Characters / The Beginning After The End Arthur Leywin

The Beginning After the End Main Character Index
Dicathians: Leywin Family (Arthur Leywin) | Royal Families | Xyrus Academy | Adventurers
Alacryans: Vritra Clan
Asuras

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Grey Willbeck / Arthur Leywin

King Grey, Note, Godspell, Ascender Grey, Godkiller, Regent of Dicathen

Debut: Volume 1 (Novel), Chapter 1 (Webcomic)

^{Click here to see him post-Volume 8}

"I never saw myself as some righteous hero out to save the world. My reason to fight has always been to protect the few I held dear. But now, after all that's happened...I have another reason. To right my wrong."

The protagonist of the novel. In his past life, he was a Warrior King from a world governed by Asskicking Leads to Leadership known for his unrivaled martial prowess, though he attained that power at a great personal cost. After mysteriously dying on his bed, he ends up being reincarnated into a fantasy world. From that point onward, he goes on to become a talented mage and adventurer who has the potential of resolving the Divine Conflict that has been going on in the setting.

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• 11th-Hour Superpower: In his climactic battle with Cadell and Nico at the close of the War Arc, Arthur manages to tap into the third phase of his beast will, allowing him to fold space like nobody's business and match them both in combat. While he feels invincible in this state, it does not last long as it slowly starts to break his body apart and would have eventually killed him were it not for Sylvie's Heroic Sacrifice.
• Abdicate the Throne: He resigned from his position as king in his past life due to feeling Lonely at the Top after all that he had been through. He did not get to enjoy his retirement for long, as he would peacefully pass in his sleep that same day before finding himself reborn in another world.
• The Ace: In his past life, King Grey was unparalleled in all forms of combat, which was essential to maintaining his position as king. This status carried over into his reincarnation, as Arthur is extremely talented in both physical and magical combat thanks to his retention of his past self’s maturity and expertise. He is able to control all four elements, the deviant forms of two of them, and the Element No. 5 of aether. His prowess earns him a spot among the Lances, the most powerful mages of Dicathen. He becomes even more inspirational after he returns to an occupied Dicathen a year after the war, not only wielding godlike powers but also single-handedly retaking the continent.
• Achilles' Heel: Before his ascension to white core, his main weakness was his meager mana pool when compared to most his opponents. This would force him to end engagements quickly and decisively. Following the loss of his mana core and his subsequent Re-Power by developing his aether core, it was briefly the loss of his ability to fly on his own outside of riding Regis or Sylvie. This allowed his enemies to be free to keep their distance from him while hitting him with spells. After acquiring King's Gambit, his newfound insight into aether allows him to fly once more.
• Adventure Duo: As the masked adventurer Note, he traveled alongside Jasmine as her protégé.
• Adoptive Peer Parent: To Sylvie. He was physically eight years old when she first hatched (although mentally he was in his forties). When Sylvie is able to assume human form after the seal placed on her gets broken, people mistake her for Arthur’s Our Phlebotinum Child with Tessia. Not helping matters is that when Sylvie performed her Heroic Sacrifice to save Arthur, she used her body to reconstitute his. In the process, Arthur’s hair and eyes turned the same color as Sylvie’s, which makes it all the more easier to mistake him for her biological father which he is not. Complicating matters further is that when Sylvie is resurrected, she undergoes a Plot-Relevant Age-Up which makes her Younger Than They Look just like him.
• Affectionate Nickname: His parents and Tessia affectionately refer to him as “Art”. Virion refers to him with the Insult of Endearment of ”Brat”.
• Always Someone Better:
  • Is this to Elijah. Not only is Arthur much more physically and magically talented compared to Elijah, but he has far more success in attracting the ladies. As it turns out, this resentment ties into Elijah’s true identity, who has been twisted into despising Arthur - or rather Arthur’s past self King Grey - for a perceived wrong he committed in their past lives.
  • The remaining Lances see him as this after his return from Alacrya and acquiring his asuran powers.
• Ancestral Name: Arthur is named for his great-grandfather.
• Anti-Magic: Arthur is able to manipulate aether, the Element No. 5 of the setting which itself is the opposing force to mana. After losing his mana core, he ends up making himself an aether core which renders him unaffected by any mana-based attacks. He even goes on to develop a new godrune, Realmheart, which allows him to cancel spells.
• And This Is for...: Upon slaying Cadell during the Victoriad, Arthur reminds the fallen Scythe of a certain individual he had killed years ago, one who set him on the path he is on now.
  Arthur: This is for Sylvia.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • Agrona, the deity responsible for invading Arthur’s homeland of Dicathen, causing the deaths of many of his friends and family, and reincarnating him in the first place along with his friends Nico and Cecilia whom he has brainwashed into serving him.
  • Kezess, the deity responsible for Agrona’s Start of Darkness, orchestrating the destruction of Elenoir, and also causing the deaths of many of Arthur’s friends and family.
• Archaeological Arms Race: From Volume 8 onward, Arthur and Agrona are engaged in race to investigate the Relictombs - the last bastion of the long-extinct djinn and their knowledge - in order to acquire the four keystones the djinn left behind. In doing so, they seek to uncover the workings of aether and the ability to master fate itself, which has the potential to end the Divine Conflict.
