Volume 3 of Soul Eater: The Perfect Edition covers all of volume 4 and half of volume 5 of the original manga. A lot of the focus in the first half is Medusa's continued experiments with the "black blood" Soul was infected with after their fight with the Demon Sword in the previous volume.
To that end, she engineers the release of an immortal wolfman with a witch's eye from a prison - his design when he basically looks human is much better than his wolfman look - then sets him on Maka and Soul. Even with Black Star and Tsubaki as back-up, things aren't going well, because the partnership is falling apart. Soul is aware there's something inside him that may make him more powerful, but also endanger Maka. Maka feels guilty about Soul being injured protecting her, so she's charging into things without thinking, too focused on "getting stronger" by herself, and not on working as a team.
(There's a scene prior to the fight where they disagree about whether to proceed with a dangerous training exercise or not. In no small part because Maka immediately agrees without even asking Soul. Professor Stein says the Meister has authority to decide, so Soul's objections are essentially ignored. Which really makes me wonder about the rights of Weapons in this whole set-up, if the relationship can potentially be a dictatorship. I guess the check on that is supposed to be their soul wavelengths falling out of alignment, at which point they couldn't work together properly.)
They have a handicap in that "Free", as the wolfman dubs himself, is out of practice after 2 centuries in the pokey. That gives them enough time to get things together enough to push through and win. Though Soul deciding to embrace this power, confident he won't let it consume him or Maka, is a dicey proposition. Especially since, when they use "soul resonance", he starts to consume her soul before he gets himself under control. And now Maka's coughing up black blood. Definitely nothing to be concerned about!
After a jokey chapter about the Meisters and Weapons all trying to prepare for a test (to varying degrees of success), Death the Kid runs into the Demon Sword, in the middle of a mission to take down a Muppet-looking motherfucker calling himself the Flying Dutchman, who is swallowing up people with his ship. The battle would have to go down as a loss since Chrona absorbs all the souls, and Kid gets too distracted by the perfect symmetry of the clouds around the sun to give chase.
A lot of those chapters is devoted to one of his two Weapons, Liz, who gets separated from Kid and her sister Patty. Liz runs into a child ghost who tries to guide her, but Liz is a big scaredy-cat and keeps crying. The little girl's soul is absorbed along with all the others by Chrona, and even says good-bye to Liz as it happens. There's, at least at this point, no payoff for that. Liz doesn't feel regret over being so scared, or determined to stop the Demon Sword. She doesn't try to keep the girl's soul from being absorbed. She doesn't do anything, except chide Kid for being distracted by cloud symmetry. Feels like a time for a character beat that never went off.
Then things kick into high gear, as Medusa's forces spring a trap during a party at the Academy, trapping almost the entire organization (save Dr. Stein and the three lead Meister/Weapon teams) in some magic box. She intends to release the "Kishin", some terrible demon that used to be a Meister (who ate his Weapon.) Lord Death keeps the kishin sealed in a bag made of its own skin, beneath the Academy, then used his own soul to contain the madness the Kishin exudes within the city.
So while Lord Death explains the Kishin's backstory to everyone else trapped in the room, Stein, Maka's loser pervert of a dad, and the kids chase Medusa and her crew. Stein gives them a plan to follow, and Maka promptly chucks it out the window because she wants a rematch with Chrona. Great, not like there are more important things going on than avenging your pride over that "L" you took.
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