Please be aware that not all spoilers might be tagged. Proceed with caution!
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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The Campus Watch and Supporters
The Campus Watch. From left, Carlos Whitrow, the Empty Chair Memorial, Alvin Godfrey, Lesedi Ingwe, and Tim Linton.
Click to see them in Side of Fire.
The Kimberly Campus Watch is an all-volunteer group organized by Alvin Godfrey to help police the student body, as well as patrolling the upper levels of the labyrinth to rescue lost students. They're also the most visible part of the liberal faction in campus politics, which is the incumbent side on the Absurdly Powerful Student Council at the start of the series.Click to see them in Side of Fire.
- Foil: To the Sword Roses. They're a group of upperclassmen that similarly got together as friends with a collective dream of making the world better, but have already lost members because their bonds ultimately couldn't overcome the stressors of attending Kimberly, foreshadowing the travails that the Sword Roses are likely to face in the future. Lampshaded by Tim in volume 9 after Katie communes with a tír god: he tells Oliver that "Your whole crew's a bunch of walking red flags".
- Graduate from the Story: Godfrey and Lesedi both graduate from Kimberly after volume 10 and are Put on a Bus. We know from volume 13 that Godfrey went on to try out for the Gnostic Hunters but is shown struggling with the training regimen. Linton and Vera Miligan themselves graduate after volume 13.
- Hero of Another Story: They have a set of subplots all their own that intersect with the Sword Roses fairly regularly: chiefly their past with Ophelia Salvadori and their rivalry with the old council. The Side of Fire Spin-Off volume takes place in Godfrey's second year and explains it all in much greater detail than the main series.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: As seen in the flashbacks in volume 3 and in Side of Fire, the Watch used to be much more a club of well-intentioned screwups than an effective campus safety patrol. Alvin Godfrey is a bull-headed Stock Shōnen Hero who tended to blow himself up with his own fire magic, Tim Linton is a drag queen notorious for being careless with his poisons and useless at making anything else, Carlos Whitrow is a nonbinary asexual who counterspells Sex Magic, and Lesedi Ingwe was the Only Sane Woman stuck cleaning up after them and prefers kickboxing to Sword Arts. Surprisingly it was the addition of Ophelia Salvadori, the succubus-blooded girl who Smells Sexy and uses her womb as a petri dish, that actually allowed them to overcome their initial troubles and get to where they were elected to the student council, and she didn't last much more than a year on the team before her descent into villainy.
Alvin Godfrey
Voiced by: Satoshi Hino (Japanese), Bradley Gareth (English)
First Appearance: LN Volume 1 | Manga Chapter 6 | Anime 1x3 "Soldier"
A fifth-year student, and Kimberley's Student Council President. Godfrey organized several student clubs to protect underclassmen, starting with the Campus Watch, which patrols the upper levels of the labyrinth to rescue lost students. Old friends with Carlos Whitrow and Ophelia Salvadori.
- Behavioral Conditioning: He cast pain spells on himself repeatedly to condition his body to not be automatically aroused by Ophelia's Perfume, in order to be near her without being affected by her inability to turn off her powers.
- Big Good: To the extent that the first half of the series has one. He's a capable and good-natured young man who cares deeply about human life and takes every student death at Kimberly personally, and has spent his whole academic career working as a community organizer in the student body to make Kimberly safer and more welcoming to attend. However, enough people in the student body and faculty like things just the way they are that he and his friends have been fighting an uphill battle since day one, though they have been making measurable progress. He even invites Oliver and Nanao to join the Campus Watch themselves in volume 4, but Oliver declines out of concern it could interfere with his mission of revenge and Nanao follows suit.
- Burn Scars, Burning Powers: Downplayed: he doesn't have any actual burn scars, but that's only because healing magic exists: he used to burn himself with his own overpowered fire spells until Clifton Morgan taught him how to control it properly.
- Casting Gag: In the anime, Satoshi Hino provides the voice of Alvin "Purgatory" Godfrey, who is famed for his abilities with fire powers. Godfrey's Nom de Guerre is "Rengoku" in Japanese. Only a couple years earlier, Hino voiced Kyōjurō Rengoku in the anime of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, who likewise has fire-related elemental powers.
- Chaste Hero: He's the apex of a Bisexual Love Triangle between Ophelia Salvadori, Tim Linton, and Leoncio Echevalria, but there's no indication he's ever expressed romantic interest in anyone at all.
- Establishing Character Moment: He's introduced by casually blowing away the magical creations of two rogue upperclassmen with a single spell, before swearing to get the lost Sword Roses back to the surface unharmed and banishing the upperclassmen back to their laboratories, punishments to follow. This cleanly establishes both his fighting abilities and his protective instincts in a single scene.
- Fictional Disability: He was born with an abnormally large amount of mana but lacked the natural talent to control it properly, and tended to blow himself up with his own fire magic. He had to learn how to do it the hard way by practicing with Clifton Morgan.
- The Grappler: Having been Brought Down to Normal by Rivermoore stealing his sternum, Godfrey switches tactics for his team's opening bout in the combat leagues in volume 8: being unable to rely on his normal firepower, he switches to a spatial magic-enhanced grappling art called magicombat, and incapacitates his opponent Efler with a choke hold.Efler: …Y-you bastard…! This isn’t how a mage fights…!
Godfrey: No. This is how you fight a mage. The Watch has learned how to fight you. - The Incorruptible: Unlike most mages, he's completely uninterested in personal power except as means to an end, said end being that mage society should be much more kind, collaborative, and supportive of the weak. Tim Linton comments in volume 10 that he initially thought Godfrey was crazy, but after getting to know him, he decided that Godfrey was actually the Only Sane Man at Kimberly. The Conspiracy rejected recruiting him for this reason: while in theory their end goals are very much aligned, he's fundamentally a protector and Internal Reformist, whereas the conspiracy plans to overthrow the current order through assassination of bad actors including most of Kimberly's current faculty.
- Internal Reformist: His organizing efforts in the student body and efforts to police the labyrinth are part of a larger goal to humanize Kimberly's student culture and restore some sense of basic morality and decency into the very amoral broader mage culture.
- Only Sane Man: Discussed by Tim Linton, who says he initially thought Godfrey was nuts, but after getting to know him, decided he was only sane person at Kimberly for actually objecting to the horrible ways mages tend to treat each other and trying to do something about it.
- Playing with Fire: Godfrey has an impressive facility with fire spells: his Establishing Character Moment sees him incinerate one Ophelia's chimeras and one of Cyrus Rivermoore's bone golems with a single casting of Ignis. His fire spells are so powerful that he couldn't control them and constantly injured himself through at least his second year at Kimberly, before Clifton Morgan taught him how to control it properly.
- Red Baron: His penchant for fire spells earned him the nickname "Purgatory" among the Dwellers of the Deep he spends most of his time policing.
- Stock Shōnen Hero: Surprisingly he has more claim to this trope than Oliver himself does. He's a spiky-haired young man who is strong, charismatic, compassionate, and enraged by injustice, but also fairly bull-headed and a social misfit. He also has a fire affinity.
- Student Council President: He does hold this role, but Reign deemphasizes the student government compared to most school-based Japanese media: most of his authority comes from the soft power he wields as founder and leader of the Campus Watch. A significant part of the plot of the Year 3 books revolves around the fact that he's about to Graduate from the Story and has yet to nominate a successor to either role.
- We Used to Be Friends: He, Carlos, and Ophelia co-founded the Watch, with him repeatedly casting pain spells on himself for Pavlovian conditioning so he could be near her without being affected by her Perfume. It's strongly implied her feelings for him weren't entirely platonic, either. They had a severe falling-out later after she had a Then Let Me Be Evil moment and took a Face–Heel Turn.
- World's Best Warrior: By the time he hits sixth-year, he's such a good fighter that Esmeralda even briefly considers him a potential suspect in the murder of Professor Forghieri. He's quite displeased by the prospect.
- Zombie Advocate: Downplayed. While he isn't an activist, he does come down on the pro-demihuman civil rights side simply on the general principle of wanting people to treat each other better.
