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The Water Magician Arc 1 Volume 2 by Tadashi Kubou, Illustrations by Nokito. Published by J-Novel Club.

The adventures continue! This volume has what I would consider 2 major events (mini-arcs) contained. One, where everyone has to fend off a stampede coming from inside the dungeon. The other is an assignment at a faraway port-town, to celebrate the launch of a new ship.

The author has to solve what I call the “Saitama” problem. In order to preserve the tension of the series, Ryo can’t be around when big issues occur, since he is (supposedly) one of the strongest magicians in this world. So to prevent everything from getting solved quickly, he actually writes him out of the situation, or delays his arrival with some excuse. There aren’t any cellphones in this world, so it makes sense these things happen, at least at this point in the series. Ryo isn’t particularly interested in becoming a hero and saving the world. At most, he cares about the people around him, like Abel, a newly introduced future-gf, Sera, and his party-mates.

Sera was introduced in the previous volume as a battle-hardened highly-skilled-at-wind-magic elf-girl who is enthralled with Ryo’s sword-fighting abilities. I think it’s clear from the setup that she’s Ryo’s future romantic interest, as every scene they’re in together has Ryo remarking on how beautiful she is. They have good chemistry and similar interests, so although this feels like a way to counter the clearly homo vibes between Abel and Ryo, I’m not annoyed about it.

Also, Ryo has two hands. They’re both even watching over him in the cover of this volume!! You’re not fooling me, author-san….

I imagine Ryo won’t have any room for ability growth since the whole point is that he’s OP, but I enjoyed the development of the side characters.