• Armor-Piercing Response: When King Glayder (under the coercion of his court conjurer Sebastian who covets Arthur’s bond Sylvie) refuses to back down after Arthur refuses to give him Sylvie, Arthur casually asks the king if he would be willing to sell his own children (who are present in the same scene) to him just to get his hands on Sylvie. The gall of Arthur’s response stuns everyone around him so much that it provokes one of the royal guards into attacking him for insulting the royal family.
• Arrested for Heroism: After Arthur ends the attack on Xyrus by executing Lucas, he and Sylvie are arrested by the Lances at the behest of the Council. In spite of the protests of the survivors, in particular the Glayder siblings whose parents are on the Council, Arthur and Sylvie are taken away. Not helping matters is that one of the Lances apprehending him is Bairon, Lucas’s older brother, who has nothing but hatred for him for killing his brother and the offense against his family. As it turns out, this was part of a gambit by Agrona to manipulate the Council into handing Arthur and Sylvie over to him.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership:
  • The world of his past life was governed by this trope. Grey fortunately had the unrivaled strength, prowess, skill, and tenacity to climb his way to the very top of the social ladder and become king.
    Arthur: In terms of swordsmanship and controlling ki, I was second to none, for in my previous world, personal strength was essential to being a ruler.
  • Even in his reincarnation, Arthur still finds himself in positions of leadership thanks to his own strength and powers. At the start of the War Arc, Arthur becomes one of the Lances, the elite Magic Knights of the Council who act as generals in the war. Arthur’s unparalleled magical capabilities, the connections he has with the Council and the asuras, and his own prior feats are what earn him the position.
  • This status holds true even when Arthur returns to Dicathen after having been presumed dead since the end of the war. Having Came Back Strong to a degree that matches if not exceeds his past powers, on top of being one of the few leaders for the Dicathian resistance still alive, Arthur takes up the mantle of leadership for the resistance and leads them back from the brink to retake their homeland.
• At Least I Admit It: There are quite a few moments when Arthur admits he was in the wrong. He admits he was hypocritical when he tried to keep his parents away from the war when he was on the frontlines as one of the Lances. He also regrets not being kind to Seth who has nothing to do with his sister's actions in the war. He also acknowledges that his execution of Lucas was rather extreme when he reconciles with Bairon.
• Atop a Mountain of Corpses: At the end of Volume 5, Arthur reunites with Tessia and the Twin Horns when they find him inside the dungeon they were about to enter while sitting on top of the corpses of the monsters they thought they would have to fight.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Burst Step, which leaves him crippled in the aftermath of using it.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: The cover of Volume 9 has him doing this with Caera.
• Badass Cape: As a Lance, Arthur wears the same crimson cape that the other Lances wear as a sign of his status as one of the strongest mages in Dicathen. Later on, he wears a hooded white cloak on top of the ebon-black djinn armor he acquires during his time in Alacrya.
• Badass Teacher:
  • On his first day of class in Xyrus Academy, Arthur becomes the professor of his Practical Mana Manipulation class after the previous professor got dismissed following an initial demonstration Gone Horribly Wrong (one which Arthur put a halt to before any other students could get hurt). Despite only being a first-year student, he is able to put older students in their place.
  • During his time in Alacrya, Arthur secures a position at the prestigious Central Academy and becomes the professor of a Melee Enhancement Tactics class. His students get a front row seat to his feats in the Victoriad wherein they watch their professor humiliate one Scythe, kill another Scythe, and escape the High Sovereign Agrona and the Legacy with impunity. His time with them pays off as when Seris launches her rebellion, Arthur’s students remain sympathetic to him and either convince their families to either abstain from supporting the Vritra or throw in their lot with the rebellion.
• Bargain with Heaven: In Volume 10, Arthur makes a deal with Kezess in securing Epheotus’s protection of his homeland of Dicathen from the Vritra in return for sharing with him what he has learned about aether. Considering Epheotus is inhabited by Jerkass Gods and Kezess is a genocidal tyrant, this deal is far less benign than what it would normally be.
• The Beastmaster: He is bonded to both Sylvie (a dragon) and Regis (a monstrous spectral wolf), and following the resurrection of the former is able to fight alongside both in battle (though by that point Sylvie's Shapeshifter Default Form had become her human form and thus he had come to see her more as his daughter than as his pet). He is able to ride either of the two if he so chooses.
• Because You Were Nice to Me:
  • His friendship with Elijah forms in this manner. After Arthur collapses following his slaying of the elderwood guardian, he wakes up to learn that Elijah had been tending to both him and Jasmine when he could have just as easily abandoned them like Lucas did. The two of them proceed to warm up to each other while they recover. Arthur views Elijah's actions as a true indication of his character and thus worthy of his friendship, while Elijah comes to view Arthur as his First Friend. After escaping the Dire Tombs, Arthur elects to bring Elijah to live with him and his family in Xyrus, and in turn the two of them end up attending Xyrus Academy together.
  • Arthur hated the Alacryans and Vritra for everything that happened to him and his homeland. When Caera first met Arthur as he was playing dead in the Relictombs, she took pity on him and spared him when her guards wanted to kill him. When they met again, Arthur saved her life from mana beasts and they teamed up. Later on during his time in Alacrya, Arthur got to pose as a professor at Central Academy and wound up influencing the scions of several Alacryan noble families. These interactions played a major role in causing Arthur's hatred toward the Alacryans to subside as he grew to see them as much victims of the Vritra as his own people. In fact, when Arthur properly introduces himself to Seris's rebellion, he explicitly cites his students as the main reason for changing his perceptions on the Alacryans.
