Characters / Reign of the Seven Spellblades — Kimberly Faculty

Reign of the Seven Spellblades Character Index
The Sword Roses | Kimberly Students (Upperclassmen) | Kimberly Faculty | Spoiler Characters

This page covers the professors and other faculty members at Kimberly Magic Academy.

Please be aware that not all spoilers might be tagged. Proceed with caution!

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Chronology Key

This key is based on the main protagonists' grade year progression through Kimberly Magic Academy. Grade years cited in characters' descriptions are based on their grade year at time of introduction.

• Year 1 (1532 of the Great Calendar): Light Novel Volumes 1-3 | Manga Chapters 1-46 | Anime Season 1
• Year 2 (1533 GC): LN Volumes 4-6
• Year 3 (1534 GC): LN Volumes 7-10
• Year 4 (1535 GC): LN Volumes 11-13
• Year 5 (1536 GC): LN Volumes 14-TBD

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Headmistress Esmeralda

Esmeralda Catena Draclugh

Voiced by: Atsuko Tanaka (Japanese), Krystal LaPorte (English)

“The two tenets of our academy spirit are ‘freedom’ and ‘results.’ Obviously, these are both predicated on self-responsibility. Thus, a simpler way of expressing this would be ‘Your life and death are in your own hands.’”

First Appearance: LN Volume 1 | Manga Chapter 1 | Anime 1x1 "Ceremony"

The school's headmistress, nicknamed the Witch of Kimberly, and a renowned battlemage who served in the Gnostic Hunters with Chloe Halford, before betraying and murdering her in the prologue of the series.

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• Arch-Enemy: Considering Oliver is saving her for last on his kill list of the people responsible for murdering his mother, he seems to consider her both his biggest obstacle and the one most at fault for her death.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Acts like a chief administrator to Kimberly Academy along with the significant skills to back it up. But in truth, she's the leader of a corrupt group who shares equally-nasty traits/habits as well, not to mention killing Oliver's mother remorselessly years ago in the past.
• Cleavage Window: Her customary outfit is an ankle-length dress with a low-cut neckline under halter-style straps, with another opening showing some underboob.
• Cool Big Sis: Discussed, with no small amount of Dramatic Irony, in volume 10: Chloe Halford mentions in a flashback that one day she hopes to introduce her son Oliver to her, thinking she'd become a big sister figure to him.
• Corrupted Character Copy: She is something of a Composite Character between Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape, being the respected head of a prestigious magic academy and being in love with the mother of the main protagonist (Darius Grenville ends up taking most of Severus' nastier traits and asocial personality). However, while Dumbledore (ostensibly) is quite a caring headmaster and deeply concerned with student welfare at Hogwarts, Esmeralda is completely unapologetic about the fact that about twenty percent of the students who matriculate to Kimberly Magic Academy will be "consumed by the spell" before they graduate. Furthermore, while Albus and Severus did everything in their power to protect Lily and her family, Esmeralda is the one who killed Chloe and left Oliver without a mom growing up. Additionally, Severus' love for Lily is portrayed as true and selfless, and he's repentant over accidentally causing her death, while Esmeralda intentionally kills the woman she loves and eats her soul, proving herself just as rotten as her co-conspirators.
• Dare to Be Badass:
  • Every year at the entrance ceremony, she gives a dramatic speech about how dangerous it is to be a Kimberly student and how many entrants will not survive to graduate. Which is usually immediately undercut by the second-years telling the first-years not to worry too much because the upperclassmen are there to help them. Or in the Sword Roses' case, by Nanao suggesting a headache remedy to her out of the blue.
  • More generally, when she interacts with students it's usually to demand better of them, such as when she tells Diana Ashbury "You've gotten slow" while sitting in on broomsport practice in volume 6.
• Dhampir: She's a human mage with vampire ancestry, which is the source of her ability to devour souls: she drains them along with her victims' blood. Not for nothing does her surname resemble "Dracula".
• The Dreaded: She is by far the single most-feared character in the series, able to ride herd on mages twice her age or more, and being summoned to her office is serious business for students: Oliver is scared stiff when it happens to him and Pete in volume 6 even though she says up front that they're not under suspicion in Forghieri's death (because it ought to be physically impossible for a second-year). Theodore is brave enough to needle her, but only the resident Fearless Fool Nanao is completely unwary of her.
• Dual Wielding: Her character description at her introduction in Chapter 1 mentions her having two athames in scabbards crossed at the back of her waist—an extremely rare choice among mages, who normally use either a single athame or a white wand. The revelation of her vampiric Power Parasite nature strongly suggests she took this from Chloe Halford, the only other known practitioner.
• First-Name Basis: Everybody calls her Esmeralda, or "Emmy" for short if they know her well. Her full name isn't stated until volume 10.
• Gravity Master: One of the few times she's actually cast a spell on-page is during the entrance ceremony, wherein she inverts the gravity in the Fellowship so the matriculating students can dine at place settings on the ceiling.
• Headache of Doom: She is plagued by near-constant headaches which are completely unresponsive to standard remedies. It's a side effect of the hundreds of mages whose souls she's eaten.
• Hiding Behind Your Bangs: The anime, which moved Chloe's death scene from the beginning of the series to episode 6, depicts her in a flashback with a hairstyle much like Vera Miligan's, with her bangs covering her left eye, in a Five-Second Foreshadowing of her betrayal of Chloe.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: She runs Chloe through from behind with her athame in the prologue.
• In-Series Nickname: Her close friends call her "Emmy"—including Chloe in the prologue to volume 1.
• Kill the Ones You Love: She was in love with Chloe Halford, but took the side of their other comrades and killed her, claiming she had no choice. Demitrio speculates this may have been a way of Redemption Rejection: she killed her loved one as a sort of self-inflicted baptism by fire to start her rise to power, possibly even to awaken her vampire side.
• More Senior Subordinate: She's a Kimberly alum herself and one of the youngest members of its faculty: she was an underclassman to Theodore McFarlane, Chloe Halford, and Edgar Groves as well as her current subordinates Vanessa Aldiss and Baldia Muwezicamili, and Grenville, Aristides, and Gilchrist were already teaching at the school. But Asskicking Leads to Leadership in the mage world, and she's one of the most powerful mages in recorded history.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: Downplayed. Her low-cut neckline is isn't quite cut to her navel and is closed at her bust, but has another opening showing some underboob and a sheer panel that exposes her navel in some images.
• Pimped-Out Dress: Her outfit of choice in the present day consists of a shin-length blue dress fading to black at the hem (drawn in a more purple hue in the anime), with a close-fitting, very low-cut bodice that shows off some underboob and has a sheer panel exposing her navel. She wears a matching bolero-style jacket over this.
• Power Parasite: She's able to steal the powers of mages whose souls she consumes, a trait granted by her vampire ancestry.
• Psycho Lesbian: She was in love with Chloe, and affirmed it even as she killed her.
• The Social Darwinist: "Your life and death are in your own hands," as she says in her customary orientation speech to matriculating students. She is completely unapologetic about the fact that one in five don't survive to graduation and asks only that the casualties leave something worthwhile behind.
• Soul Eating: She devours Chloe's soul after fatally stabbing her In the Back, though she only got half of it: the other half managed to find its way home to her family and settle with her son Oliver. In volume 10, Demitrio Aristides reveals she's eaten the souls of over 100 mages that he knows of, which fuels her incredible powers as a mage; Chloe's was only the first.
• We Used to Be Friends: She was one of Chloe Halford's comrades in the Gnostic Hunters, until Chloe and the other seven had a falling-out over what Chloe wished to do to end the threat of the Gnostics permanently, and betrayed, tortured, and murdered her.
• World's Best Warrior: Fueled by all the mage souls she's eaten, she's credibly believed to be one of the most powerful mages in recorded history.
• You Killed My Father: She's the last on Oliver's list of Kimberly instructors to kill to avenge his mother.

