While I kind of don't hate there being a revival macguffin, two big problems:
1. It both wasn't really foreshadowed and... why WOULDN'T Hiyuki assume the item works in that world the way it works in the game?
2. Joey is not remotely interesting a character so his apparent death didn't cause me to feel anything and consequently his survival didn't cause me to feel anything.
See, this is why I dislike so many opposite sex pairings. They're often so lazy. The dramatic tension is assumed rather than earned. Like if you stick a guy and a girl together and wait long enough, bam, they fall in love eventually whether they want to or not as the plot demands. Usually with only one character of the two actually meaning a damn and the other being a flat satellite for the first one. Joey is basically every female love interest from anime in the 90's.
Anyways, I guess I'm actually glad he's not dead. If he's going to still be around, at least there's a distant, distant chance he'll eventually be a love interest I can care about as much as Hiyuki does.
By the way? If your fantasy world has people able to just come the hell back to life because of reasons, you've pretty much undermined/weakened any dramatic tension further death scenes could have.
... well, at least the art is really cute and I love both of Hiyuki's character designs. Thanks for the TL!