Director: Shūji Miyazaki
Writer: Shōgo Yasukawa
First Aired: 6 October 2023
Adapts: Volume 3, Chapters 3-4
In another flashback to Ophelia's Dark and Troubled Past, she relates to Carlos how her mother taught her to use her sexuality as a weapon in service to the family's Super Breeding Program. Carlos tries to convince her that there's more ways than sex to relate to other people.
After the opening credits, we join Katie and Guy back on the surface. They've heard nothing from the rescue party since they entered the labyrinth three days ago, and Guy is especially worried about Oliver, given that their enemy is a woman whose biology can't help but drive men crazy with lust. Katie apparently never considered this and screams that could never happen to him!
Yeah, it could. Oliver and the others are now making their way across the third layer where Ophelia makes her lair, and the only thing worse than the foul miasma of the swamp is Ophelia's perfume spread throughout. Nanao continuing to cling to his side isn't helping matters, and Miligan pesters him to take the medicine she brought along from their base instead of trying to tough it out.
They reach a vast lake, and the team uses more of Guy's toolplant seeds to craft a boat. As a backup plan, Miligan teaches the underclassmen a magical technique to Walk on Water. Nanao flubs it, but Oliver and Chela get it right first-try, and Nanao once again shows that she does her best work without thinking about it: she's able to join Oliver on the water out of sheer determination to stay by him.
While Lynette and Stacy try to cross the lake on their broomsticks, hoping the monster-repellent incense they burned will keep any aquatic critters away, the Sword Roses set out in their sailboat, but are waylaid by Cyrus Rivermoore on the back of his bone serpent, who refuses to let them pass, alluding to a debt he owes. While asking Cyrus if he intends to be Ophelia's "final visitor", Miligan casts a spell behind her back, luring an underwater chimera to attack him, and they vamoose while he's occupied. Nanao wonders aloud what Miligan's reference to a "final visitor" meant, and Oliver explains there's a tradition that when a mage is consumed by the spell, an acquaintance will go to be with them in their final moments—whilst the camera meaningfully cuts back to Godfrey and Whitrow.
In an extended flashback, the Student Council President and his Number Two recall their own history with Ophelia. Bullied at school for her powers over men, she found respite with the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits that was the Campus Watch in those days—after Alvin Godfrey spent months casting Dolor on his own genitals to get to where he could be near her without wanting to have sex with her. By their second year together, they had made a name for themselves, with Ophelia's abilities as an organizer and healer critical to their success. But eventually the bullies got to her, and she embraced her succubus side and fought back, and a fight with Tim Linton and Godfrey led to her leaving.
Within Ophelia's laboratory, Pete and Albright put their escape plan into motion: Pete blasts his way out with Albright's orbs and recovers his athame from a storeroom, and shatters the beacon orb outside, creating a Pillar of Light and praying that somebody sees it.
This episode provides examples of the following tropes:
- Adaptation Deviation:
- The potion that Oliver takes to suppress the effects of Ophelia's Perfume is original to the anime. In the novel he was stuck toughing it out.
- In the novel, Teresa Carste had her own boat to cross the lake and therefore didn't need to turn back at the water's edge.
- Adaptation Distillation: The episode significantly compresses the backstory sequences with the Watch compared to the novels, but preserves the gist of the story.
- Agony Beam: Played for Laughs: Godfrey chooses to deal with Ophelia's Perfume by casting Dolor on his own groin, simulating the pain of a swift kick. Repeatedly. For months. This is already quite funny enough, but then remember that back in "Arise", Oliver said that the pain curse can only reproduce pain the caster has experienced themselves—which means Godfrey has canonically been kicked in the crotch before.
- Battle Discretion Shot: The bullies sexually harassing Ophelia have a Mass "Oh, Crap!" when she summons a chimera from her womb. The camera cuts away as the monster crawls from her belly, and all we see is bloodstains staining the screen as they scream.