Luther Garland

Voiced by: Kazuyuki Okitsu (Japanese), John Burgmeier (English)

“Sword arts is mostly the art of self-defense. Unless you are planning to become a total social recluse, you have nothing to lose from learning ways to deal with the rare chance of a surprise attack. You absolutely cannot say the world is safe enough for this to be unnecessary—even while you are here at Kimberly.”

First Appearance: LN Volume 1 | Manga Chapter 2 | Anime 1x1 "Ceremony"

The sword arts instructor at the school and one of the more conventionally personable teachers.

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• Adaptational Early Appearance: In the anime he has an Early-Bird Cameo where he introduces Headmistress Esmeralda during the opening ceremony, before being properly introduced in episode 2.
• Black Sheep: Being the resident Cool Teacher (along with his school chum Ted Williams) makes him very much an outsider in the Kimberly faculty, who tend towards Sink or Swim Mentorship: he's seemingly excluded from Esmeralda's insider group (where even resident Upper-Class Twit Theodore McFarlane isn't), Vanessa Aldiss dismissively refers to him as a "that kid", and Darius Grenville disparages his swordsmanship and covets his job.
• Cool Teacher: He's younger than the other teachers and one of the nicest ones at the school by a long way, teaching through positive reinforcement and keeping a close watch on student safety. He also backs up Katie when she clashes with Darius Grenville over euthanizing the troll that attacked her, and reins in Vanessa Aldiss when she goes too far fighting the upperclassmen in the tournament prelims in volume 7.
• Hidden Depths:
  • He's impressively perceptive: he's detected both Oliver and Teresa Carste spying on him from stealth before, where they're normally undetectable.
  • Despite not being part of the conspiracy to murder Chloe Halford, he joins the investigation into Enrico Forghieri's death and is one of the first to realize that somebody tried to Make It Look Like an Accident.
• Master Swordsman: As you'd expect from the sword instructor at a school that trains Gnostic Hunters. Nanao has killed with the blade in battle before, many times, but in a series of simulated bouts they fight in order to get a feel for how to teach her (Union mages don't generally use two-handed swords, so he has to modify his curriculum for her), he deals her a string of Curb Stomp Battles. He's also one of the only people outside Esmeralda's insider group whom they suspect could have killed Darius Grenville.
  Nanao: ...Impressive. You decapitated me one hundred and two times.
  Garland: Ah, but you surpassed my expectations. And at such a young age, too. Yamatsu swordsmanship is truly amazing.
• Ret-Canon: His character design originated with Sakae Esuno's manga adaptation and was happily canonized by novel artist Miyuki Ruria.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Discussed. In volume 4, Teresa Carste tells Oliver she saw Garland in third layer of the labyrinth killing chimeras during the events of the previous book. Based on his impressions of Garland's character, Oliver surmises the swordmaster may have decided to screw the rule he himself cited to Katie that teachers don't get involved in labyrinth incidents until eight days have gone by, and tried to covertly aid the students' rescue missions, though it's entirely possible Garland had other motives.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Defied. Oliver questions whether, after sparring with Garland, Nanao feels any differently towards him since Garland is clearly a far superior swordsman to Oliver. Nanao immediately shoots that down.
  Oliver: Aren't you drawn to him, as a swordsman?
  Nanao: Let's say there was a girl who was perfect in your eyes, whom no one could rival. Then one day, the greatest beauty in the world appears before you. Would your feelings change?
  Oliver: ...They wouldn't. I'd feel exactly the same as before the second girl appeared.
  Nanao: I am the same. (smiles)

