Characters / The Death Mage Who Doesnt Want A Fourth Time Adventurers

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The Five-Colored Blades

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Heinz

"I have done things to you and your companions that cannot be undone! But I cannot die here!"

The leader of the Five-colored Blades, a party of B-class (later promoted to A-class) adventurers who capture Darcia, leading to her death. Having a change of heart, a remorseful Heinz joined the Orbaume Kingdom and became an advocate of Alda's peaceful faction, which seeks to end the persecution of Vida's races. He is the main target of Vandalieu's revenge, who scorns his change of heart as being a self serving attempt to appease his own conscience.

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• The Ace: He's one of the most talented humans alive, starting at B class before moving on to A and then finally ending up as one of only three S ranked adventurers. Alda is considering making him a subordinate god when he dies.
• Adaptational Sympathy: In the original web-novel, he didn't have time nor opportunity to investigate Darcia before she came into town, and if the hand delivered letter given him by Baronet Bestero was accurate and he did nothing, hundreds of lives could have been lost if he allowed what he was told was a high-ranking member of a murder cult to come to town. This is much more redeemable than his manga depiction where he attacked a woman with little, if any warning, in the town square, only revealing he received this note when the rest of the party is openly celebrating her unjust death in a tavern and he's going "I don't feel so good about this."
• Adaptational Villainy: He's considerably less sympathetic in the manga than the original web novel. In the novel, he confronts Darcia in the forest, just outside of town, going purely by the merits of her wanted poster, and the hand-delivered letter from Baronet Bestro; once the commission's been carried out, and Godran burns Darcia at the stake, he leaves town almost immediately, openly refusing to partake in the "celebration," out of sheer disgust at being played like a fool. In the manga, he and his entire party attack her in the town square, without any cause or provocation, whatsoever, caring not a whit about collateral damage, especially "innocent civilians" nearby, and seeing with his own two eyes that she was an honest, law-abiding woman. It isn't until long after she's been horribly tortured and burned at the stake, as he's having dinner in the tavern, eating a lavish meal he bought with the money he's paid for attacking her, that he begins having misgivings, and even then, they're only at the level of "I don't feel so good about this."
• Aesop Amnesia: He is very, very good about "coming to peace" with his crimes and sins, rather than actually accepting responsibility for them. He spends 10 years or so lying to everyone about his involvement in Darcia's death, even making himself believe he was a helpless bystander, not the agent most responsible. When he's confronted by Vandalieu and Darcia, in person, and hit between the eyes with the fact that he is genuinely unrepentant, especially once he gets the "Vida's Mortal Enemy" title, he goes into a depression that Alda's faction tries to rouse him from, with a bunch of platitudes and Logical Fallacies. They eventually manage to succeed, and Heinz demonstrates his most damning flaw. While the rest of his party, even Edgar who sees nothing wrong with treating Vida's races like wild animals, killing even helpless children, are chained down by The Evil God of Sinful Chains through the weight of their sins, Heinz walks through the sins, completely unfazed, to then [Guide] Bellwood away from his own guilt, for kick-starting the Fantastic Racism in the first place, and back into active life in the world of Lambda.
  • As he's undergoing the Trial of Bellwood and gets the "Holy Mother Killer" title, he and his party start going through his Rogues Gallery to try and think how it could be possible before settling on Darcia getting the "Holy Mother" title after her death. Among the list of victims is a merfolk woman leading a "cult" guarding a demon king bodypart, who managed to escape his crusade alive. Chapters 254 and 255 reveal to Van and the readers that the "cult" was a Temple of Tristan, a well respected subordinate god of Peria, and he attacked them going purely by the merits of a hand-delivered letter from a noble who wanted the head-priestess dead because she's the result of an adulterous tryst and he didn't want the possibility of a Succession Crisis nor Blackmail hanging over his head. Wasn't taking a noble's letter at face value what got him in trouble in the first place?
• Appeal to Worse Problems: When Vandalieu hits him between the eyes with the cold, hard truth that his self-proclaimed quest for atonement has done nothing but kill innocents, including children, Heinz instead turns it back around by claiming that that Vandalieu's actions are worse rather than admit to his own mistakes. Except the problem there is that while this may^note They operate at different scales, making it unclear who has done more overall good and harm be true, the way he points this out reveal himself as a hypocrite: He claims to champion an oppressed group, but when hearing about someone helping that group at the expense of their oppressors, his first reaction is anger at the person who actually helped. Even if he meant that Van's actions would only further conflict, it doesn't change the fact that he shows next to no concern for people who were actually suffering.
• Arch-Enemy: During the Trial of Bellwood, his descent into the dungeon is interrupted by Vandalieu, who have a brief argument before fighting. Heinz's positions beforehand and actions during the battle completely alienate Vida, earning him the Title of her archenemy. Good luck calling yourself a champion of Vida's races when their god and creator absolutely hates you and has spread the word about how your words are completely untrustworthy.
• The Atoner: He feels regret over the death of Darcia and seeks to end the persecution of races like Dark Elves as a result, causing him to launch a campaign of internal reform. However, when confronted about his role in her death he grows defensive, showing that he's been busily denying as much responsibility as possible and hasn't even publicly acknowledged that he participated in her death rather than simply failing to save her.
• Believing Their Own Lies: In the ten or so years since Darcia's death, after fleeing into Orbaume, he spent every waking moment telling everyone, including himself, that he failed to rescue Darcia from "Saint" Gordan torturing her and setting her ablaze at the stake, then defiling her remains with "holy water." After being forced to face the truth, much as he might want to admit it, attempting to do so will cause his faction to implode.
• Blaming the Victim: Justified. In Chapter 200, Van gets enough control over the Curatos created copy body to actually address Heinz and party to tell them they're letting themselves be led around by the nose in repeatedly attacking Curatos created meat-puppets, but before he can finish, Heinz interrupts him, points at the corpses, and yells out that the battle is their fault for not wanting to talk things out. Van himself concedes the point, but isn't swayed from considering Heinz, Edgar, and Delizah as existential threats that need to be exterminated, considering their history with Vida's races and the fact that they chose to enter this situation willingly and intentionally.
• Blue Is Heroic: A heroic adventurer with the nickname "the Blue-Flame Sword".
• Bounty Hunter: Adventurers basically just kill monsters to collect rewards. While Heinz considers himself a hero trying to fix the system from within, Van points out that his actual behavior hasn't changed since his adventurer days: He still just goes into the homes of other races and kills them for money based on flimsy and biased information, then leaves satisfied with himself. This accusation hits hard.
• Byronic Hero: He's a genuinely well meaning and noble person, but his flaws completely destroy any chance of accomplishing anything. His appearance as The Atoner is undermined by him refusing to accept responsibility for his actions when people blame him for what he's done rather than praising him for (supposedly) changing, his hypocrisy in how he puts humans in a higher position than Vida's races ruins his credibility and his inability to admit his mistakes keeps him from actually changing for the better. He's all set to destroy himself and it's only a matter of time before he goes down.
• Captain Ersatz: He's basically what Cecil Harvey would be if he never underwent his pivotal Character Development and remained an Unwitting Pawn.
• Character Development: Subverted. A good portion of the story makes it seem as if wavering on his Blind Obedience to Alda's doctrine might at least have him learn to investigate the merits of subjugation quests so he doesn't wind up getting played as a fool by some Alda fanatic or corrupt noble again, like what happened in Evbejia. Chapter 200 reveals that he learned nothing from the experience, continues taking subjugation quests for money without doing any preliminary investigation, and Alda Harmony ultimately only wants Vida races to be at best second class citizens compared to the real "people". Repeated in volume 13, where Heinz considers putting himself at Van's mercy to try and get his friends spared, only to turn on Van so he doesn't have to admit to himself his own culpability in the revival of Demon King Guduranis. For all Heinz's talk of change and growth, it's all just about feeding his hero complex and Never My Fault flaws, rather than growing beyond them.
• Chewbacca Defense: He tries to impugn Van's decision to free the abused and illegally enslaved Titans in the Hartner Duchy mines by saying Van's responsible for taxes going up to repair the Hartner Duchy castle... Which the Hartner duke says was torn down by the criminal Kanata.
• Condescending Compassion: After speaking with him, Vandalieu concludes that Heinz's "peaceful" faction is worthless in terms of bringing Vida's races equality. They stand firmly on the side of humanity and have never even considered that all their adventurer requests to slay dangerous monsters were completely one sided and brutally violent: They didn't ask questions, they just assumed the worst and killed every "monster" present, including infants and children. Even if he is sincere, this fundamentally human centric view guarantees Vida's races will exist in a presumably permanent lower social position where their existence is only tolerated, at best, and constantly beset by prejudice built into the system. Further, Heinz does very little to actually help people in danger, instead doing things that improve his image like "helping" a young dhampir try to register at the adventurer's guild whether the dhampir in question, Van, actually wants help or not.
• Consummate Liar: Not only does he have a nasty habit of absolving himself of his crimes in his own mind by lying about his involvement to everyone, including himself, but when he's on-screen [Guiding] Alda fanatics, he makes them doubt their fervor by telling them that Alda himself is wavering on his ideology when nothing could possibly be further from the truth. And he wonders why Vandalieu considers him untrustworthy...
• Create Your Own Villain: Because he attacked, incapacitated, and kidnapped Darcia, left her to the "tender mercies" of Godran, to be burned at the stake, after three days of public torture that he pointedly ignored, and left Vandalieu to his own devices, fleeing in the middle of the night into another country like a coward, rather than do anything at all to aid the infant dhampir, and then spent the next 10 years lying to everyone about his involvement in the affair, he's left Vandalieu with no choice but to become his and his patron god's worst nightmare, and take up a bunch of crimes to stay alive. Being completely unapologetic and carelessly mass-murdering Vida's races, entire villages at a time, for money, has not helped.
• Crime of Self-Defense:
  • His party still takes subjugation missions against Vida's races when they cause harm to humans, which seems at least reasonable. However, as Van points out, the humans likely started those confrontations: Majin have a standing kill on sight order while ghouls don't leave Devil's Nests, meaning any human deaths were likely a result of self defense. It's easy to imagine how else humans might pick a fight with Arachne or whatever and then go crying to the adventurer's guild when it goes poorly.
  • He gets angry at Van for forcibly freeing Titan slaves, punishing the Hartner duchy and defending the Scylla at the defense of the Sauron duchy because this would incite more conflict. Never mind that the Hartners and Saurons started it, apparently Van should have just let it slide.
  • On the other side of things, Darcia and Vida state they will never forgive Heinz for traumatizing Vandalieu even further by cutting through Curatos's copy of Darcia in front of Van's eyes to try and destroy Van's own copy body... while Van is trying to kill Heinz and two of his friends. Any lasting damage Van took during that fight? He did it to himself while attempting to commit murder.
• Dark Secret: While early chapters implied Heinz publicly based his crusade out of guilt for the murder of Darcia, Van eventually discovers that he actually claims he failed to save her rather than being one of the parties most responsible for her death.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the standard heroic adventurer keeping the world safe from monsters while "heroically" keeping in mind their intelligence and free will so as not to seem racist. He just accepts quests to get rid of monsters at face value and seems to only extend compassion and understanding to said "monsters" if they've managed to avoid having a hit put out on them. Which often means going completely unnoticed because many races are deemed kill on sight. He's completely unable to see the situation from the perspective of the group he's been sent to eliminate, typically failing to notice that they are quite possibly the victim in the situation, not the aggressor, and even if they did start it his response is often well into overkill. He accepts requests to commit murder without bothering to check out the accuracy of the information he's being presented or the motives of those involved then gets surprised when it turns out that he's the asshole, not the tribe of ghouls barely managing to survive in twisted lands infested by monsters or the majin quietly minding its own business far away from town.
• Determinator: Deconstructed. He never gives up, never gives in, refuses to surrender or stand down in the face of overwhelming force, and continues to march to the beat of his own internal drum, acting on his self-righteous beliefs, but because he never, ever looks at the actual merit of his actions just continues to make everything worse and obliviously sabotages, subverts, and undermines his own stated goals until the consquences blast him in the face, soundly defeating him and making his methods completely impossible, but after he mopes around for a bit, he comes back fiercer and more determined than before, completely ignoring how his own actions turned around to bite him somewhere sensitive.
• Deuteragonist: The story often has numerous sections following his growth, goals and adventures as he tries to get stronger and reform Alda's church. Notably, he's pretty much the only character besides Van himself to have complete status page displayed, including his total stats. His POV shows that there's actual little need for enmity between him and Van, but because of the latter's personal grudge and the former's ignorance of the situation and narrow minded belief in Alda, the two are pretty much destined to clash.
