"Oh no! We angered it! How will we deal with this?.. Wait, she says she's his friend? Better murder her to make him even more angry! That will clearly solve our problems!"
"Oh no! We angered it! How will we deal with this?.. Wait, she says she's his friend? Better murder her to make him even more angry! That will clearly solve our problems!"
They didn't actually think she would be let go, did they? The higher-ups always need someone to blame, and sh*t travels downhill, so this outcome should've been obvious.
Well, that rat did coerce her, and lead the incompetents towards demise. Seems he thinks he's intelligent from his deductions, but he fell at the finish line.
“oh shit, we acted hastily and caused the demon king to emerge! How do we fix this? Oh he’ll leave us alone if we leave it alone? That’s sounds too good to be true, so let’s go and kill the one human it cares about and actually cause the prophecy to come true! That’s definitely the best course of action!” What dumbasses
"Oh no! We angered it! How will we deal with this?.. Wait, she says she's his friend? Better murder her to make him even more angry! That will clearly solve our problems!"
I've read the (raw) WN pretty far, it goes way, way beyond this arc. I'll summarize themes briefly and say the over-arching theme is: "All of it is due to the arrogance and stupidity of humanity."
And I mean MASSIVE timescales and character set changes.
I suspect this manga will only cover this first "Demon King Prophecy arc" -- which goes pretty far along by itself. A hundred chapters or so. But the "Holy Kingdom arc" itself goes multiple hundred. Then it goes off into other arcs.
Series is fairly brutal, in that Shu really doesn't care about anyone but Iris.
If anything, Iris is (or Shu's reflection of himself in her is) Shu's moral conscience.
I will say Iris' character is the comedic relief. Some of her deep-lore is expanded on far, far further on. The photo of her parents is foreshadowing, as what happened to her parents is actually important. (Both to Shu in domino-fashion, and lore-wise.)
And super-duper mega spoilers, that may relieve anxiety for people here (and describes events up to 500+ chapters in):
Shu already accepted responsibility for Iris -- right here. If he had a mission in life, it was to "experiment to develop his powers in order to survive". Now it's that, and "protect and fulfill Iris". Those are literally his character motivations for rest of novel, which is still ongoing.
Iris is already immortal, due to her (Spoiler: chrono-, not regenerative-!) powers. And this incident -- the Church betraying her for their foolish ego -- causes her to agree to finally divorce herself from humanity. (Cue massive time-skips and era-scale arcs.)
Iris and Shu do eventually get ""married"". Or as close to it as a Human and Death Spirit++ can. (No Snu-Snu.) They already walk together as immortals. But he eventually (300+ chapters in) finally accepts her to "fulfill her emotional need" for a partner. (i.e. Shu has no more feigned resistance when she presents herself as "queen" in the Fairy Island Kingdom he becomes savior "king" of.)
They eventually have a daughter (400+ chapters in), artificially created by Shu in a mixing experiment since they are different species. Super-cute, inherits mostly from Iris, mischievousness and kindness. Nature-spirit girl who, (as an experiment by Shu to develop human morals [and instill the stupidity of humans] + Iris' pleading to save innocent peaceful villagers,) becomes guardian farming deity of a village having crop failures.
Spoiler: the kingdom the village is in betrays her, (just like Mom who was trying to teach her about humans,) causing her to run home crying to Iris. And she hides in her room scared of humans for a couple hundred years.
Fun fact: Shu "created a soul" when he made his daughter. Pretty much attracting the attention of the REAL in-world materialized god "El Magia". (He's literally Lucifer, and is a barrel of monkeys. Deserves a few paragraphs himself.)
El Magia approves of Shu's creation of his daughter and doesn't mind -- because he finds the whole thing interesting -- but warns Shu to cut it out, and stop his treading on his domain (experimenting in that direction).
Overall fun story. VERY long. But I disliked the arcs where it goes off into the stupidity of side protagonists that kill themselves. Institutional and incurable stupidity of humans is pretty much a given in this novel.
I've read the (raw) WN pretty far, it goes way, way beyond this arc. I'll summarize themes briefly and say the over-arching theme is: "All of it is due to the arrogance and stupidity of humanity."
In the WN, Iris is trusting but naïve, believing in the goodwill of humanity and the church "her parents served". She promises Shu she'll "come right back after telling them"... even though Shu warns her it won't end well. The WN is narrated from Shu's perspective. So Iris simply doesn't show up on time, then Shu starts investigating, slowly unfolding the written story of Iris' captivity.
So in the WN, Iris leaves Shu here saying she'll tell them the truth to begin with -- there's none of this "Orc Lord + truth detector" nonsense.
She flat out tells them (while not disclosing everything) that Shu doesn't want to fight. And is simply thrown in jail as a witch to conceal local Church's failed rushed power grab for glory. The national Church with miko's "two doors exist" prophecy was also bigoted and would never accept "coexistence door" -- but from prior experience -- were still gathering S-Rank forces for single massive strike against a "potential King-class".
I am guessing the manga editor wanted to tone down Iris' naiveté a bit -- or wanted to speed things along by "deus ex machina'ing" this inquisitor. I'm not a fan of the change. Iris is Iris, keep her wholesome. She's literally one of the saving graces of humanity.