It sure was a big day
Though today's issue does raise a few questions
So from the rest of the issues we've seen the manifested beasts acting like wild animals running wild in human residence
While the arena beast acted like a trained show animal and does look like someone was behind this
- Someone else summoned the beast?: That individual would be a lot more skilled than Sanders (The ending of duel arc leans towards suggesting that more skilled scribes can summon stronger familiars) which leaves the question of "how tf did that one individual go unknown" (Could be Andrea Argent; we haven't heard much from her since the duel and stuffs happened behind the scenes that made her go underground(?) but that feels like a long strech)
- Sanders did it herself?: Since the article doesn't mention anything about when she disappeared she might have left the place while the focus was on elsewhere and summoned it herself...but that gives more questions than above
- Why didn't she use the stronger beast as her main familiar?
- Did Maxwell & Sanders somehow know this before the beast manifestations started and planned beforehand?
- (As pointed out before) Was the reputational risk worth it?
- Maxwell was behind the manifestations?: “There’s no sign of any scribed spells.” (Figaro Stone, Dec 7 issue) So we can actually tell if those arcane magicks are artificial or not. And the beast summoning was definitely natural, so unless something is wrong here, this one is completely out of the question.
- Nothing shifty was going behind the scenes: Shortest strech from what I can tell. We might be able to see Maxwell being a major contributor to figuring the manifestations out.