• Didn't Think This Through: The fundamental flaw to his character is not a blind belief in Alda's dogma, as he has openly questioned it on several occasions, but rather that his decision making process is impulsive, irrational, rash, overly trusting and almost completely based on his emotions. He rarely takes empirical evidence or even his own first hand observations into account, instead preferring to fall back on the ease of letting other people do his research for him while ignoring their intentions are not as good, or allowing himself to be comforted by Edgar's words because he's a friend while ignoring that Edgar doesn't particularly believe in Heinz's actual cause. This leads him to completely ignore the obvious consequences of his "heroic" acts until they come along and blast him in the face, completely subverting his stated goals. Worse, he also fails to look back at what he's "accomplished" to see how successful he's actually been so far, meaning he doesn't even learn from his mistakes.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: Regardless of how much he states that his ultimate goal is atoning for his Tragic Mistake, and how he forces himself to believe it, his actual goal is simply to flee from his own guilt and the responsibility for his actions as far and fast as he can, and when he's cornered, turns and attacks his victims, serving to make their legitimate grudges worse. To further compound the problem, because of his Selective Obliviousness to anything and everything that shows he isn't as heroic as he wants to believe himself to be, he refuses to learn from either his own mistakes, or even the mistakes of others, and just keeps on digging.
• Double Standard:
  • When he was in Evbejia, he, without reservation, took the Baronet's commission to hunt down Darcia and Vandalieu, purely because the latter was a dhampir, leading to the former being tortured and burned alive at the stake, and he believes leading the latter to death of starvation, as an infant. To "atone," when he hears of a mercenary band hired to do the same exact thing, from an unnamed noble, he slaughters said mercenary band like they're nothing more than nameless bandits, and takes custody of the dhampir child, Selen. Then when Alda fanatics show up, trying to murder her, he just disarms them, gives them a gentle scolding, and walks them to the local jail. Murder for profit is only okay when he does it, but fanaticism gets a free pass.
  • It's noted in an early profile that he thinks Vida's races should be accepted if they don't cause problems for people, but it only becomes explicit later on that this doesn't apply in reverse. Van calls him out on this, and he ends up acknowledging the point, but his behavior doesn't really change much.
  • He gets angry and protests that Van's actions are somehow worse than his own. What are the examples he posits? Knocking over the Hartner Duchy castle, shutting down the mine by freeing slaves that were illegally acquired and mistreated even by Hartner duchy law standards, and spiriting away the human population of two cultivation villages, which the Hartner duke himself made a huge public showing of sending an army against. Heinz's crimes? Repeated acts of genocide for money, never mind the policies of Mirg Shield Nation, Armid, or his own racist god, Alda. What's worse is that this little "debate" is going on with Heinz and crew standing hip deep in hard evidence that they're training and preparing to launch a genocidal attack upon Van's empire as the clear aggressors!
• Dramatically Missing the Point: He objects to Curatos's little stunt because he sees it as a cowardly tactic. He fails to recognize that Vandalieu is pissed off and considers Heinz completely untrustworthy because the act is hard proof that Heinz's so called "atonement" is just meaningless lip-service by showcasing that Heinz will happily repeat his crimes when it suits him.
• Dramatic Irony: While training under Alda's "Familiar Spirits," said spirits goad him with the facts that he's not strong enough to defeat the new "Demon King" and his stated goal is peaceful coexistence between the "people" races and Vida's races. He, of course, is completely unaware that the "Demon King" he's training to fight against is also Vida's champion, and the very epitome of peaceful coexistence among all sentient races.
• Dumb Muscle: Granted, there are times when one must take up arms to prevent an even bigger conflict, but Heinz has repeatedly shown that despite being highly intelligent and rational, his preferred method of dealing with any situation is drawing his sword and attacking first, asking questions much later, if ever, and he utterly fails to solve any problem or situation that does not have combat as a primary element, at least not by his own merits. He utterly fails to comprehend how this completely undermines his stated goal of promoting peace until he's on the receiving end of being blasted to kingdom come, and getting a title that makes it crystal clear that peace with him, specifically, is impossible.
• Engineered Heroics: It is shown on-screen once, and referenced by the rest of The Five Colored Blades on a repeated basis, that he uses Selen as bait to draw out Alda "Anti-Vida fanatics" then swoops in to rescue her and "guide" the fanatics to a more "moderate" mindset.
• Entertainingly Wrong: He takes the combination of Alda's divine protection and having joined joined the peaceful faction^note Which does not conform entirely to Alda's stated beliefs, most notably considering races like Titans to be people and occasionally extending the same rights to those like Scylla himself as a sign that Alda's mind is not entirely made up and that he could be open to compromise. This is not entirely wrong, but the truth really seems more like Alda is just humoring him because he assumes Heinz will give up and return to being a proper believer. Maybe Alda will make an exception for the Beastmen and so on, maybe he won't, but this has absolutely nothing to do with anything Heinz says to him and certainly doesn't include races like Arachne or Ghouls.
• Expy: He's got aspects of the three other Cardinal Heroes from The Rising of the Shield Hero.
  • He's a Master Swordsman like Ren, the sword hero, and his first noted accomplishment is taking up a town's quest to subdue a "dangerous" target of the town's villainy and then leaves the area once he's done, presuming the consequences would work themselves out, somehow, with the resulting orphan being put through hell, with the town also suffering the karmic backlash of their villainy. Of course, since he couldn't take Van into custody, he instead took custody of the first orphaned Dhampir he came across, thinking that would make everything alright. He's wrong.
  • Like Itsuki, the bow hero, he goes to the adventurer's guild, takes up the requests he thinks give him the most recognition, without any preliminary investigation, completes them, and then turns in the proof, which involves body-parts of his victims, not caring about the consequences, especially the fact that he's mass-murdering entire villages at a time.
  • But the most striking parallels he has are with Motoyasu, the spear hero. He takes as fact anything and everything that he hears from a friendly face, or thinks is a friendly face, twists himself into pretzels to find some way to believe that he is not at fault for his actions, and blames his victims for the fact that they're mad at him, because he victimized them, and dubs them "evil" for daring to resist his attempts at killing them, or taking what's precious to them away by force. When he can't flee from his guilt anymore, he goes into a depression, only to be roused on the other end as an even worse person. Not to mention that he constantly goes out of his way to meddle in the protagonist's affairs and antagonize him every chance he gets, drowning in self-righteousness.
• Failed a Spot Check: Fails to notice Van saying several times during the conversation rather important things like 'Why don't we talk first before we get to the fighting? Neither of us are ready yet' and 'I'm definitely going to kill you.' Somehow it comes as a shock that as soon as Van is ready, he does his best to kill Heinz's party.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Thanks to his own lack-luster career of being a self-proclaimed champion of Vida's races, his actions in Bellwood's dungeon, the way he handled the aftermath, and several factors he's yet unaware of, his prospects are grim, no matter what he does.
  • Because he's spent over a decade telling himself that he's changed and "coming to peace" with his actions, rather than actually changing and taking responsibility for them, not to mention spending years in Bellwood's Dungeon hacking his way through anything and everything that moves, including Vandalieu, he's convinced Vandalieu that he's an irreedeemable threat that can only be stopped by killing. Furthermore, by Rodcorte's estimates, Heinz, at his best, has maybe a 1 in 1000 chance of actually winning a straight up fight, and Rodcorte is well-known for overestimating the odds in his favor.
  • Because Heinz has completely destroyed his credibility by telling everyone, including himself, that he failed to rescue Darcia from the hands of Gordan and his fanatics, rather than being the guy who attacked her and handed her over in the first place, Van is not willing to accept his surrender without concessions that Heinz simply can not stomach. He goes and screws this one up too when he tried, by recanting his surrender and attacking Van the moment Van demanded that Heinz make public all his dark secrets and confess to not only being responsible for Darcia's murder but for his part in bringing Guduranis back into the world of Lambda.
  • Alda's invested too much in him, so if he tries to take the Randolf approach and simply go into "hermit" mode, Alda's deal with Rodcorte means that he will get lobotomized and forced to attack Van anyway, and this threat looms over him as long as he remains in Alda's faction.
  • Even if he becomes aware of the above, he has no chance of defecting to Vida's faction because his actions in Bellwood's Dungeon have irreversibily alienated Vida herself, granting him the title "Vida's Mortal Enemy."
• Fantastic Racism: Double subverted. He kidnaps Darcia and gives her to a religious fanatic who proceeds to burn her alive, leaving a newborn Van to starve to death, just because some noble asked him to, and Darcia was technically a criminal by that nation’s laws for having a dhampir son. But he felt really terrible about it and began championing the cause of peace between Vida's races and the humans. However, it's shown that he's still pretty racist later when we learn he still takes those kinds of requests and seems content to allow innocent Scylla and Titans live in constant fear of extermination or outright slavery rather than truly shake up the status quo by helping them at the expense of humans.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Despite appearances, he can't actually accept when he's done something wrong, which makes him unable to modify his beliefs or atone for his actions. Instead, he claims that he failed to save Darcia rather than helping to kill her himself. He's even nearly convinced himself of this story.
  • Despite his goals, he holds a clear Double Standard when it comes to the human races and Vida's children. His position is better than nothing but for all his talk of championing Vida's races and bringing peace, he doesn't actually respect them at all nor does he view them as equal to humans.
  • Despite stating that he desires peace, his very nature is to draw his sword and attack first, ask questions later, much later, if ever, and he doesn't grasp why this is a problem. He never really bothers to do his own research, instead choosing to believe whatever a friendly face told him last. This causes him to repeatedly undermine his own goals by, at best, killing people he claims to advocate for because he doesn't bother to find out whether they were guilty of anything or their reasons for their behavior, which is often self defense.
• Follow in My Footsteps: His own flaws aren't well known publicly, which as led to a lot of imitators, many of them even worse than Heinz's party. The Flame Blades, for example, intentionally crippled the fastest member of their party so that the minotaurs chasing them would catch, mutilate and rape her so that the human party members could escape.
• Good Is Dumb: He means well, he really does. He wades into mortal danger with little to no thought for any possible rewards, struggles to free oppressed minorities from illegal slavery and works to bring about gradual reforms rather than stoop to what could charitably called terrorism from Van's group. Unfortunately, his blind acceptance of values dictated by a flawed god that he knows to be at least partially wrong leads him to actions that boil down to bounty hunting and mass murder. His inability to actually look at the consequences of his actions, those of the people around him and those he considers adversaries blinds him to the fact that he isn't actually getting much done, or at least not fast enough for it to matter to people who are suffering right now.
• Hate Sink: While he seems to regret what he did to Darcia and Van and has goals apparently similar to the latter's, over time, it becomes clear that no matter what lies he tells himself, he's really just making a good name for himself and avoiding his guilt by making token efforts that don't actually help Vida's races in need, unless the wind blows just right. In fact, he doesn't see the issue in killing the people he supposedly wants to help if they cause problems for others, even if the evidence of their wrongdoing is flimsy at best. When called out on these problems, he doubles down on his mistakes, earning the hatred of the audience. Contrasting the original three members of the party are Jennifer and Diana, who can be seen acknowledging their flaws while Heinz avoids responsibility, Edgar doesn't believe he's done anything wrong, and Delizah doesn't even listen to a thing Van has to say, openly proud of her actions.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: While the discussion between him and Van ultimately led into combat and had Van mostly convinced that Heinz's peaceful faction were more or less worthless, he actually was listening and thinking about things and would have been more self reflective if Van had been more open, as shown just a few chapters later. Unfortunately, this is the point where he realizes that peace between him and Van is now impossible thanks to Curatos's stunt and Vida declaring him her mortal enemy.
• Heel Realization: In chapter 206, after receiving the "Vida's Mortal Enemy" title, he realizes how hypocritical and ultimately self serving his actions have been, entering a state of severe depression that the goddess Mill tries to rouse him from. It definitely doesn't help that the title makes it very clear that his mission is basically impossible: None of Vida's children will want anything to do with him.
• Hero Antagonist: He's well known as an adventuring hero, saving innocents, and slaying the monsters that threaten them. He's even trying to reform the church of Alda and finding success in moderating their beliefs towards Vida's races. Van does not care, though, because it doesn't change the fact that Heinz murdered his mother for profit even if he deeply regrets it now, nor is Heinz showing remorse for his behavior: He says he did a bad thing, but when called out on it rather than praised for turning a new leaf, he gets defensive.
