Book 5 Summary

Soren, Mariko, Kowalski, and Mr. Maki arrive in Iceland and are deployed to the smaller city of Keflavik. Soren feels trapped in his new role and decides sneak out go carousing, like in his old days of Captain Malthus. While there, he meets a local woman, Heida, and they hit it off immediately. To his surprise (and hers), it turns out that she is one of their local Wizard Corps supervisors, along with a man named Henrik Olvirson.

The cadets go out with Heida on missions that involve investigating locals’ reports of the strange and supernatural. The Nagoya students quickly recognize this as a sort of scam, at least the way Henrik and Heida do it. It becomes clear that Heida just wants to finish her tour of duty without seeing any actual combat.

Even if she has her issues, Heida is exactly what Soren is after, since she keeps insisting that there are no strings attached. After losing Kiyo, that’s all he thinks he wants, too.

In one incident, they find a sheep that has been chopped cleanly in half, with one end completely skeletonized. Showing that there is some corruption in the local Wizard Corps branch, it’s decided to hide this from the sheep’s owner. Henrik is oddly pleased that Soren is willing to play ball, since in his experience, Nagoya Academy students tend to be sticklers for rules.

That is mostly true, though. Mariko is unhappy with the lies and deception, as is Kowalski. However, he’s more concerned with his lack of control over his sentient, shadowy affinity, Buddy. Buddy causes the group no shortage of issues with no signs of improvement.

They meet some other wizards, the Becker brothers, old students of Mr. Maki. They betray the group, attempting to detonate a bomb that would wipe out all of the wizards. Soren stops them with minimal help from Heida, who freezes up during the fight. Soren is convinced they are more Holy Brothers, but their dying breath tells him the more horrifying truth: they’re demonkin agents sent by Our Father Below knows who!

Since it isn’t clear who the target of the attack was, Mr. Maki is deployed to pick up the slack while the cadets and Heida are sent to a remote farm to hide out. It turns out to belong to Heida’s family. Her father is a retired, recently crippled wizard named Bryndísar, while her younger sister, Lilja, is a mundane. There is no sign of her mother, and reading between the lines, she died some time ago.

They help out at the farm, and Kowalski and Lilja start a relationship. The fresh air is doing him a lot of good, and having a woman actually be interested in him is doing a lot for his confidence. That seems to be helping with Buddy, too.

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While at the farm, Mariko drops a bombshell that Soren had half-suspected: she has fallen for him, and while she doesn’t like him fooling around with Heida, she’s convinced that he’ll come around sooner or later. He rebuffs this, knowing deep down that she could never accept his true self. No matter how lovely being with her sounded…

Despite that, he learns a bit more about what makes Mariko tick. She learned at a young age that her great grandfather was involved with war crimes during World War II, and is convinced that she can’t be trusted to choose who lives and dies.

One night, Soren and Heida are attacked by a shadowy being that looks suspiciously close to Buddy. The modus operandi of the attack doesn’t seem like Buddy, but Heida is convinced it was him. It’s decided to split up, with Heida and her family watching over Kowalski while Mariko and Soren go to investigate. They’re attacked by a bat-winged monster, Mulciber, who turns out to be an old acquaintance of Soren’s. Or, more properly, an associate of Captain Malthus.

Back before the fall of England, Malthus had gotten irritated with the low class devil when he insulted the size of Soren’s horns. So, Malthus framed him for a crime, figuring it would result in his punishment by the local petty lord. It turned out that Mulciber was given over to a secret weapons department that turned him into a living golem. The skeletonized sheep were Mulciber trying to fuel the massive requirements of his durable, rune-covered body.

Soren and Mariko barely get away because Mulciber takes his time with Soren, starting with crushing his hand. Soren breaks it off with Heida when he realizes that she had wanted to set up Kowalski to take the fall for Mulciber’s attacks so they had an excuse to leave. She’s an abject coward, afraid to end up like her father, and refuses to help them fight.

Soren, Mariko, and Kowalski go out to battle Mulciber, barely managing to match the magically enhanced demon. They ultimately win due to a creative use of Mariko’s disintegration magic to produce explosive gas, unexpected reinforcements from Heida, and Mariko firing a magical attack with a fabricata weapon they had secured. Soren apologized to Mulciber as he died, and the confused demon only insulted him back, not understanding Soren’s sincere guilt at the horrors he’d inflicted on the lower class devil.

Mariko and Soren get a moment alone, where he confesses to his true nature out of spite, combining it with an angry confession of love worth of her favorite literary character, Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. He figures that Mariko will leave him alone if she knows the truth. Instead, she accepts him, telling him that he’s forgiven. Overcome by emotion, Soren takes Mariko close and the two make love.

Not all is well, though. They receive news that the Wizard Corps is low on bodies after recent battles, so they decide to promote select cadets to full combat training early. Soren, Mariko, and Kowalski are all chosen, with the Wizard Corps declaring that Mariko had violated any claims of pacifism with her direct attacks on Mulciber. Soren swears that he will do whatever he can to make sure that she doesn’t have to use her magic in anger.

We’ll have to see if he can pull it off!