Carlos Whitrow
Voiced by: Kazutomi Yamamoto (Japanese), Dallas Reid (English)note
“Everyone here, including me, possesses sex-based magical traits. We all have our fair share of problems. But it’s okay. Here, you can find help and support.”
First Appearance: LN Volume 1 | Manga Chapter 6 | Anime 1x3 "Soldier"
Ophelia's childhood friend, and a fifth-year prefect who co-founded the Watch with her and Alvin. Prompted by Ophelia's Face–Heel Turn, they later also founded a club for students with gender- or sex-linked magic.
- Beautiful Singing Voice: Justified. Carlos is a fantastic singer whose voice performances are considered a highlight of attending meetings of the Sex Magic club. Their singing voice is literally magical and acts as a counterspell to Sex Magic, by means of their having been castrated and enchanted as a child to serve as Ophelia's minder.
- Bishie Sparkle: Carlos is attractive, androgynous, and depicted surrounded by sparkles in the novel artwork.
- Custom Uniform: Their preferred garb is quite unique in the series while still being recognizably a Kimberly school uniform: they wear a lace choker and a rose boutonniere with a Kimberly student necktie tucked into the pocket below it.
- Gay Guy Dies First: When Ophelia is consumed by the spell, Carlos penetrates her Reality Warp and uses their Magic Music to calm her and save the Sword Roses and Miligan, becoming consumed by the spell themself due to the effort needed. Both disintegrate into pure white sand, becoming the first students to die on-page in the series (though not the first death of a named character overall).
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: The final chapter of volume 3 confirms they fell in Love at First Sight with Ophelia, and their dearest wish was to see her surrounded by friends and smiling—even if that meant her getting together with Carlos's best friend Godfrey rather than Carlos themself.
- Incompatible Orientation: They're immune to Ophelia's Perfume due to being agender.
- Multi-Gendered Outfit: Carlos Whitrow is AMAB non-binary, and is depicted as wearing a mix of gender-codings: they wear a men's school uniform modified with a lace choker, high-heeled ankle boots, and a rose boutonniere.
- She's a Man in Japan: Carlos was explicitly assigned male at birth, but uses the feminine first-person pronoun atashi in the original Japanese, which tends to denote queerness when used by males. The various translations and adaptations have been inconsistent on Carlos's gender identity and pronoun preference: we're using "they/them" on this wiki based on the official Light Novel translation from Yen Press. The English subtitles of the anime treat them as an asexual male ("he/him"), while in the dub Oliver briefly referred to Carlos as a "him" in episode 8 (which in context could have just been Oliver's mistake), then had Godfrey (Carlos's best friend) use "they/them" in episode 15.
- Supernaturally-Validated Trans Person: Carlos was assigned male at birth but was magically neutered ("Castrato") as a child in order to serve as Ophelia's minder. They identify as agender and founded a club for students with gender- or sex-related magics, and invite Pete to join once his reversi trait manifests in volume 2.
Vera Miligan
Voiced by: Ai Kakuma (Japanese), Kate Oxley (English)
“You can’t call yourself a magical biologist if you haven’t personally reached into a rib cage and touched a beating heart.”
First Appearance: LN Volume 1 | Manga Chapter 8 | Anime 1x3 "Soldier"
A witch who supports demi-human rights. After she fought with Oliver's group, she became a sort of mentor to them, especially Katie. Introduced as a fourth-year student majoring in demihuman biology.
- Abusive Parents: Exaggerated. Hers grafted basilisk eyes onto her: one in her left eye socket, one on the palm of her left hand. She was the only one of six children to survive the process and convinced herself it was an act of love.
- Adorable Abomination: Her familiar, Milihand, since it's literally her own hand that Nanao cut off that Miligan then reanimated. Completely creepy, but its benign and helpful behavior actually endears it to the Sword Roses.
- All Amazons Want Hercules: Played for laughs in volume 3: she briefly propositions Oliver out of sheer interest in the incongruity of how this seemingly completely average mage can somehow keep up with the naturally talented Nanao and Chela. He's just annoyed and she laughs it off as a joke.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: By her own admission she's strictly middle-of-the pack in overall fighting strength for her age, but she makes up for it by approaching combat like a scientist: she observes her opponents and then exploits them (much like Oliver, with whom she shares the use of Lanoff as her primary sword style). She demonstrates this especially in volume 3 by taking note of the attack patterns of one of Ophelia's chimeras and deducing it has poor eyesight, then using that perception against it to get close enough to kill it.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She's introduced in volume 1 as an ally for Katie in her conflict around Marco the troll. She turns out to be the Mad Scientist whose experimentation caused him to go berserk to begin with, and has been experimenting on demihumans for years. This gets subverted once she loses to Oliver and Nanao, becoming one of their most trusted and reliable allies to date.
- Character Development: She stops her unethical demihuman experiments after they were proven wrong, and instead she focuses on being an actual senpai to the Sword Roses. While there is some tension given her actions in Volume 1 and their wariness whenever she's around, Vera's interest in the Sword Roses becomes genuine affection, as the Sword Roses as a whole essentially serve as a group-wide Morality Pet, allowing her to be who she prefers to be: a kindhearted Cool Big Sis, something her family never allowed her to be. By the time they reach the third layer (episode 14 of the anime), she's their friend in all but name.
- Cool Big Sis: After her Heel–Face Turn, she becomes a guide, a mentor, and a genuine ally to the Sword Roses; her acting like a reliable older sister figure isn't an act at all, that's who she really is, especially to Katie.
- Deadly Gaze: Her basilisk eyes have a paralytic effect.
- Defeat Means Friendship: Downplayed. After her defeat, she takes a liking to the Sword Roses and teaches them about navigating the labyrinth, even giving them her old hideout. However, everyone in the group (except Katie to some extent) are naturally still wary of her.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: After seeing Marco speaking to Katie after he refused to talk to her, she kidnaps Katie with the intention of examining her brain to find whatever quality awakened his ability to speak. She completely fails to grasp the fact that Marco never spoke to her because she was conducting painful experiments on him and Katie simply earned his trust by having his life spared and showing him kindness.
- Evil Mentor: Her track record as a Mad Scientist through volume 1 means that, while the Sword Roses do appreciate her help and mentorship, they don't trust her any further than they can throw her.
- Hand Blast: Her eye-concealing bangs are an obvious clue that one of her eyes is special. They're also a distraction from the fact that she has a second basilisk eye in the palm of her left hand.
- Heel–Face Turn: She's the Starter Villain in the first volume, but becomes an ally from volume 2 on.
- Helping Hands: Her familiar Milihand is literally her own disembodied left hand: rather than have it reattached after it was cut off, she chose to have a replacement grown in place and animated the original hand as a pseudo-lifeform. It can scuttle around and climb with its fingers, and has a fully-functional basilisk eye.
- Hidden Depths: She's actually elated to know that her experiments were proven wrong by Katie, showing that Miligan isn't the type to hold a grudge when her assumptions about the world aren't true.
- Hide Your Otherness: Her eye-concealing hairstyle is an obvious (to Oliver) clue that something is special about her left eye. Played with: it's actually intended to distract from the otherness of her left hand.
- Hiding Behind Your Bangs: Her hair is styled such that her bangs expose her right eye but conceal her left. Figuratively, it's foreshadowing that she's more than she appears: after approaching the Sword Roses as an ally to Katie, she turns out to be the Starter Villain, ultimately responsible for most of their troubles in volume 1. In a more literal sense, they conceal her basilisk eye—though Oliver realizes that they're too obviously hiding something special about her left eye, and in fact serve as a distraction from her real trump card, a second basilisk eye in the palm of her left hand.
- The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: Invoked in volume 1. She learns through the grapevine of Richard Andrews challenging Oliver and Nanao to a canned hunt of kobolds, and smuggles a much more dangerous garuda into the arena. To drive the point home, she covertly casts the message "See how it feels to be prey" onto the ceiling of the arena.
- Kansas City Shuffle: Misdirection is one of her trademarks.