• Heroic BSoD: Curatos' final gambit and the soul damage from Van leave him at least temporarily crippled and unable to do anything meaningful. More alarming for Alda is that Van's message did sink in and he has been forced to confront his own hypocrisy, greatly undermining his belief in his own actions.
• Hero with an F in Good: He genuinely wants to be a praiseworthy hero, protecting the innocent, helping the helpless, and freeing the oppressed wherever he finds them. Normally, this would be a good thing, but he's got a serious character flaw that has him fail at the Heroics 101 class. Rather than doing his own homework in any way, he insists on having others do it for him and then refuses to accept the consequences when this goes wrong. He fervently insists on denying responsibility as much as he can until this is physically impossible only to bounce back into his denial the moment someone gives him an excuse he finds plausible. As a result, he has permanently alienated the goddess he states he wants to champion, the woman who is his first on-screen victim that he was desperate to atone to, and the lovecraftian horror who calls the previous two "mom." But because he still insists in letting others do his homework for him, keeps antagonizing the last to the point that the policy now "kill on sight" or pretty damn close to it.
• His Own Worst Enemy: He means well, he really does, but he seeks to bring about the end of a system of oppression while still being seen as a hero by that very same system. To compound that problem, he also wants to be seen as a flawless Ideal Hero, emphasis on flawless, so he refuses to even admit his mistakes, let alone learn from or correct them, instead choosing to throw out lies, half-truths, and random excuses to try and pin the blame on circumstances beyond his control. Naturally, he never fails to sabotage himself every chance he gets.
• His Story Repeats Itself: One major issue for him is blindly believing in what he has been told if the person offering the information is friendly towards him, especially if it lets him avoid confronting his own flaws. This has led to him ignoring his own better nature because Edgar told him it was okay, to commit genocide because supposedly a reclusive race that actively avoids humanity was targeting them and to convince himself that what happened with Darcia was nothing but a sad mistake rather than a deliberate act that actually managed to make him feel actual guilt for once. This flaw is one that Van very pointedly shoves in his face, but after a bit of moping where it seems like the point may have sunk in, he ends up not really learning the appropriate lesson from the whole incident thanks to, once again, someone telling him something that's more comforting to hear.
• Hypocrite:
  • Considers himself a champion of Vida's races, but in any conflict between them and humans he always sides with the humans without even checking to see who is to blame or whether the ghouls/majin/etc have actually done anything wrong. He also has yet to actually do anything to help specific people, instead choosing to just start a religious movement that only uses words. On top of that hypocrisy, when he learns Van protects Vida's races at the expense of human society, he gets offended.
  • Acts like a hurting champion of justice plagued by guilt over a past crime, but when someone says he's still a criminal rather than praising him for changing, he quickly gets defensive and denies that he's done anything wrong.
  • Despite "feeling bad" about "failing to protect Darcia," he's quick to condemn Vandalieu as "insane," "evil," or just plain wrong. While Vandalieu has a rather extensive list of crimes, Heinz's own behavior is objectively worse, far more often than not. Heinz knows his actions are horrible, or else why would he lie about them. He's guilty of countless acts of genocide, for money, not for anything noble like "protecting his people," despite what he tells himself. He has no Freudian Excuse, and he had plenty of opportunities to lay down his sword and walk away. Opportunities he scoffed. When he gets called to task for it in Bellwood's Dungeon and then shortly afterward, he briefly realizes that yes, he is the bigger criminal, but then goes right back to thinking he's a "hero" for his mass-murdering ways.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Although he "feels bad," he shrugs off responsibility by claiming that accepting the request to hunt down Darcia was unavoidable because he got a hand-delivered letter from Baronet Bestero, requesting his aid. Vandalieu is well aware of this, and this is the primary reason Heinz's "atonement" is viewed with suspicion.
• Idiot Hero: He is actually fairly intelligent and means well, but because of his stubborn propensity to blindly believe as fact whatever he's told by someone he considers a friend, he's a complete and utter fool who constantly undermines, subverts, and sabotages his own stated goals, mass-murders and alienates the people he states he wants to champion, and never, ever learns from his mistakes, succeeding only at making everything worse wherever he acts. The longer he's in the picture, the more innocents are going to die as a direct result of him, and he continues to delude himself that he's actually making improvements in people's lives that aren't entirely superficial and completely fragile, dependent entirely on his personal reputation.
• Ignored Epiphany: In chapter 200, when Vandalieu tells him and his party that Ghouls are a race of Vida, he admits to having suspicions that the common knowledge of Ghouls being a type of undead was impossible, at best, but simply shrugged and went back to killing them, to collect their body parts for money.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: To further numb his conscience, while in the Trial of Bellwood dungeon, facing off against the Vandalieu "sock puppet" that's wielding Demon King Fragment facsimiles, he shouts "even if you're the son of the woman I let die, I won't hold back! We can not leave the demon king's pieces alone!", seemingly indicating that he believes he simply let Darcia get burned at the stake and tortured, not that he actively had a hand in putting her in that situation. This is, in fact, what he publicly claims and what he has forced himself to believe until Van confronts him point blank.
• Inspector Javert: So as to avoid admitting his mistakes and wrongdoing as much as possible, he continues to hunt Vandalieu every chance he gets, subverting his self-proclaimed goals of atonement and easing tensions between Vida's races and "the people." He then has the gall to yell at Vandalieu that the latter "doesn't want to talk things out."
• It's All About Me: Not in the "everything in the world is my property and people should do whatever I say" manner, but in the "everything that goes on in the world is my doing". Even though Vandalieu specifically pointed out that Heinz's actions are not what made Vandalieu the "Demon King", Heinz firmly insists that he's directly responsible for all Van's "evil" acts and beats himself up over it.
  • By the time of the chapter "Heinz Returns," he has come to the conclusion that he must be the best "hero" alive, trouncing and outperforming all others, regardless of the cost, and can not brook any other hero working in his sphere of influence, aside from his own party, unless he completely outshines them. This results in many, many problems leading to his rapid self-destruction.
• I've Come Too Far: After getting the "Holy Mother Killer" title, he not only knows precisely why, and accepts that he deserves it, but realizes the possibility that Alda's faction of gods has been playing him for a fool is high. Still, he convinces himself, and the rest of his party, that his only path forward is to complete "Bellwood's Trial" and then try to speak with Alda about things rather than follow his own beliefs.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Averted. He never, ever stands down or surrenders. As long as he thinks he can act, he will. The only time he sheathed his sword was fleeing Amid in the middle of the night, and then only because he didn't want to fight humans, even though he knew their actions were horrible, and he was disgusted at being their pawn. But as long as he can delude himself into thinking his actions are somehow righteous, he won't stop until it's physically impossible to continue.
• Light Is Not Good: His main element seems to be light and he has a special version of divine protection from the god of light as well, but because he's so completely resistant to changing his mind about things all he manages to really achieve is make himself feel better about his old crimes without actually working to atone for them.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Van intentionally withholds critical information from Heinz regarding some of his own actions like rescuing the cultivation villages from the Hartner dukedom and taking them to Talosheim for their own safety, the status of his mother as being both alive and Vida's incarnation, his own status as Vida's champion and so on. While there are good reasons for not doing so, not least of which is that Alda will immediately know classified information, this does present a very skewed view of Van and makes him basically look like Lambda's Al Qaeda. It's only at the very end of the conversation that Van mentions in passing that he's connected to Zantark and Farmaun Gold, a revelation that is probably overshadowed by Van turning into a horrible monster and trying to murder them all.
• Medal of Dishonor: After Darcia revives as a chaos elf, the Boundary Mountain Range nations slowly begin learning about his role in her death and grow to loathe him. He ends up gaining the 'Holy Mother Killer' title as a result of so many people considering him such, much to his shock. Now he'll never be able to forget the worst thing he ever did. Unlike many titles, this one has no effect beyond existing: Anyone who knows that he killed the Holy Mother of some religion is sure to hold him in contempt and anyone that approves would be scum themselves.
  • And that isn't his worst one. That distinctive dishonor is "Vida's Mortal Enemy". A "title" he receives from Vida herself after Curatos's Darcia copy ploy that destroys his credibility and makes his mission impossible.
• Moral Myopia: He and his crew are guilty of countless acts of genocide and are caught red-handed preparing for a large-scale genocidal invasion of Talosheim, yet he calls his victims "evil" for resisting and Vandalieu "an abomination" for coming at him and his with deadly force when his crew refuses to stand-down and disarm.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Part of Curatos' strategy to protect Heinz's party is throwing a copy of Darcia between Heinz and Van as the two are attacking each other. Van can't help but hesitate briefly while Heinz accidentally cuts through her, reigniting his trauma. Even as bad as Heinz has been shown to be the last few chapters, this was absolutely not intentional and he's completely horrified. Afterwards, he's also seen holding himself in contempt for publicly acting like he failed to save Darcia rather than being directly complicit in her murder.
• Never My Fault: He downplays his own personal involvement in Darcia's death as much as he can. When he gets a title regarding her death, he's forced to accept it, but instead shifts responsibility to something like 'Van is making an evil cult now, I'll need to kill them all in the future if I want to achieve my goals of peace with Vida's races.' Only the cult he thinks he'll need to destroy is obviously made of Vida's followers, meaning he's hampering his own goals with his refusal to accept complete responsibility. The idea that he should really be offering an apology and at least trying to work with Van, who might or might not accept but would probably at least listen, doesn't cross his mind.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Though he's only a "hero" to Alda's faction, his shallow self-serving "peacemaking" has made the situation in Lambda far, far more volatile. In chapter 207, a group composed of Alda and Vida clerics, guarding the entrance to Bellwood's Trial, one set of knights facing the dungeon to keep monsters from rampaging out, and another set facing away to keep nae'er-do-wells from swarming in, states that Alda's "peaceful" faction is a soap-bubble, held together entirely by Heinz' reputation, and should anything happen, Heinz' death, his Dark Secret be exposed, Heinz ascends to become a subordinate god, or he's publicly made to answer for all his nastiness, not only will the so-called peace entirely implode, but all the Alda fanatics that Heinz has "converted" into moderates will almost certainly radicalize again, and now they not only know all of the Vida church's weak spots, but have risen through the ranks and command armies. For all his talk of wanting peace, Heinz has put a time-bomb right in the heart of Orbaume, and it's only a matter of time before it goes off...
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • By shoving himself into Van's business, unprompted, in Nakiri, enraging the latter so much that he ran out of town, screaming, Van unlocked the "Labyrinth Creation" skill which gives Van a manner for instant transfer of people, supplies, and materiel, where nobody can follow, allowing for instant response to any and all threats on his people, in addition to making several major improvements to Talosheim by exploiting the existing dungeons.
  • Pushing Van to his limits to the point he fractures his own soul gives Van the opportunity to examine it and remove some foreign elements, slightly lessening the effect of Rodcorte's curses, though only one is actually still relevant.
• Noble Bigot: While his reforms seem like a good measure, they're still highly human focused and would still put Vida's races in an inferior and vulnerable social position at best.
• Nothing Personal: Especially in the manga. He tells Darcia he has no grudge against her, but that her life is over the moment he confronts her in Evbejia.
• Not Me This Time: In Bellwood's dungeon, he tries to deny involvement in Curatos's final gambit, stating he would never intentionally do anything that cowardly. Van doesn't believe him.
• Not Quite the Right Thing: He accuses Van of taking actions that satisfy himself while really just removing the possibility for compromise by igniting hostilities. Van responds that the time for compromise is past and that he is already officially at war with Amid and trying to find whether he can find any common ground with Orbaume. "Compromise" even with people like Heinz leaves Majin and Ghouls open to be murdered the moment a human cries about monsters in the neighborhood.
• Oh, Crap!: When he hears a disembodied roar indicating Van's recovered from the Bellwood's Trial fiasco faster than he did, much faster, he'd be soiling and wetting himself if he wasn't a disembodied soul in Mill's care.
• The Paladin: He's primarily a swordsman with strong Light/Holy magic and supporting Life magic. His chief patron is the god of light, but he has difficulty thinking through the consequences of his actions.
• The Paragon: He not only destroys evil and saves the weak wherever he may find either, he is also triggering a peaceful reformation of the church of Alda. By sheer coincidence, this happens to occur at roughly the same time as Alda deciding to begin reforming his church to focus more on the demon king remnants and extending peace towards (some of) Vida's races.