Vanessa Aldiss

Voiced by: Megumi Toyoguchi (Japanese), Corey Pettit (English)

“In this class, we’ll be handling magical creatures, and they are considered ‘natural resources.’ This is no place for your starry-eyed ideals of cohabitation or friendship.”

First Appearance: LN Volume 1 | Manga Chapter 4 | Anime Episode 1x2 "Sword Arts"

The magical biology instructor. Has it out for Katie.

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• Even Evil Has Standards: Despite viewing magical creatures as mainly fodder for experiments and even food, even she is shocked when somebody kills all but one of the griffin fledglings the second-years are raising in volumes 4 through 6 (Katie and Miligan had the survivor with them). Exploited: the Sherwood siblings killed the griffins specifically to agitate her so she'd be off her game for the conspirators' coming Assassination Attempt.
• Femme Fatalons: As the image indicates, she's able to transform her forearms into clawed limbs for fighting.
• Fiery Redhead: She's a bloody-minded brute with a short fuse and a shock of red hair. Her behavior becomes even more erratic after the slaughter of the second-years' griffin fledglings, and the other teachers have to repeatedly rein her in for excessively endangering students.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: She's so erratic and violent that even most of the other teachers don't like her: the only one who seems to is her former classmate Baldia, who calls her by the Affectionate Nickname "Vana".
• Loophole Abuse: On the receiving end of this from Gwen Sherwood in her second appearance in volume 5. She expects the class to break griffins like a horse, and is ready to flunk Katie and mock her mercilessly when she tries to befriend the griffin instead. Katie unexpectedly succeeds after Sherwood covertly uses her Magic Music to give her efforts a slight boost, and Gwen points to one of the unwritten rules of Kimberly: if you succeed at an assignment despite disobeying the professor and they can't figure out what you did, it's a passing grade.
• One-Woman Army: In volume 7 she first singlehandedly obliterates both sides of the Battle of Hell's Armies off-page, then holds off almost the entire seventh-year class with only her arms transformed: Godfrey, Echevalria, and Rivermoore together barely manage to draw blood, and that was without her actually meaning to kill anyone.
• Sadist Teacher: She's openly dismissive of the demihuman civil rights movement and calls the ideals trash, and expects all her students to clean up their own failures. She doesn't even step in when Katie is badly bitten on the hand by a magical silkworm she accidentally caused to metamorphose, and flunks Oliver and Chela on the spot for moving in to protect her (changed to docking them two points each in the anime).
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Her specialty is weaponized transformation of her body: most commonly of her arms, but her whole body can be modified on the fly to be weapon, defense, or both at the same time.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: She views magical creatures solely as resources to be exploited, and brags about hunting and eating centaurs before the civil rights movement succeeded in getting them reclassified as sapient.
• You Killed My Father: She was one of the seven mages who betrayed and murdered Oliver's mother, and is the second on his list to kill—though she's been pushed back twice because of Finagle's Law.

Frances Gilchrist

Voiced by: Misa Kato (Japanese), Linda Leonard (English)

“Those unsightly metal things on your waists… How can you call yourselves mages while wearing them? I simply cannot understand it. Perhaps they are necessary for the poor nonmagicals, but we live alongside the mysteries of this world. Only a wand is fitting.”

First appearance: LN Volume 1 | Manga Chapter 4 | Anime Episode 1x2 "Sword Arts"

The spellology instructor. Also a former Gnostic Hunter.

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• The Archmage: She teaches spellology, essentially the underlying theory and practice of magic itself.
• Corrupted Character Copy: She's one of Minerva McGonagall, as a stern no-nonsense elder teacher who teaches advanced magic. However, while McGonagall stern attitude belies a warmer side that cares for her students and she's definitely a fighter for Good, Gilchrist is part of the conspiracy that murdered Oliver's mother.
• Doesn't Like Guns: She despises sword arts as a concept, arguing that a mage should rely on pure magic first and foremost. This is partly because even though it made mages harder for Muggles to kill, widespread carrying of swords also led to an increase in mage-on-mage violence.
• Marionette Master: Rather than practice sword arts, she argues that mages should seek magical solutions for close-in defense, and demonstrates this by summoning up a small squad of automatons in the first class. Discussed later by the Sword Roses: Pete notes that this particular solution is probably Awesome, but Impractical for most mages, but the underlying idea of alternatives to sword arts isn't an inherently bad one.
• Really 700 Years Old: She's over 1,000 years old, which is normally impossible even for mages since beings called Reapers usually come to kill any mage who lives past 200: mathematically, she has to defeat at least sixteen of them every night at her age.
• Stern Teacher: She's a curmudgeonly, no-nonsense educator who expects excellence from her students.
• You Killed My Father: She's one of the seven mages who betrayed and murdered Oliver's mother, and is on his kill list.