- Oliver notes that her Hiding Behind Your Bangs hairstyle is obviously hiding that something is special about her left eye, namely that it's the transplanted eye of a basilisk. Too obviously, as he figures out moments too late: it's misdirection from the fact that she has a second basilisk eye in the palm of her left hand.
- Team Miligan's strategy in their combat league match against Team Deschamps boils down to Miligan repeatedly swapping her familiar Milihand between herself and Lynette and sometimes even hiding it underground, so that the opposing team can never be sure where it is and thereby guard against the paralytic gaze from its basilisk eye. Which, much like her Hiding Behind Your Bangs hairstyle, is all a distraction from the fact she's had her other basilisk eye removed from her left eye socket and reimplanted in her back! Thus, she nails Deschamps with a Badass Back trick much like she pulled against Nanao, match over.
- Literal Disarming:
- Nanao cuts off her left hand at the climax of her and Oliver's duel with her, removing her second basilisk eye. She later makes lemonade out of lemons and animates the severed hand to serve as a familiar.
- Invoked in volume 10: she does one better by having the regrown hand severed and sewing Milihand on before the match so she can smuggle it into the arena, then deliberately takes a sword blow to the wrist to detach it so she can use Milihand as a remote weapon (an end run around the rule against use of familiars in the combat leagues).
- Love Martyr: She thinks that her parents' grafting of a basilisk eye into her hand was an act of love, rather than a callous use of their own child as an experimental subject. For reference, her five siblings did not survive the same procedure.
- Magical Eye: Her left eye was replaced with the eye of a basilisk, giving her a paralytic gaze attack.
- Red Baron: "Snake-Eye Miligan", to people aware of her basilisk eye.
- Science Wizard: In addition to being a mage, she's a researcher specializing in demihuman biology and eventually takes Katie on as her research assistant (de facto apprentice).
- Second Place Is for Losers: Played for laughs. She really wanted to be Kimberly's first pro-rights Student Council President, and is first shocked into silence, then drinks herself unconscious after losing to Tim Linton. Tim appoints her as one of his councilors and even has the council take on most of the debts she ran up during the campaign, but she really wanted the top job. She's gotten over it by the start of the next school year, though.
- Starter Villain: She's the primary antagonist of volume 1 of the novels, having created the troll that attacked Katie at the entrance ceremony in her experiments, as well as sneaking the garuda into the arena where Richard was to challenge Oliver and Nanao to a canned hunt.
- Student Council President: Well, not yet, but with Alvin Godfrey set to Graduate from the Story starting in volume 6, she throws her hat in the ring to succeed him as the pro-reform candidate in the upcoming election. And loses to Tim Linton of all people. She does get appointed to the student council in the end, though.
- Weak, but Skilled: By her own admission she's strictly middle-of-the-pack as a fighter, but compensates with Awesomeness by Analysis and trickery. We get a taste of this in volume 1 when she fights Oliver and Nanao, but she really shines in the combat leagues with a surprise upset against the more conventional Team Deschamps that involves her and Lynette playing a Shell Game with Milihand to use its Deadly Gaze against their opponents.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: She genuinely does want to improve the station of demihumans, but her chosen method, "intellectualization"—raising their intelligence levels so humans will be more willing to respect them—has led her to dissect and experiment on them for years.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: She's nominally part of the demihuman civil rights movement. Unfortunately her method of getting those rights involves Playing with Syringes to make demis more intelligent so wizards will respect them.
Kevin Walker
Voiced by: Kaito Takeda (Japanese)
“We're the Labyrinth Gourmet Club, and this is our new-member welcoming party! Wanna join?!”
First Appearance: LN Volume 2 | Manga Chapter 24 | Anime 1x9 "Explore"
An sixth-year who, in an oft-referenced Noodle Incident, once became lost in the labyrinth for over six months. He now runs a student club that feasts on its flora and fauna. A friend of Godfrey and Whitrow.
- Action Survivor: He became quite adept at navigating and surviving the labyrinth, and supplies Godfrey and Whitrow with a map to Ophelia's lair when she's consumed by the spell.
- Extreme Omnivore: He's the head of the Labyrinth Gourmet Club, which hunts and gathers throughout the labyrinth to figure out which species can be made edible and how.
- Noodle Incident: In addition to the oft-referenced but never-elaborated time he got lost in the labyrinth, Karlie Buckle relates how he once tried to cook a meal in the Great Big Library of Everything on the fourth layer and nearly got himself killed by the reapers guarding it.
- Red Baron: "The Survivor", referencing his unscheduled trip through the labyrinth.
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Per normal school policy, the faculty doesn't get involved in missing persons cases in the labyrinth until eight days have passed, at which point it's assumed they'll be trying to recover a body. Walker was down there for six months and declared Legally Dead and his funeral held, only for him to eventually turn up no worse for wear.
Tim Linton
Voiced by: Nina Tamaki (Japanese), Kiba Walker (English)
“Go back to polishing your tumblers, Barman. Your cocktails are too sweet for my taste.”
First Appearance: LN Volume 3 | Manga Chapter 33 | Anime 1x12 "Possibility"
A member of the Watch in the year below Godfrey, and an alchemist specializing in poisons.
- Bad Powers, Good People: Despite being a Master Poisoner, he's a genuinely good guy with an easygoing personality who strongly supports Godfrey's benevolent vision for the student body.
- Bisexual Love Triangle: He's gay and had a crush on Godfrey when he was younger, which caused tension between himself and Ophelia. Ophelia eventually left the Watch, but Godfrey has never seemed to return anybody's romantic interest in any noticeable way.
- Camp Gay: He's openly gay and has a high-pitched voice and pink highlights in his hair, and sometimes dresses in drag instead of his school uniform.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Darius Grenville once reportedly complained that as far as beneficial alchemy goes, Linton couldn't make a balm for bee stings, but he's the best poisonmaker at the Academy.
- Dark Horse Victory: He's ultimately elected the new Student Council President, over Miligan and Whalley, after he dropped everything to save the lives of underclassmen who fell into the arena during Godfrey's combat league match against Echevalria. Godfrey decided this execution of his own ideals—at significant personal risk—made Tim the most worthy successor he could ask for, and he nominated him at the last minute.
- Deadly Gas: One of his specialties is gas bombs. During the upperclassmens' preliminary round of the Tournament Arc, he clears the way through the second layer with airbursts of poison gas that kill most of a flock of wyverns (moved from much deeper in the labyrinth to pose the seniors a better challenge) and send the others fleeing for their lives.
- Early-Bird Cameo: He first appears in volume 3 in Ophelia Salvadori's Troubled Backstory Flashbacks, then is reintroduced in volume 6 during the election arc.
- Evolutionary Pressure Cooker: Tim reveals in volume 10 that the magic tradition of the Lintons is to scoop up magically talented children and repeatedly poison them and force-feed the victims to the survivors until only one is left, which they then raise as their heir. Tim directly compares this to the "bug urn" practice used in Chena, and the process understandably left him severely messed-up: when he came to Kimberly Magic Academy, he found it so similar to what he'd survived that he attempted a mass Murder-Suicide by setting off a Deadly Gas bomb in the cafeteria. Alvin Godfrey saved his life, and Tim has been devoted to his cause (and hopelessly in love with him) ever since."I was the one who lived. The poison bug who survived on the flesh of his siblings. That ain't a metaphor: I literally survived a bug urn."
- In-Series Nickname: "Toxic gasser". It's used as an insult rather than a Nom de Guerre a la Godfrey's "Purgatory".
- Master Poisoner: He's an alchemist who is hypercompetent at making poisons and devising ways to deliver them, but completely incompetent at everything else. He chose to make it his signature.
- Noodle Incident: He offers to enter the race to succeed Godfrey as Student Council President, but everybody else in the Watch shouts him down: the whole school remembers that time he gassed the Fellowship (i.e. the main dining hall and student hangout). Finally explained in volume 10, and it's a lot less funny than it sounded: it was an attempted Murder-Suicide—basically the magical equivalent of a school shooting—courtesy of him being in a really bad headspace before Godfrey took him in.