• Perspective Flip: In most stories, he'd be the protagonist and his heroic exploits to save humanity from evil monsters would be highlighted. His flaws would be, at worst, glossed over, and his failures would (perhaps rightly) be pinned on corrupt aristocrats and his own extremely racist god feeding him false information either directly or indirectly, leading him to unwittingly committing grievous acts of villainy, and his Archenemy Vandelieu would, at best, be a Tragic Villain, for the latter's many, many crimes. In this story, the perspective favors Vanelieu, who is the victim of Heinz's failures and flaws, which forced him into doing those crimes, just to survive, and finished the process of driving him mad, with Heinz utterly refusing to admit fault in what he's done.
• Punch-Clock Hero: Deconstructed. He is a shining example of everything wrong with someone who champions "justice" while in pursuit of fame, glory, and wealth.
  • The moment he realized he was played as a fool by corrupt nobles in Mirg Shield Nation, and fanatical wild-eyed priests, (though he still doesn't know about the Evil Gods), he could have thrown the money he got for capturing Darcia at them in disgust and helped Darcia escape, or failing that, rescue her infant child.
  • Instead, he flees into another country and keeps the money. Then, rather than raise his sword against those who played him, he spends the next 10 years targeting the ones they're victimizing, because he gets paid well, a noble title, and quite a few parades in his honor.
  • Rather than helping races like Titans or Scylla in dire straits, suffering under horrible injustices, he ignores them, since there's no fame, glory, or money to be had, to instead go and focus on photo-ops, like butting into the business of a young boy being turned away from the Adventurer's Guild.
  • Then when he's confronted on how fraudulent his so called "atonement" is, he goes full-tilt Moral Myopia and Never My Fault until he and his party find themselves on the wrong end of the beatdown, and he -briefly- realizes what a heel he actually is.
• Reasoning with God: Intends to convince Alda to stop persecuting Vida's races. Considering Alda hasn't budged in over 100,000 years, this would normally have been an Impossible Task, but he was already independently convinced by Nineroad to compromise, meaning he's willing to accept the races not descended from evil gods as they are the only ones who can be moved to Rodcorte's system.
• Reformed, but Rejected: Played with. He feels completely awful about what he did to Darcia and her son, but Van is even angrier that Heinz considers running away to Orbaume and accumulating even more power that he can use against Van as any kind of "atonement" for what he did. The limited nature of his "reform" is also illustrated with one of Heinz's foils, Schneider, who also came to realize that persecuting Vida races was wrong, and proceeded to remain in the Amid Empire and its vassal states, secretly protecting and smuggling members of Vida races into relatively safe secret villages.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: He and his current party firmly refuse to believe the "illusion" in The Trial of Bellwood dungeon can possibly be Vandalieu, not because his behavior is off, but because the party believe Van can't possibly have the abilities Curatos is showing them.
  • In the chapter dubbed "Heinz Returns," he addresses the rest of the party and grudgingly admits that Van has done a much better job of being a hero than himself, rescuing both the "human" races and Vida's races without bias or prejudice, and Heinz is vexed by this, so he unilaterally declares that Van might, just might, "wake up arrogant" one morning, and by then, he would be way, way too powerful to stop. So action must be taken now to set up checks and balances to keep that from happening. He has a point. Van has repeatedly demonstrated clinical and legal insanity, by both showing loss of control over his actions and an apparent inability to tell right from wrong. Unfortunately, Heinz is utterly convinced that he is that check and balance, completely and intentionally ignoring the fact that he is the trigger for those bouts of insanity, making him the worst possible choice.
• Selective Obliviousness: He ignores a great deal of evidence that his actions aren't as heroic as he wants to believe or simple obvious facts like that ghouls being undead makes no sense at all given that they're known to reproduce sexually and can hold Jobs. Him being forced to confront these facts doesn't necessarily say good things about him either: When it comes to ghouls, his reaction is along the lines of 'Well, whatever, they needed to die anyway' despite the ghouls likely being victims of aggression in the first place, not dangerous monsters.
• Skewed Priorities: He seems to be more concerned with taking a stand for Vida's races than actually doing anything for them. When he hears that Van has been ignoring anything like diplomacy and directly helping Ghouls, Titans and Scylla at the expense of human kingdoms, he's outraged. From his perspective, Van is going to start a war. From Van's perspective, Alda's been having the human kingdoms wage a genocidal war against Vida races for 100,000 years, with people still being oppressed and murdered every single day.
• Start X to Stop X: He believes the best way to convince Alda that genocide is wrong is to go and commit numerous acts of genocide, both to fulfill adventurer's requests and "stamp out evil cults" that worship Vida in Orbaume, where Vida's religion is legal simply because they're a "non-human" race... Then he's shocked to find that Vida hates him.
• Stupid Good: For a very, very loose definition of "good". His actions might mean well in the short-term, but are ultimately self-defeating.
  • He takes on a guild request, hand delivered by a baronet, to hunt down a "witch" that is guilty of the "crime" of marrying a vampire and siring a dhampir. He captures and turns in the "witch" but leaves the dhampir child completely unattended, to be hunted for the "crime" of existing over ten long years, thus giving said child a well justified unquenchable hatred and desire for vengeance.
  • Over those ten years, he lies about his involvement to everyone, including himself, and then founds a reformation movement on that lie. Since the church of Alda in Amid was responsible for the original request, handled by the baronet as a mediator, all it would take is one butt-hurt Alda acolyte to dig up the proof of completion form, thus exposing the lie, to bring his reform movement down.
  • Over those ten years, he also tries to lessen tensions between Vida's races and "the people" by hunting down heinous criminals or "evil cults," but never, ever stopped to investigate if those he was hunting were actually either of those things, plus he tends to go easy on human criminals while coming down hard on those from Vida's races, serving to aggravate tensions instead, failing to understand how this is a problem.
  • He encounters a dhampir being turned away from the adventurer's guild in Nakiri, one he even suspects might be the very same dhampir his party grievously wronged. Rather than investigate, he marches up, shoves himself into the boy's business, and then flaunts Selen, who innocently boasts about how good a life she's had, thanks to being "rescued," thus tearing open the scabs over the boy's emotional wound's and pouring concentrated lemon juice on them. Then happily ignoring his own concerns that the boy was indeed the one that was wronged so long ago.
  • His reckless attempt to clear the Trial of Zakkarat doomed Martina to be lost forever.
  • His even more reckless endeavor into Bellwood's Dungeon, to become Bellwood's successor and try and get Alda's ear to [Guide] him away from his mad obsession with genocide wound up having Alda's faction [Guide] him into a genocidal mindset instead, preparing to launch a genocidal invasion.
  • His self-righteous attempts to protect said dungeon of misinformation, lies, half-truths, etc., completely destroys his credibility and completely alienates the goddess he was trying to atone to most!
• Tautological Templar: He believes that since his stated goals of convincing Alda that genociding Vida's races is wrong and lessening tension between the people races and Vida's children are noble goals, then everything he does in attempting to pursue these goals is noble, regardless of how shortsighted or even evil it is. After briefly hearing Heinz's thoughts, Van concludes that while Alda's peaceful faction is better than nothing, they aren't nearly good enough of a reason to stop him from killing Heinz.
• Tempting Fate: In Chapter 202. Vida and Darcia show up and collect Van's fragments, so he can recover, and they were planning on simply leaving the area without a word. Heinz calls out to them. This results in not one, but two very pissed off Mama Bear goddesses giving Heinz's party a Breaking Speech and then blasting them to kingdom come, even though they knew Heinz and party would be revived "in town."
• They Just Dont Get It: Heinz is not an idiot, which only makes his rampant biases even more infuriating. To an impartial observer, the warning signals are glaringly obvious, but it takes Vida herself getting involved before he realizes how wrong he is, and by then, he's painted himself in a corner with no way out.
  • He gets played as a fool by a corrupt noble and Alda Burn the Witch! fanatic, dooming an innocent babe to death by starvation, were it not Vandalieu, because he didn't bother to actually investigate the quest beforehand, just presuming he and his party were hunting a dangerous criminal that needed to be taken down. When he learns the truth, he flees Amid in disgust and then does the same thing in Orbaume, presuming that since Orbaume is more Vida friendly, the subjugation requests must be truly heinous without any independent investigation, even after seeing with his own eyes that the adventurer's guild is easily corrupted, and Alda fanatics are willing to die in hunting down Vida's races, notably Selen, his "adopted" Dhampir.
  • He proclaims he wants to lessen tensions and bring peace between Vida's children and Alda's, but when he seeks to become Bellwood's successor, he and his party brute-force the trials of Zakkart, attacking anything and everything that can be attacked, until he's teleported out, Martina, dead and lost forever. Then when "Bellwood's Trial" comes into play, he doesn't even pause to consider that the dungeon is forcing him to attack various members of Vida's races, no opportunity for dialogue, negotiation, or compromise, just one big battle to the death after another.
  • When fake Vandalieus start showing up, he just hacks his way through them, not stopping to wonder why Alda's camp has a young Dhampir boy show up and attack his party with bizarre spells, skills, and demon king fragments.
  • When he and his party get a title of infamy in the dungeon, rather than heed his instincts that he's being lured into a trap that might wreck his stated goals, he keeps going.
  • When the real Vandalieu shows up and calls him and his party out for everything they've done to him and his, and how Heinz is clearly showing himself to be a clear and present threat that will not be swayed, rather than take the opportunity to surrender or flee, he attacks, and is shocked that Vida and Darcia call him out on it, and slap a title of enmity on him and his party.
• Tragic Mistake: From his perspective, Darcia's death was a tragic mistake that he's trying to atone for. However, Van openly scoffs at his efforts and points out that all he's done is ease his own conscience. And thanks to his own actions, his goals for true atonement are likely now impossible.
• Trauma Button: Darcia's death serves as one for a while before he eventually forgives himself, never mind what his victims think. However, it comes back after Curatos uses a copy version of her that Van hesitates to attack just long enough for Heinz to cut through it and destroy the copy Van, meaning he's 'killed' her again. Driving it home is that the real thing appears immediately afterward and says that while she forgives him for her own death, she (and Vida, though Heinz doesn't know this) will never forgive him for what he has done to Van.
• The Unapologetic: He spends a great many of his appearances promising to apologize to Vandalieu for the death of his mother and being hunted for the crime of existing, since infancy. When the two meet in chapter 200, and he's reminded that he's directly responsible for Darcia's death, rather than throw down his sword and apologize, he instead goes the Palpapek route and defends himself by saying that Darcia broke the law and deserved to be punished for it while he was just doing his job. This, after being told that Van hates him and wants to make sure he never hurts Van's loved ones again. It's stated soon afterward that he's already forgiven himself recently, so apparently no one else should hold a grudge either.
• Unwanted Assistance: Van is enraged when Heinz attempts to step in to help him register as an adventurer in Nakiri. He would rather die than receive help from his worst enemy.
• Unwitting Pawn: Alda and Curatos don't even realize it because they fall under the same biases, but their attempts to train him present an incredibly skewed view of the world and situation at large during the trial of Bellwood. For example, portraying Fidirg as a brutal raging beast or putting an illusion of Van on the same side as his enemies Ternecia and Gubamon, then fighting in ways that make him look much more brutal than he actually is. Personal history aside, there's little theoretical conflict between Heinz's ideals and Van's, but Heinz's blind belief in the situations shown in the dungeon skew his viewpoint. By the time the dungeon crawl ends, all hope for peace between the two is shattered completely.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He intervenes in the fight between Vandalieu and Rikudou Hijiri / Avalon, against the advice of both Van and Alda. This causes the fragment of Gudaranis in Edgar to fully awaken and consume him, setting the Demon King loose in Lambda.
• Villain Has a Point: Van criticizes Heinz's party for wiping out Ghoul villages and not even considering the idea that they were clearly one of Vida's races despite them being able to hold Jobs. Heinz responds that he did have his suspicions but actually doing anything about it was likely beyond his abilities. Indeed, there are a lot of things working in Van's favor. First, while Ghouls are noted to be so hostile that they rarely even tolerate other races of Vida, Van stumbled across a pretty friendly bunch that mostly just hid from humans. Second, Van has the Ghoul King/Emperor titles and posses Guidance skills that target Ghouls, meaning it's very easy for him to get them on board with his plans. Third, Heinz doesn't really have anything to offer Ghouls except not killing them while Van is able to offer things that Ghouls not only value highly such as fertility charms but also make it less necessary for them to be so aggressive in the first place.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Played with. At first he was hesitant to even kill pregnant goblins, but thanks to being influenced by Edgar he ends up loosening said inhibitions compared to what he considers humanoid monsters. But on the other hand, at the time he genuinely did not consider ghouls to be actual people but rather just weird zombies and even then, it isn't made clear if he personally did so or if he just condoned his party members like the aforementioned Edgar killing them.
• You Killed My Father: He is one of the targets of Vandalieu's revenge, for kidnapping his mother and selling her to be burned at the stake by a religious fanatic.

