It occurred to me that while this second dungeon excursion has so far been similar to the first trip, Ruche has changed- she unprompted tells Elma that she trusts that he has a plan that he thinks will work via a surprisingly complicated chain of reasoning that is pretty solid from the perspective of game theory.

That is not to say that there aren’t pitfalls in such reasoning given the existence of game theoretical chaotic loops that might result in two would be partners behaving in bizarre ways, but I suppose such a discussion is outside the scope of this particular episode.

Anyway, Elma knows that he can trust Ruche to fully commit to any plan he comes up with and knows from his fight with Malice that Ruche won’t “jump the gun” if his plan appears to go off the rails, even though his plan there had upset her. To be completely honest, this is subtle stuff that I did not notice while I was watching the episode and I had to ask myself later what was different this time around in the dungeon.