- Orphanage of Fear: He's the result of the Linton clan using the Chinese bug jar treatment
on adopted kids: the Linton elders' practice is to snap up magically talented orphans from all over, poison them, and then force-feed those who died to the survivors to create a single Master Poisoner as their heir. This did not leave him in a good headspace: the only reason he's still alive is because Godfrey interrupted his attempted Murder-Suicide in the Fellowship. - Poisonous Person: The combat league rules place limits on what weapons mages can bring into the ring with them, so shortly before the final match, he chugs down a string of potions to turn his own body into a poisonous weapon. Gino Beltrami did the same.
- Rescue Romance: Godfrey waded into Tim's Deadly Gas to save his life after Tim attempted to commit a Murder-Suicide and got him mentally stable again. Tim fell for him during this process, though all indications are that it's one-sided.
- The Rival: To Gino "Barman" Beltrami, the premier alchemist of the old council, who considers Tim's poisons a failure of alchemy.
- Significant Birth Date: According to a tweet by the author, his birthday is 2/14, i.e. Valentine's Day, which is deeply funny given his unrequited crush on Godfrey.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: There's relatively little profanity in this series, and 90% of what there is comes from Tim, mostly in the form of Precision F Strikes directed at people he's arguing with. For example, in the confrontation between the Watch and the old council in volume 6, he eschews the prior higher-brow insults in favor of telling Leoncio Echevalria to "Go fuck a dog, asshole."
- Wholesome Crossdresser: He often dresses in drag for little more reason than it amuses him to.
Lesedi Ingwe
Voiced by: Yuna Yoshino (Japanese), Cassie Ewulu (English)
First Appearance: LN Volume 3 | Manga Chapter 33 | Anime 1x12 "Possibility"
A classmate of Godfrey, she has become his new Number Two on the Campus Watch by the time of her reintroduction in volume 6.
- Armed Legs: Inverted: she has adamant guards on her combat boots, which are widely thought to be either to increase the damage of her kicks or for Imposed Handicap Training. They're neither: they're actually a Power Limiter that keeps her from injuring herself with barefoot kicks, since she lacks Required Secondary Powers. When she goes barefoot against Khiirgi in volume 10, the flesh on her legs is in tatters by the end.
- The Big Guy: Out of the Watch's original Five-Man Band lineup, she's their best physical fighter, even more than Godfrey: she's a tall, muscular young woman who can kickbox in midair.
- Butch Lesbian: She's a tough, muscular young woman, and in volume 10 she tells Khiirgi that she hates her and is going to kick her ass not just for seducing her girlfriends, but for making them cry.
- Custom Uniform: Instead of the normal girls' undershirt, she wears a crop-top under her outer jacket and ties the necktie to her belt.
- Early-Bird Cameo: She first appears in volume 3 in Ophelia Salvadori's Troubled Backstory Flashbacks, then is reintroduced in volume 6 during the election arc.
- Inconsistent Spelling: Miyuki Ruria apparently didn't have any idea how her given name was supposed to be spelled in English and wrote it "Recedy" in the color insert in Side of Fire.
- Kick Chick: She's a very powerful kickboxer and seems to prefer martial arts to swordplay, which leads to Tullio Rossi seeking her out as a mentor to further improve his own mix-and-match fighting style.
- Love Freak: Inverted. Her previous experiences with romantic relationships have pretty much all been negative—she watched Ophelia's feelings for Godfrey go to hell in a handbasket, then had her own love interests get repeatedly seduced by Khirrgi Albschuch—and it's left her with a poor opinion of romance in general. She gets distinctly grumpy in volume 8 after realizing that Oliver is the apex of a Love Triangle between Nanao and Katie (and Pete, but she didn't realize), telling him to "leave his love life on the surface".
- Number Two: She steps up to become the new second-in-command of the Watch after Carlos's death, and takes over while Godfrey is indisposed in volume 8.
- Only Sane Man: In the Watch's early days, she was frequently stuck cleaning up after Tim and Godfrey caused various kinds of mayhem.
- Red Baron: Her preference for kickboxing over sword arts earned her the nickname "Hard Knocker".
- The Rival: She has an intense and deeply personal one with Khiirgi Albschuch, who brags about repeatedly seducing Lesedi's love interests.
- Token Minority: By name and physical design, she's clearly intended to be African (or rather whatever the setting's Fantasy Counterpart Culture for Africans is: her In-Universe ethnicity hasn't been defined any more specifically than "from another continent"), making her the only character besides Nanao to not be of Union descent. Her given name, incidentally, means "light" in Tswana, while her surname is a common given name in Zambia and the Congo.
- We Used to Be Friends: She basically demanded Ophelia join the Watch early on, in large part because she was good at healing magic—an extremely relevant skill given Tim Linton sucked at everything but poisonmaking, and Godfrey had a tendency to accidentally set himself on fire. However, she was later one of the first to realize that Ophelia's behavior was starting to negatively affect the Watch, and tried and failed to head off the ultimate split.
- You Are in Command Now: In volume 8 she assumes temporary command of the Campus Watch following Godfrey's injury in volume 7, and organizes a posse of Watch members and sympathetic underclassmen to pursue Cyrus Rivermoore.
The Old Council
The campus conservative faction, who controlled the student council before the start of the series. Generally opposes civil rights for demihumans and has a Social Darwinist outlook on mages. Leoncio Echevalria
First Appearance: LN Volume 6
An upperclassman who once ran for Student Council President. He's an enemy of Alvin Godfrey's reform faction after losing to them in the last election.
- As Long as It Sounds Foreign: His surname was likely supposed to be "Echevarría", a name of Basque origin. His given name appears in both Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries.
- Custom Uniform: Befitting his upper-class background, he ties the necktie of his school uniform with a Bonney Cross knot instead of the usual Windsor, and accessorizes it with a jeweled tie clip.
- Depraved Homosexual: He's a Social Darwinist villain prone to threatening to sexually dominate male characters who defy him, including both Alvin Godfrey and Tullio Rossi.
- Enemy Mine: His rivalry with Godfrey doesn't stop them from promptly joining forces during the preliminary round of the senior-year combat leagues when Esmeralda installs Vanessa Aldiss as the boss battle, and again in volume 9 when Vanessa throws chunks of Uranischegar's Alien Geometries inside the barrier protecting the underclassmen.
- Everyone Has Standards: Despite his Social Darwinist attitude, in volume 9 he's just as appalled as Godfrey when Vanessa Aldiss throws chunks of Uranischegar's Alien Geometries inside the barrier protecting the underclassmen just to make things more interesting.
- Gag Penis: There are several references to him having comically large equipment: in his first appearance, he calls attention to his off-puttingly large hard-on from a confrontation with Godfrey, and in volume 10, Khiirgi gives an admiring monologue about his "massive trouser snake", much to his annoyance.
- Inconsistent Spelling: In the Japanese version's color inserts it's Romanized as "Etchevalria".
- Light Is Not Good: He has a specialty in light magic, but is the major antagonist to Big Good Alvin Godfrey and the reformist factions of the student body as the leader of the pre-Godfrey student council.
- The Man Behind the Man: Students are only allowed to stand for Student Council President once, and Echevalria lost to Godfrey in the last round. Everybody knows that the current conservative candidate, Percival Whalley, would be essentially Leoncio's Puppet King on the student council should he win.
- Manly Gay: A Wicked Cultured variant rather than the standard big and tough portrayal. Unlike the campier Tim Linton and tsundere-like Pete, he's sexually aggressive in a very toxic way, driven to be on top and often threatening to "tame" other male characters who defy him, and publicly and rather luridly calling attention to the fact a confrontation with Godfrey gave him a hard-on.
- Nom de Guerre: Godfrey names his in volume 10: "Golden Lord", for being a Light Is Not Good aristocrat.
- Scars Are Forever: Lampshaded by Miligan, who derisively notes that he still hasn't healed the burn scar on his face that Godfrey put there several years ago.
- The Social Darwinist: He argues that Godfrey's policies of inter-student cooperation and policing the misbehavior of upperclassmen have weakened the student body and promises to repeal them. Miligan counters that the previous council's Might Makes Right policies were stifling the student body and they've been able to blossom since they were lifted.