    • This ends up going both ways. When Seris launches her rebellion, Arthur's students were able to convince their families to either withdraw their support of the Vritra or join up with the rebellion out of respect for him and what he had taught them. In addition, during his reconquest of Dicathen, Arthur showing mercy to the surrendered Alacryans ends up causing some to turn against the Vritra and thus side with him.
• Berserk Button: Arthur is very protective of his loved ones, in particular his own family, Sylvie, and Tessia. Just threatening them, let alone harming them, is a surefire way to earn his wrath. Just look at the fates of Lucas, Cadell, or Taci to see what Arthur has in store for those who do make that mistake.
• Beyond the Impossible: Quadra-elemental mage with two deviancies. Then his mana core is shattered and he decides to build one out of freaking aether.
• Big Brother Instinct: He is very overprotective of his little sister Eleanor. Even before Eleanor was born, Arthur was willing to sacrifice himself to protect his pregnant mother when they were attacked by bandits. He contemplates getting his sister a bond to protect her from threats, although she ends up getting one on her own courtesy of Windsom.
• Big Brother Is Watching: The Scrying artifact allows him to witness people and events all over the world. His usage of it ends up being rather literal as he uses it to keep tabs on his little sister Eleanor.
• Big Brother Mentor: His little sister Eleanor looks up to him a lot, and so Arthur has taken on the responsibility of mentoring her so that she can be strong enough to defend herself. This dynamic is reinforced from the War Arc onward as their parents are away with the Twin Horns, and especially once Arthur returns from Alacrya and subsequently attempts to awaken Eleanor's latent djinn magic.
• Big Damn Heroes: Arthur is prone to doing this.
  • In Volume 4, Arthur and Sylvie’s arrival is what puts an end to the attack on Xyrus Academy. He manages to cower Lucas, who had been causing most of the carnage, into submission with his Killing Intent before subjecting Lucas to a Cruel and Unusual Death by unleashing the full display of his powers.
  • Volume 5 has Tessia and the Dicathian forces about to attack a dungeon infested with Alacryan mana beasts. However, when they arrive at the entrance they find only the corpses of mana beasts. When Tessia opens the door, she finds Arthur sitting Atop a Mountain of Corpses, having dealt with the mana beasts in the dungeon for them.
  • At the end of Volume 9, Arthur, straight off his triumph in the Victoriad, finally returns home to Dicathen right as Kezess has sent Taci to exterminate the Dicathian resistance and puts an end to his rampage by bringing him into the Relictombs and slaying him there.
  • In Volume 11, Arthur, Sylvie, and a squadron of dragons sent to accompany them arrive to deal with Perhata's squadron of Wraiths, in the process rescuing the Dicathian refugee caravan led by Lilia that they had taken captive as a Human Shield.
• Big Damn Reunion: Followed by this as well.
  • In Volume 2, after having been separated from his family for three years, Arthur finally reunites with them in Xyrus in a rather tearful fashion. He even gets to meet his little sister Eleanor for the first time.
  • The end of Volume 5 has Arthur return to Dicathen after two years when his training in Epheotus is abruptly halted due to the war proceeding much faster than expected. He reunites with Tessia and the Twin Horns first, then Virion and Aldir, and finally his own family, who to his surprise are more accepting of him now even though he had parted from them in a cold manner given their distressed reaction to him telling them about his reincarnation.
  • The end of Volume 9 has Arthur finally reunite with his friends and family in Dicathen after having been separated from them for a year while he was marooned in the Relictombs and Alacrya. This time around the reunion is much more bittersweet, as not only has Arthur been presumed dead since the end of the war, but the reunion occurs right after Taci’s rampage in the djinn sanctuary. Making matters worse, some of Arthur’s allies were among the casualties and he never got the chance to talk to them again.
  • The end of Volume 10 has Arthur finally being able to resurrect Sylvie following her Heroic Sacrifice at the end of the war, albeit with the aid of Aldir who sacrifices himself by giving up his own mana reserves in order to restore her.
• Big Good: From Volume 10 onward, Arthur takes up the role from both Virion and Seris in the war against the asuras. He leads the Dicathian resistance into rising up and retaking their homeland from the Alacryans in a matter of days. Seris also takes the opportunity to launch her rebellion in the same timeframe with the hope of allying with Arthur, which he does in the following volume. Even some asuras join him due to his potential to end both the Divine Conflict and the tyranny of both Agrona and Kezess.
• Big Man on Campus: Arthur has a rather lofty reputation during his time in Xyrus Academy. In spite of being a first-year, he earns a spot on the brand-new Disciplinary Committee despite having no prior connections. Not only does he humiliate a professor during the first day of class, but he ends up replacing said professor at Director Goodsky’s behest the same day. This is followed by him managing to hold his own in an upper-level combat class where he ends up saving the Student Council President from an attack Gone Horribly Wrong. On top of all that, the fact he attracts the attention of both Princesses Eralith (the aforementioned Student Council President) and Glayder becomes a topic of interest among the student body.
• Black Knight: The djinn armor clads Arthur in an imposing panoply of ebon-black plate armor. Not only that, he acquires it during his time in Alacrya when he has been hiding under the guise of Grey, and his entry in the Victoriad catches everyone by surprise as most Alacryans do not know who he is. Unlike most examples of this trope, Dark Is Not Evil is in effect and Arthur is still one of the good guys.
• Blasphemous Boast: Given who his true enemies are, it is no surprise that Arthur tends to make some rather sacrilegious lines to their face.
