Reign of the Seven Spellblades, Vol. 1 (manga) (Reign of the Seven Spellblades (Manga))

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On the way to the opening ceremony at Kimberly Magic Academy, Oliver Horn passes by the mysterious samurai girl Nanao Hibiya, while becoming friends with fellow students Guy Greenwood and Katie Aalto. Outside the school, a student casts a spell that forces Katie to run towards a giant troll that has gone berserk, but she is saved by Nanao. At the ceremony, academy headmistress Esmeralda delivers a speech warning students that 20% of students do not survive to graduation, but are "consumed by the spell". The students attend a mixer afterwards where Oliver, Nanao, Guy, Katie, Michela McFarlane, and Pete Reston introduce each other and become friends. Nanao explains that she was saved from a certain death by one of Michaela's relatives and was recruited to enroll at Kimberly. At night, Oliver walks out of the dorm to investigate the school and meets up with Teresa Carste, who provides him with intel. At daybreak, Oliver meets a mysterious girl named Teresa Carste, sent by his siblings to watch over him. He then sees Nanao bathing her scar-covered body at the fountain nearby the boys dormitory, which Nanao claims is a purification ritual to cleanse herself for all the enemies she killed in war and is told that what she is doing is unacceptable. Oliver is intelligent, brave, and caring. He takes most situations very calmly, but he can lose his temper when someone harms his friends. According to Oliver himself, he is not good at compartmentalizing his feelings.

When the faculty of Kimberly Magic Academy discuss the disappearance of Professor Darius Grenville in volume 2, the possibility that a student may have killed him is suggested, and then immediately discarded as impossible: as Headmistress Esmeralda puts it, "If, by some chance, a student did kill him, that would mean Darius was never fit to be a Kimberly instructor." This means that the prime suspects are the other instructors. This was exactly what the killer, first-year student Oliver Horn, wants them to think—and in their defense it indeed wouldn't have been possible if he didn't have access to his mother's Ghost Memory. However, after a second professor is confirmed to have been murdered in volume 6, the idea that one or more students might have been responsible starts to gain more traction: in volume 7, the senior-year combat leagues are intentionally arranged so that Esmeralda can determine if any of their students might have been strong enough to do it after all.Neither adaptation includes Chela's suggestion from volume 2 that Pete take advantage of his reversiism to experiment sexually, and episode 13 of the anime cuts Miligan making a pass at Oliver after the Battle of Hell's Armies. When Oliver and the others notice Nanao's depressed mood, they encourage her to open up about her troubles. She begins by recalling her time in Yamatsu, just before she enrolled in Kimberly. During a fierce battle with the enemy, Nanao found herself just moments from being impaled by enemy spears, when a strange Western Sorcerer appeared to save her from her fate. Seeing Nanao's potential, the foreign gentleman offers to enroll her in Kimberly Magic Academy, to which she accepts. Since then, Nanao felt like she was in an extended dream, thinking she had really died on the battlefield, and that her new life in Kimberly was all some sort of illusion. With these thoughts in mind, Nanao becomes desperate to fulfill her dearest wish before this dream ends: "Enjoy the sword of mutual love", an ideology taught during Nanao's time in her sword academy. "In essence, a proper swordsman must not meet hatred with hatred and fight for revenge. To have a duel with an opponent one accepts and respects, with no animosity between you—on the path of the sword, this is called shiawase." (Vol. I Chapter 2: Sword Arts, pg 117) Shiawase (幸せ) meaning "happiness" or "good fortune", is the kind of duel to the death that Nanao truly desires. When she first crossed swords with Oliver, she felt that more than ever before. She had finally found her shiawase, her happiness. Curly blond hair is a Hereditary Hairstyle of the McFarlane family: Theodore McFarlane and his daughters Michela McFarlane and Stacy Cornwallis all have it. Chela jokes at the entrance ceremony dinner that it's considered polite to faint at the beauty of it. Power Trio: Discussed in volume 9 by the Tournament Arc match commentators, who note how similar the finalist teams are in structure: they each have a leader/planner figure (respectively Oliver Horn and Richard Andrews), a strong physical fighter (Nanao Hibiya, Joseph Albright), and an unorthodox disruptor (Yuri Leik, Tullio Rossi).

