by any means. The memory breaks as Twilight jolts awake on the Forgers' sofa. Anya pats his head to chase the fear away, he learns he fainted over her Tonitrus Bolt, and the family ends the night cooking and sharing dinner together.

Loid's mother dies in the raid on Kielberg, completing his orphaning; his father is confirmed to have never come back after Luwen's destruction. The episode establishes the East-West war as the crucible of his entire worldview.

Loid and Franky meet for the first time, years before their partnership, with Franky introduced as an Ostanian deserter whose arguments plant the first real doubts about the war in Loid's mind.

The deaths of his childhood friends push Loid to his defining creed about ignorance, and a Westalis intelligence recruiter leverages his forged papers to pull him into espionage. Sylvia Sherwood appears as the commanding officer who trained him, and in the present the Forgers close the episode with a quiet dinner.

The episode adapts portions of Chapter 62.2, Chapter 62.3, and the extra page following Chapter 62 in Volume 10. The anime significantly expands the material, adding the Kielberg bombing and shelter scenes, Loid's falsified enlistment paperwork, extra wartime imagery, reaction shots during Franky's university anecdote, added soldier scenes under Loid's monologue, and the Forgers preparing their meal together.

Loid's military alias reads Roland Spoofy in the English manga, while the anime spells the first name Lorand. Programming adjustments pushed the Japanese broadcast fifteen minutes past its scheduled slot.