Despite her misgivings about Asahi, even Ruri realizes that with a war upcoming with Nadasha, she has to try and talk the blockhead out of going through it. So she returns to Nadasha to try and get Asahi to end this war. But instead, Ruri ends up exiting knowing that the two losers who summoned her, Asahi, and the other students actually concocted the Priestess Princess tale, and that no matter how hard she tries, Asahi still can’t seem to understand what’s really going on despite Ruri’s explanation.
And that, boys and girls, is how you reach a breaking point!
Ok, to be clear, Ruri long reached a breaking point with Asahi. But after everything she’s experienced (getting banished, meeting fairies, and hanging out with dragons), things have turned out as best as she could hope for. Meanwhile Asahi’s being paraded about for nefarious reasons, and her ignorance continues to shine. In the end though, a war between Nadasha and the Nation of the Dragon King will not be pretty for Nadasha. So the fact that Ruri has known her since childhood plays a big role in attempting to meet her again.
So of course, Ruri ends up being disappointed with Asahi one last time as the words that come out of her mouth never register with Asahi in any way. I think Asahi’s dumbness is what either keeps or holds The White’s Cat Revenge back for some, but I can at least roll with it since it wouldn’t be terribly surprising to meet someone not quite as naïve as Asahi in real life, but just enough to twist things to fit their standards. And yes, this is indeed when Ruri finally comes to grips with being unable to sway Asahi no matter what.
While that did kick this volume of The White’s Cat Revenge off, a lot more things aside from Ruri turning into cat form and simply lazing about in the Dragon King Jade’s lap occur. Aside from preparations for facing Nadasha, Ruri ends up drawing yet another fairy to her side, and this one, who she named Rin, is one of the most powerful fairies around. As mentioned earlier the summoning was just a pretext to create this scenario of Nadasha declaring war on the Nation of the Dragon King, and Ruri really got to see the true nature of the priests who summoned them.
But one of the other subplots is Ruri still hanging around in cat form around the dragons despite being human. She does want to tell everyone the truth but Claus’ comment still spooks her so she’s not sure when. The only one who knows she’s actually human is Claus’ son, Joshua, and he informs her that she’ll have to let Jade know the truth before they face Nadasha. That’s when one of the Dragon King’s retainers, Euclase, overhears them. This ends up leading to a very comedic explanation of the other subplot — Ruri, in human form, was the blonde girl Jade saw in town! From art to the timing, it was fun to see Joshua realize he’s had so much unnecessary work!
The misgiving I have, however, involves Euclase though. In the light novels Euclase is commonly referred to as they, but in the manga Euclase is she — and once Joshua says so it’s clear it’s not Ruri possibly assuming this. Is this merely a case where this wasn’t decided by the time the manga began adapting the light novels? Since I did read the original White Cat’s Revenge I did find it a bit jarring, but I can only guess this is what was in the Japanese text for the manga.
This volume was sorely a pick me up from Volume 2, which was fine but just plodding along. We got more story, the fairies with the cute but murderous intentions behind them popping up alongside the flowery air around Jade and both cat and human Ruri in this volume, and the beginning of the upcoming war. All in all, the manga still remains interesting, and worth checking out.