the registering of the citizen coins, which so far is nothing more than some world-building element in the story without any real purpose, but here it allowed Ferdinand to ignore the god-given task to play his own game and trap Gustavio. And this didn’t feel unplanned at all. The coins get mentioned throughout the story again and again so we don’t forget them. And I believe the first time they are mentioned is in Part 1 during her sister's baptism or at the very latest during her own.

We also get shown Ferdinand’s MO of letting people play by the rules of one game while playing himself a completely different game entirely when he had his Ditter game against Dunkelfelger. I have to re-read those parts but if memory serves he pulled the same stunt by having Dunkelfelger think they’re playing Speed-Ditter while he started to make Treasure-Stealing-Ditter moves. Or he turned it into the latter. Either way his move in this volume was foreshadowed and not an ass-pull.