Oka was the biggest surprise for me in this episode. Like none of you might remember, I was talking a long time ago how I suspect Oka knows everything and thus she's also trying to save the world by going along with the elves' questionable plans and whatnot. However, now it was revealed she actually doesn't necessarily know much, she only has the roster. I very much suspect Potimas is only telling Oka as much as he deems useful, and not all of it is going to be true either, I bet. Oka only cares about her students, so as long as Potimas can make it look like it's for the sake of the students, he can use Oka as he wishes. I imagine he has used her a whole lot, which is pretty much what Sophia was suggesting as well.

I'm now all but convinced the pale lady is Kumoko. I was against it before, when I still didn't know Kumoko might actually be one up on the demon lord. If she has got the demon lord subdued, it doesn't matter what Kumoko is doing, nobody's going to threaten her. As we saw in this episode, once again, Kumoko isn't exactly the sharpest poison fang in the world. So, maybe Kumoko actually is much happier being a gray eminence than the topmost figurehead. On the other hand, if the demon lord is, in the 15 years after world, just another part of Kumoko (if Kumoko's parallel mind ate the demon lord's whole soul and replaced her), it might still please Kumoko that she's not, in her main persona, the one responsible for leading the whole demon world. Of course she could grow along the way, but how she acted in front of Gilly-Gilly wasn't very self-confident and charismatic.

Nevertheless, this is one series where I really don't want a major time skip.