In the novel, Teresa Carste wasn't introduced until the epilogue of the first volume (chapter 15 of the manga). The anime adds several scenes in the first five episodes where she covertly meets with Oliver on the dormitory quad, as well as having her send an anonymous tip to the Campus Watch to get Godfrey and Whitrow to respond to Oliver and Nanao's raid on Miligan's laboratory. Diana Ashbury: The star of the Blue Swallows broomsports team, Ashbury took a dislike to Nanao when she was accepted onto the Wild Geese team in 1533. She changed her tune after Nanao made her work for her win in their first match, and started coaching her in broomsports. Nanao also encouraged Ashbury to reconcile with her lost lover Clifton Morgan. Their First Time: Discussed when Oliver and Chela give the Sword Roses The Talk: Chela mentions that statistically, about eighty percent of Kimberly students will have had their first sexual experience by the time they graduate. Intimate Healing: In volume 4, Oliver is still fighting the aftereffects of Ophelia Salvadori's Perfume, causing him to become uncomfortably aroused when a drunken Nanao glomps him. When Chela realizes it, she corners him in the restaurant men's room and advises him that, As You Know, if he's still feeling the effects after this long, the only surefire way to clear the Perfume out of his system will be to satisfy the urge, and not by himself. Though she questions whether he'd rather sleep with Nanao (both of them having admitted to their attraction at this point, though neither is willing to call it "love" yet), she solves the issue with a magic-assisted handjob through their clothes. Justified because Sex Magic was involved in causing the problem to begin with, so it makes sense that a similar effect would be useful in resolving it.Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Union seems to be a European Union equivalent, and Azia is obviously Asia. Screw the Rules, They're Not Real!: Despite being an openly and proudly dangerous Academy of Adventure where it's expected that about twenty percent of matriculating students will not survive to graduate in seven years, Kimberly Magic Academy does have some school rules, but enforcement is haphazard and usually left up to the whims of upperclassmen (fortunately the current student council is of a mind to run a Campus Watch). Volume 2 makes particular note of the school rules on Wizard Duels, which are a routine way to settle disputes: on the school grounds proper, only upperclassmen are allowed to set their swords' dulling spells at half-strength, but protagonist Oliver Horn is challenged by Tullio Rossi in the labyrinth beneath the school, where there's nobody to enforce the rule, and Oliver is willing to go along. While Nanao seems to have taken Chela's advice to heart since then, even with her growing affection for Oliver, her desire to duel him still lingers.

Demitrio Aristides characterizes the ancient alliance of humans and demihumans that slew the god of this world as little more than a team-up against a common enemy, though he allows that the now-extinct progenitor demihumans likely played an outsize role in getting the different factions to work together. Range: Extended melee with a weapon while her 7th Spellblade (Can slice through everything she perceives as an obstacle be it the formless space, the passage of time, and even the concept of distance) Superpowerful Genetics: While we don't know exactly what mechanism leads to the ability to use magic, it is known that magic can either be inherited or appear spontaneously in non-magic families, but either way it's something you have to be born with. Mages are even known to use selective breeding to try to produce more powerful mage children. Super-Toughness: Mages as a rule are hard to kill: they can usually at least survive anything that doesn't kill them right away, though a full recovery requires medical intervention. This is used by the author as an excuse to repeatedly inflict grievous wounds on them without issue: to name but one example, Oliver is disemboweled by the garuda in volume 1, but instead of bleeding out in seconds, is able to retreat and sort himself out with a healing spell while Nanao holds it off.

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The Kimberly student council, including Godfrey, Whitrow, Lesedi Ingwe, and Tim Linton, enter the labyrinth in search of Ophelia and the seventeen kidnapped freshmen. With no help forthcoming from the faculty, the Sword Roses plan to enter the labyrinth themselves, and Miligan agrees to bring Oliver, Nanao, and Chela with her to attempt to rescue Pete in exchange for Katie becoming her research assistant. Inside Ophelia's laboratory, Pete changes into female form while unconscious and becomes immune to her Perfume. Godfrey and Whitrow encounter Kevin Walker, who hands over a map he made of the third layer, where Ophelia's workshop lies. Miligan teaches the Sword Roses how to identify the weaknesses of Ophelia's chimeras and slay them. Michela McFarlane: Oliver and Michela are close friends who often act as the more mature members of the sword roses to ensure everyone is ok and behaving well, both of them act like coaches to help their fellow friends with improving their skills be it with magic or sword arts. Oliver and Michela sometimes get into debates about which swordsman style is more effective, though its just a friendly debate and nothing more. The relationship between Oliver and Nanao goes beyond a simple camaraderie. It is a profound connection between two individuals who have found inspiration, strength, and support in each other. Together, they create a harmonious bond that blends skill, emotions, and a shared vision of a future intertwined through the art of swordplay. Oliver and Nanao are strongly attracted to each other from book one on. Katie also has a crush on Oliver starting in book one, and Pete starts to act like a tsundere towards him in volume five. As of volume 9, Oliver has only ever expressed any romantic interest in Nanao. Yen Press Licenses Unnamed Memory, 5 Other Novels, 6 Manga". Anime News Network. July 3, 2020 . Retrieved December 11, 2021.