  • During his fight with Taci in the Relictombs, the asura questions what Arthur has become when confronted with his newfound power. Arthur responds by saying that the appropriate title for what he has become would be "Godkiller" as he executes the asura.
  • At the end of the Siege of Vildorial, Arthur gets the remaining Alacryan forces to retreat by saying Agrona has exhausted his patience and that he is giving them a ten second-Mercy Lead before he decides to kill them all. Given that he had just fended off an entire squad of Wraiths and was holding aloft the severed horn from one of them, on top of having destroyed an entire military facility in Vechor using the tempus warp the Wraiths used, the Alacryans wisely decide to retreat.
• Brought Down to Normal: In the aftermath of the war, Arthur learns his mana core was damaged beyond recovery during the climactic battle.
  • Brought Down to Badass: That being said, Arthur still maintains his combat expertise. In addition, at that point he had become part-asura thanks to Sylvie’s Heroic Sacrifice which has enhanced his physiology beyond that of most mortals and had just awakened the acclorite Wren gave him. He was still capable of fighting that he even contemplated leaving the Alacryans he was travelling with to die in the convergence zone as he felt confident enough that he could survive on his own (although his own disdain for the Alacryans at the time might have also played a factor in his thought process).
• Brother–Sister Team: After he returns to Dicathen, Arthur brings his sister Eleanor along with him when he enters the Relictombs. As the Leywins are descended from the djinn, Arthur hopes to unlock some of that latent magical potential within her. Eleanor joins Arthur and his party when they enter the Relictombs to join up with Seris and her rebellion, as not only does she have her own distinct form of djinn magic and Alacryan regalia but she has been chosen by Silverlight to wield it after the death of its former wielder Aldir.
• Bully Hunter: Arthur is not very fond of those oppress the weak. In his time in Xyrus Academy, Arthur becomes a member of the Disciplinary Committee which means hunting bullies becomes part of his job as the committee was created to resolve disputes and put down instances of Fantastic Racism on-campus. Later on during his time in Central Academy, Arthur fends off a group of bullies who were picking on Seth.
• Bullying a Dragon: This happens to him quite a lot.
  • After Arthur has made a name for himself as the masked adventurer Note, a group of adventurers are in an inn talking about his reputation and feats when Arthur himself walks into the establishment to pick up some rations. One of the adventurers, Turman, is jealous of Arthur's reputation and decides to pick on him as Jasmine is not around. Arthur dodges all of his attacks, cuts off all but the thumb on his sword hand, and then cowers him into submission with his Killing Intent.
  • In an original scene in the Webcomic, Arthur, Sylvie, Elijah, and Vincent are on their way to the announcement in the plaza when they stumble across a group of racist students beating up a dwarf. After Elijah gets beaten up when he tries to intervene, Arthur steps in. In spite of Vincent trying to resolve the situation peacefully as he knows how powerful Arthur is at this age, the students mock him as well, which causes him to allow Arthur to do what he pleases with them. Naturally, Arthur proceeds to beat up all of them. To add insult to injury, Prince Curtis and Princess Kathyln show up as well to reprimand them for their actions, followed by Arthur contacting Director Goodsky to have them expelled from Xyrus Academy.
  • After the orientation at Xyrus Academy, Arthur and Elijah come across a racist human student defeating a dwarf in a duel. Before the human student can Kick Them While They Are Down, Arthur tries to stop the fight, followed by Tessia, Clive, and Lilia showing up. After the human student is let off with a warning, Tessia calls out Arthur for trying to break up the fight on his own to which Arthur replies that if he hadn’t, the dwarf would have been severely injured. Clive attempts to reprimand Arthur for the manner he talked back to Tessia, to which she pleads with Clive to stop. What follows is Arthur tossing Clive straight into the air as he and Elijah return to their dorm.
  • In another original scene to the Webcomic, Arthur is confronted by Lucas and his cronies. One of said cronies, Marcois, ends up attacking Arthur in a fit of blind rage. Even though he is more than capable of beating him at full power, Arthur notes that Marcois is abnormally strong and he experiences difficulty in subduing him without breaking his Power Limiter. It takes Sylvie turning into her dragon form to take him down. Once Marcois is incapacitated, Arthur and his superior Claire uncover that he has a set of bloody Power Tattoos engraved along his spine which are the reason for his abnormal condition and are connected to the Radical faction on campus.
  • At the climax of the attack on Xyrus Academy, Lucas gloats to Arthur about how much fun he will have desecrating the incapacitated body of Arthur's Love Interest Tessia. What follows is Arthur's Killing Intent overpowering Lucas (who at this point has been empowered by a stronger version of one of the elixirs the Radicals have been using) before he in a state of Tranquil Fury subjects him to a very graphic Cruel and Unusual Death.
  • A non-fatal example occurs once Arthur returns from his training in Epheotus and reunites with Tessia and the Twin Horns. Darvus, one of Tessia's teammates, is jealous of Arthur and despite being repeatedly warned by the rest of their team not to do so challenges Arthur to a duel out of sheer arrogance and pride. He is promptly subjected to a Curb-Stomp Battle as Arthur not only dodges all of his blows but promptly incapacitates him through mana flow rupturing.