Darius Grenville

Voiced by: Hiroki Tochi (Japanese), Ian Sinclair (English)

“To eradicate stupidity from the human race. That is my greatest wish.”

First Appearance: LN Volume 1 | Manga Chapter 8 | Anime 1x3 "Soldier"

The alchemy instructor, and another opponent of the civil rights movement. Also a former Gnostic Hunter.

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• Agony Beam: He has a penchant for pain spells: his Establishing Character Moment is using one on Katie when she refuses to stand aside from his move to euthanize the troll that attacked her at the opening ceremony. Oliver later tortures Darius with the same spell to avenge Darius using it on his mother, while mocking him for begging Oliver to stop.
• Corrupted Character Copy: Grenville draws clear inspiration from Harry Potter's Severus Snape: tall, slim, shoulder-length black hair, Sadist Teacher of alchemy at a Wizarding School who covets another position (swordmaster rather than Defense Against the Dark Arts), and has a backstory connection to the main character's mother. Except rather than trying to save her from the Big Bad and failing, he helped murder her, and furthermore was motivated by jealousy of her abilities and wounded pride from her thinking Garland was better than him. He also has a habit of helping promising students along in their academic research so he can plagiarize it, and is torturously killed at the end of the first volume, having succeeded only in solidifying Oliver Horn's resolve to kill his mother's other six murderers.
• Dramatic Irony: The other instructors discuss his disappearance several times. The possibility that a student killed him is brought up, then immediately dismissed as ridiculous, even though that's exactly what happened.
• Evilutionary Biologist: His life's goal is to "eradicate stupidity from the human race". To that end, he steals research from talented students.
• Green-Eyed Monster: His motive for his role in Chloe's death? He was jealous of her talents and angry that she thought Luther Garland was a better swordsman than him.
• Literal Disarming: Oliver uses the Fourth Spellblade, Angustavia, to find and reach the one-in-ten-thousand possible future where their Duel to the Death ends in Oliver lopping off Darius's sword hand.
• Master Swordsman: So he says: he claims to be as good or better with the sword as Luther Garland, and covets the other man's job as a consequence, considering him too soft. His past as a Gnostic Hunter would seem to bear this out, but we never get to see much of his swordwork because Oliver disables him in one cut with a Spellblade.
• Never Found the Body: Invoked. Oliver kills him in the abandoned workshop of a deceased student deep in the labyrinth, and he and his co-conspirators dispose of the body. As a result, he seems to the other instructors to have simply disappeared.
• Off with His Head!: Oliver tortures him until he begs for death, then summarily beheads him when he does.
• Plagiarism in Fiction: He has a reputation for allying with promising students so he can steal the fruits of their research for use towards his own goal to "eradicate stupidity from the human race."
• Rasputinian Death: He and his coconspirators put Chloe Halford through 128 different tortures before Esmeralda finally killed her, all of which Oliver possesses because of her Ghost Memory. Oliver gets through fifty-seven of them before Darius begs him to let him die.
• Sadist Teacher: Calls Katie an ape for refusing his command to stand aside when she gets between him and the troll from the entrance ceremony, then hits her with a pain spell when she refuses to back down. Vera Miligan intervenes to end the confrontation, with the offscreen backing of Luther Garland (onscreen in the anime).
• Sink or Swim Mentor: Oliver spends a good chunk of the first practical exam running around the classroom rescuing other students from Dangerous Phlebotinum Interactions that both Darius and the lab assignment seemingly deliberately don't warn the students about. Darius only steps in to compliment Oliver after he's lightly injured rescuing Pete.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Was covertly engaged in this with Miligan. While he opposed her goal of improving the lot of demihumans, he thought he could eventually steal her research into improving their intelligence if it bore fruit and use it on humans.
• Villains Want Mercy: Once Oliver has him at his mercy after using Angustavia to disarm him, he tortures him with pain spells. In rapid succession Darius goes from raging at Oliver about how he won't get away with this, to begging him to stop, to miserably asking for a Coup de Grâce, all while Oliver mocks him about how much more torture his mother withstood at Darius's own hand.
• We Can Rule Together: After clashing with the Sword Roses throughout volume 1, he offers to make Oliver his apprentice, noting that Oliver would be a good researcher and theoretician, even though he has no particular talents of his own and will likely hit a wall as a spellcaster at some point. That's when Oliver reveals he's there to kill him.
• You Killed My Father: He's one of the seven mages Oliver targets for assassination for their part in his mother's murder.

Theodore McFarlane

Voiced by: Toshihiko Seki (Japanese), Chris Gardner (English)

“Forgive me, Headmistress. It’s just my nature to stir the pot when it’s too settled.”

First Appearance: LN Volume 1 | Manga Chapter 7 | Anime 1x3 "Soldier"

Chela's father, a guest lecturer at the academy. Rescued Nanao from death in battle in Yamatsukini and brought her to Kimberly.

