Percival combining his energy with the sword was so predictable that I expected him to just do it without any buildup, but I guess it's actually a big deal if the boost is exponential. I like how he's still a complete newbie who's learning these very basic techniques as he goes. Looks like the Cernunnos isn't going to last much longer, but what about Ardbeg? He could be a big threat even on his own, but the way he's being set up as Anne's opponent makes me question that. She's not completely hopeless in a fight, but she's also not particularly strong since her magic isn't combat oriented. Will be interesting to see how she will manage to become a holy knight with her skill set.
I like how Ardbeg is being used to make the antagonists more sympathetic. I'm curious if the three tragedies he mentioned will have some relevance to the story. They sound like potential backstories of some of the Knights of Chaos, in fact the grieving father looks a lot like Ardbeg himself. However, I'm not sure if some ordinary civilians could just decide to become holy knights one day. The kids maybe since they would have started training at a young age, but the woman couldn't even lift some rubble and Ardbeg was apparently just a normal hunter in the past. Maybe that explains why he has to rely on a mythical beast to fight and struggles to defeat Anne on his own? He was never holy knight material to begin with.
We're now only 2 chapters away from chapter 39 which will feature one of the Sins on the cover and like I mentioned earlier, the Sin in question might already appear in the chapter before that at least in some capacity. We still need to wrap up the fights, reveal what the elder is all about and give some sort of a resolution to the village's current predicament. I'm leaning more and more towards the idea that one of the Sins will have to come to the village to meet the party. Or perhaps they're already there? Gowther can alter his appearance, he can communicate with both demons and humans, he's technically a doll so the amber may not affect him, his magic can put people to sleep and might allow him to use animals to spy on people, he would recognize the dragon handle and he would find the name 'Sin the fox' interesting. That would also explain why Sin is completely calm after waking up, which is not the reaction you would expect from someone who was just knocked out by some shady guy who lives in an ominous village. Perhaps he knows that everyone is safe because they've got a very powerful ally on their side? Food for thought.
The archangel amber is a mixed bag. Where was this amber during the holy war? I assume one of the Four Archangels created this device when they allied with Liones, potentially giving it to a holy knight to use in the war, but it didn't and somehow Arthur got a hold of it. But either way, why didn't we see this before? It basically one-shots any mass army of red/grey demons in an area and that would've been extremely valuable during the war. But meh, guess this guy has it now. Considering an archangel created it, its probably capable of sealing any non-high level demon, making me think the village leader is potentially, a former member of the ten commandments since there's more than one generation of them.
The archangel amber is just an upgraded version of goddess amber which was one of Merlin's inventions, so I don't think an archangel had to be involved in its creation. Merlin being the inventor also explains why it's in the hands of Arthur's knights, but who knows why it didn't appear during the holy war. Perhaps Merlin only created it afterwards in case something similar ever happened in the future? Or maybe she just wanted her allies to suffer some more.