Edgar

A human adventurer and resident thief of the Five-colored Blades. He serves as second in command for the group since the defection of Riley and Martina's death.

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• Accidental Truth: In dismissing Vandalieu as being the same dhampir that the Five Colored Blades once hunted down, after making him an orphan, he jokingly states "it's not like he's the second coming of the demon king, right?" Guess which title Van gets that very day?
• Condescending Compassion: He feels sympathy for Vida's races because he relates to them a little, but not only does he quickly eliminate assumed threats to humanity, but he then continues on to put down the women and orphaned children like literal animals because he just assumes they couldn't survive on their own.
• The Corrupter: Whatever Heinz's faults may be, Edgar amplifies them and helps keep Heinz from thinking for himself and accepting responsibility for his actions. Edgar genuinely means well, but his basic worldview includes ideas like "You should kill women and children after exterminating their providers cause it's not like women and children can fend for themselves, right?" So since he sees absolutely nothing wrong with Heinz's actions, he helps soothe Heinz's conscience when Heinz hasn't actually done anything to make up for what he has done yet.
• The Corruption: Begins being taken over by a fragment of Guduranis's soul that Rodcorte shoves into him.
• Face of a Thug: In the volume 9 addendum, he's listed as having a "face one would definitely see one of if they were to visit a slum... an unpleasant look in his eye and a stubble."
• Failed a Spot Check: While Heinz suspects Vandalieu is the same Dhampir they looked for years ago, Edgar dismisses those concerns as guilt for their past actions.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: He's the Scout to Heinz's Fighter and Diana's mage.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: The addendum at the end of Volume 9 reveals that even though the gods walk the earth in Lambda, he doesn't believe in or revere them in any way. Not a single one. The only reason he's considered a follower of Alda is that he follows Heinz, who is a follower of Alda. Left to his own devices, Edgar wouldn't give a damn.
• Hard Work Fallacy: Inverted. He believes that the only reason he escaped from the slums is that Heinz and The Five Colored Blades personally plucked him out of them, and he's a human who isn't the target of oppression from Amid's Alda-friendly theocracy, so it's just better to treat Vida's races, that he grew up with, as animals, and kill them if they get in the way of Heinz's "greater cause."
• Karmic Death: He spent his entire existence in Heinz's party convincing the latter that Vida's races were, at best, mere stepping stones for Heinz's greatness. He gets to see how it feels to be a stepping stone for someone else's greatness when Guduranis uses his soul as spare parts.
• Kick the Dog: He kills the women and children of defeated members of Vida's races because he reasons that they couldn't survive on their own anyway so it's really just a mercy kill, right?
• Lack of Empathy: He fully admits that the kidnapping and murder of Darcia was in fact an evil deed, and a "tragedy," but still considers Van's resentment a trivial affair, and that it no way merits the "Holy Mother Killer" title he, Delizah, and Heinz acquired as a direct result of their involvement.
• Never My Fault: He's even less willing to accept responsibility for his actions than Heinz. His overall attitude towards Heinz's campaign is indifference: He doesn't hate Vida's races but he also shows no regret for previous crimes against them and only gets defensive when called on it.
• No Sympathy for Grudgeholders: He fully expects, nay demands, that Vandalieu should have no grudge against Heinz and what remains of the adventuring party that's responsible for Darcia's kidnapping, torture, and murder, especially by pointing out that said party is now nurturing Selen, because raising one Dhampir "kindly" is a good enough apology for putting another, completely unrelated, Dhampir through hell for ten years, starting at half-a-year old.
• Not Quite the Right Thing: Normally, standing by your friends and encouraging them when they're down is the right thing to do. Unfortunately, he does this by either convincing Heinz that his actions weren't wrong in the first place, and genuinely believes it himself, or by convincing Heinz that some well-meaning and noble act has made up for his mistakes, even it's completely unrelated to earlier mistakes or actually makes things worse. This ends up putting Heinz on a path where it's impossible to earn forgiveness or accomplish his genuinely noble goals.
• Number Two: Serves as second in command for the Five-colored Blades after Riley left the group.
• Obliviously Evil: Not only does he kill Vida's races who are in conflict with human society, but he also chooses to kill their families and children in what he considers a Mercy Kill. When Van calls him out on this behavior, he just gets angry because he doesn't think he's done anything wrong.
• Psychological Projection: Because he and Heinz hunt down Vida's races for money and then pat themselves on the back as "heroic" because they took a quest at face value, claiming said races were "evil" without any independent investigation, he angrily berates Vandalieu when the latter admits being responsible for freeing the slaves from the Hartner Duchy mines and putting up the undead generator in the Sauron duchy to protect the Scylla, accusing Van of "feeling good about himself for feeling like a hero by provoking needless suffering."
• Sanity Slippage: After barely escaping with his soul intact while fighting Van, he's handed over to Rodcorte for treatment as his soul is so badly damaged it needs the help of a specialist, but there isn't actually a whole lot Rod can do to get him back into fighting shape either. So he has the brilliant idea of grafting parts of the demon king's soul onto him to repair the holes in his soul. Edgar comes out of the ordeal still himself... but now prone to irrational hatred and rage that scares and confuses him because he doesn't know what's going on. Eventually, he's basically consumed from within as Guduranis's soul fragments devour him.
• Satisfied Street Rat: Volume 9's addendum shows that he started life out in the slums and took up adventuring with Heinz to make something out of his life.
• Toxic Friend Influence: His character sheets, under careful analysis, reveal that he's the primary reason Heinz has such a fierce Selective Obliviousness against anything that might imply he's not as "heroic" as he believes himself to be. During his time with The Five Colored Blades, he did everything in his power to make Heinz believe his actions and beliefs are completely beyond reproach, and that their victims are irredeemably evil, so no matter how evil or "tragic" the actions of the party, the victims had it coming.
• Would Hurt a Child: While Heinz has hesitated in the past at even killing pregnant goblins, which are no more intelligent than animals and literally breed like rabbits, Edgar goes out of his way to kill children during subjugation requests. He figures they'd die on their own anyway and is just saving them the suffering they'd experience along the way. Never mind actually trying to help them or anything or giving them a chance. He even has the gall to get mad when Van calls him out on it.

Delizah

A dwarf adventurer and shield-bearer of the Five-colored Blades.

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• Clone by Conversion: After causing enough internal injuries to kill her in chapter 404, Van uses his demon king avatars to infest her corpse so he can catch Heinz off guard with a [World Piercing Hollow Cannon] to the face.
• Cool Helmet: The manga shows her wearing a horned helmet.
• Deadpan Snarker: Usually directs her snark in Heinz' direction.
• Hypocrite: Happily follows Heinz when he takes subjugation requests at face value, relying only on the Adventurer's Guild's word that such requests are legitimate and have been fully investigated, doing nothing to remind him how such a thing led to him being played as a fool by both a corrupt noble and an Alda fanatic, yet turns around and utterly lambastes both Diana and Jennifer, because they took at face value the Adventurer's guild and the goddess Mills, strongly in Alda's camp, that ghouls were mutant undead that somehow were able to bear children when Van comes along and says "Ghouls are a race of Vida."
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Comes with being a Shield-Bearer.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: In the addendum at the end of volume 9, it's revealed that Van's condemnation did get through to her, and she feels guilty, but Heinz' and the party's well being trump that, no matter how bad their actions.
• Party Tank: Her abilities focus on redirecting enemy aggression from her more fragile party members. It comes as a nasty blow to her pride when Van easily breaks through her defenses to take out Diana.
• Stone Wall: She's the most defense oriented member of the group.
• Would Hurt a Child: While Jennifer and Diana feel guilty about killing Ghoul children when they realize what they've done, Delizah doesn't say a word or even really bother listening.

Diana

An elf adventurer and priestess member of the Five-Colored Blades. She joined the group after the death of Martina at the trial of Zakkart.

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• Fighter, Mage, Thief: While actually a priestess, she's technically the mage to Edgar's thief and Heinz's fighter.
• Forced Sleep: The patronage of Mill, Goddess of Slumber, allows her to do this.
• Heel Realization: When called out on the party attacking Majin on sight, she acknowledges her double standard by looking away in shame. After the fight she's still rather upset because she knows whatever else Van has said or done he was definitely right about this.
• Replacement Goldfish: Joined the group after the death of Martina at the Trial of Zakkart.
• Sunk Cost Fallacy: She honestly believes that the best way for Heinz to "atone" for his part in the murder of Darcia, Van's mother, is to go and kill Van too, especially if he's found to be wielding Demon King Fragments in reality, as opposed to the horribly skewed "illusions" in the Trial of Bellwood Dungeon.
• What the Hell, Hero?: After the fight with Van, she and Jennifer are both angry at Alda's faction for not teaching them about Majin and Ghouls. They know the way they've treated these two races totally undermines the mission they've been trying to carry out.

