After getting impaled in the chest by the bandit boss, Izark honestly expected Noriko to be terrified of him and call him a monster, like everyone else typically does when they see the extent of his powers. But that was quite frankly the least of Noriko’s concerns, as the last thing she wants to see is him hurt. Once again, it was she who rushed to get a doctor. But as it turns out, there was nothing for the doctor to see, Izark’s wound had already healed itself closed. Neither the doctor nor mayor suspected anything when he had claimed he was never bleeding to begin with, and that the wound is an old scar.
This was definitely a moment where he took advantage of the fact Noriko couldn’t understand what they are saying, since if she had, she would have called out on his lie since she had witnessed him getting severely stabbed first hand. So thanks to the language barrier, the secret is remains between them. Izark has also claimed he has recovered well enough, but honestly besides his body healing itself, what defines as “feeling better” can be largely debated given how he really didn’t look so good after the fight. Heck, later in the episode, the mayor had mentioned Izark even expressed frustration that had he not been unwell, he wouldn’t have had to kill the bandits… (As for the problematic ones, Han who we knew for a minute been promptly captured by the townfolks, the Bandit Boss been killed by Keimos, and Niva and the surviving bandits have all been captured.)
The biggest story though, was the first fight between Keimos and Izark. Naturally it didn’t take much for Niva to persuade Keimos to fight the guy considering he’s exactly the one he had been looking to have a fight with. Keimos has demonstrated very similar powers to Izark, but there’s a noticeable huge gap between them. Keimos expected Izark to at least be heavily injured, but seeing the way he nonchalantly gets back onto his feet, let alone sustain no lost limbs when the same power had blood a guy’s head off last week actually freaked him out. For the first time he realized he had met his match. Had it not been for Ranchef’s intervention to quite literally pluck him out of thin air, he was initially fated to lose to Izark and be gravely wounded.
And now that Keimos’ is in Rachef’s possession, unfortunately for Izark and (unbeknownst to Noriko), it’s only a matter of time before they gain the long awaited lead of her whereabouts. Although the Keimos has yet to see Noriko himself, due to recognizing that only someone as powerful as Izark could take out those flower beasts in the Great forest, he can now offer a critical lead that will better enable Rachef and Gorya to investigate whether Awakening is still by his side. And that’s sure to prove to be a headache.
For this very reason, Izark’s rightfully concerned about leaving her behind in any town as she is. Because of the language barrier, Noriko still doesn’t know what her situation is. (Not to mention it’s only been 3 days, it’ll be a while before she can speak fluently!) Despite his original plans to kill her, Izark has more or less concluded the best course of action is to simply help Noriko get in the position to control her own fate. So now his job is to help her find her place in the world where she (if she’s lucky) won’t be recognized as Awakening. However the immediate concern is Noriko accidentally and unknowingly outing herself for having been found in the Great Forest. Everyone and their grandmothers knows that Awakening had landed in the Great Forest, so getting Noriko up to speed with their language with haste is a critical part of protecting her and building further on their cover. After-all, the sooner the two can get on the same page about this,the sooner Noriko can start blending further into their society with hopes of creating a solid alibi before they go their separate ways. So for the mean time, they’ll stick together.
That being said, we did see that the mayor had considered taking Noriko under his wing because he feared she’d be a hindrance to Izark, and dragged into more dangers (if only they knew her fate..), and understandably had doubts about how long Izark would be willing to keep her by his side. Needless to say, while it was a thoughtful gesture, and it may have greatly paid off for Noriko’s cover story had the mayor decided to make the offer, but he didn’t go through with it. The reason why he had changed his mind was because he felt that having Noriko is someone Izark could use by his side. (Haha… again, if only he knew…)
While the proposal could have been a tempting offer, staying in town probably would’ve been too risky anyways. Had Keimos not connected the dots and identified Izark as the suspected culprit from the Great Woods, maybe Noriko would have had a greater chance to seamlessly blending into the town with the guidance of the mayor and other kind individuals, (who had all done their best to communicate with her today to reassure her that Izark did not abandon her.) After-all, it’s the little details that can add up to tracing them down and identifying who she is: Can’t speak the language, seen travelling with a powerful wanderer, bought clothes from a merchant because she had been wearing the guy’s clothes, insisting despite being strangers that they share room together, and god forbid, someone finds her journal. So at the end of the day, it really is best just to keeping moving. Never staying in one spot for too long in order to keep their heads as low as they realistically can.
As for Noriko… funny enough while she has yet to grasp the grand scheme of things, thanks to her mentality, actually already got a bit of a gist of why she was brought to this world in the first place. Ever since encountering an alerting a house fire in a neighbourhood she had just moved into, Noriko has always believed whenever she feels troubled and helpless, she determines that there’s a reason for it. And sure enough, yes, there’s certainly a fateful a reason why she’s been brought to this world… But whether she agrees with the the way those in power intend to use her influence as Awakening is largely a toss-up. As it stands right now, we still don’t know the specifics and nature of Awakening’s powers. We only got a general gist of it, which is said to be significant enough to allow those who have her by their side to control the world and tame the Sky Demon.
Oh and one last thing: We did learn that the little monsters that the bandit boss had on him are called “Chimo”. besides the fact they grant powers to the wielder, the main concern is that once they are taken away or destroyed, it can cause the wielder to go insane as though they are addicted to their power.
And with that, Noriko and Izark are onto their next destination. We’ll have to see how much longer they can steer clear of Rachef, especially since we’ve gotten a peek into his powers, which was crazy given he somehow made himself share bodies with Groya to borrow his powers!