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• Bisexual Love Triangle: As a Kimberly student, he was one of at least three suitors pursuing Chloe Halford, and fought a duel with her eventual partner Edgar Groves. Esmeralda herself was the third.
• Blue Blood: The McFarlanes are an old and renowned mage bloodline.
• Come with Me If You Want to Live: In Nanao's Troubled Backstory Flashback, she was about to be run through by a squad of ashigaru, when McFarlane, who had been visiting Souma Domain, froze them in mid-strike and offered to take Nanao back to Yelgland with him to become a mage.
• Corrupted Character Copy: He's superficially similar to Gilderoy Lockhart, as a foppish and rather silly world traveler and book author who sometimes fills in for other teachers, particularly Alchemy after Darius goes missing. However, he's actually competent, and is subtly indicated to be a far more threatening character than the eccentric facade he puts up: besides his maltreatment of his illlegitimate daughter Stacy, he's got Chela's entire life basically pre-planned for her including Arranged Marriages to further the family bloodline, and she's starting to resent it and has also become suspicious of his intentions towards Nanao.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He's repeatedly introduced walking upside-down on the ceiling or alternatively floating upside-down through the air for no apparent reason, and spends his period as a substitute alchemy instructor tasting the students' attempts at antidote potions, with predictable results. He's also a mage powerful enough to immobilize an entire army with a single spell in Nanao's Troubled Backstory Flashback, which is just the tip of the iceberg. In volume 4, he hands a Curb-Stomp Battle to a knife-wielding maniac that accosts him, Oliver, and Nanao in Galatea, disintegrating the man's torso in an eyeblink with the Second Spellblade. In volume 9, an elfed-out Chela loses her temper at him and attacks him, only for him to knock her out cold with a single spell.
• Early-Bird Cameo: He first, briefly, appears in Nanao's Troubled Backstory Flashback to her Last Stand in Yamatsukuni before being properly introduced in volume 2.
• Embarrassing Relative Teacher: He is the cause of many a facepalm from Chela over his silly behavior.
  Chela: He acts that way virtually all the time. People call him ‘free-spirited,’ but there’s no denying he lacks the sense of responsibility needed in a parent or instructor. It causes me no end of suffering.
• The Gadfly: By his own admission, he just enjoys stirring the pot.
• I Gave My Word: He was a classmate of Chloe Halford at Kimberly, and found Nanao to fulfill an oath he swore to Chloe that has yet to be elaborated on.
• I Have No Daughter!: He sired Stacy Cornwallis as a spare for Chela and then left her with her mother's family, and has largely ignored her existence ever since and refuses to acknowledge her as his daughter. That said, he does give her a Pet the Dog moment in volume 9 when her and Fay's performance in the combat leagues convinces him to order the Cornwallis family to allow their relationship.
• Master Swordsman: He's a master of the Rizett Style and can easily keep up with Luther Garland
• Never the Selves Shall Meet: Weaponized. He wields the Second Spellblade, "Creumbra, the self-racing shadow", derived from an earlier mage's attempt to create a Doppelgänger that caused a nuclear-level explosion. Creumbra involves extending just over fifty percent of one's existence to the limits of one's spatial magic, at which point the two halves will violently snap back together and obliterate anyone and anything unfortunate enough to be caught in between.
• Ojou Ringlets:Gender-Inverted and justified. Much like his daughter Chela, he has blond hair styled in ringlets (though he cuts his much shorter than hers), which runs in the McFarlane clan and leads to Nanao realizing her new school friend is related to the mage who rescued her.
• Parental Substitute: In the Backstory, he rescued Nanao from the brink of death in her last battle as a samurai by freezing the entire enemy army with a single spell, and took her under his wing as a substitute father-figure. That said, by volume 5, Oliver and Chela have begun to question his motives for doing so: it seems that after Chloe Halford's death, he started searching specifically for someone similar to her out of an obligation that Nanao apparently fulfilled, and in volume 4 he's shown monologuing about how he wants Nanao to "reach where I am".
• Power Floats: He's prone to floating upside-down through the air, for little more reason than his own amusement.
• Upper-Class Twit: Played With. He cultivates an image of an eccentric but nonthreatening aristocrat: an impeccably dressed, adventurous book author prone to dramatics who constantly gets into minor scrapes through his silly behavior. However, he's also a Kimberly alumnus powerful enough to freeze a whole army with a single spell, and it's unclear whether his silliness is genuine or Obfuscating Stupidity, or both.
• Virtuous Character Copy: He has a lot of similarities to Gilderoy Lockhart, as a foppish and rather silly world-traveler and book author who fills in after another teacher is indisposed. However, unlike Lockhart, he actually did have all the adventures he claims to have done and is quite competent when he puts his mind to being so: he's even a Spellblade wielder.

Dustin Hedges

Voiced by: Kazumasa Fukugawa (Japanese), Cody Savoie (English)

“Ha-ha! Surprisingly difficult, isn’t it? It’s harder to keep a broom still for extended periods of time than it is to let them fly!”

First Appearance: LN Volume 2 | Manga Chapter 16 | Anime 1x7 "Reversi"

The broomriding instructor.

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• Berserk Button: He despises cheaters and flies into a fury when a supporter of the old council tries to blind Nanao during the Wild Geese-Blue Swallows team battle match.
• Demoted to Extra: The manga and anime adaptations both cut most of his introductory scene, leaving him just providing a bit of exposition about Flying Broomsticks.
• Giving Up on Logic: He's caught completely flat-footed by Nanao's surprising proficiency with the broomsticks: first that she was able to tame Chloe Halford's former Moody Mount Amatsukaze when even he himself couldn't, then took her first flight perfectly. He finally gives up on expecting her to flub it by the end of the class period.
  “…You know what? You win. You win, Ms. Hibiya. You’re amazing. Talented beyond compare,” Dustin complimented with an undercurrent of resentment.
• Mauve Shirt: He's pretty much just the Flying Broomstick teacher: all his scenes are connected either to broomsticks, or to the Fictional Sport played on them.
• Retired Badass: He's said to be a retired Gnostic Hunter, specifically a "balmung rider"—basically broomstick cavalry, wielding an athame specialized for fighting from the back of a broom.

