With this episode, we have looped back around to the episode 1 opening. I can't say I was expecting the entire episode to be devoted to the passing of Ars's father. However, it was pretty well done. From when I read the manga, this point marked the storytelling peak in my opinion. However, my favorite character of the series was teased right at the end of the episode. So, even if my favorite parts of the story are over, I can still look forward to that.
Yeah, I think that this story would work pretty well in LN form. From this point on in the story, the manga slowly lost my interest as it is a lot of strategy/meetings/talking only punctuated by action or drama. Here's hoping that the anime is successful enough to attract the publisher's attention.