- Villainous Crush: He simultaneously hates Godfrey, and wants to dominate him sexually. He also publicly and rather luridly calls attention to the fact that his confrontation with Alvin in volume 6 gave him a hard-on.
Percival Whalley
First Appearance: LN Volume 6
A fourth-year running as the conservative faction's candidate for Student Council President, backed by Leoncio Echevalria and opposing Vera Miligan.
- Butt-Monkey: He's completely uncharismatic as a candidate and mostly exists to be Echevalria's Puppet King and current boytoy, and to be repeatedly humiliated by other characters. That being said, he does display some Hidden Depths in his leadership skills: he organizes the middle years during the preliminary round of the combat leagues and then leads a team to a 3:1 win record in the final.
- Hidden Depths: While even he thinks he's more or less peaked in magical abilities, he displays a not-insignificant talent for organizing and leading traditionalist mages, who are normally individualistic to a fault and find it hard to work together for long.
- Meaningless Villain Victory: So meaningless we only even heard about it months after the fact. He placed higher than Nanao on points during the solo duels round of the broomsports tournament, but nobody cares because Nanao still downed him in their match.
- "Not So Different" Remark: He tries to get Oliver's political support as a fellow Jack of All Trades mage, suggesting that all-rounders like themselves can do a better job leading other mages than specialists, and even offers him a spot on the student council should he win. Oliver is intrigued by the suggestion, but still ends up voting for Tim Linton in the end.
- Puppet King: He's firmly under Echevalria's thumb and everyone knows his candidacy for Student Council President is really a Proxy War between Echevalria and Alvin Godfrey.
- Straight Gay: He's Echevalria's current boyfriend, but other than that is pretty much a normal conservative upperclassman.
Khiirgi Albschuch
“Immorality and the profane are my calling! I am an Alp! Khiirgi ‘Avarice’ Albschuch!”
First Appearance: LN Volume 6
A sixth-year student allied to Echevalria, Albschuch is a full-blooded elf with a rivalry with Lesedi Ingwe.
- Boomerang Bigot: Implied: elves are apparently an exception to the racial component of the Fantastic Caste System, so she's accepted into the conservative faction that discriminates against demihumans of other species.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Openly sees herself as a villain and Lesedi as the heroine destined to destroy her.
- Combat Sadomasochist: She's a hardcore hedonist and takes pleasure from both inflicting and receiving physical and emotional pain, which is put on particular display when she fights Lesedi in volume 10.
- Green Thumb: Her signature magics are perversions of traditional elven plant-based magic, ranging from conjuring undead plants in volume 8, to embedding seeds in her own flesh to grow wooden armor and Combat Tentacles during the final round of the combat leagues.
- Incompatible Orientation: She overtly flirts with Echevalria several times, but he's gay and only interested in Godfrey.
- Law of Inverse Fertility: Elves are Long-Lived and produce few children. Khiirgi mentions in an Internal Monologue in volume 10 that she's sowed her wild oats pretty wide as part of her rebellion against elvish culture (they rarely interbreed with humans), but without results, and suspects she may be fully sterile.
- My Species Doth Protest Too Much: To hear Khiirgi tell it, the majority of elves in the setting are pretty standard wood elves, which were apparently favored by the dead god of this world over humans for their comparative respect for how things are (whereas humans have a tendency to iconoclasm). Khiirgi was kicked out of elven society for her utter disrespect for propriety, such as raising undead plants—which in her opinion is the kind of thing elves should look into, lest they continue to stagnate.“I am an outcast elf. Drawn to the immoral, beguiled by my desires, I was driven from my home and washed up at Kimberly. My parents lay together, two virtuous elves—yet the product was the devil you see before you. If there is any meaning to that, I’d call it a sign. A reminder that our species is trapped in a dead end, in need of guidance to the next evolution.”
- Red Baron: "Avarice", according to Lesedi. Though she has another, more insulting one that she also answers to: "Alp".
- Seduction as One-Upmanship: She needles Lesedi about repeatedly cucking her during a confrontation between the Godfrey and Echevalria factions in volume 6.
- Token Nonhuman: She's the only full-blooded demihuman character introduced so far other than Marco, and is aligned to the conservative faction.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Yeah, she was a total psycho as a child, too: in volume 10 she recalls cutting open the family's pet fairy to see what was inside, and cutting a friend's eyes out to make a ring.
- The Unfettered: Deconstructed. Her habitual disrespect for rules of courtesy and propriety causes her to be widely ostracized even at Kimberly: at best she's merely tolerated, even by the conservatives, and for their own convenience. Or as Lesedi Ingwe more concisely puts it, "Nobody fucking likes you."
Gino Beltrami
“Alcohol’s roots are medicinal. And all medicine turns poisonous at the wrong dosage. When will you learn that, Tim? That is the nature of what you so proudly scatter.”
First Appearance: LN Volume 6
A classmate of Echevalria and the premier alchemist of the old council, and rival to Tim Linton.
- The Bartender: He's a master brewer and distiller with a specialty in fine craft liquor, and mixes cocktails for the upperclassmen.
- Cultured Badass: Able to go toe-to-toe with the uncouth Master Poisoner Tim Linton despite his more gentlemanly image.
- Fog of Doom: In combat he tends to surround himself with a cloud of soporific chemicals, which he combines with Lanoff Style sword arts to produce a Fantastic Fighting Style that Tim refers to as his "booze blade".
- Mentor Occupational Hazard: His alchemy mentor was consumed by the spell after tasting one of his creations, apparently thinking it so perfect that it spoiled her on booze forever. Gino arrived at their laboratory the next morning to discover that she had herself become a room-filling pool of liquor.
- Poisonous Person: The combat league rules place limits on what weapons mages can bring into the ring with them, so shortly before the match, he chugs down a string of potions to turn his body into a poisonous weapon. He takes Tim down—after using his body to shield him and several underclassmen from an errant fireball from Godfrey and Echevalria—by kissing him on the mouth with Drugged Lipstick.
Other Upperclassmen
Ophelia Salvadori
Voiced by: Ai Kayano (Japanese), Robin Clayton (English)
First Appearance: LN Volume 1 | Manga Chapter 5 | Anime Episode 1x2 "Sword Arts"
A fourth-year student specializing in Sex Magic who breeds chimeras within her own womb.
- Alas, Poor Villain: Nanao cannot bring herself to kill Ophelia when faced with her soul form of a crying child. Ophelia subsequently disintegrates together with Carlos, and is memorialized at the funeral for students who died the previous year at the start of volume 4.
- Berserk Button: Whatever you do, don't call her "harlot" or anything similar unless, like Cyrus, you're looking for a fight. She's a lot more sensitive about her Dark and Troubled Past than her reputation as The Vamp would suggest.
- Broken Bird: She was basically brainwashed into being a sexual predator by her mother, once even being Forced to Watch while her mother raped a man, and was repeatedly used as a de facto Breeding Slave for their eugenics experiments. Her Sex Magic and family reputation then made her the target for a ton of bullying when she matriculated to Kimberly. All this came to a head, and she started seducing other members of the Watch, nearly breaking it apart before her crush Godfrey, along with Lesedi Ingwe and Tim Linton, drove her out. Now she haunts the Labyrinth.
- Custom Uniform of Sexy: As befitting an outcast from the Academy, she favors a floor-length purple ball gown with several cut-outs and a slit to her hip on the right side, and has refashioned her school uniform jacket into a sort of bolero style.
- Empty Chair Memorial: The depiction of the Campus Watch in the anime's opening credits shows Carlos standing behind an empty chair until the last two episodes, when a young Ophelia is added to it to show the Watch before she fell into villainy.
- Evil Former Friend: She was a childhood friend of Carlos Whitrow and then a member of the Campus Watch, but was driven to villainy by Slut-Shaming from other students.
- First-Name Basis: She prefers to be addressed by her given name because of her abusive family.
- Incompatible Orientation: A variant: her Perfume doesn't work on people who are not biologically male, though it does work on men who aren't normally attracted to women. Conveniently, Pete is a Sex Shifter and becomes immune when he switches to his female form while passed-out, and Carlos was magically neutered as a child and identifies as non-binary.