- Behavioral Conditioning: Alvin Godfrey is introduced to Ophelia as a friend of a friend, but naturally reacts to her Perfume—and promptly deals with it by casting a pain curse on his own dick. He kept this up for months, to the point where Ophelia actually started getting embarrassed by it, and finally was able to approach her without feeling anything. Lampshaded by Ophelia, who demanded to know why he would go to such lengths instead of trying a potion or a spell—to which Godfrey replies that the pain of getting repeatedly kicked in the balls is nothing compared to the pain she's lived with her whole life.
- Bisexual Love Triangle: Ophelia is suggested to have fallen in love with Godfrey during her time in the Watch; meanwhile her gay classmate Tim Linton is also openly in love with Godfrey.
- Blunt Metaphors Trauma: Nanao, having learned Yelglish as a second language, has no idea what the word "horny" means.
- Call-Forward: In "Noisy Forest" Lesedi Ingwe quoted Ophelia as having said that "pain is a reminder that you're still alive." Ophelia herself says something similar to Tim during the flashback sequence while healing him after his hand is injured by a cracking crab.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Gender-Inverted with Tim Linton in this episode: it's indicated that he's so nutty about his crush on Godfrey that he scares away sympathizers to the Watch who would otherwise join. This is an error by the adaptation: the scene cut half of Lesedi Ingwe's dialogue from the book, which states the actual problem was Tim's carelessness with his poisons. Tim's line that Godfrey doesn't need anyone else was originally just an attempt at blowing off her criticism.
- Evolving Credits: For the first thirteen episodes, the opening credits sequence included a shot of the student council standing around an empty chair. Starting with this episode, that shot is replaced with a sepia-toned picture of the Watch as first- and second-years, with a young Ophelia sitting in the chair and everyone looking much happier.
- Flashback Echo: Oliver recalls his mother demonstrating Lake Walking to him when he was a child. Chloe tells him one day, he'll be able to do it too: "After all, you're my son."
- Foreign Language Title: "Salvadori" in katakana, with the definitional kanji 淫魔の末裔 inma no matsuei, "descendant of inma"—the equivalent in Japanese Mythology to Succubi and Incubi.
- Foreshadowing: Oliver explains the concept of a "final visitor", a mage who visits another mage who is being consumed by the spell, as the camera pointedly lingers on Godfrey and Whitrow, suggesting that one of them will be Ophelia's.
- Gilligan Cut: Katie desperately denies that Oliver could possibly be made horny by proximity to Ophelia. Cut to Oliver struggling with exactly that problem.
- Healing Hands: Lesedi Ingwe insists that Ophelia join the Watch because she can cast healing magic, but it's said that eventually they recruit other members who are better at it than her.
- Incompatible Orientation: Inverted: Ophelia's Perfume works on male biology, period. Even the openly gay Tim Linton isn't immune, and accuses Ophelia of "making a mockery of my feelings."
- Kraken and Leviathan: The chimera that Miligan lures out of the swamp to distract Cyrus is a mass of octopus-like tentacles.
- Let's You and Him Fight: Miligan gets past Cyrus by luring a kraken-like chimera out of the depths of the lake to attack him, then skedaddles while he deals with it.Cyrus: Clever girl.
- Magic Misfire: Godfrey's abilities with fire magic in the flashback are a far cry from the present day: when he casts Flamma as practice, the spell backfires and burns his hand. According to Professor Gilchrist, he lacks the natural ability to control the levels of mana he was born with.
- Mandatory Line: The scene immediately after the opening credits adds almost nothing to the story and basically just exists for Katie and Guy's voice actors to get paid this week, after they were completely absent from "Noisy Forest".
- Noodle Incident: Implied. In "Arise" we learned that pain curses can only reproduce pain the caster has experienced, which means that Godfrey has canonically been kicked in the crotch before.