Jennifer

A human adventurer and member of the Five-Colored Blades. She's an unarmed combatant who joined the group after Riley left.

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• Bare-Fisted Monk: She's a unarmed fighter, and she's powerful enough to kill a Noble-born Vampire in a single hit.
• Dramatic Irony: She mentions there's no way Vandalieu could control so many Demon King Fragments and use so many different spells without becoming corrupted, when in fact Van has absorbed even more fragments and knows an even larger number of spells.
• Heel Realization: She takes Van calling her out on the party's hypocrisy with surprise and shame, realizing that by the standards she's supposedly living under, she's a cold blooded murderer of defenseless children. After the fight she's still rather upset because she knows that whatever else Van has said or done he was definitely right about this.
• Non-Indicative Name: She's a member of the Five-Colored Blades but doesn't wield weapons.
• Replacement Goldfish: Joined the group after Riley left.
• What the Hell, Hero?: After the fight with Van, she and Diana are both angry at Alda's faction for not teaching them about Majin and Ghouls. They know the way they've treated these two races totally undermines the mission they've been trying to carry out

Selen

A Dhampir girl who accompanies the Five-Colored Blades, who treat her like a family member.

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• The Baby of the Bunch: She's the youngest member of the group at only six years old around the time she's introduced.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: In universe. Amemiya Hiroto innocently "stole" all the blessings Amamiya Hiroto was supposed to get from Rodcorte before going to Origin, leading to "Subject D-01" going through a living hell. She innocently "stole" the family life Vandalieu always wanted and needed, and it's all Heinz's fault.
• Entertainingly Wrong: When she makes an appearance in chapter 249, she reminisces about her encounter with Van in Nakiri and thinks he's just shy, running off out of embarassment. In reality, he ran off because he was so, so utterly pissed at Heinz and party giving him Condescending Compassion that he couldn't control himself.
• Foil: To Vandalieu. Although her parents were also murdered, for the "crime" of one of them being a vampire, she's a living display of everything Vandalieu was denied during his formative years, a home, a loving family, people who care for and protect her, and it's all due to the same guy.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Unlike Vandalieu who is half-vampire half-Dark Elf, her non-vampire half is human.
• Happily Adopted: She is officially Heinz's daughter by adoption in the nation of Orbaume. This confers upon her the status of a noblewoman so long as he lives, though since the title is not hereditary, she is still basically considered a commoner.
• Innocently Insensitive: Due to not knowing that Heinz is directly responsible for the death of Darcia, and putting the infant Vandalieu on the run since he was half a year old, she honestly extends a hand of friendship to him when they meet in Nariki, calling Heinz a "good guy". It takes every ounce of self-control Van had to not rip her face off.
• Locked Out of the Loop: She does not know anything about Heinz's misdeeds in Evbejia.
  • She is also completely unaware of how Heinz is fond of using her as bait to draw out extremists so he can "guide" them.
• Morality Pet: The fact that the Five-Colored Blades do genuinely care about her well-being, even Heinz, though he sees using her as bait to lure out Alda fanatics as having higher merit to him, is about the only redeeming feature they have, with their foolish insistence of going out of their way to antagonize and traumatize Vandalieu and endanger his followers every chance they get and being dumbstruck that he retaliates, even when he spells it out for them, in small, simple words.
• Naïve Newcomer: She never stops to ponder that if Heinz and company were close enough to rescue her from those mercenaries, then why were her parents not rescued too...Or better yet, why those mercenaries were allowed in her home to begin with...
• Out of Focus: She seldom makes an appearance, even when the story focuses on Heinz's party.
• Separated by a Common Language: She and Van both speak Japanese, but while Van is familiar with Katakana, she's only familiar with Hiragana. When Van gets a letter from her asking for a play-date, he replies that it's not possible as long as Heinz is around, because he's a Vida fundamentalist and Heinz is a well-known Alda follower, even if he is part of the self-proclaimed "peaceful" faction. Van could only reference this in his return letter by using Katakana, so she has to ask a guard to read it for her, who just says that Van is too busy.
• Shared Unusual Trait: Like all Dhampirs, she has different colored eyes.
• Tag Along Kid: For the Five-colored Blades.
• Team Mascot: Put nicely, she's the symbol of Alda's peaceful faction. More cynically, she's walking propaganda and doesn't even know it.
• Trauma Button: She is one for Vandalieu. Thanks to being rescued and raised by Heinz and the Five-Colored Blades, she's a living, breathing testament and reminder of everything Heinz took away from Van as an infant. Van briefly considers showing Heinz how that feels by turning Martina into an undead and flaunting her in his face, to see how he likes it.
• Unwitting Pawn: Heinz actively uses her as bait to draw out Alda fanatics so he can "guide" them towards a more "moderate" mindset, despite the fact that doing so puts Selen in mortal peril, as shown on-screen once, and whatever "guidance" he gives them is likely to be short-lived as the fanatics' actions are punishable by death in Orbaume. She is not aware of any of this.

Former Members

Riley

Why am I in the shadow of such a naive dunce?

Known as the Green Wind Spear, he's a former member of the Five-colored Blades who left the group after disagreements with Heinz. Obsessed with standing out and getting out of Heinz' shadow, he joined the Mirg Expedition force alongside his party of slaves to prove everyone he's superior to Heinz.

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• Boxed Crook: His party was made up of criminal slaves who committed some pretty heinous crimes. This alienates many of the people around him.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: On the receiving end of one by Borkus.
• Deader than Dead: Van was in no forgiving mood when he had his soul within his grasp.
• Dirty Coward: He has no problem using his slaves as meat shields if he thinks he can get away with his life. He can't.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: He buys some reasonably competent criminal slaves to serve as his party members, reasoning that the hero Bellwood was once praised for doing the same. He fails to recognize that unlike Bellwood's party members, these three are all heinous criminals: One is an Elizabeth Bathory esque serial killer, another is a traitorous former adventurer and the least scummy of the three is still a bandit leader with a higher body count to his name than the other two combined. This ruins his reputation among some, but he never notices.
• Fatal Flaw: He can't stand not being the center of attention. The final straw is when he's not only seen as an accessory to Heinz, but comes to consider Heinz rather naive for putting his morals ahead of the party's own financial and professional well being.
• Follow in My Footsteps: What he thinks he was doing by copying Mikhail's spear use, party of criminal slaves, and tendency to share monster meat with the soldiers escorting his party. Fellow adventurers disagree.
• Glory Hound: Obsessed with glory and achievements.
• It's All About Me: He's not incapable of kindness that doesn't cost him anything, but you can see a little calculator in his head clicking away trying to figure out 'how will this benefit me and my public image' every time it comes to make any kind of decision. This is the only real factor that comes into play, leaving him quick to throw his mistress, party and even nation in favor of short term profits.
• Jerkass Has a Point: He may be a bastard with no sympathy for a half-year boy he had a hand in making an orphan, but he is right about one thing: Heinz is the height of naivete in thinking that skipping out on the post-witch burning celebration, including a meeting with Baronet Bestero, the one who made the request, and fleeing Amid in the middle of the night is any kind of atonement, and the height of foolishness for thinking that going to the adventurer's board to take requests to wipe out Vida's races, entire villages at a time, in any way reduces friction between Vida and Alda's people.
• Lack of Empathy: While he isn't overly cruel, he does tend to be dismissive of other's pain. His generosity and magnanimity is easily overshadowed by his at best disinterest to whether any of the soldiers working with him live or die.
• Moral Myopia: Especially prominent in the manga. He sides with a traitorous general in Mirg Shield Nation, Ternecia's pet vampire Isla and her squad, and repeatedly attempts genocide without shame for his own glory, but when he sees Van hold something that looks like Ice Age, the magical spear, he cries out "don't soil that spear with your evil hands!"
• Never My Fault: When facing Van's extreme rage, to the point Van's Surpass Limits skill is rising as a result of resisting, due to his own actions concerning the death of Darcia, he lampshades this trope, by name, claiming he is in no way at fault for what happened. This claim does not save him.
• Nice to the Waiter: Surprisingly, he's noted to actually be quite generous and to distribute high quality meat to the soldiers with no real concern over being compensated at all.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Thinks he's the chosen hero, but he's inferior to Heinz in everything except strength, including as a person.
• Token Evil Teammate: The only member of the Five-colored Blades who felt no remorse for capturing Darcia and leading to her death. He splits from the party when Heinz feels too conflicted about the mission to accept patronage from the local nobility, unable to understand why Heinz even cares.
• Virtue Is Weakness: He looks upon Heinz's noble traits as nothing more than "naive foolishness" and ultimately leaves the party in disgust once Heinz starts showing sympathy for a helpless half-year old little boy he himself made an orphan.
• The Worf Effect: He's shown to kill dragons during the scouting of the tunnel into the Boundary Mountain Range, but he was still no match to Borkus.
• You Killed My Mother: He is one of the targets of Vandalieu's revenge because of this.

Martina

Why did you accept the request if you don't like it, Heinz?

A former member of the Five-Colored Blades who died when they attempted to challenge the Trail of Zakkart. Vandalieu wishes to retrieve her body to use as a taunt against Heinz.

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• Blaming the Victim: When she noticed Heinz had regrets about the death of Darcia, she first asks him the obvious question of why he undertook the quest in the first place. When he retorts with "I got a hand delivered note from Baronet Bestero, I had no choice," she then tries to soothe his conscience by stating that it doesn't matter why Darcia gave birth to a dhampir, whether it was the result of Sex for Services, Valen was just that good at seduction, or even if Darcia was taken by force, by daring to get pregnant and give birth, she "reaped what she sowed" by being tortured and set ablaze, alive, in the town square, then callously goes back to drinking her ale. Considering that, at the time, her job included going to rescue women who are the victims of monster rape and impregnation, and being a woman herself could have become a victim at any time, this stance is deeply disturbing.
• Collateral Angst: Froze to death in the Trial of Zakkart dungeon, something that has continued to be a source of trauma for Heinz. Vandalieu also wanted to use her ghost and corpse to inflict even more trauma onto Heinz as an act of revenge, though eventually gave up on it after Martina gave up her past life completely to become Jane Doe.
• Forgiveness Requires Death: Vandalieu justifies forgiving her by noting "well, I'll just think of it as if Martina died and was reincarnated." after her ghost forces a permanent Loss of Identity by becoming Jane Doe.
• Hive Mind: After her death, her and the other female adventurer ghosts who died in the Trial of Zakkart merged into a single composite ghost made of many others so they would no longer be able to regain memories of their past lives.
• Just Following Orders: She reminds Heinz that, as the party leader, it was his choice to accept or refuse the request to hunt down Darcia.
• Karmic Death: She believed Darcia being tortured and burned at the stake was "reaping what she sowed" for the "crime" of being in love with a vampire in a country that worships Alda. She then dies trying to conquer a dungeon created by a god of the Vida faction.
• The Lost Lenore: The addendum at the end of volume 9 reveals she was Heinz' lover.
• Loss of Identity: Lost her memories and identity after death from spending an extended time trapped in Gufadgarn's dungeon. She further chose to enforce this afterwards, merging with her fellow ghosts so none of them would be able to regain their memories as they leveled up, as all of them feared finding out they used to be Martina and having their soul consumed by Vandaleiu.
• Our Elves Are Different: Was a pointy eared Elf who had skills as a magician.
• Space Master: Being exposed for a long period of time to Gufadgarn's space-attribute mana caused her ghost to become highly skilled in magic that manipulated space as well.
• Subordinate Excuse: Implied. She was Heinz' subordinate in the party, and she was Heinz' lover. Whether she used her position as his subordinate to get close to him remains unknown.
• Was Once a Man: Was an Elf, before becoming a ghost, and then a spherical undead spirit made up of multiple ghosts.

