By Hajime Kanzaka and Rui Araizumi. Released in Japan by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis.

Another day, another short, mostly action-filled volume of Slayers to try to expand into a review. Lina and Gourry are still searching for a replacement for the Sword of Light, and swords that can cut through ghosts are not really on the same level. Then they hear a rumor (well, beat up a goon to obtain a rumor) that the regent in Solaria is collecting magical swords and other such weapons. Heading there, Lina and Gourry find a city that has lots of armed guards, lots of buildings they can’t enter, and a supposedly friendly regent who… is being guarded by Luke and Mileena, who are also in the city. Needless to say, not everyone is telling the truth, there’s some really creepy demon shit going on behind the scenes, and it’s going to have to come down to a lot of sword fighting and magic battles to get out of this one. Fortunately, this is a volume of Slayers, so we have just the right sort of protagonists to carry this off.

In general, Slayers doesn’t really do flashbacks or prequels – at least not in the main series. There’s a separate novel series that has not been licensed that features Lina and Naga the White Serpent having adventures before she first meets Gourry, and those also got their own anime, but for the most part the two never actually connect to each other. So it’s always interesting to hear Lina talk about these sorts of things. Here one of her minor allies is someone she’s worked with before when a city was about to be destroyed, and she allied herself with several others to stop it. Which admittedly does not sound like Lina, but then this is the novel’s Lina. We also get another mention of her mysterious older sister, and her apparent love-that-borders-on-abuse of her younger sibling. Gourry, sensibly, does not pry further into what is clearly a big trauma for Lina, but we as an audience are very curious.

Speaking of minor allies, we also have Luke and Mileena, which makes me ask… what exactly is their purpose in the story? They’re not really filling the ‘replacements for Zelgadis and Amelia’ role, and for that matter it’s puzzling as to why Zelgadis and Amelia were written out in the first place. You get the sense that the author has something in mind for them, but… given that the first arc took 8 books, and was a fairly loose arc to begin with, I suspect it may be a while. We see more of Luke’s self-declared love for Mileena, and her total disinterest in same. Luke’s sort of a muscle-bound hothead, which contrasts nicely with Gourry’s muscle-bound airhead. This especially comes up when we come across the results of another horrific experiment, one which involves a lot of dead children. It would be interesting to see this developed.

And so, having managed to save the day without destroying the city for once, our heroes are free to wander once more… well, after clearing their names and doing the paperwork. Still good, but this felt like a slighter volume than usual in the Slayers series.