How Not to Summon a Demon Lord (Volume 9) – Into the Woods!
While testing flight magic, Diablo sees a beam of light and goes to investigate. When he gets there, he finds a Priestess being attacked by a Paladin, which is strange. Anyhow, even a demon lord can’t just ignore a damsel in distress!
How Not to Summon a Demon Lord (Volume 9) – Into the Woods!
What happened?
Diablo managed to stop Alicia from killing herself by destroying her dagger before she could thrust it into her throat. With no idea what she should do now, Edelgard tells her that dying would be a waste. Diablo tries to say something demon lordy and accidentally sends Alicia to spy on the King and kill anyone who might be a threat to him. At least, she didn’t kill herself… With that taken care of, Diablo heads out with Shera and Rem to test flight magic. Since he has his ring that deflects magic, he can’t cast it on himself, so he settles for a fallen log and rides it like a surfboard. Shera and Rem were amazed and desperate to try it themselves. Then, Diablo see a beam of light in the forest, which he decides to investigate, especially as there is a powerful energy radiating from the location. As he gets closer, his flight magic deactivates, sending him crashing to the ground. His fall was broken by a Beast Mushroom, which is squashed beneath him.
Diablo finds a Priestess whom the Beast Mushroom was attacking. She is stunned to see him, calling him God. Before he can correct her, a Paladin, furious that Diablo killed his Beast Mushroom, summons some more monsters to kill them both. Diablo fights back, killing the summons. He casts an ice magic spell to trap the Paladin, but loses him. Then, he turns to the Priestess, who says her name is Lumachina and that she is the High Priestess, the leader of the church. Well, the symbolic leader, anyhow, a council of cardinals hold all the power, and they appear to have decided to get rid of her. She needs help finding the Head Paladin based in a town called Zircon Tower. Diablo is excited because, in the game, his base was near there. Maybe it is here too!
What did you think?
It should come as no surprise, but I’m definitely getting more from the manga than the anime was able to deliver. For example, after Alicia had been stopped from killing herself and had come up with a new crazy mission for her life, the owner of the tavern came in to tell them to be quiet. That was when she saw Edelgard and freaked out. However, after Edelgard promised not to eat her, she offered the owner a large jewel as payment to be quiet. Well, the tavern owner did one better and helped Edelgard and Klem hide their appearances, which explained their attire in the second season of the anime. There were other moments, that helped everything flow together that were missing in the anime.
As Diablo was testing his flight magic, Shera started talking about doing some sunbathing… naked! Well, Rem was not about to join in and turned to Diablo for his thoughts. They probably didn’t want to know his thoughts, but he was too caught up in them to answer. Anyhow, when he found Lumachina, her clothes were torn up from the attack by the Beast Mushroom and his first thought was “is she sunbathing?” It made me laugh, but also added a level of continuity that the second season of the anime didn’t have. I’m already enjoying this arc a lot more in the manga, and I’m excited to see how it develops from here.
What was your highlight?
After Lumachina woke up in Diablo’s bed, she found Rem and Shera standing over her. She was a little surprised, but they had one question that they needed her to answer – did Diablo do something to her? Obviously, they saw her clothes and Diablo carrying her into the room, so they wanted to make sure he didn’t do anything weird. Of course, she defended him and asked them if he was a god. They told her that he was an incredibly powerful sorcerer who went around telling everyone he was a demon lord from another world, which didn’t clear anything up. Lumachina asked them how they knew Diablo and was surprised to see their slave collars. Shera tried to explain, but Rem cut her off and told Lumachina that they were adventurers and Diablo was their companion. This was all very confusing and shocking.
If Diablo were not God, then she would need to marry him since he saw her naked… Now, everyone was shocked, and not least, Diablo, who was standing on the other side of the door listening to everything. He didn’t want to marry her, and he couldn’t tell her he was God. What was he going to do? Well, Diablo actually came up with a remarkably clever and simple solution. He told Lumachina that there are reasons that he cannot reveal his true identity in this realm and left it at that. She bought it and asked if she could call him Diablo too. One of my favourite things about this series is the internal dialogue that Diablo has with himself as he tries to work everything out and maintain his appearance as a demon lord. That worked perfectly in this scene as we saw how he worked his way through the problem.
Series Information
| English Title | How Not to Summon a Demon Lord |
| Japanese Title | Isekai Maou to Shoukan Shoujo no Dorei Majutsu |
| Genres | Action, Comedy, Ecchi, Fantasy, Harem, Isekai, Romance |
Anime
Season One
Season Two
Manga
| Series | How Not to Summon a Demon Lord | |
| Author | Yukiya Murasaki | |
| Artist | Naoto Fukuda | |
| Volumes | Ongoing | Chapters |
| 1 | I’m Dangerous, I Swear! | 1-4 |
| 2 | Overpowered Overlord! | 5-9 |
| 3 | Keyboard Warrior! | 10-14 |
| 4 | The Devil You Know… | 15-19 |
| 5 | Boss-level Badass! | 20-24 |
| 6 | Demon Lord vs Demon Lord! | 25-29 |
| 7 | The Demon Within! | 30-34 |
| 8 | Don’t Wake the Demon! | 35-39 |
| 9 | Into the Woods! | 40-44 |
| 10 | A New Threat! | 45-49 |
| 11 | X Marks the Rot! | 50-54 |
| 12 | Swept Away! | 55-59 |