Enrico Forghieri

Voiced by: Hōchū Ōtsuka (Japanese), Mark Allen Jr (English)

“Kya-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

First Appearance: LN Volume 2 | Manga Chapter 17 | Anime 1x7 "Reversi"

The magical engineering instructor, a mage specializing in the construction of golems. Utterly barking mad. Also a former Gnostic Hunter.

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• Ax-Crazy: His madness makes him supremely unpredictable and no less lethally dangerous for it.
• Casting Gag: His anime voice actor Hōchū Ōtsuka surprisingly looks a lot like him, albeit he has a lot more hair in the front.
• Dead Man Writing: Exaggerated: he turns out to have a golem prepared to activate if he doesn't check in with it every few days that not only formally announces his death, but is capable of taking over running his classes!
• For the Evulz: His stated motivation for killing Chloe Halford in such a torturous way and ripping her soul from her body? It amused him to see such a renowned battlemage laid low.
• Golem: His specialty, which he builds as war machines to battle Gnostics and their creatures.
• It's Personal: It already was personal since he helped murder Oliver's mother, but Oliver moves up his timetable when Enrico takes an interest in Pete and tries to make him his apprentice in volume 5.
• Laughing Mad: Utterly unhinged and howls with laughter near-constantly. He was a crybaby as a child until his non-magic childhood friend told him to laugh instead of cry as she lay dying.
• Mad Scientist: His experiments make Miligan from volume 1 look sane.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: The battle with him was too violent to entirely cover up, so Oliver's coconspirators clean up the scene to make it look like he'd died accidentally while testing Deus Ex Machina. Unfortunately, while they succeed in obfuscating who did it, the teachers investigating notice the telltales of their tampering and now know somebody is actively targeting Kimberly faculty.
• Pet the Dog: Offers lollypops as gifts to students who do well in his classes. Also seems to revert to his innocent childhood self in his final moments.
• Powered Armor: One of his golems is something he conjures around himself as a magical variation on this trope.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: His experimental Humongous Mecha golem Dea Ex Machina is powered by the disembodied souls of imprisoned demihumans and even a few condemned criminals, to get around the problem of the natural magic particle density being too low to efficiently power a golem that size. So is the other prototype, Deus Ex Machina, which he unveils during Oliver's assassination attempt.
• Rasputinian Death: Defied. It takes a lot of punishment to bring Forghieri down, but Gwyn stops Oliver from torturing him to death the way he did Darius because keeping Oliver alive with the soul merge active is killing Shannon.
• Sink or Swim Mentor: He isn't actively sadistic like Grenville or Aldiss, he just likes to throw students into the deep end with minimal instruction. He does provide healing to students injured in his class, though: after the trap the students fail to disarm in volume 2 releases a swarm of venomous snakes, he passes out lollipops containing an antivenin.
• Start of Darkness: He had a non-magic childhood friend, Noemi, who he loved dearly. Her town was secretly controlled by a Gnostic cult, which had an internal religious war break out, causing all hell to break loose. He was forced to Mercy Kill her by burning her alive when she began to be transformed into a plant by Gnostic magic run amok.
• Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred!: Sums up his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Oliver in his final moments. Not only is Oliver burning out his own life by merging with his mother's soul to use her powers in battle, but the more he hates the men he fights to kill, the more he betrays the very ideals of creating a better world for all living things that his mother died for, and the more he betrays her natural free-spiritedness.
• Taking You with Me: He doesn't go down easy when Oliver and his comrades go to assassinate him. Thirty-two mages go to kill him in a prepared ambush in the labyrinth, and eleven of them don't come back.
• Too Kinky to Torture: He's so insane that pain curses just make him laugh harder.
• Villainous Valor: He doesn't budge an inch despite being outnumbered thirty-four to one, and keeps fighting even after the last of his golems is destroyed. Only Oliver breaking out his Spellblade and running him through is enough to finally put him down.
• We Used to Be Friends: He was a comrade of Oliver's mother Chloe Halford, until they had a falling-out over Chloe's plans to end the Gnostic Wars by fundamentally changing the nature of the mage world, and collaborated with the other six to murder her.
• You Killed My Father: He's one of the seven mages who betrayed and murdered Oliver's mother in the prologue.

Baldia Muwezicamili

“First day of classes is always core theory, but first, a vital warning. Don’t ever touch me; and don’t ever touch anything I’ve touched until I give express permission. Do not step where I have walked. And probably best if you don’t spend more than two hours in the same space as me. Fail to the follow these rules, and it may prove catching.”

First Appearance: LN Volume 4 | Manga Chapter 15 | Anime Episode 1x6 "Arise"

The professor of Curses at Kimberly Magic Academy, and a member of Esmeralda's insider group.