Storm of Tyranny

Schneider

One of the few S-class Adventurers in the Amid Empire and leader of the Storm of Tyranny. He has little interest in the politics of the Empire, being content adventuring, killing monsters and drinking at the bar he owns. He's also a champion and protector of several races of Vida within the Empire.

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• Achievements in Ignorance: By killing lots of legendary monsters and being drenched in the blood that came out, he became immortal. He doesn't even realize it.
• Always Save the Girl: Because of a Divine Message from Vida, he has become a defender of women and children of any race, especially pregnant women.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: His Unique Skill [True Warrior] allows him to use martial-skills that require weapons using only his body, turning his body into an actual weapon.
• Cultural Rebel: He never understood why he was supposed to hate Vida's races, and eventually became the protector of those races within the empire.
• Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?: Schneider is famed for having slain an evil god. The story notes that in truth it's more in the sense of him being a ladykiller: She seems to be his latest girlfriend and joined his party as the elf Lissana.
• Failed a Spot Check: He genuinely believes he's an old man even though he hasn't aged in twenty years or so.
• Foil: Serves as one to Heinz. While both are top ranked adventurers who feel that Vida's races need to be treated better, Heinz mostly just tries for what could be considered internal reform of the church but takes no concrete actions to help anyone in need. Further, his fundamentally condescending attitude shows in the double standards he displays towards, say, majin and ghouls vs human villagers or the rights of Scylla and titans vs those of humans. Schneider, on the other hand, actively took the time to learn about lamia and so on, has a dark elf party member and has made it his life's goal to immediately move villages in Amid outside the region of human attacks, contrasting Heinz who left them to their own devices in order to travel to Orbaume, where they aren't in any immediate danger.
• Immortality: He stopped aging in his mid 20s after killing a ton of monsters, but since he's actually in his mid 50s he insists that he's an old man.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: He's a member of the religion of Vida, which is opposed by the Amid Empire which he belongs to.
• Really Gets Around: He's had his fair share of lovers throughout the years.
• Red Baron: Thunderclap Schneider.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Killed an important but corrupt nobleman in public in full view of everyone. He made no attempts to run or hide and simply fended off all adventurers or soldiers that came after him while going about his daily life. Eventually, the emperor extended a pardon in return for getting rid of an evil elder dragon.
• Selective Obliviousness: He completely refuses to acknowledge that he's immortal and hasn't aged in a good twenty years or so. He justifies this by pointing to his (naturally) white blond hair and thin (compact) physique. Maybe in a hundred years or so he'll admit that his Undying skill is literal and not a reference to looking good for his age.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Schneider and nearly every member of the group want to murder Mazhukzarl right were he stands for manipulating them, but especially for brainwashing a woman, impregnating her and setting up a crime he knew would be stopped with lethal force in order to put the child under their protection so he ensures the continuation of his bloodline.

Dalton

An alcoholic member of Storm of Tyranny. He's a dark elf that masquerades as a human using a magic Item.

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• The Alcoholic: He likes to drink booze almost as much as Lissana, who is a Goddess of intoxication.
• Ambiguously Brown: Not so much, but since he's a Dark Elf that masquerades as a human, he comes off as this.
• Delinquent Hair: Has a prominent Mohawk. Apparently it was a popular style back in his village.
• I Want Grandkids: His grandmother Lideria is constantly needling him about settling down and giving her great-grandkids.
• Tattoo as Character Type: In the manga he's shown having a rose tattooed on the side of his head.
• That Came Out Wrong: His conversation with Van leads to some amusing misunderstandings in the way it's phrased.

Lissana/Jurizanapipe

An Elf woman, an A-class adventurer and member of Storm of Tyranny, and the incarnation of Jurizanapipe, the Evil God of Degeneration and Intoxication. She's one of the several gods that defected from the Demon King's army after being convinced by Zakkart.

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• The Alcoholic: Weaponized. She can endow intoxication on people by chugging any alcoholic beverage and then spraying it as a Breath Weapon.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Her skin turns dark blue when using her true powers.
• Breast Expansion: Her breasts become even bigger when in her true form.
• Due to the Dead: She and Zod give the Vampires that tried to kill them a proper burial to honor the Vampires that fell during the war 100,000 years prior when they were all companions.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: She's the former Evil God of Degeneration and Intoxication, and as such she lives to get drunk whenever she can.
• Overly-Long Tongue: When showing her true power her tongue becomes incredibly long.
• Third Eye: Manifests when she shows her real power.
• We Used to Be Friends: She knew Birkyne, Ternecia and Gubamon back when they all fought for Vida, finding herself disappointed by their Face–Heel Turn.

Zorcodrio

Bartender and member of the Storm of Tyranny, he's actually a Pure-blooded Vampire released from his seal by Schneider some time ago. While he lacks in magical skill, he compensates with superior physical and martial skills.

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• Achievements in Ignorance: He learned just enough about electric eels and muscles from the champion Solder to... fire lighting from his pecs. It is even commented the first time he does it in-story that Solder would cry if she knew how badly her teaching was misinterpreted.
• Action Dad: Not only he's the adoptive father of Sieg, he and his wife Rachel are expecting their first child very soon.
• The Bartender: His job when not adventuring.
• Daywalking Vampire: He is the only vampire to ever acquire the Sunlight Resistance skill without being one of Van's subordinates. He gained the ability at rank one by completely ignoring that his body was constantly burning while working outside during the day performing reconstruction work after Gudaranis' defeat. The other Pure Breed vampires tried to replicate this but failed.
• Due to the Dead: He and Lissana give the Vampires that tried to kill them a proper burial to honor the Vampires that fell during the war 100,000 years prior when they were all companions.
• In-Series Nickname: Zod
• It Runs on Nonsensoleum: Can generate electricity by vibrating her muscles. He's politely informed that this is gibberish but it doesn't stop him.
• Lightning Bruiser: He's lightning fast and hits very hard.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: Fought at the front line of the war between Alda and Vida. He was the first to fall, but only after fought further at the front lines and more fiercely than anyone else with his physical strength, and after enduring more attacks than anyone else, was the first to fall.
• Papa Wolf: Discussed. When they party's exploits are brought to light in chapter 280, his fellow party members note that he's actually become more vicious towards Alda fanatics after being married and siring a child, not less, as Zod laid waste to an Alda temple in Amid, calling them out on Alda's insane obsession with genocide. The party posits the theory that Zod's deeply concerned the "conservative" Alda faction might target his wife and dhampir child, like what happened to Darcia and Van, if he leaves them alone.
• Really 700 Years Old: He's a Pure-Breed Vampire that fought in the war between Alda and Vida 100,000 years ago. Because he was sealed for a great deal of that time, he doesn't feel much older than a hundred years.
• Semi-Divine: He's not a full god because he still has a physical body, but he's at about that level and therefore known as a demigod.
• Shock and Awe: Can vibrate his muscles to generate electricity in order to compensate his lack of magical skill. He's so strong at absorbing electricity he can fry and almost kill a Beast King in one single strike.
• Testosterone Poisoning: He's so muscular he could make an ogre look weak.
• Took a Level in Badass: Zod was already incredibly strong 100,000 years ago, even for a Pure-Breed Vampire, and after becoming an Abyssal Vampire, he can literally fight on the same league as Colossus and Demi-gods with little to no damage to his body.
• Underestimating Badassery: An arrogant Noble-born Vampire Emperor thought he would be easy pickings because of his lack of magical ability, only to be utterly destroyed by Zod because he doesn't need magic.
• Unskilled, but Strong: He has little to no talent in martial arts or magic, but is insanely strong and durable when he cuts loose. He actually has a unique combat style called Muscle Techniques. Despite his lack of technical skill, the other Pure Breed vampires are typically weaker than he is despite living much longer.

Merdin

A Dwarf A-class adventurer, waitress and member of the Storm of Tyranny.

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• Dance Battler: Works as dancer at the tavern that serves as base for the Storm of Tyranny, and she knows how to apply that knowledge in her fighting style.
• The Generic Guy: Considering her companions are an immortal S-class adventurer, an alcoholic dark elf, a goddess in the shape of an elf and a Pure-blood vampire, she's rather average in comparison.
• Only Sane Man: The member of Storm of Tyranny with the biggest common sense.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: She's a Dwarf, and the least outstanding (outwardly at least) of her party.

Heart Warrior Brigade

Arthur

A rookie adventurer from a remote village who received the blessing of Bashas, the Goddess of Rain Clouds, coming into contact with Vandalieu and the deities he represents.

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• All the Other Reindeer: His appearance and strength made most of villagers distrust and avoid him with the exception of an elderly priest and Borzofoy's family.
• Classical Hunter: He's been hunting all sorts of dangerous animals and monsters for most of his life, which is what made him surprisingly effective despite his inexperience.
• Country Mouse: Comes from a small, isolated village who didn't even know adventurer was an actual career path.
• Face of a Thug: He's a nice and virtuous person, but his size, strength and fierce gaze made most people in his home village distrust him.
• Heroic Build: He's pretty muscular and heroic person, and those muscles are what make Vandalieu accept him quite easily.

Kalinia

The younger sister of Arthur, a Priestess and a fellow adventurer, who also received the blessing of a god that had been led by Vandalieu, in her case Zelzeria, Goddess of Dark Nights.

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• Cool Big Sis: Because she never had any female friends, she treats Miriam like the younger sister she never had.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Her patron is a goddess of darkness, but she's a nice person who has been through rough times.
• Death Glare: Similarly to her brother, her gaze constantly makes her look intimidating.
• Does Not Like Men: Due to being attacked by a group of young men from another village when she was young, she developed an androphobia that makes her uneasy around most men.
• Friendless Background: With the exception of her brother and Borzofoy, she never had any friends until she met Miriam and Van's followers.
• Statuesque Stunner: Described as tall like her brother and undoubtedly beautiful.

Miriam

A completely average adventurer who came across Arthur, Kalinia and Borzofoy, ending up leading them in starting their careers as adventurers and following them into meeting Van.

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• The Face: Besides the leader she's also the one in charge of her party's social interactions, being the only one who doesn't have the Face of a Thug.
• Nice Girl: Despite how much she's exasperated by her companions' lack of common sense, she's too nice to just leave.
• Only Sane Man: She's the most normal and with the most common sense in her Ragtag Bunch of Misfits.
• Ridiculously Average Guy: She was a completely normal adventurer who just happened to be saved by Arthur when she was looking for rare herbs.
• Weirdness Magnet: A regular person who ends up with the protection of three separate gods and leading a party with a serious lack of common sense.
• Young and in Charge: She's the youngest member of the party at just 15 years old, but ended up as the leader due to being the only one with actual experience adventuring.

Borzofoy

A Dwarf adventurer and childhood friend of Arthur and Kalinia who also received a blessing from a god of Alda's faction that decided to defect to Van's side.

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• Childhood Friends: He's been friends with Kalinia and Arthur since they were children.
• Conveniently an Orphan: Like his two companions, his parents are deceased so he had no problem joining them as an adventurer.
• Creepy Good: He considers himself a cheerful person who laughs easily, but he comes off more like an old man with a creepy laugh.
• Dark Is Not Evil: He received the blessing of Hamul, God of Shadows, but he's a pretty nice guy, if a bit unknowingly creepy.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: He's described as very un-dwarf like, being lean and frail-looking, with some aptitude for earth and fire magic.
• Younger Than They Look: He's only 27, pretty young for a dwarf, but due to his weak constitution he's rather lean and gloomy faced, looking like a tiny old man instead of a young dwarf.

Other

The Flame Blades

The most notorious of the groups that seek to imitate Heinz and the Five Colored Blades.

