Tags: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Harem, Tragedy, Shounen

Sub-Tags: Dungeons, Revenge, Betrayal, OP, Strong Lead

Light’s Revenge Against the Elves!

Continuing his campaign of revenge against those who wronged him, my latest review catches up on Backstabbed’s second volume as Light sets his sights on Sasha!

An Engagement Present

After exploring the world under his newfound lens, the second volume moves to craft Light’s largest revenge plot so far. Travelling to the Elven Queendom, Light and his gacha girls seek revenge against Sasha, one of the party members who tried to kill him, who’s about to celebrate her engagement to Mikhail, part of the reward for killing a master.

This revenge takes the form of a large-scale scheme with an impressive number of moving parts. The first part of which comes in two forms, psychological attacks and baiting the Queendom to investigate their large, mysterious tower in the forest.

Baiting Sasha with psychological attacks to approach the tower was the easiest of these tasks – her fragile position within the Queendom would ensure her investigation. Baiting the elite soldiers, the white knights, to the stage required some interesting political manoeuvring.

It’s by far my favourite part of the revenge scheme because it requires some genuine ingenuity to ensure everything works out.

The second half of the revenge scheme moved toward the capture of Sasha and the utter humiliation of the Queendom. To this end, Light, Ellie and the other LV 9999s set up a series of battles between strong gacha members and individual members of the White Knights.

Each battle is completely one-sided, leading to several elf-shaped holes in the tower walls. Though we shouldn’t feel sorry for them, each having committed unspeakable crimes towards the human race.

As an aside, whilst the action within these scenes are great, the antagonists themselves all feel lacking when it comes to character depth. Beyond being utterly irredeemable psychopaths, there’s little else to set them apart.

The Master and The Other

Whilst character depth is a problem amongst this volume’s antagonists, the world-building certainly isn’t lacking.

Once again, this volume adds towards the legend of the supposed master and their effect on the world. What’s more, this volume comes with the revelation that there are more mysterious beings and that Light may more likely fit into that character.

This type of world-building is constant within the series and is always a highlight. The author clearly knows how to hand-feed the readers just enough information to keep them engaged whenever revenge is off the table.

To conclude, Backstabbed in a Backwater Dungeon’s second volume is an overall improvement from its previous outing. Featuring a complex, large-scale revenge scheme alongside some fantastic world-building means this could be a series to look out for if you’re in the mood for some catharsis!