  • During the Victoriad, Nico interrupts the competition to challenge Arthur so that he can exact his revenge on him for killing his fiancée Cecilia in their past lives. After a brief exchange, Arthur (who at this point has Came Back Strong since their last confrontation during the war, in which Nico struggled to beat him until fellow Scythe Cadell intervened) nonchalantly knocks him out in a Single-Stroke Battle that sends Nico flying across the arena. To add insult to injury, it turns out that said blow destroyed Nico's mana core, which is karmic considering Arthur's own mana core had been damaged beyond recovery in the aftermath of their last confrontation.
  • In Volume 10, during the Siege of Vildorial, Arthur uses the tempus warp the Wraiths had brought with them to prevent the Destruction godrune from overtaking him and thus killing everyone around him, which takes him to an Alacryan military facility in Vechor. He is immediately surrounded by a force of Alacryan soldiers led by Janus Graeme, a professor at Central Academy who had tried to frame Arthur during his time in Alacrya. Graeme tells his troops that they have nothing to fear as Arthur appears to barely be clinging to life, only to be proven horribly wrong as Arthur proceeds to let the power of Destruction loose, obliterating the camp and everyone within it before he returns back to Vildorial.
• Call to Agriculture: Discussed. In a moment with his mother and sister, he tells them that after the war is over he would retire and take up potato farming.
• Calling Parents by Their Name: In his narration, he sometimes refers to his parents by their given names, Reynolds and Alice. After revealing the truth about his reincarnation to them, he briefly slips up and calls his father Reynolds, which only makes their parting even worse.
• Came Back Strong: Following the climactic battle at the end of Volume 7, Arthur finds out that his mana core has been damaged beyond repair. In spite of this, Arthur gains new powers that match if not outright exceed his previous powerset. He learns that Sylvie's Heroic Sacrifice made his body part-asura, develops an aether core to replace his mana core, acquires godrunes such as Destruction and Aroa's Requiem, awakens the acclorite which manifests as a Shapeshifter Weapon Guardian Entity named Regis, and acquires an ancient suit of Powered Armor, in the process becoming one of the strongest mortal mages in the setting. He uses his newfound powers to exact revenge on his Alacryan enemies and reconquer his homeland.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: From Volume 8 onward, Arthur becomes an aether-powered demigod bent on bringing both sides of the Divine Conflict to justice for the atrocities they have committed. However, even though either Kezess or Agrona could easily strike him down in spite of his newfound power, his mastery over aether deters either of them from doing so as they covet his insight. On top of that, Agrona needs Arthur alive to strengthen the Legacy, who is Arthur's opposite in that she has mastery over mana. In pitting the Legacy against Arthur, not only does Agrona want her to get stronger from these confrontations, but he hopes that the clash between mana and aether would reveal the true nature of power in the world.
  Seris: Kezess wants to drain the knowledge from your mind, while Agrona wants to dissect you and see how you work.
• Cast from Hit Points: Burst Step, Static Void and basically any power that draws from his dragon will.
• Celibate Hero: In his past life as King Grey, Arthur did not have time to form relationships. The closest he had to a relationship was his brief interest in Cecilia which he shared with his boyhood friend Nico, but he was willing to step aside and let Nico have his chance with her rather than compete with him for her affections. Of course, this made her Suicide by Cop in their duel much more traumatizing for him. This carried over into his reincarnation, and given that he maintained his mental age and maturity it made pursuing relationships much more uncomfortable on his end as much of the girls who were pining after him were not his mental age. As such, he ends up spurning almost every Love Interest that comes his way.
• Character Development: In his past life, he was a lonely and vengeful king who eventually isolated himself from all of the people that he cared about if not having gotten them killed. This is one of the major reasons for his desire to keep everyone he loves safe in his reincarnation. He breaks from his emotional shell by confessing his feelings for Tessia and after Sylvie's Heroic Sacrifice becomes calmer so he can think clearly. After spending time living among the Alacryans, Arthur comes to the realization that they are as much victims of the Divine Conflict as the Dicathians are. He resolves to liberate both continents and their inhabitants from the tyranny of the asuras.
• Child Prodigy: He was able to awaken his mana core at the age of three when normally most children would awaken around the age of ten. On top of that, at the age of eight he has become a quadra-elemental mage able to bend not just the four elements but the deviant forms of two of them and the Element No. 5.
• Child Soldiers: The Precociously Talented Type. While Arthur has been training to fight since he was a boy and even spent a portion of his adolescence as an adventurer, at the age of 15 he becomes one of the Lances. As the youngest among the Lances, Arthur becomes a general in the face of the impending Alacryan invasion. Of course, his military experience from his past life coupled with his unparalleled mastery of the elements makes him suitable for his newfound role. By the time he reconquers Dicathen after the end of the war, Arthur is still only 16 years old.
• Childhood Friend Romance:
  • With Tessia. After rescuing her from slave traders, he spends three years living with her family in Elenoir until he is able to reunite with his family. Their shared childhood together leaves a growing infatuation on Tessia’s part, and when they reunite years later in Xyrus Academy she attempts to trigger a Relationship Upgrade between the two of them. Arthur, knowing that he is mentally much older than Tessia, asks her to hold off their relationship until they are adults to which she reluctantly agrees. Later on during the War Arc, their relationship advances as they promise each other to get married after the end of the war.
  • Lilia is a Subversion. He meets her shortly after reuniting with his parents and she also develops an attraction to him, especially since he helps her become a Mage Born of Muggles. When she tries to confess to him at Eleanor’s birthday party, Arthur, who was already becoming attracted to Tessia, preemptively shuts Lilia down by saying that he would have to approve of whichever boy she shows him.
