Tags: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Romance, Harem, Comedy, Isekai
Sub-Tags: Dungeons, Game Elements, OP, Strong Lead
Synopsis:
Arihito and his party’s preparations for their ultimate battle against the Shining Simian Lord are going smoothly: They now possess an item that can help lift the curse on Theresia, and Arihito has recently obtained a new Hidden God power courtesy of Fylgja and her Intelligent Armor. But the SimianLord’s curse is still slowly eating away at Theresia. To save her from this seemingly unbeatable foe, Arihito must join forces with his vast support system and his Guild Savior allies! (Source: Yen Press)
A Fateful Fight Against the Simian Lord!
A Search for the Holy Sign
Continuing their quest to stop the Shining Simian Lord, time is starting to run out for Arihito and his party. With Theresia’s curse progressing ever further, the story for volume 8 begins with a search for a holy stone. Their quest takes them to a rocky landscape labyrinth filled with expectant seismic shifts.
The author’s inventiveness in creating new creatures for every different labyrinth in the series is one of the story’s greatest highlights, and the latest volume in the series follows in these footsteps. Rather than keep the same old hostile enemies approach, the eighth instalment introduces creatures that can be reasoned with.
Fighting against a Stray Strada, a creature with intelligence, becomes a stroke of luck for the team. Able to reason with the creature, they strike a deal where it shows them the path towards the necessary holy stones. Thankfully they manage to get the stones in time, as it isn’t long before Theresia shows signs of coming under the Simian Lord’s control.
A Monkey’s Palace
The second half of the volume is dedicated to a fight eight volumes in the making. Constantly hanging over the story since Elitia was introduced, fighting and defeating the Simian Lord has been one of the guiding principles for Arihito’s party to climb up the labyrinth world’s levels. True to the hype, the battle is a grand affair, if perhaps a little short.
Welcomed back into a Japanese-style world filled with castles and monkeys donning samurai garb, the final battle against the overpowered ape sees Arhitio bring along a 16-man strong team. Whilst others defeat the Simian Lord’s henchman, it’s left to Arihito’s main team to fight against the main boss.
All the preparation and strategy that the team has gone through throughout the fifth level ends up paying off. The end result of the battle is a Simian Lord totally defanged and defeated, lifting Theresia’s curse and freeing Rury from the ape’s grasp.
Overall, the eighth instalment of World’s Strongest Rearguard seeks and succeeds in achieving one of the series’ most central goals, defeating the Shining Simian Lord. Whilst the journey towards the battle had some ups and downs in terms of quality, the end result gets the job done.
What’s more exciting to see coming out of this volume is the potential plot lines upcoming for the story’s continuance. Intelligent monsters, the cathedral, and a confrontation with the white knight brigade all wait in the series’ future if it gets a ninth volume.
The World’s Strongest Rearguard Vol. 8
My Rating: 8/10
I hope you enjoyed my review and would love to see what you thought of the volume in the comments! If you like what I do and want to see more, consider supporting me by buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.
You can read the eighth volume of this series digitally or physically through the list of distributors on the Yen Press website.
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