- Meaningful Name: Ophelia is Greek for "aid" or "help", signifying her abilities with healing spells. More importantly, it was the name of Hamlet's tragic Love Interest, who was driven mad by his apparent rejection of her and eventually killed herself, mirroring much of Salvadori's story in volume 3.
- Mother of a Thousand Young: She breeds chimeras to fight for her within her own womb. A small army of them begin to rampage through the labyrinth after she's consumed by the spell in volume 3.
- Pet the Dog: For all her troubles, she's still ultimately human and gets lonely living a solitary life in the labyrinth. In volume 2 (anime episode 8), Oliver runs into her when she's in a good mood and they're able to have a civil conversation: it comes out that among other things she has a sweet tooth and sometimes still comes up to the cafeteria for the pumpkin pie. She's acquainted with Shannon Sherwood for much the same reason, probably helped by their Commonality Connection of both having been forced to bear a child for familial obligations. She also subtly tries to warn Oliver away from the labyrinth for the next while, foreshadowing her planned Grand Aria that causes her to be consumed by the spell.
- Power Incontinence: Not only can she not turn off her Perfume, she's "consumed by the spell" in volume 3 and her chimeras start rampaging through the labyrinth, and she kidnaps several male students to breed more chimeras with, including Pete and Joseph Albright.
- Rape as Backstory: Ophelia's history of being sexually abused as a child is very important to volume 3's story: she was turned into a de facto Breeding Slave for her mother's eugenics experiments by putting her in proximity to desired sperm donors and letting her succubus Perfume do the rest. She was thus forced to bear multiple pregnancies to term before she even turned 15. Slut-Shaming at Kimberly led to her hitting the Despair Event Horizon and embracing the image of the succubus.
- The Rival: To Cyrus Rivermoore. They've fought several brutal battles in the Labyrinth, one of which Oliver, Pete, Chela, and Nanao get caught in the middle of in novel volume 1/manga volume 2.
- Science Wizard: Bordering on Brains and Bondage given her Sex Magic theme. She's established to be quite brilliant at magical biology and anatomy: Oliver tries to defuse the Sword Roses' first confrontation with her by complimenting a paper she wrote. Cyrus Rivermoore also refers to her in hindsight as a "mad genius". The conflict of volume 3 is caused by the culmination of her research Going Horribly Wrong and causing her to be consumed by the spell.
- Serial Rapist: Most if not all of the men she's had sex with were not in any state to give proper consent due to her Perfume.
- Sex Magic: She Smells Sexy and breeds chimeras within her own womb using male "essence".
- Sexy Slit Dress: She's worn a purple ball gown slit to her hip since her Face–Heel Turn, refashioning her school uniform jacket into a bolero that she wears over it with the bandolier for her wand and athame.
- Smells Sexy: Her Perfume makes her virtually irresistible to any male she comes across—and much to her chagrin, she's completely incapable of ever turning it off.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: It's strongly implied she was in love with Alvin Godfrey, who went to great effort to immunize himself to her Perfume; Vera Miligan even mocks her for it in volume 3. Her Face–Heel Turn led to her ensnaring several members of the Watch, which drove them apart: they fought a duel and she fled into the labyrinth, and rarely returns to the surface nowadays.
- Succubus: The Salvadoris are a clan of mages descended from succubi, an extinct race of demihumans whose females could use their wombs to mix and match the essences of other races they mated with. Historically they tried to use this for a Super Breeding Program to create a "perfect being", but their attempts failed.
- The Vamp: She's a sexual predator who seduces male students in order to use their mana in her chimera experiments. It's apparently a family tradition among the Salvadoris.
- Teen Pregnancy: By rape, repeatedly. She was basically turned into a Breeding Slave for her family's eugenics experiments the minute she hit puberty and only escaped for a time by attending Kimberly. Then in her second year she conceived a human child with a male student during her estrangement from the Watch (the fate of this child has not been addressed).
- Tragic Villain: She gets several POV sections in volume 3 laying it all out in flashbacks. She grew up as the latest in a succession of abusive childhoods in her family, raised to be a sexual predator with related Sex Magic powers she couldn't control. Despite the efforts of Alvin and Carlos to keep her sane and help her channel her talents in a useful and moral direction, bullying at school over her abilities eventually led her to a Then Let Me Be Evil moment. She took a Face–Heel Turn and became one of the "Dwellers of the Deep"—upperclassmen who prey on their unwary juniors in the Labyrinth.
- Uneven Hybrid: Her bloodline includes succubus ancestry (a now-extinct species of demihuman), which is where the majority of her special powers come from.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: She was already badly broken when she arrived at Kimberly, but Carlos and the Watch tried to give her a chance to avoid becoming her mother that she initially took. In the art, she's drawn a lot more cutely in the flashbacks to that time compared to the predatory seductress she's depicted as in the present.
Cyrus Rivermoore
Voiced by: Atsushi Imaruoka (Japanese), Sean Letourneau (English)
“Ha! Have you already forgotten how I ripped out half your bowels in our last skirmish?”
First Appearance: LN Volume 1 | Manga Chapter 6 | Anime Episode 1x2 "Sword Arts"
A fifth-year student and Ophelia Salvadori's rival, who specializes in creating golems of animated bone.
- Anti-Villain: In volume 8 his attacks on other students turn out to all be for the purpose of constructing a new body for Fau, the ghost of an ancient necromancer his family has been keeping preserved for centuries, so that she can pass on her otherwise lost knowledge in a way that he can recreate it. Once the posse hunting him figures this out, they make a deal with him to let him finish in exchange for him returning Godfrey's sternum afterwards (The Grim Reaper will inevitably come to claim her because resurrection was forbidden by the dead god).
- Arc Villain: He backstabs Godfrey at the end of volume 7 and steals his sternum and a chunk of his etheric body with it, driving the plot of volume 8 where the Watch sends a posse after him to get the bone back so Godfrey can heal, and the old council tries to delay them.
- Custom Uniform: He eschews the traditional student uniform entirely, in favor of a costume resembling a priest's vestments, befitting his chosen occupation of necromancy. This is commented on by Teresa Carste in volume 10, who initially calls it old-fashioned-looking but then admits she thinks it looks kinda cool.
- Dem Bones: He's a necromancer who specializes in constructing fighting beasts out of bones recovered from the labyrinth's creatures.
- Enemy Mine: Teams up with Godfrey and Echevalria to defeat Vanessa Aldiss in the combat league qualifying round, but it was a ruse to get close enough to Godfrey to steal his sternum for his latest project.
- Friendly Rival: Downplayed. He has an odd kind of respect for Salvadori even though they've tried to kill each other numerous times, even critiquing each other's creations mid-battle. In volume 3 Miligan even asks whether he intends to be her Final Visitor—a mage who goes to care for one consumed by the spell in their final hours. He doesn't, but he does mention an intent to express condolences to her family. In volume 8 he even describes her in hindsight as "a mad genius". It still doesn't make their fights in the labyrinth any less dangerous to be around: when they cross wands, it's for real.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's introduced preying on underclassmen lost in the labyrinth and then Slut-Shaming Ophelia Salvadori, but over the longer run of the series he turns out to be a pretty decent guy. He actually respects Ophelia a lot (it's suggested he just slut-shames her because he enjoys fighting her and it's a good way to piss her off), and only targets other students to get materials for his own Series Goal. Being a necromancer in the series requires a lot of kindness since The Undead can be extremely dangerous if neglected or mistreated, and he's shown being a pretty good dad to the astral lifeform Fau gives him to raise.
- Magic Music: Cyrus is a concert pianist, which is a job requirement for necromancers: large-scale use of Undead Laborers requires periodic "consolation" or else they go out of control.
- Necromancer: Cyrus is Kimberly's preeminent specialist in the control and reshaping of the dead, which has been somewhat of a lost art form since ancient times (due to past necromantic civilizations being destroyed in Zombie Apocalypses).
- Quirky Household: One of the greatest Dramatic Ironies of the series is that a man from a family of necromancers had one of the series' most normal family lives. He idolized his 200-year-old grandfather, who loved him right back, and had the ghost of an ancient necromancer named Fau as a constant companion and friend.