  • In his past life, Grey's first and only love was his childhood friend Cecilia. However, he was willing to step aside and let Nico have his chance with her. His lingering feelings for her only served to make her Suicide by Cop during their duel in the King’s Tourney all the more traumatizing for him.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Averted. While still nominally heroic, Arthur is only in it for his family and loved ones. He even attempts to take Agrona up on his offer to sit out the war after seeing the toll it has taken on his family. Later Played Straight after his stay in Alacrya for a year and then returning and retaking Dicathen, his goal shifts from only protecting his family and loved ones to saving the peoples of both continents and ending the Divine Conflict.
• Cincinnatus: Despite having been a king in his past life, all Arthur wants in his current life is to live with his loved ones in peace and safety. Even after becoming the de facto leader of the Dicathians following his return to the continent, he reiterates to them that he is only acting as their leader to protect them from the threats they currently face and inspire them to stand up for themselves. He even tells his mother and sister - who are already Secret-Keepers to his reincarnation - that after the war is over that he might as well take up the Call to Agriculture instead of remaining in power.
• Clueless Chick-Magnet: Subverted. He is very much aware of his popularity with the ladies, but he just does not care as he cannot seem to find any of them attractive (the mental age gap not helping).
• Combat by Champion: In the world of his past self King Grey, kings had to duel representatives from other countries both to resolve disputes and to maintain their position. Luckily for Grey, he was strong enough to beat every contender that challenged him.
• Comically Missing the Point: After Tessia kisses him, he isn't shocked by that but the belief he is now a criminal for kissing an underage girl. This is despite her being biologically a year older than him and the fact that she was the one to initiate it.
• Consummate Liar: In his guise as Grey, Arthur has little trouble passing himself off as a country person raised in isolation to justify his ignorance of Alacryan customs. He even pretends to be Caera's manservant, though unfortunately for him he meets a Living Lie Detector. Later on, when the time comes for him to acquire the fourth keystone, he keeps almost all of his allies Locked Out of the Loop regarding the true nature of his plan, which includes lying to a good majority of them to make them think they are defending his location when in fact he will not be there.
• Cool Crown: Given his status as a reincarnated king, Arthur is associated with crowns. As King Grey, he wore a rather elaborate crown. In several promotional materials and images, Arthur is seen wearing a crown of his own despite never actually wearing one in the story. When Arthur acquires the third djinn keystone from Mordain, the godrune he creates from it, King's Gambit, manifests as a golden floating crown above his head.
• Cool Mask: As the adventurer Note, he wore a voice-altering mask to hide his identity.
• Contrived Coincidence: There are quite a few times when Arthur arrives in the nick of time to save his friends from imminent disaster or tragedy without him intending to do so in the first place.
  • Subverted with his return to Dicathen after spending years training in Epheotus. At the time, it seems to be quite the coincidence that Arthur ended up into the same dungeon that Tessia was stationed in and slaughtered the mana beasts infesting it. However, Aldir infers that Wren intentionally sent Arthur there to reunite with Tessia given how Wren was a Shipper on Deck for their relationship.
  • After his apparent disappearance at the end of the war, Arthur is finally able to return to Dicathen after having spent the past year in Alacrya. He arrives right as Taci, who had been sent by Kezess to purge the Dicathian resistance, is about to kill his mother and sister. Both Arthur and Taci are surprised to see each other, though the surprise quickly wears off as Arthur proceeds to slay Taci for the atrocity he had been carrying out against his friends and family.
  • When Mordain recalls Chul back to the Hearth in light of the increasing activity from the Wraiths near its location, the latter gets into a confrontation with the Legacy and her own escort of Wraiths. Despite Mordain intervening to save his life, Chul is all but fatally wounded. Cue Arthur suddenly arriving in the Hearth looking for the third djinn keystone that he knows is in Mordain's possession. Then when Arthur sees Chul's condition, he conveniently has Tears of the Mother pearls that he received from Veruhn, one of which ends up being used to save Chul's life.
• Cover-Blowing Superpower: During his time in Xyrus Academy, Arthur is forced to conceal his fire and water attributes with a Power Limiter. This is in order to prevent Lucas from recognizing him as Note and in turn prevent House Wykes from targeting his family given the former's power and influence.
• Create Your Own Hero: It is safe to say that Arthur only ends up being the way he is because of the actions of the resident God and Satan analogues in the setting, Kezess and Agrona (neither of whom are very nice people, to put it lightly).
  • Agrona was the one responsible for reincarnating Grey into Arthur as he sought the power of the Legacy, Grey's deceased childhood friend Cecilia, and needed Grey and his other childhood friend Nico as anchor points to summon her. Thanks to the intervention of Arthur's temporally-displaced bond Sylvie (Agrona's own daughter), Grey reincarnated outside of Agrona's control and avoided being Reforged into a Minion. Coupled with Agrona invading Arthur's homeland of Dicathen leading to the deaths of many of his friends and family and his Love Interest Tessia being turned into the vessel for the Legacy, and the man who would have been one of Agrona's greatest pawns instead became his greatest mortal nemesis.
  • Kezess orchestrated the genocide of the ancient djinn, which led to Agrona's Start of Darkness when he exiled him for uncovering the truth. Among the few Genocide Survivors were the ancestors of Arthur's family, the Leywins. Arthur only finds out about all of this courtesy of Kezess's own daughter Sylvia (the aforementioned Sylvie’s mother). Coupled with Kezess obliterating Elenoir in a futile attempt to kill the Legacy and attempting to purge Arthur's friends and family, and Kezess has no one to blame but himself for inadvertently creating a man who has devoted his entire being to making him and the rest of the asuras pay for their crimes.
