The events we see here are what Shiroe and the raid went through at the same time Akatsuki and the others had been dealing with the murderer. On Christmas Eve, Shiroe and the rest of the raid were facing off against the raid boss. They knew it from the game, so they had an idea of its abilities and attacks. So far, everything is going decent. They had some insta-kills, but they were revived while everyone else was fighting the raid boss. Stupid Demikas still has his hatred toward Shiroe, but the idiot is surviving because of him.
So far, so good. I won’t go into details of every single attack they did since that wasn’t the most important part of this episode. But what was strange was that the raid boss’ abilities were being used everywhere, such as changing its form over and over whenever it wants to, when in the game it could only change its form at a certain moment. And what really ruined everything, and was also very strange, that out of nowhere two more raid bosses crashed into the area. That part is especially weird because there aren’t supposed to be multiple raid bosses in the same area. Each raid boss is designated an area. And no one anticipated this, not even Shiroe. It was three raid bosses against them all, and none of them could stand a chance against them. They were all killed.
When Shiroe opens his eyes, he’s not his avatar anymore but his human self. He’s walking through his memories and forgot the name of a ramen place, one of the memories he’s forgotten. His encounters his younger self and sits next to him on a park bench. We get some background on Shiroe, his parents worked all the time, he was a pretty reserved kid, always mocked kindness, and never accepted help. When seeing his younger self sitting on the park bench, the only place he would go to when he was upset, Shiroe recalled his past and all the mistakes that he had committed, and that he keeps committing even now in the Elder Tale world.
He’s not as trusting of others. He always had this problem in his life, but he’s still doing this. The reason why he failed was because he didn’t trust the others like he should have. He remembers when William had told him that when you die, you learn a lot about yourself, about how shitty you are, and everytime that you die, you’re reminded again and again. And now Shiroe understands what he had meant by that.
Understanding all this, Shiroe goes to that world where he met up with Akatsuki. The same scene we saw before plays out again, and they both revive. Shiroe revives at the entrance of the raid area, and that’s where the episode ends.
It was nice to get a closer look at Shiroe, and maybe he can change himself too. Though I really wonder what the raid team is gonna do with those raid bosses, because if all of them appear at the same time again, they’re just going to get killed again.