- Recurrer: He makes a couple of appearances in volumes 1 and 3 but has no significant role in the story, until he comes back with a vengeance in volume 7 and starts harvesting bones from other students' living bodies.
- Seeks Another's Resurrection: He's ultimately revealed to have been working towards perfecting Ritual Magic to create an Artificial Human body he can resurrect his ghostly companion Fau into so that she can pass on her lost necromantic knowledge.
- Slut-Shaming: He does this to Ophelia Salvadori, since her main special skills are sex-based, but it's strongly implied that he does it specifically to provoke her to fight him since it's her Berserk Button.
- Younger Than They Look: He looks like he could be in his forties but he's 22 in volume 8. According to him, working with the dead tends to age you prematurely (though his grandfather still lived to the age of 200). Cyrus's voice actor mentioned that his appearance threw him off.
Shannon Sherwood
Voiced by: Sayumi Watabe (Japanese), Monet Tatianna Lerner (English)
“You have so…many friends. That’s wonderful…”
First Appearance: LN Volume 1 | Manga Chapter 11 | Anime Episode 1x5 "Glare"
Oliver's older cousin and surrogate big sister, and younger sister of Gwyn Sherwood.
- Abled in the Adaptation: She has a Speech Impediment in the novels that causes her to stammer frequently. This is dropped in the anime adaptation.
- Affectionate Nickname: "Noll", for Oliver. He calls her "Sis" (the translator's version of "Nee-san").
- Big Brother Instinct: Oliver was half-raised by Shannon and Gwyn after his mother died, and they consider him their baby brother. In particular, they're both happy for him that he's developed such a good circle of friends in the Sword Roses and approve of his romance with Nanao. They also stay up for four days straight caring for him after he nearly self-destructs during the attack on Enrico Forghieri, and she sleeps in his hospital bed with him for the fifth. In the Backstory it also led them to help Oliver and his father Edgar orchestrate a palace coup against the Sherwood clan leaders after what they put her and Oliver through.
- Brother–Sister Team: She and Gwyn are "Irish twins" born less than a year apart and therefore are in the same year at Kimberly. They're rarely out of each other's company and form an extremely effective duo.
- Child by Rape: The Sherwood elders wanted a pure-blooded heir, so they drugged Shannon and Oliver and made him impregnate her, hence why he feels so guilty in his volume 2 recollection of helping her with pregnancy-induced mana shifts. And it was All for Nothing: the pregnancy ended in a stillbirth.
- Cuddle Bug: Shannon is tactile and affectionate by nature, invariably hugging and (chastely) kissing Oliver as a greeting. The only time he's objected to this was when he was covered in gore after assassinating Darius Grenville, not wanting to get any of it on her.
- Love Confessor: To Katie in volume 8: while taking a break from dungeon-delving in Rivermoore's lair, Shannon asks what made Katie fall in love with Oliver, taking for granted that this was the case. After recovering from her embarrassment, Katie admits she fell for his gentle heart.
- Graduate from the Story: Defied: She and Gwyn graduate after volume 10, but because it would be difficult for them to continue helping Oliver with his Series Goal if they left the series, the siblings get research jobs at Kimberly.
- Healing Hands: She's highly adept with healing magic. She pretty much singlehandedly keeps Oliver from disintegrating on the spot when he performs a Merger of Souls with Chloe Halford's soul during the attack on Enrico Forghieri, and spends days keeping him alive afterward.
- Relative Error: During her introduction, Katie, already keyed-up by Chela and Nanao offering Oliver kisses on the cheek as a reward after the garuda incident, is rather put off by Shannon's affectionate touchy-feeliness towards Oliver, and is only slightly mollified when Oliver explains that Shannon's just his cousin and surrogate big sister.
- Psychometry: In volume 8 she is able to play back some of Cyrus Rivermoore's memories off of the bone fragments he embeds in his undead creations, which the posse attempting to recover Godfrey's sternum uses to gather intelligence.
- Shoot the Dog: She and Gwyn kill all the griffon fledglings the second-year students are raising (except for the one he helped Katie with, because she had it with her) to throw Professor Aldiss off-balance in preparation to attack her.
- Speech Impediment: She has a bit of a stammer, tending to pause frequently while talking. This is dropped from her anime appearances.
- Superpowerful Genetics: Shannon is a genetic throwback to the long-extinct progenitor demihumans, whose blood the Sherwood clan has been practicing forced cousin-marriage to keep alive in the family for centuries. This is the source of her proficiency with Healing Hands and Psychometry, as well as her ability to cast the spell that allows Oliver to merge his soul with his mother's.
- Teen Pregnancy: Implied. In volume 2, Oliver recalls treating a woman for pregnancy-induced mana disruptions (in the context of helping Pete with his sex shifts). The woman calls him "Noll". It's not absolutely clear that the woman was Shannon but she's one of the only characters introduced so far whom it could plausibly be. Ultimately confirmed: she was pregnant with Oliver's child (he was drugged into raping her by their great-grandfather to produce an heir with progenitor ancestry), which ended up stillborn. In retrospect it explains her more-than-affectionate behavior towards Oliver, even slightly more than Gwyn's older sibling behavior does.
Gwyn Sherwood
Voiced by: Shoya Ishige (Japanese), Alex Hom (English)
“Don’t let awkward selfishness cloud your mind at this stage. Just be yourself and be sincere with your friends. That’s the key to gaining allies—for both sides of you, Noll.”
First Appearance: LN Volume 1 | Manga Chapter 15 | Anime Episode 1x6 "Arise"
Oliver's older cousin and surrogate big brother, and the older brother of Shannon Sherwood.
- Affectionate Nickname: "Noll", for Oliver.
- Big Brother Instinct: Oliver was half-raised by Shannon and Gwyn after his mother died, and they consider him their baby brother. In particular, they're both happy for him that he's developed such a good circle of friends in the Sword Roses and approve of his romance with Nanao. They also stay up for four days straight caring for him after he nearly self-destructs during the attack on Enrico Forghieri. In the Backstory it also led them to help Oliver and his father Edgar orchestrate a palace coup against the Sherwood clan leaders after what they put Shannon and Oliver through.
- Brother–Sister Team: He and Shannon are "Irish twins" born less than a year apart and therefore are in the same year at Kimberly. They're rarely out of each other's company and form an extremely effective duo.
- Enlightened Self-Interest: He and the other coconspirators consider putting their support behind Vera Miligan's bid to succeed Godfrey as Student Council President, because the presence of the Watch (somewhat counterintuitively) makes it easier for their activities to go unnoticed.
- Graduate from the Story: Defied: He and Shannon graduate after volume 10, but because it would be difficult for them to continue helping Oliver with his Series Goal if they left the series, the siblings get research jobs at Kimberly.
- Literal Disarming: Demitrio Aristides cuts one of his arms off during the comrades' Assassination Attempt. After he breaks free of the Time Stands Still effect, he fuses his violin bow to the stump as a stopgap until he can have it regrown.
- Magic Music: Gwyn's specialty is stringed instruments. He's a violinist and contrabassist who sometimes performs with Carlos Whitrow and is able to use music to cast and enhance spells or to disrupt opposing spells, which earned him the Nom de Guerre "Spellstrings".
- Sex Magic: Implied: he's a member of Carlos Whitrow's club for students with sex-linked magical traits, but precisely what he has going on is not stated.
- Shoot the Dog: He and Shannon kill all the griffon fledglings the second-year students are raising (except for the one he helped Katie with, because she had it with her) to throw Professor Aldiss off-balance in preparation to attack her.
Lynette Cornwallis
Voiced by: Mari Hino (Japanese), Brianna Roberts (English)
“Could you quit ignoring me for, like, one second?”
First Appearance: Volume 3 | Anime Episode 1x13 "Noisy Forest"
Stacy Cornwallis's older half-sister, a fourth-year student at time of introduction.
- Barrier Warrior: Entrapped within Ophelia's Grand Aria, she erects a magical barrier to try to protect the weaker victims members of the rescue party.