• Cry into Chest: After being left alone with Tessia following his debriefing after his return from training in Epheotus, he embraces her and allows her to cry into him.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Due to his power, Arthur ends up delivering several one-sided beatdowns to his enemies.
  • His final confrontation with Lucas during the attack on Xyrus Academy. After paralyzing Lucas into submission with his Killing Intent, Arthur proceeds to unleash the full display of his powers now that Lucas has crossed the line. He burns off his left arm, then freezes and shatters his right arm, followed by him using gravity magic to crush both of his legs and ending it off with a Finishing Stomp to crush his pelvic region.
  • Shortly after reuniting with Tessia, Arthur is challenged by Darvus, one of her teammates. In the ensuing duel, Darvus fails to land a single blow on Arthur before Arthur incapacitates him with mana flow rupturing.
  • His rematch with Nico during the Victoriad. He knocks out Nico in a Single-Stroke Battle that sends him flying across the arena. To add insult to injury, the blow destroyed Nico’s mana core as well.
  • The retaking of Dicathen sees Arthur delivering a string of lopsided defeats onto the Alacryan forces, sometimes entirely on his own with only Regis helping out.
• Curtains Match the Window: After Sylvie sacrifices her body to preserve his own, Arthur's hair and eye colors turn the same white-gold as hers.
• Custom Uniform: As a member of the Disciplinary Committee, Arthur wears a unique black uniform with a golden trim. This makes him stand out next to regular students who wear blue and white uniforms. Later on after becoming a Lance, he gets their signature white, red, and gold ceremonial uniform.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique:
  • Summoning his beast will allows him to use Sylvia’s dragon powers for a short while, but it causes a violent backlash that leaves him unconscious for hours in the best case and nearly disintegrates his body in the worst case.
  • At its full power, the Destruction godrune can destroy a whole continent. This is not helped by the fact that overusage of it puts Arthur on a Power High that compels him to unleash its full power. As such, Arthur often has to regulate his usage of it to prevent Collateral Damage, though Regis helps him out.
• David Versus Goliath: His fight against the elderwood guardian during the ill-fated expedition into the Dire Tombs. Arthur is only an adolescent just about to enter puberty and is still shorter than Jasmine (who herself is rather short to begin with), while the elderwood guardian is a towering mass of vines. Arthur still manages to bring it down.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Post-Volume 9, Arthur wears a dark suit of armor, conjures supernatural purple flames, and is accompanied by a terrifying spectral wolf. Fortunately, he would rather spare your life rather than resort to violence first (though if you still insist on fighting, he is more than willing to oblige to show you just how big of a mistake you just made). That is, unless you are of the Indrath or Vritra Clans (except Sylvie, and even she has disowned both sides of her Warring Natures), in which case he will show you no mercy.
• Death by Origin Story: Being a Reincarnate in Another World Isekai, the story begins with him mysteriously dying on his bed despite being in his forties and still in peak physical shape. What really happened was that Agrona stole his soul for use in his plan to reincarnate the Legacy, only for a temporally-displaced Sylvie to intervene and snatch his soul to be reincarnated into Arthur rather than Agrona’s vessel of choice.
• Death Glare: A staple of his, often combined with his Killing Intent.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: After Arthur Came Back Strong as an aether-wielding demigod, he is able to defeat enemies whom were previously considered invincible. In the Victoriad, he is able to slay Cadell, the strongest among the Scythes who had been all but unstoppable in his previous appearances. He follows that feat up by slaying Taci, who while a boy by asuran standards was able to defeat the remaining Lances all on his own. And that is before he starts slaying entire squads of Wraiths, Agrona's Semi-Divine Super-Soldiers who are meant to kill asuras and are The Dreaded among the Alacryans as semi-mythical bogeymen.
• Derivative Differentiation: Originally, Arthur started out as a carbon copy of Rudeus Greyrat, with the only major differences between them at first being their past lives (Arthur was a Warrior King while Rudeus was a Hikikomori) and more importantly their attitude towards sexuality (Arthur is a Celibate Hero who spurns most girls due to the mental age gap in sharp contrast to the perverted Manchild that is Rudeus prior to his Character Development). However, Arthur diverges considerably from Rudeus as the story progresses in several respects.
  • Where Rudeus ends up becoming The Archmage who expands on his original powerset, Arthur is a Magic Knight who ends up losing his original powerset only to Re-Power himself with an even stronger powerset and Come Back Strong.
  • While Rudeus does suffer his fair share of tragic moments such as his father Paul's death and learning of the Bad Future from his future self, Arthur tends to be put through far more suffering than his inspiration given how he ends up fighting a war against the Jerkass Gods who have lorded over the setting, and despite being one of the strongest mortal mages alive gets pitted against enemies who are just as strong as him.
  • In addition, while both men end up encountering people from their past lives, in Rudeus's case they end up being side characters who become his associates, while in Arthur's case it is far more personal as they were his best friends who summoned by the Big Bad and subjected to Mind Rape, in the process turning them against their former friend as the Big Bad's new Co-Dragons.