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• Adaptational Early Appearance: The manga and anime both give her Early Bird Cameos in Chloe Halford's death scene flashback, as well as in the meeting Esmeralda calls regarding Darius's disappearance, but she has no lines. She wasn't identified in the novel versions of either scene and isn't formally introduced until volume 4.
• Affectionate Nickname: She's the only person who actually seems to like Vanessa Aldiss: they were classmates at Kimberly and she still calls her "Vana".
• Chekhov's Classroom: She's formally introduced in volume 4 teaching the second-years' first class on curses. One volume later, curse energy derived from Human Sacrifices turns out to be the power source for Enrico Forghieri's experiments into Humongous Mecha, and the Heroic Sacrifice of several curse practitioners in Oliver's group is key to defeating him.
• The Corruption: She specializes in curses, a contagious form of magic, and is afflicted by so many it's a wonder she's still alive: just being near her is enough to sicken bystanders and kill plants.
• Evil Mentor: In year 4, she takes Guy Greenwood of all people under her wing after he's cursed in a mishap.
• Older Than They Look: She looks like a little girl, but that's just because of the curse inflicted on her. She was a classmate of Vanessa Aldiss and senior to Luther Garland (who is in his thirties).
• Poisonous Person: Her body is so loaded with curses that people get sick just by being near her. She's self-aware about this and provides flavored water during classes so her students can wash their mouths out after throwing up.
• You Killed My Father: She is one of the seven that murdered Chloe Halford.

Ted Williams

First Appearance: LN Volume 4

The permanent replacement for Darius Grenville as alchemy professor beginning in year 2, and a former classmate of Luther Garland.

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• Enthusiastic Newbie Teacher: After the first class with him, the Sword Roses and their second-year classmates are collectively amazed that he actually taught a normal class—so much so that it makes Oliver suspicious that he's a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing given how Kimberly teachers usually act. Meanwhile he confesses to Garland that he was scared to death he'd disappoint the kids.
• Stealth Expert: He and Garland were in the same class at Kimberly and thick as thieves. They used to practice their stealth techniques by playing pranks on the teachers.
• Unexpected Successor: Discussed: he got the job on the basis of a recommendation Darius Grenville apparently left before his disappearance, and was as astonished as anyone else. Ted remembers Grenville ridiculing him, but Garland recalls Grenville complimenting him behind his back.

Demitrio Aristides

“Why is observing the stars such a pressing matter? I doubt you need that explained, but as it is fundamental to the conceit, I shall do so: Because every little light in the night sky is a world distinct from our own—a tír.”

First Appearance: LN Volume 5

The professor of astronomy at Kimberly Magic Academy. He is an active-duty Gnostic Hunter and a member of Esmeralda's insider group.

