Frieren: Here’s What Happened to Burg

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End has perfectly combined Japanese fiction’s artistry with Western fiction’s tropes to create a wonderful fantasy work that is extremely popular worldwide, and for a good reason. While the protagonists are the story’s focus, in this article, we will discuss another character whose role is that of a secondary character – the powerful Mage Burg. Burg was introduced during a flashback scene related to Übel and it was one of the more interesting flashbacks we’ve seen in the series. We are going to use this article to tell you all you need to know about Burg and his abilities, as well as how he perished in the series.

Burg was a powerful First-Class Mage

Frieren is a series that has managed to attract a lot of attention because of how the story has been crafted and how interesting its characters are. Both those we’ve seen in the history of the series, as well as those from the present, the characters always have something interesting to offer and the late First-Class Mage Burg is definitely one of them. Even though we’ve seen only a little of him and his story, we still want to tell you a bit about him.

Burg is a character from the past. The past we are talking about is two years before the present timeline so it’s not ancient past as in some cases. At the time, the Second-Class Mage Exam was taking place and Burg was responsible for the second task. Sense described him as an amazingly skilled Mage who was a defensive specialist; in fact, since becoming a First-Class Mage, Burg had not been injured even once. Such was the power of his defensive magic.

Sadly, this is all we know about his story, as the focus of the narrative soon shifted to his abilities and his special “invention”, as well as his fate, which is what we are going to do in this article as well.

His “Immovable Cloak” seemed to be the ultimate defense

As Sense explained, Burg was credited with coming up with the so-called “Immovable Cloak”, a cloak that was imbued with defensive magic. It was seemingly impenetrable, i.e., there was no offensive spell that could breach it, and it was called “immovable” because Burg did not even have to move. He could stay in place and the spells would simply deflect off of the cloak.

As the organizer of the second task, he gave the Mages a very simple thing to do: they had to come in front of him and fire offensive spells at him. If even one of them forced him to take just one step back, they would pass. So, the task was basically to move the “Immovable Cloak”, which was both intriguing and symbolic in a way. As you can imagine, the task was far more complex than it seemed and the Mages failed one by one until Übel arrived.

Übel was the one who killed Burg, although she did not want to do it

At the time, Übel was still a Third-Class Mage and she entered the exam to become a Second-Class Mage. She wasn’t as experienced and her offensive output wasn’t as diverse as that of some other candidates, but Übel was quite sure of herself. On the other hand, as Sense confirmed, no one really worried about Burg, as it was more or less certain that nothing would happen to him. And yet, Übel came, with a smile on her face, approached Burg, and without seemingly doing anything, she passed him, after which Burg ended up being cut in half, dying. Observing him, Übel simply said that she overdid it.

It was a shock for anyone and Übel ultimately failed the exam, as there was a condition that prohibited anyone from killing Burg; had they killed him, they would have been disqualified immediately. And that is why Übel did not pass the exam. but proved herself to be more than capable. But how and why did she kill him?

Well, we’d like to start off by saying that Übel did not want to kill Burg; it wasn’t some sort of sadism or vendetta – her intention was not to kill Burg, but simply to breach his defenses and to injure him. But how? As she later explained it to Sense, her signature spell, Reelseiden, allowed her to cut through anything if she could imagine cutting through it. Magic is, as has been described in the series, the art of making the imaginable real. So, if Übel was able to imagine cutting Burg, she would be able to do it and that is exactly what happened. Of course, she overdid it a bit and used too much power, as her control over the spell wasn’t that good, but she ultimately proved her worth, as well as her notoriety.

Have something to add? Let us know in the comments below!