Tags: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Comedy, Romance, School Life, Isekai

Another Musketeer Makes their Move Against the Guardian Knight to Be!

There’s never a slow moment for Slowe, even after his success in stopping a war in Zenelaus. Slowe’s stress levels continue to rise in the sixth volume as everyone pushes him toward becoming a guardian knight to the future queen, from his classmates at Kirsch to his estranged family. If that wasn’t enough for him to deal with, one of the three musketeers, the dream dealer witch, disagrees with the peace treaty between the north and south and has decided to attack the institute putting many lives in danger.

We see a new side to Slowe in this volume and it’s not one I really like. He comes over quite passive for most of the volume and has regressed to his former state of getting fat and avoiding his problems. Given his latest problem, this is understandable yet nonetheless frustrating. The honour of becoming a guardian knight can truly be a double-edged sword and even more so for Slowe. Becoming a guardian knight means solitude and giving oneself completely over to the role of protecting the future queen, forever remaining single for the sake of the kingdom. This last fact is a real problem for Slowe as becoming a guardian knight would ensure that he could never achieve his dream, the one thing that caused all his pain in the anime, finally confessing his feelings to Charlotte. As a result, this volume has Slowe at a loss on what to do for most of the volume and struggling to find a way out of the predicament when he can usually come up with the answers.

Slowe’s struggle isn’t helped by the host of new unlikable cast members as well the existing characters’ lack of concern towards his feelings and thoughts. Two new main characters are added to the cast in this volume, Mallory and Professor Yugiri, neither of whom make the greatest of first impressions. Mallory is the main maid of the Denning household and isn’t shy in making her thoughts known about Slowe becoming a guardian knight. Not only that, but she also teaches Charlotte some new magic tricks that are very explosive in nature. Professor Yugiri is a new teacher at the Kirsch Mage Institute and failed guardian knight candidate whose method of teaching students often lands them in hospital not to mention her seemingly obvious anger and jealousy towards Slowe that leads to a heated battle at the midpoint of the novel. She does receive redemption at the end of the novel where it’s explained that she was only trying to warn Slowe but it feels half-baked and I still came out of the volume disliking her character.

Series regulars also seem to be pointing Slowe towards becoming a guardian knight, even Charlotte. Her role during the first half of the volume seems the cruellest of all immediately congratulating Slowe on the role and how much of a good opportunity it would be. Luckily, her arc is the best during the volume and one of the only shining lights in an otherwise difficult read. Towards the end of the volume, Professor Yugiri finally explains to Charlotte just what it means to become a guardian knight and how it would affect Slowe and Charlotte’s relationship with him. This is a triggering moment for her, finally, she has to face how she really feels about him and just how much she’d lose with him gone. The answer is she likes him romantically meaning there might be a confession sooner rather than later. Tina is another great part of the volume and the series overall. She does seem to know Slowe’s mind and is one of the few people to consider his side of things.

The end of the volume sees Slowe go face to face with the dream dealer witch, or rather her newly created puppet, Professor Yugiri with her fully realised powers. The witch is the strongest enemy that Slowe’s faced in the series so far. She is way beyond his capabilities, even her fully powered puppets pose a great problem. This time he could only temporarily defeat the witch with the help of Nanatrij, but it seems like she’ll be back in another future volume.

This volume is almost all struggle and strife with a lot of unlikeable characters, events and even Slowe seems off his game. With the volume ending with events unresolved and things carrying into the seventh volume, I think this volume suffers from being the beginning of an arc with nothing going quite to plan and characters causing frustrating conflicts only for things to go well in the next volume. This leaves the volume being rather difficult and annoying to read with very little character development, which is a shame given just how much I love all 5 of the other volumes. Hopefully, things will get better with the next volume as Slowe ends up meeting the Queen again and the second round with the dream dealer witch beings.