Director: Daisuke Kurose
Writer: Shinsuke Ōnishi
First Aired: 22 September 2023
Adapts: Volume 3, Chapters 1-2
It's been several days since Pete was kidnapped by Ophelia Salvadori. While Alvin Godfrey and the Campus Watch enter the labyrinth in pursuit, the remaining Sword Roses have been frozen out and told to sit tight. Guy loses his temper and decides to go after Pete, but is stopped by the others, who insists it's too dangerous.
That doesn't mean they've given up trying, though. Oliver contacts his cousins, who are joining the search but tell him they can't risk exposure by mobilizing their comrades. Katie tries Luther Garland, but that's also a no go: the normally kindly Sword Arts instructor regrets to inform her that the teachers are forbidden to enter the labyrinth to deal with a student-involved incident themselves until eight days have gone by. And Chela tells Oliver that she even tried to pull strings with her father, but he turned her down flat.
So Chela decides to throw the student council's dictate to the winds and enter the labyrinth herself. Oliver tries to stop her, but she's made up her mind.
Luckily, a third option then presents itself: Katie reveals she went behind their backs to Miligan and offered herself to "Snake-Eye" for research if she helps rescue Pete. Oliver is furious and tries to override Katie, but Miligan makes a much more acceptable counterproposal: rather than a guinea pig, Katie will be her apprentice. The co-leaders of the Sword Roses agree, and together with Nanao, they enter the labyrinth.
As the rescue party heads for their hideout to pick up supplies, Miligan explains some of the history of Ophelia's magic: her succubus ancestors hoped to breed a "perfect being" through eugenics. For this, Miligan says, she needs male mana—at which point the Sword Roses realize that Pete is in even bigger danger than they thought: in his female form, he's immune to Ophelia's magic, and therefore worthless, meaning she might kill him out of hand if she finds out. And indeed, Pete has just shifted to female in a cell in Ophelia's laboratory and wakes up.
After finding Marco the troll safe and sound in their laboratory, and picking up some medicine to deal with Ophelia's Perfume, the rescuers resume their course to the second layer, where the Campus Watch is blasting a path through the chimeras running amok. They encounter Kevin Walker, who gives them a map of the third layer, where he believes Ophelia has made her lair. Meanwhile, the Sword Roses and Miligan encounter another chimera near the entrance, and Miligan breaks out her trickery-centric fighting style from before, using decoys to learn the chimera's attack patterns so she can get close and kill it with a lightning spell. The credits roll as the party enters the Bustling Forest.
This episode provides examples of the following tropes:
- Absurdly Powerful Student Council: Alvin Godfrey, the Student Council President, and his student councilors Carlos Whitrow, Tim Linton, and Lesedi Ingwe do what the teachers refuse to, and head into the labyrinth to hunt down Ophelia and rescue the kidnapped students.
- Adults Are Useless: According to Luther Garland, teachers are forbidden from entering the labyrinth during a student incident until the eighth day, at which point it's assumed they'll be trying to recover bodies rather than rescue missing students.From the books: Chela is similarly stonewalled by Theodore, who basically tells her that if she can't protect her friends from danger, she doesn't deserve to have them. The gap is theoretically getting filled by the Absurdly Powerful Student Council and other upperclassmen, who organize a posse to hunt down Ophelia, but the Sword Roses decide not to wait.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: By her own admission, Vera Miligan is no fighter compared to Ophelia Salvadori, but she makes up for it against the first chimera they encounter by using decoys to analyze its weaknesses and exploit them, just like Oliver does. This demonstrates a template for the Sword Roses to follow in subsequent chimera encounters.
- Brutal Honesty: Nanao grimly shuts down Guy's half-baked plan to enter the labyrinth with her real-world experience as a samurai: out of every five of her comrades who went missing on the battlefield, only one ever returned alive.
- Call-Back:
- The Campus Watch members make several comments corroborating Ophelia's remark in "Rivals" that she used to be one of their friends.
- Katie tries to voluntarily let Miligan examine her brain like Miligan tried to do back in "Glare" and "Arise", in exchange for Miligan's help rescuing Pete. Fortunately Miligan has learned her lesson and makes a much more morally acceptable counteroffer: Katie becomes her research assistant.
- Miligan estimates Pete has a 20% chance of survival, referencing Headmistress Esmeralda's line in "Ceremony" that 20% of students will not survive to graduation. However, a rescue attempt by herself and the Sword Roses might raise that to a 21% chance.
- Cool Key: Miligan gives Milihand to Katie: in case she doesn't make it back, the disembodied hand will serve as a key to access her research notes so that Katie can pick up where she left off.
- Foreign Language Title: "Possibility" spelled phonetically, with the definitional kanji 生還率 Seikan-ritsu, meaning "chance of survival".
- Healing Hands: Lesedi Ingwe is shown healing Tim Linton from an injury, and remarking that if Ophelia was here, she'd tell him the pain is a reminder he's still alive.
- Idiot Hero: Played for laughs by Nanao, who grudgingly agrees to try joining in on the battle planning instead of just following Oliver and Chela's directions or operating on instinct like she usually does.
- Incompatible Orientation: A close variant: Ophelia's Sex Magic only works on biological males, which means Pete becomes immune to her the minute he shifts to female.
- It's All My Fault: Godfrey and the Campus Watch partly blame themselves for the current crisis, largely by failing to stop Ophelia in time. Now they have to clean up the mess.
- Leonine Contract: Subverted. Katie offered to let Miligan examine her brain like she wanted to before, in exchange for her help rescuing Pete. Oliver is furious and tries to withdraw the offer on her behalf, but Miligan has had a sincere change of heart and never intended to accept it anyway. She makes the much more reasonable counterproposal of Katie becoming her research partner and de facto apprentice, which the Sword Roses accept (Katie enthusiastically, Oliver and Chela grudgingly).
- Let's Split Up, Gang!: The three strongest of the Sword Roses, Oliver, Chela, and Nanao, join Miligan in attempting to rescue Pete, while Katie and Guy give them supplies and take notes for them, since Kimberly's class schedule is continuing uninterrupted despite the crisis.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: The Absurdly Powerful Student Council has placed a curfew on the school, forbidding anyone to enter the labyrinth until the Ophelia crisis has been resolved. Oliver, Chela, Nanao, and Miligan defy that curfew to try to rescue Pete themselves.
- The Stinger: There's a brief post-credit scene of the Campus Watch looking out into the Bustling Forest, with Carlos calling it "our last adventure".
- Super Breeding Program: Miligan describes how the succubi, Ophelia's maternal ancestors, had the ability to mix donor essences in their wombs, and used it with the goal of creating a "perfect being". Pure succubi are extinct nowadays, but Ophelia's chimera research is an extension of this project, and the male students she's kidnapped are the fuel for it.
- Superman Stays Out of Gotham: Gwyn and Shannon join the Campus Watch's search for Ophelia as themselves, but flatly refuse to mobilize the rest of their comrades: those are for the assassination plot alone, not for an unrelated rescue mission.
- Time Skip: Several days have passed since the last episode.
- Token Minority: This episode marks the first anime appearance of student councilor Lesedi Ingwe, the only black character in the series so far, though she's a minor character in this Story Arc. (And yes, she is intended to be African or the equivalent: her name is Bantu.)
