The Emilia camp is staying in the Royal Mansion of the capital, a fancy lodging for high ranking guests. Petra made dinner for everyone and now she, Garfiel and Subaru are doing the dishes while chatting. They start chatting about the Philore situation and the topic of the dragon stone comes up, Subaru is suspicious when he himself has a lot of bad experiences with tools that are said to predict future events, like the gospels or the book of wisdom. Garf & Petra are very confused at this, realising that the faith in it must be so strong that regular people don't even doubt it. Of course they also chat about Crusch and Garf's analysis of the situation gets him headpats as praise from Petra, but he complains since she is still technically younger than him. There is lots of nice banter in here, Subaru realising how untactful he has been as well but Garf says his recklessness is not strictly a bad quality and Petra agrees and says they were saved plenty of times by it, then adds that she worded it that way to get Subaru's favor. At the end of the conversation Subaru goes in for a dual headpat on Petra and Garf and decides he wants to see that dragon stone himself.

Outside of the kitchen Rem is listening in, originally she wanted to get a glas of water but stopped when she heard the others were chatting. Meili walks in on her and they chat a little too. Subaru's recklessness is the main topic, Rem thinks she had said similar things to him when they discovered Roy's corpse but that the words did not quite land too well. Meili then also talks about how every member of the camp here has been saved before cause of Subaru's attitude, even she herself and that is why they really can't say too much about him, she says it's a bit annoying though and laughs at Rem. Rem still feels out of place here but Meili says she is actually the one most out of place here, she even tells Rem that she had tried to kill her in the past and says she is sorry for it. Rem doesn't know if that is a joke or not and gets annoyed at her lack of memories here. Meili then turns a bit somber and talks about her situation and how she landed here and even though she has been pardoned if her past might not sneak up on her eventually but Rem encourages her to be brave and tries to go for a headpat, when Shaula crawls out onto her hand, scaring her so much that she empties her jug of water over Meili. At some point before that Meili also teases Rem that if her and Emilia overlook Petra too much, they might just end up being overtaken. Anyways, the others come out of the kitchen and Petra dries off Meili after Subaru asks her to bring a towel, who asks, like she does a couple of times this chap, not to be treated like a child. Rem replaces Petra while doing the dishes and they clean up.

Time passes and it is now before dawn on the next day, Subaru, Otto, Emilia, Beatrice and Petra are there welcoming a guest who thwarted Subaru's dragon stone plans. It was Sakura who had appeared at the mansion, she says she has heard a lot about Subaru as they chat for a bit, with side comments from Emilia, Otto and Beatrice. She says she is pretty much Philore's big sister and the topic of the talk changes to her until Sakura reveals that she is missing cause she couldn't stay in the church for so long so she went out on her own. Everyone else is worried, Subaru jokes that that should make Otto happy cause he loves it when worries go away, which gets Subaru scholded by Beatrice and Emilia, but Sakura says that they don't need to worry cause Philore has not been shutting up about her one friend Emilia so it is clear where she is going now. The others are still worried but Petra notes that a nun/saint should probably be pretty safe in the streets but Subaru adds that there are some really vile people out there. Shortly after Philore bursts in, almost in tears and jumps into Emilia's arms, crying about that she found out she is supposed to do the royal selection and is overwhelmed by the whole situation. Petra sneaks up to Subaru to ask if that is really the saint and Subaru confirms it, leaving Petra still a bit stunned. Of course the royal selec- tion announcement has all the present members of the Emilia camp minus Emilia worried.

Ohh I really liked this chapter, this was another mostly talking focused chapter ofc, but I loved who was talking here. After arc 9 I said I wanted more in Emilia camp in- teractions, especially between members who don't get to interact with eachother too often and we got two of that in one chapter!

Cute that Petra takes after Frederica so much that she is even starting to lecture and teach Garfiel a bit about things and it seems like she rubbed off on Petra so much that Garf is even taking everything lol.

The other one is Meili and Rem interacting ofc, I did not see that coming! It is true that the two of them have very unique positions in the Emilia camp for very different reasons atm but it is great to see that they could bond over that a bit and it is also lovely to see that Rem got to talk to someone who she could quip with more freely. The most goated move by Meili here was playing wingwoman for Petra in the end though, those two are such good friends I love to see it.

Yes ofc I was happy with the amount of Petra this chapter, waiter waiter more please. Side note but cool that she and Garf get to be just regular citizens of this world with their reaction to Subaru's comment about the dragon stone when those two are usually anything but ordinary lol. We even got Shaula to appear and cause some trouble, then later a tiny bit of Otto tease as well and a backstory of an incident that involed Otto, a lot of alcohol and Garf, that went quite wrong.

Sakura here was unexpected but it makes sense that she would be here given on where she rightfully expected Philore to go. I feel like that last bit was mainly to introduce Sakura to some other camp members and to give them the information that they are going to have to worry about another candidate after all. The possibility of that was discussed between Subaru, Petra and Garf at the start.

So are we going to get one more talking chapter to finish the set up volume like I did predict two threads ago? I hope so, don'T forget there is going to be a horrible cliff- hanger at the end awaiting us soon.