WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Episode 3 of The Strongest Sage With The Weakest Crest, "The Strongest Sage Meets Iris the Dragon," now streaming on Crunchyroll.
In The Strongest Sage With The Weakest Crest, protagonist Matthias “Matty” Hildesheimer isn’t who he appears to be. To everyone who meets him, from his classmates to his teachers to even the monarch of the kingdom he resides in, Matty is an exceptional student of magic despite possessing the reputed crest of failure. In reality, Matty is the reincarnation of Gaius, a powerful sage from thousands of years ago who is worshipped as a god in the present timeline. Despite being greatly revered by magicians in the present, Matty keeps his past life as Gaius a secret, even from his friends.
After going through the trouble of inducing his own reincarnation to get his desired four crests, Matty implied in Episode 2 that he's not actually as strong as he used to be when he only possessed one crest as Gaius. In Episode 2, he gained access to his king's dungeon as a means of testing his new magical abilities under his current crest. He succeeded not only in making it to the 25th floor of the dungeon, a floor no one before him had been able to access, but he even managed to kill the dangerous Arc Serpent that resided within its depths. Matty brought back the head of the serpent as proof of his magical talents and sold it for 750 pieces of gold in Episode 3.
After selling the Arc Serpent's head, Matty split the 750 gold pieces between his friends Lurie and Alma and immediately detected the presence of two demons targeting the Second Academy. Matty noticed one demon was stronger than the other and decided to take out the stronger demon while he tasked Lurie and Alma with fighting the second weaker demon. During his fight with the stronger demon, Matty confirmed he is in fact weaker in his current incarnation and is learning new magical skills. This naturally left him vulnerable to powerful demons who could easily exploit that weakness.
Matty used his combat experience from his past life as Gaius to use the demons' own magic against them to keep the odds in his favor. Defeating the two demons between himself, Lurie and Alma raised suspicions from the kingdom's residents. Second Academy students are expected to possess neither the power levels nor combat experience to effortlessly defeat two powerful demons. Matty recognized their suspicions as a problem for himself since this could prompt both the school and even the king himself to dig deeper into his past and pry him for answers when they can't make sense of his past.
When Matty, Lurie, and Alma are summoned to the king's palace to be rewarded for defeating the two demons before they could attack the kingdom, a third demon was discovered spying on them from a remote location. Matty along with Alma and Lurie decided to travel to the demon’s location to dispose of him, though Matty does not have the strength to do a teleportation spell. He instead decided to visit an old enemy he fought in his former life as Gaius to transport them. This brought them to Iris the Darkness Dragon.
Iris has been around for as long as Gaius and continued to live for another 5000 years after his death. During that time, a magical reactor explosion ended the previous human civilization and induced a second stone age. This explained, from Matty's perspective, humanity's regressive views on magic in the current timeline. Iris was unable to recognize Gaius in his current incarnation as Matty, but she does recognize similarities between the two. After asking Matty if he happened to know Gaius, Matty revealed he is his reincarnation and asked a favor of her. He asked that she transport himself and his friends to the third demon's location without revealing his true identity in exchange for healing her wings.
Iris agreed to transport Matty, Lurie, and Alma to where they needed to be and she enjoyed the privilege of being able to fly again. However, Iris proved unable to keep aspects of Matty's former life a secret, revealing in the process that he used to have a friend named Reuter, who in the present timeline, is known as a legendary swordsman. Lurie and Alma continue to be in the dark about their new classmate's identity, but whether or not Iris unwittingly spilled the beans on Matty's secret, only time will tell. If Reuter especially appears in the present, Matty may not be able to keep his past hidden for long, which could potentially expose his true motivations, whether heroic or villainous in nature.
