Done!
Mercuri@ani.social 1 day ago
ALICIA IS BACK! And the first thing she does is give her eye away. Guess she really wants a reason to wear that eyepatch. And boy does it make her look like such a villainess
Still, I found it weird that she gave it away basically for nothing. That wasn’t very villainessy of her. We get confirmation that her magic is now at least at level 91, since she needed that level of magic to give away her eye. Whether or not her magic is at 100 or not remains to be seen. I still think it’s possible she went straight to 100, but considering she was so excited about giving her eye away she did it immediately after leaving the cottage I have my doubts now.
And the confrontation with Liz. That was so fierce!
This exchange seems a bit more straightforward in answering some lingering questions. It appears that Liz doesn’t have knowledge of the game. Rather, she is aware that no matter what she does things always work out for her. She basically has plot armor as the protagonist. It could be that her brainwashing is just a side-effect of this phenomena and she’s completely unaware she’s even doing it. If that’s the case, it makes me wonder how Alicia is able to counteract it. I do love how Alicia basically reprimands Liz for not trying to min-max her cheat ability.
Prince Duke shows up to be creepy again. Yes Duke, tell the girl you’ve been watching her constantly without her knowledge.
But in a surprise twist, Alicia screws up. She ends up chastising Duke and pushing him away. Wait, isn’t that a perfectly normal thing to do when someone basically admits to stalking you? Well, considering that Alicia internally says she didn’t want to say those things, it makes me wonder if the game phenomenon isn’t trying to force Alicia back towards her intended path. Or maybe she was just caught off-guard and genuinely screwed up since she wasn’t expecting Duke to be angry with her.
At the very end we finally get a good look at Mel
This is the glimpse we got of Mel last week:
Considering that Duke tasks her with finding out the secrets of Liz’s ability to brainwash people, how she seems to talk in an omnipresent voice to Duke, and how Mel calls Alicia a “villainess,” it’s pretty safe to say she’s some kind of supernatural entity tied to Duke’s water magic. She might even have some insight to the workings of the game.
Just wow, what a lot to unpack this episode.
rikka@ani.social [bot] 1 day ago
wjs018@ani.social 1 day ago
I suspect that Alicia was being influenced in some way in that exchange with Duke. I mean, yeah, he was being creepy as hell, but that is pretty normal for him at this point. She seems to have acted against her will. Like you, I think that it is less likely to be Liz consciously influencing things after this episode. Either she is doing it unknowingly, or there is some game force pushing things back to the game’s story line. However, if that was the case, wouldn’t it have influenced Duke and the handful of others that don’t seem affected by it by now?
Really fun episode with Alicia back and I am looking forward to more direct confrontations with Liz and co. going forward.
Mercuri@ani.social 1 day ago
Right? We’ve seen Henry get broken out of it. Maybe Alicia has some kind of cheat skill too since she’s a reincarnation.
The confrontations with Liz are going to be epic. And yes, that push to Ms. Freckles so Alicia could whisper to Liz… amazing.