- Not So Above It All: Oliver's endurance is impressive and he's resistant to Ophelia's Perfume, but even he can't hold out forever when immersed in it for three days straight, especially with Nanao in close proximity.
- Pillar of Light: Albright's beacon orb generates a bright column of light stretching to the ceiling of the third layer to mark Pete's location.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Campus Watch in the flashbacks are a far cry from the Absurdly Powerful Student Council of the present: they're more a group of well-intentioned screwups than an effective campus safety patrol. In a supreme irony, it's the addition of Ophelia that helps them grow into what they are today, and she nearly tore the group apart when she turned to villainy.
- Ship Tease:
- We already knew that Oliver and Nanao were attracted to each other, but the episode overtly shows he's physically lusting after her as well: he's already having trouble focusing amidst Ophelia's Perfume, and Nanao hugging his side like she usually does isn't helping. Nanao also figures out the Lake Walk after Oliver does it, out of sheer will to stay by his side.
- It's suggested in this episode that Ophelia fell in love with Godfrey at some point, before her turn to villainy.
- Significant Wardrobe Shift: Ophelia spends most of the flashback sequence wearing an ordinary girls' student uniform, and is drawn more cutely than The Vamp she is in the present. After the fight with the other students, she switches costumes to the Stripperiffic purple gown she wears in the series' present.
- Slut-Shaming: Played for Drama. After arriving at Kimberly, Ophelia endured over a year straight of sexual harassment over her succubus ancestry, before she finally lost it and embraced that side of herself, leading to her break with the Campus Watch and descent into villainy.
- Smells Sexy: As previously established, Ophelia gives off a Perfume that makes males uncontrollably lustful, and it's worse since she was consumed by the spell: just being on the same layer of the labyrinth as her is enough to make Oliver uncomfortably horny. We also learn from Tim this episode that being gay is no protection.
- Swamps Are Evil: This is our first look at the third layer of the labyrinth: wetlands as far as the eye can see, with a poisonous miasma that will get you if you try to fly over it.
- Tamer and Chaster: Downplayed: in the novel, Miligan overtly tried to explain to Nanao that the exposure to Ophelia's Perfume was giving Oliver a Raging Stiffie (the English translation used the phrase "pitching a tent"). The episode changes this line to a comment that Oliver was "horny".
- Then Let Me Be Evil: Ophelia was raised to be a sexual predator, but at Kimberly she sincerely tried to get away from her family legacy and be a normal girl. But a year and a half of sexual harassment culminated in her embracing her succubus side, leading to her present status as Arc Villain.
- Tsundere: Ophelia complains to says that Godfrey's casting of pain curses on himself every time they meet is getting embarrassing. Carlos asks if she wants him to stop, and she pricklishly mutters that she kinda wants to see how far he'll take it.
- Underestimating Badassery: Played for Drama. A group of second-years are shown Slut-Shaming Ophelia, telling her she doesn't belong at the side of someone as strong as Godfrey: the Watch has members now who are better healers, and the only other thing she's good for is making men horny. This isn't remotely true—Godfrey is shown to rely heavily on her abilities as a personnel manager—but it's enough to provoke Ophelia to embrace her lineage as a Mother of a Thousand Young. We don't even see the fight that breaks out when she conjures her chimera, we just hear the other students screaming as it attacks, while the screen goes white before being shot through with bloodstains.Ophelia: So if I was strong, you wouldn't have a problem with me?
Boy: If, yeah.
Girl: Want to find out?
Ophelia: Yes. Let's. (draws her athame) Partus.
(cue Mass "Oh, Crap!" from the bullies) - Walk on Water: Miligan teaches the Sword Roses the Lanoff Style "Lake Walk", which involves emitting small amounts of mana from the soles of the feet to propel oneself across the water surface.
- We Used to Be Friends: Ophelia was once a core member of the Campus Watch, but Slut-Shaming over her succubus ancestry led to her embracing that image, seducing several members, and then fighting with her friends and fleeing into the labyrinth.
