By Gamei Hitsuji and himesuz. Released in Japan by Overlap. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Hikoki.

Last time I said that it wasn’t all that surprising that another hero came from Japan, and now after this volume we find that there’s actually a close connection between this fantasy world and Suimei’s own. Given the sheer amount of backstory we’ve gotten on Suimei and his own magic studies, this isn’t too surprising. It’s not good news for anyone who isn’t as powerful as Suimei, though, and there’s some genuine concern at the end of the volume over his splitting with Hatsumi and heading off to once again research a way to return to his own world. Fortunately, through the magic power of trauma, Hatsumi has finally regained her old memories, and so now she recalls enough awesome sword experience… to know that she can run away if need be. Not win. These new enemies are tough. The old enemies are pretty tough too, actually, and the book itself is essentially devoted to three huge fights and an epilogue.

The most interesting of the three fights, though not necessarily the most enjoyable, is the one on Reiji’s side. Reiji is a fairly dull hero, but he’s also pretty pure and noble and cliched as a hero as well. This is why the bad guys seem to think that he, rather than Hatsumi, is going to be the one they make their “main hero” to save the world – he’ll inspire the little people more. Of course, that assumes he’s actually doing heroic things, rather than yelling at Mizuki. Mizuki has been a flat character for a while now, and I wanted her to develop and be able to do more. But not like this. Weaponizing her chuuni tendencies makes her just as annoying as it sounds, and I fear we may have to deal with this version of her for some time. (Combining this with Lefille becoming a little girl again, it’s like the author was asking what things I dislike the most in Too Far Behind and then leaving heavily on them.)

Suimei does get a bit more complicated in this volume, not always for the better. Seeing him terrified of fighting the dragonewt because of past trauma involving his father was interesting, but in the end it didn’t really seem to hamper his battle abilities. More interesting was the discussion at the end with whatever entity is possessing Mizuki and making her fantasies reality. We get a glimpse of a Suimei who did something very nasty, and I’m fairly certain that it’s going to come out in the next book or two and have horrible consequences. Mostly, through this book, Suimei has been a pretty nice guy despite pretending that he isn’t. But he’s not perfect, and he’s a teenager. That said, it’s sort of hard to square this backstory with him and Mizuki and the “dur hur, I don’t know why all these girls are mad at me” harem idiot except “convenience of the plot”.

Overall, this is a good volume of Too Far Behind! if you like fights, and there’s some good plot-related stuff as well. It just had a couple of issues that kept niggling at me through the book. It also had no interstitial illustrations, the second volume to be missing them. Someone should have a chat with the illustrator.