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• Adaptational Early Appearance: The manga and anime both depict him in the flashback to Chloe Halford's murder.
• Anti-Villain: He sincerely believes, not without reason, that the horrible things he sometimes has to do are necessary to protect this world from the gods of other worlds, starting from a Sympathetic Murder Backstory where he had been living in a nonmagical village as a helpful mage beloved by its children, only to have to exterminate the entire village when it became infected by an Apostle that turned them into Plague Zombies. Furthermore, he is unfailingly polite and respectful even to people he disagrees with. He is also apologetic for the Trauma Conga Line his assassination of Chloe Halford put her son Oliver through, even trying to create an illusory happy life for Oliver so that he doesn't suffer when Demitrio finishes him off. After Oliver spots A Glitch in the Matrix, escapes the illusion, and mortally wounds him, they have a sort of Dying Truce and Demitrio does his best to warn Oliver about Esmeralda's powers.
• Dying as Yourself: Inverted. Yuri Leik reasserts himself over Demitrio's personality one last time in his dying moments and creates an illusion of a starry sky to replicate the last time he saw Oliver, so that they can say their farewells.
• Early-Bird Cameo: He's present for the volume 2 scene where Esmeralda's insider group discusses Darius Grenville's disappearance, but has no lines.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • He's as infuriated as Godfrey and Tim when Vanessa impulsively tosses pieces of Uranischegar's Alien Geometries inside the magic barrier protecting the students from a tír migration.
  • He's completely appalled by the treatment Oliver received from his great-grandparents, which is indirectly his fault, and tries to kill him painlessly inside an illusion of a happy life as recompense.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: If he hadn't reabsorbed Yuri Leik, he likely would have killed Oliver when they fought: Oliver only broke out of Demitrio's Mind Control and then defeated the Fifth Spellblade because of Yuri Fighting from the Inside.
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: He wields the Fifth Spellblade, "Papiliosomnia, the dream of a butterfly that never wakes up again", which causes the victim to become unable to tell the difference between themselves and their opponent and either not resist the wielder's attack or outright kill themselves.
• Rasputinian Death: Defied. This time, Oliver can't even bring himself to start torturing him because he knows his friend Yuri Leik is still alive inside Demitrio, leading to a Dying Truce between them.
• Reality Warper: His signature skill, sourced from his ability to spin off Soul Fragments, is "primal magic", a facsimile of powers once held by the progenitor demihumans via tapping into the Spellblades-verse's equivalent of Akashic Records, letting him manipulate space and time in far more fundamental ways than conventional magic. This is only possible, however, while he maintains a state of partial Loss of Identity made possible by his fractured soul: once Yuri's personality reemerges and starts Fighting from the Inside, he loses access to this magic.
• Really 700 Years Old: In volume 10 he's revealed to be nearly 600 years old (the scenes of him living among Muggles take place 567 years ago), making him the second-oldest character after Frances Gilchrist. It's a rare mage who is powerful enough to fight off the reapers for that long: mathematically he's presently stuck fighting at least seven of them every night.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Unlike Grenville and Aldiss, in his introductory scene he takes the time to properly address Katie questioning the prevailing theories behind magical history with equanimity and facts. Katie isn't convinced by his reply, but is pleased that he treated it as a reasonable question. He also is shown in a flashback living among nonmagicals and teaching their children about astronomy, and is just as enraged as the Campus Watch members present when, during a tír migration, Vanessa throws chunks of Uranischegar's Alien Geometries inside the barrier protecting the underclassmen just to make things more exciting.
• Redemption Rejection: His stated motive for his part in Chloe Halford's murder was that he found himself responding emotionally to her ideals of wanting to make the world better to live in so that Gnostics would have a harder time gaining a foothold. Intellectually, he found this a frighteningly risky path, and killed her in hopes of killing the part of himself that agreed with her. He speculates Esmeralda may have been the same.
  “I acted to shore up my resolve. To force myself to never again cling to my memories of Chloe. To never let myself hope for the future she spoke of. By ending our relationship in the worst imaginable light—with that dark suggestion, I sealed away Chloe Halford’s light. I knew I’d need it, if I was to continue down this path afterward. To avoid my footsteps faltering. ... Her idea of the future placed too much hope in people. I weighed the damages in the event of a betrayal against the price of maintaining the status quo. Protecting the darkness of the present over chasing a blinding dream…”
• Significant Birth Date: According to a tweet by the author, his birthday is 9/9. The number 9 is associated with suffering in (predominantly Christian) folklore, fitting into the suffering he first endured, then inflicted.
• Soul Fragment: He broke off a piece of his own soul to create Yuri Leik to spy on the student body. In volume 10 it's discovered he's been doing this periodically since he was hired 40 years ago. Justified: a traumatic experience in his youth—having to incinerate an entire village himself to stop an Apostle of the god of Ayrioneptu, including his own students—caused his soul to fracture.
• Spotting the Thread: He realizes from watching Oliver in the Tournament Arc that this unassuming underclassman fights like a Gnostic Hunter and is far better at it than he has any right to be, making him a prime suspect for the murders of Grenville and Forghieri.
• Villain Respect: Demitrio is impressed by Oliver while they're fighting, and ends up feeling sorry for him after he sees the Trauma Conga Line that his part in Chloe's death unintentionally put her son through as a boy, and tries to grant him a painless death devoid of suffering once he gets done reading his memories. After Oliver turns the tables due to Yuri's interference and mortally wounds him, he uses his last words to warn Oliver of the true scope of Esmeralda's powers, which frighten even him.
• Villainous Valor: Even stripped of his primal magic, he fights on: out of 32 mages that come to kill him, he kills twelve and cuts one of Gwyn Sherwood's arms off.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He genuinely believes, with some reason, that incursions from other tírs and the Gnostics who worship their gods must be destroyed with extreme prejudice for the safety of this world. This is partly motivated by an experience when he lived in a nonmagical village: a child encountered a tír creature from Ayrioneptu that initially seemed innocuous but turned out to be a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing that took over the entire village, Plague Zombie style.
• You Killed My Father: Aristides was part of the conspiracy that murdered Chloe Halford and is targeted by Oliver in volume 10 when he and his comrades realize that he's close to unmasking him.

Gisela Zonneveld

First Appearance: LN Volume 6

The school physician.

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• Flat Character: The only time she's shown up outside of scenes where she treats injured students is when Esmeralda calls an all-hands meeting following the discovery of Enrico Forghieri's murder.
• Healing Hands: She specializes in healing spells and related areas of medicine.
• Quirky Doctor: She acts a lot like a female version of Forghieri and clearly derives no small amount of amusement at her patients' expense. Also, she seems not to have ever heard of anesthetic. In her defense, she's a very good doctor: she's able to quickly get Alvin Godfrey back on his feet after he gets his sternum stolen, replacing it and then reinstalling it after its recovered as outpatient procedures.

Rod Farquois

First Appearance: Volume 12

A well-known reversi archmage who replaces Demitrio Aristides as astronomy instructor in 1535.

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• Amputative Sentencing: Esmeralda cuts one of his arms off for going into the labyrinth to rescue a group of students who got into trouble, in defiance of Kimberly's eight-day rule.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: His name is spelled ロッド=ファーカー Roddo Fākā in katakana, which the official translation rendered as the French-sounding "Farquois". Feeding it through Google Translate instead returns it as the Scottish surname Farquhar; it's possible translator Alex Keller-Nelson didn't recognize it.
• Ascended Extra: Farquois was first mentioned all the way back in volume 1 in connection to his research on trolls, then again in volume 2 when Oliver and Chela were trying to reassure Pete after he awakened as a reversi, and was spoken of in past tense as if he were a historical figure, no less.
• The Political Officer: He was sent to Kimberly by the Gnostic Hunters in the interest of restoring order at the school (which is a major recruiting ground), under the (mistaken) notion that the murders of three teachers in preceding years are the result of infighting among the faculty. Esmeralda is understandably very displeased by this.
• Sex Shifter: Like Pete Reston, he's a reversi: a mage whose physical sex periodically switches between male and female.
• Shapeshifters Do It for a Change: A reversi, he's said by Chela in volume 2 to be pansexual and have a wide variety of paramours.

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