- Drone Deployer: In volume 10, she employs Runic Magic to create something akin to a magical Attack Drone that bombards the other team with spells from high above, as an end-run around the tournament rule forbidding teams from bringing familiars or magical tools besides their wands and athames into the arena.
- Half-Sibling Angst: Her defining character trait is being grumpy with Stacy over her obsession with beating Chela and trying to get her to pay more attention to the siblings she actually grew up with.
- Mauve Shirt: She's pretty much just around in the background of volume 3, reluctantly escorting her younger sister through the labyrinth in hopes of rescuing Fay. She survives but doesn't contribute to the story overmuch. She comes back in volume 10 as a teammate of Vera Miligan in the combat leagues.
- Shipping Torpedo: Downplayed: she's willing to help Stacy get Fay back from Ophelia, but doesn't understand in the slightest why he's so important to her, pointing out that, as a Cornwallis, Stacy could theoretically have any boy she wanted. (It bears mentioning that at this point in the story, Stacy and Fay aren't actually together romantically yet.)
- Squishy Wizard: She's a good spellcaster but a poor swordswoman, having neglected sword arts practice in favor of putting more time into her academic research.
Diana Ashbury
“You’re an eyesore, kid. And I’m gonna knock you outta the sky.”
First Appearance: Volume 4
The star of the Blue Swallows, one of Kimberly's senior-level broomsports teams, who develops a professional rivalry with Nanao when the latter is promoted to the big leagues in volume 4.
- Abusive Parents: In a continuation of our running theme of mage parents using their children as tools, Diana's removed everything unnecessary for faster broom flight, including her fertility.
- Friendly Rivalry: Initially she dislikes Nanao, both for being an upstart rookie star and for her comments that she partners with her broom Amatsukaze rather than dominating it (Amatsukaze itself is rather opinionated on the matter). After their first match, with the amount of work Nanao forces her to go to to beat her, she changes her tune and even starts mentoring her, apparently hoping to have an interesting competitor.
- Inconsistent Spelling: The Japanese version spells the Romanized version of her surname "Ashberry".
- The Lost Lenore: Clifton Morgan's disappearance caused her to hit a wall in her personal development: she didn't realize until after he was gone how deeply in love she'd fallen with him.
- Passionate Sports Girl: Pretty much everything about her characterization has to do with broomsports in some way.
- Signature Move: The "Ashbury Turn". Get your opponent to chase you straight up to the altitude limits of your brooms, fall off your own broom and let gravity turn it around and catch you, and whack your opponent with the increased closing velocity. The other teams consider losing to it to be a rite of passage in the senior league, and Ashbury is impressed when she has to break it out in Nanao's debut match. (The match commentators hate it though, because nobody can actually see what happened from the ground.)
- Single-Target Sexuality: She drove away every catcher who tried to partner up with her for years until she met Clifton Morgan, whom she found good-naturedly charming and who was the first man able to keep up with her. After he took a leave of absence to work on an experiment and the promised date of his return came and went, she never took another.
- Super Breeding Program: She's revealed in volume 6 to be the product of several generations of selective breeding to create faster and more talented broom riders. Her life's goal is to break the world record in timed obstacle course racing—which killed the last record-setter by Phlebotinum Overdose. Morgan returning from the labyrinth to see her gives her the motivation to succeed.
- Together in Death: Right after her record-setting run, the tír fire in Morgan explodes out of him and sets him ablaze. She intentionally dives her broomstick into the fireball and they burn to ash in each other's arms.
- Worthy Opponent: Views Nanao as this after their first match, even taking to helping train her so she gets even better.
Clifton Morgan
First Appearance: Volume 5
A big, friendly upperclassman who has been secretly living in the labyrinth for years. Used to be Diana Ashbury's catcher.
- Gentle Giant: Big and burly, but he's a Nice Guy and a big laugher.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: As part of his own academic research, he set up a ritual to summon tír fire from another planet's god, telling Diana he'd either return from the labyrinth at a set date or she should presume him dead. As it turned out, neither happened: the fire infected him and he's been slowly burning alive ever since.
- Nice Guy: He's a big laugher and pitches in to help the Sword Roses when they're attacked by wyverns in the labyrinth in volume 5 then asks after Diana, whom he charmed into keeping him as her catcher when no one else could measure up. He also pitches in to assist Oliver, Nanao, and Chela when they're attacked by several upperclassmen in political violence related to the upcoming Student Council President election.
- Playing with Fire: The tír fire in him has the side effect of making him tremendously effective at casting fire magic. He even helped teach Alvin Godfrey how to control Flamma properly: he tended to burn his own arms casting it before.
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: He's believed to be dead. He's not, but he is dying. When first encountered in volume 5, he's been missing in the labyrinth and presumed dead for several years. He attempted to summon tír fire from another planet's god but couldn't control it, and as a result has been slowly burning to death ever since.
- Together in Death: Right after Diana's record-setting broom run, the tír fire in Morgan explodes out of him and sets him ablaze. She intentionally dives her broomstick into the fireball and they burn to ash in each other's arms.
Karlie Buckle
“Looks like you got your wits about ya. But all kidding aside—do not step out in front of us.”
First Appearance: LN Volume 5
A Kimberly seventh-year who secretly supports Oliver's cause. Married to Robert Dufourcq.
- Action Mom: Karlie and Robert have three children, though they're never shown in the series. Between the two of them, she's the front-line fighter.
- Battle Couple: She and Robert are a husband-and-wife team of Kimberly upperclassmen who fight other people together almost as often as they fight each other.
- Fiery Redhead: Karlie has a shock of bright red Boyish Short Hair and is a loudmouthed Blood Knight prone to henpecking her husband.
- Heroic Sacrifice: After Robert's Suicide Attack to immobilize Deus Ex Machina with a curse, she and two more comrades cast a Suicide Attack of their own: a four-bar incantation, "Magnus Fragor Ultimata Omnisvitae", that explosively cracks through the armor around Enrico Forghieri's cockpit—and also instantly causes all three of them to explode on the spot.
- Minidress of Power: She's a natural Blood Knight, and is depicted in the novel art wearing a school uniform skirt barely longer than her underwear (they're normally knee-length). This is combined with button-front knee boots to provide Zettai Ryouiki.
- Red Baron: She's nicknamed "Bloody Karlie" for her tendency to get spattered in Ludicrous Gibs during her fights.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: She's around for the last two chapters of volume 5 and is killed fighting Enrico Forghieri.
Robert Dufourcq
“I d-don’t know how. Just…he has something I d-don’t. Something you don’t; n-none of our other comrades do. Deep down inside his…his c-character.”
First Appearance: LN Volume 5
A sixth-year student who secretly supports Oliver's cause. Married to Karlie Buckle.
- Battle Couple: He and Karlie are a husband-and-wife team of Kimberly upperclassmen who fight other people almost as often as they fight each other.
- The Corruption: He's a specialist in curses, a category of spell likened to a magical contagion. He and five other comrades turn it into a Death-Activated Superpower during the assassination of Enrico Forghieri, intentionally getting themselves killed by his golem Deus Ex Machina to transmit a curse that causes its arms to go out of control.
- Family Man: He's a kindhearted man who hopes that Oliver can make a world where his weak youngest child can be happy.
- Henpecked Husband: Karlie may wear a miniskirt, but it's pretty clear which of them wears the metaphorical pants in their relationship. Their introduction starts with them recalling how he got his arm melted off the first time they were in the third layer. He starts to remind her how she nearly got her face burned off in the same incident, at which point she grabs him by the back of the head and squeezes his skull until it creaks.
- Heroic Sacrifice: He and five other comrades deliberately sacrifice themselves to inflict a curse that causes Deus Ex Machina's limbs to go out of control and try to kill its own pilot, immobilizing the Humongous Mecha.
- Speech Impediment: Robert stutters a lot while speaking. The only time he manages without it is when he declares his Undying Loyalty to Oliver's cause, hoping the world Oliver creates will be good for their weak youngest child, before sacrificing himself to bring down Deus Ex Machina.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: He's around for the last two chapters of volume 5 and is killed fighting Enrico Forghieri.