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• Be Careful What You Wish For: Their greatest desire was to be "heroes," for fame, wealth, and glory. Fitun seeks them out and makes them "heroes" alright, as heroic spirits, killing them all, painfully. The process is not shown, but they are heard screaming from off-screen.
• Broken Pedestal: Because their adventures brought back critical information, and they made a good show of "keeping a stiff upper lip in the face of loss," whenever they lost their sixth "rookie" member, the Adventurer's Guild and the public at large saw them as dependable adventurers who power through their personal losses to protect the population at large. When Natania's testimony reached all the local branches and the investigation found a pattern of recruiting new members just to use them as bait, everyone looked upon them in disdain, their reputations completely shattered.
• Engineered Heroics: Natania is the fifth time they've recruited a sixth member with the express purpose of using as bait so they can escape if things went wrong and then reporting to the guild that they were victims of an ambush, forced by circumstances beyond their control to abandon a wounded party member. They've done this to collect the sympathy of their fellow adventurers and the public at large, as well as boost their name. The moment the truth came out, public opinion turned a full 180 degrees in an instant.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: The five core members have various races among them, human, half-elf, even Titan and beast-kin, the last two being a shock since they're often seen as second-class citizens, at best, even in Orbaume.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: They are truly devoted to each other but will cripple, wound, and happily sacrifice any "sixth" member when the situation gets too rough for them.
• Evil Virtues: Loyalty. The fact that they are loyal to one another is their motivation for constantly seeking out sixth "rookie" members that can be used as bait when things get rough. Loyalty means protecting your friends and not caring about strangers, right?
• Heroic Wannabe: They strive to be "heroes" like Heinz, copying and "improving" on his legend, even his flaws.
• It's All About Me: They only care about themselves. When Natania's testimony reached their ears, they had the gall to complain that they were getting a fine, not being imprisoned, or worse.
• No Name Given: Their names aren't mentioned.
• People Puppets: After Fitun's finished "making them into heroes," he, through Hajime, marches their animated corpses over to the nearest adventurer's guild branch and pays off their reparation debts before the fine is finalized, by using monster materials in lieu of cash. This immediately tips off Vandalieu that Alda's faction and the hostile reincarnators are up to something nasty.
• Shadow Archetype: To the Five Colored Blades. They have all of the flaws but almost none of the virtues, real or imagined, of Heinz and company, and react with the same level of ... distaste when those flaws are pointed out. Their fate is also a fine example of what would have happened to the Five Colored Blades if the truth about their misdeeds in Amid had come to light early in their careers, before they became highly lauded "heroes" whose claim to fame is, of course, taking up guild requests to wipe out entire villages on flimsy, or non-existent "evidence".
• True Companions: Yes, the five core members are indeed truly devoted to each other, through thick and thin, but this does not extend to new members they recruit.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Introduced and "turned into heroes" by Fitun in the same chapter.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: If you're recruited to the sixth position, they will sacrifice you to save themselves the moment things get to be too much for them.

Randolf

An Elf also known as "Randolf The True", and one of the only two S-class adventurers in the Orbaume Kingdom. Despite his rank, he prefers to complete requests alone and live a humble life away from politics.

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• Anti-Hero: Though ultimately trying to do good, he's quite willing to engage in heinous acts if he believes they're expedient or a net positive. For instance, Randolf's quite willing to Mercy Kill limbless victims of monster attacks because he believes they'll suffer for whatever does remain of their lives in abject poverty. He also has no problem imprisoning or even assassinating major nobles or adventurers if he believes they are a major threat to the continued existence of Orbaume.
• The Bard: One of his more commonly used identities is a bard named Rudolf, and he's genuinely good at playing instruments, having learned in his youth how to play at his home village.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: He's an S-class adventurer without interest in politics or being an honorary noble, preferring to just hunt to feed himself.
• The Cynic: Generally doesn't think any of his actions can really change things, making him not want to deal with nobles or adventures anymore if it's not a serious threat to the kingdom.
• Entertainingly Wrong: When he stumbles across Fang, Van's pet Hellhound, and Simon, he presumes Simon is a powerful monster-tamer, and the Hellhound is his familiar, because Fang moved in to protect Simon and growled a warning. In reality, Fang growled a warning because he considered Van's "disciple" Simon to be the weakest of their "pack".
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite his moral apathy, there are certain lines he won't cross: He planned to Mercy Kill the limbless Juliana and Natalia after they had been mutilated by minotaurs. However, when Natalia states she wants to live to help the mind broken Juliana and expose the adventurers who injured her to serve as bait while they got away, even Randolf grudgingly takes the pair of women to relative safety despite the potential personal inconvenience.
• Jade-Colored Glasses: In his youth, he lost his village to a dungeon overflow caused monster rampage that destroyed the whole thing and turned it into a devil's nest. In hopes of saving it, he became an adventurer, assembled true companions, and eventually amassed the money and fame to mount a culling of the monsters... only to find that the devil's nest had become a source of economic prosperity for the area, and the other elves from his hometown were happier living in cities than a tiny forest village. This led to Randolf becoming the grumpy cynic he is today.
• Grumpy Old Man: For a young-looking elf, he certainly gives that vibe with his gloomy disposition and general disinterest with things that he considers bothersome.
• Humble Hero: Looks more like an average middle-aged mercenary than a glamorous S-class.
• Master of Disguise: Can easily alter his appearance and mannerisms to move around incognito. It's to the point that even though Vandalieu has met Randolf in multiple different disguises, he hasn't realized they're the same person or that any of them is the famous adventurer Randolf the True, at best wondering if all these somewhat similar looking highly skilled elves he meets are perhaps related.
• Our Elves Are Different: If it wasn't because of his pointy ears, he would look like the average middle-aged mercenary.
• Red Baron: Picked up the nickname "Randolf the True" for his incredibly powerful and accurate archery skills.
• Refuge in Audacity: He infiltrates the city of Morksi as a bard, an occupation that's often a guise for criminals or bounty targets. How to avoid being suspected as such? Turn his eyes and hair bright blue so that he could never blend into the crowd. As such, the guards ignore him.
• Retired Badass: He even announced his retirement and tried to give back his guild card, only agreeing to keep it because otherwise he would have been unable to buy materials or other goods from Devil's Nests or Dungeons, such as the proof of having exterminated the monsters
• Stopped Caring: He used to be a more heroic man, but upon seeing there were always more people in need of help and more evils to vanquish he just stopped trying, figuring that if he couldn't fix everything there was little point to even doing what he could.

Simon

A 27-year old adventurer who lost his arm a decade ago. After being bitter and aimless for years, Darcia's sermons motivated him to improve himself, eventually receiving an artificial arm from Vandalieu.

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• An Arm and a Leg: Lost his right arm a decade ago while adventuring, considering it a Career-Ending Injury, until Darcia and Vandalieu motivated him to go back.
• Artificial Limbs: Vandalieu commissioned a new arm and helped him train to use his spirit materialization so he can use almost like his original arm.
• Beard of Sorrow: Had grown a beard that made him look older thanks to his loss of purpose.
• He Cleans Up Nicely: After finding a new purpose thanks to Van, he gets a haircut and starts using better clothes, looking his actual age.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Kind of inverted. When fighting a thuggish adventurer named Gordon, the thug thinks his normal left arm is weaker than his artificial one, when in fact Simon has been training his new dominant arm for years. Cue a sucker punch to the jaw of the thug, followed by unconsciousness.
• Younger Than They Look: Only 27 but looked much older due to his disheveled looks and Beard of Sorrow.

Natania

A 17-year old Wildcat Beast person abandoned by the Flame Blades at the mercy of Minotaurs during an adventuring quest, losing her four limbs in the process. Rescued by Randolf and left in Vandalieu's care, she's been given four new limbs by the Eclipse Emperor.

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• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: She manages to get Randolf to grudgingly spare her via such means. Most notably, even if she had to survive by prostituting herself to people with sick fetishes - the only realistic hope of not starving - she would do it. Fortunately, she gets dumped on Van indirectly and doesn't have to.
• An Arm and a Leg: Much like Juliana, Natania had all four of her limbs cut off by Minotaurs.
• Artificial Limbs: She's been given two new arms and legs, and thanks to training alongside Simon, she can now use them just like her original limbs.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Described as having thick eyebrows.
• Determinator: Unlike Juliana and the other girls raped by Minotaurs, Natania refuses to lose the will to live when offered a Mercy Kill from Randolph, even being willing to become a limbless prostitute if it means she can stay alive.
• Little Bit Beastly: She's a wildcat Beast Person, and has feline ears and a tail (which thankfully wasn't cut off by the minotaurs).
• Running on All Fours: Her new limbs can morph into cat limbs that allow her to run this way. Due to not being used to them, she injures her back and has to rest in bed afterwards.
• Took a Level in Badass: From an average adventurer to slowly but surely becoming much stronger with her new and improved limbs.

Gordon

A C-rank adventurer that thought browbeating the owner of Van's two ghoul "familiars" to claim the very attractive women for himself was a grand idea.

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• Asshole Victim: If the truth were known about his ultimate fate, nobody would mourn. In fact, many would celebrate.
• The Bully: Very used to using his strength to brow-beat other people into submission.
• Break the Haughty: His C-rank status and "Strong-Arm" title went to his head and made him think he was invincible. Then he met "Starving Wolf Micheal" and the two D-rank Adventurers, Natania and Simon. Not only did any one of them rebuff his attacks, and with ease, but he wind up on the ground, unconscious, after receiving a haymaker from a one-armed Simon.
• Death of Personality: Fitun essentially erases his mind and modifies his soul to become a vessel for his subordinate the Heroic spirit Bobby. His name is even changed to Gordon Bobby after the descent.
  • Death Equals Redemption: Since Van has no personal grudge against him and his personality is all but erased, he has no problem with either turning him into an undead or pseudo-reincarnating him instead of eating his soul.
• Entertainingly Wrong: When he sees the daughter of the Alchemist Guild's guildmaster speaking with Zadaris and Basdia, he immediately presumes they're her familiars and tries to browbeat her into turning them over to himself, and barely lets her get a word in edgewise to explain that they're not her familiars and trying to browbeat an influential person in Morksi is a bad idea.
• Fantastic Racism: He thinks Vida's races, including Dhampirs, are all sub-human, and says that to Van's face. Fortunately for him, he doesn't get to see how wrong he is.
• Fatal Flaw: Lust. He let his desire to own one or more very attractive ghoul Sex Slaves lead him to messing with people way, way above his paygrade, both in martial talent and political influence. He's lucky he got off as light as he did.
• Humiliation Conga: He demands a duel with Alicia, the daughter of the guild-master from the Alchemist's guild only for "a random thug" to completely own him. He tries to save face by going after Natania, a D-rank adventurer who lost all her limbs only to receive a Literal Ass-Kicking. As a last-ditch effort to win his self-proclaimed duel with anyone on Van's side, he picks a fight with Simon and winds up unconscious on the ground, losing a Single-Stroke Battle with a one-armed man. Lastly, he loses his "Strong Arm" title. He's just lucky Vandalieu and the Adventurer's Guild think he's been punished enough.
• Mugging the Monster: Under normal circumstances, his belief that he could clean the clock of "Starving Wolf Michael", Simon, and Natania would have been well justified, as a C-rank adventurer is usually far stronger than a random street-thug, and two D-rank adventurers, all put together, especially since the adventurers are missing a few limbs. Unfortunately, this "random thug" is actually a high-ranked noble vampire in disguise, and both the D-rank adventurers had been training for a month under Vandalieu and are far stronger than they appear. He's really fortunate that he didn't challenge Van to a fight, as losing to a barely teen kid would have been a humiliation he'd never recover from.
• Serial Rapist: As he's departing from Alcrem Duchy, trying to flee his disgrace, for fear that those he terrorized would come seeking vengeance, the narration states that he repeatedly took women against their will.

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