There were two surprises for me by the end of this light novel by Kiki, illustrated by Kinta. One was that I made it to the end of this light novel (admittedly, I skipped a chunk in the middle) and two, that Milkit and Flum agree that they “like” one another. How bold of them.

So, this series might actually be really good if the artistry went into things beyond the gleeful description of human mutation and violence against children. This latter is why I skipped. I am not wasting my precious years on this planet reading details of children suffering as a form of entertainment. But the actual fight scenes are quite decent. And Flum gaining new cursed skills and items is fun. On the bad side, I despise gloating bad guys and this series is neck deep in them. So it’s a constant slog for me to make it through these books, wallowing as they do in terrible people doing terrible things because and good people doing terrible things to stop them and save a few children from the even more terrible things along the way.

In the meantime, Flum is joined by more of her former Hero group members, and we’re clearly setting Flum and her team up to take on them as well as the church, which has been the source of evil throughout.

As I say with every volume, I have no idea if I’ll keep reading this series. It’s not bad, but it ain’t great. As Sean Gaffney so aptly put it in his review, “this series far more comfortable with being a horror book than a yuri book”. I am not a horror-for-horror’s-sake kind of person. I appreciate well crafted horror, but this series always feels more like “let’s squeeze in some gross shit.” This volume added zombies to the mix and, to the author’s credit, it makes sense. It’s not just another horror trope, and it’s more of an emotional stress point for several of the key characters.

Ratings:

Art – 8 Kinta’s art is definitely getting better as the volumes progress.
Story – 7 Settling into good and ugh in equal amounts
Characters – 7 Some emotional growth here, which was nice
Service – 5 Guro-service and always threats of more terrible by gloaty bad guys
Yuri – 5 – Milkit and Flum are up to “like” and Eterna and Ink are couple-ish

Overall – 7

If you like body horror, mutating things and tentacles with your undead, then you will probably really enjoy this volume.