The theme for that volume, I think, is how people believe what they do is right, even if it’s not.
It’s shown in two cases.
The first is Nephia, a female knight who is assigned as Evan’s bodyguard.
When she’s a kid, she was kidnapped along with many other children. After being rescued by knight, she aspire to become a knight who protects the people. Despite her family’s protest, she became a knight.
Nephia look down on noble ladies like Serena, thinking of them as vain stupid women who only care about jewels, dress, gossips, and standing in the way of her work. While she herself is doing meaningful work for the people of the kingdom. Meanwhile, in the knights corp, she hates being looked down just because she is a woman; despite her superiors already pointed out, not only she’s factually weaker than men, she’s too impulsive and would jeopardise an operation for her own idealism. Nephia is assigned as Evan’s bodyguard not for her ability, but to keep her out of the way.
Even later, Evan had to reminds her, a knight is the king’s sword and shield, not hero of justice or protector of the people; if the king ever orders knights to kill the people, they must do it.
The thing is, even her most important memories is just her own delusion. The knight only came to rescue the children because Nephia, daughter of high ranking noble with connections, is among them. Else the knight wouldn’t move just to save commoners.
The other is Remulus, the bishop who saved Fascias, Tigur’s childhood friend.
Fascias survived the massacre, rescued by a bishop. Remulus, the bishop, teaches Fascias, and the boy converted to the faith, turning his back against the wrong ways of the tribe. For Fascias, Remulus is like his guiding light and god. Remulus is a very idealist person, but reality is not as beautiful. Seeing his master suffering, Fascias went on his own to murder corrupt nobles and church officials who troubled his master.
Problem is, after converting to the faith, Fascias abhorred the way of the tribe, especially murders. So every time he kills someone, he hates himself for it.
Remulus himself is not manipulative, he is just out of touch with reality. He turns blind eyes about how much influence he had on his disciple.
In Fascias’ case, Serena compared him to Tigur. In Tigur’s case, he is rescued by Serena who can accept himself as he is. Meanwhile, Remulus is pushing his ideals to Fascias, denying his past. This came out bad for Fascias’ mental health who now hates himself for what he and his tribe had done. Fascias even gouged his own eyes, hating the red eyes that is symbolic of their tribe.
The background case is how the underworld (backed by corrupt nobility and church officials) is performing human experiment, creating chimaera by injecting monster blood to human. The victims are war refuge from neighbouring country (who are mainly handled by the church).
Serena forced the culprit to do desperate move by using her family’s influence to start their own humanitarian effort for the refuge, cutting the source for experimental subjects.
Although, even after the case is dealt with, Serena had her hands tied to the program because the program is started under her name. Her mother happily supported her though.
The ebook extra story is about Serena visiting Rosemary in the abbot. She told Rosemary how to make friends there, and if she acts good, she might get dispensation for family visit.