  • Rudeus ultimately ends up being a Supporting Protagonist to Orsted in his struggle against Hitogami, while Arthur ends up having to become the Big Good to protect his loved ones against Kezess and Agrona and put an end to the Divine Conflict they have caused.
• Despair Event Horizon: Crosses it momentarily as he lies broken and powerless in the Relictombs, in a foreign continent, with Sylvie seemingly dead, his homeland conquered, the fate of his loved ones uncertain, the truth of the Divine Conflict laid bare before him, and his mana core shattered beyond all repair.
• Determinator: Can and will go through inhuman amounts of suffering to get what he wants.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?:
  • At the end of the Siege of Vildorial, Arthur gets the Alacryans to retreat by holding aloft one of the Wraiths' severed horns and declaring that Agrona has exhausted his patience.
  • During his negotiations with Kezess, Arthur twice calls him out on his genocide of the djinn even though Kezess, being the Top God, is far more powerful than he is. The only reason Kezess does not strike him down for his insolence is because Arthur is the first being in millennia since the genocide to have come close to understanding how to control aether, though Kezess sternly rebukes him by warning him that any further mention of the djinn will be the end of him.
  • A Downplayed example occurs following Oludari's capture. Arthur is angry at his asuran allies for not upholding their end of their bargain in that the operation to capture the rogue Sovereign caused the deaths of several Dicathian refugees who were caught up in the crossfire. This causes him to backhand Sarvash, the dragon who had been leading the asuras accompanying him. The asuras present call him out for his apparent lack of respect before Arthur counters their accusations by calling them out for their own callous lack of regard over the Collateral Damage they had caused.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight:
  • Non-romantic example. After discovering the dying Alea in Widow’s Crypt and hearing out her story, he holds her tight as she slowly expires.
  • In his past life, his duel with Cecilia during the King's Tourney saw her throw herself onto his blade to end her suffering.
• Discard and Draw: His mana core is shattered beyond recovery? No matter, he just makes a new one out of aether this time.
• Dismemberment Is Cheap: After becoming part-asura following Sylvie's Heroic Sacrifice and acquiring his aether core, losing limbs becomes practically a non-issue to him as he regenerate them by absorbing aether.
• Draconic Humanoid: Whenever Arthur taps into Sylvia’s beast will, he assumes several of her physical traits and powers as a dragon. Later on, thanks to her daughter Sylvie’s Heroic Sacrifice to preserve his body, his body is now partially draconic in nature.
• Dragon Knight: Arthur was given his beast will by the dragon Sylvia, which allows him to borrow her abilities in combat. Not only that, but before she died she entrusted him with her daughter Sylvie, who becomes his bond and serves as his mount in battle. Later on, he becomes one of the Lances, the most powerful Magic Knights in Dicathen. Post-Volume 7, his body has become draconic in nature thanks to Sylvie's Heroic Sacrifice and he later acquires an ancient suit of Powered Armor to match. In an ironic twist, at the same time he learns that the dragons committed genocide on the djinn, the ancestors of his family.
• Dragon Rider: He frequently rides Sylvie into battle once she has grown large enough to carry him.
• Dragon Tamer: As a beast tamer, Arthur is bonded to the dragon Sylvie.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: When Arthur ends up in the Relictombs, his mana core has been damaged beyond recovery. As he has been rendered almost powerless, Arthur is forced to accompany a group of Alacryans while looking for a way to Re-Power himself.
• The Dreaded: Was this as General Leywin to the Alacryan army, as the only Lance capable of consistently defeating Retainers. Post-Volume 9, he becomes this to them again. His new reputation began at the Victoriad, where he came out of nowhere to defeat two Scythes before promptly escaping Agrona and the Legacy with impunity. Then, he shows up in Dicathen and retakes the entire continent in a matter of days all while giving the Alacryan forces there the Mook Horror Show with his godlike powers. He even managed to show up in Alacrya again and blow up a whole military facility with a Fantastic Nuke.
  Adaenn: Did you not see what he did at the Victoriad? I wasn't even there and still I've heard it recounted dozens of times. He single-handedly retook the Dicathian cities of Vildorial, Blackbend, Xyrus, and Etisin, defeating entire armies. Even the Scythes, I'm told, bowed before his superior might.
• Due to the Dead:
  • After finding the dying Alea Triscan in Widow’s Crypt, Arthur embraces her as she takes her last breath. Afterwards, he and Sylvie give Alea and her fallen soldiers a makeshift burial before promising them they will have people come down to reclaim their bodies.
  • In the aftermath of Taci’s rampage, Arthur uses Aroa’s Requiem to rebuild the djinn sanctuary and prepares graves for all of the casualties, in particular Aya and Feyrith.
  • After his audience with Kezess following Oludari's capture, the former asks him to attend the funeral of Avhilasha, the dragon who died during the operation. While Arthur does express his condolences to Avhilasha's clan, he takes the time to privately pay his respects to Sylvia by leaving her empty core at the shrine, especially since she might not have gotten the same ceremony due to Kezess knowing she betrayed him.
    Arthur: You opened my eyes to a life I had yet to live. Saved me twice from a death come too soon. Trusted me with a vision of the future you wouldn't live to see. And most important of all, welcomed me into your family in name and act.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: His features become rather effeminate after fusing with Sylvie as his body had lost all muscle definitions, to the point where Caera and her attendants mistake him for a woman. This is only temporary as he eventually regains his former strength and physique.
• Elemental Powers: In his past life as Grey, he was able to control the four elements of water, fire, earth, and wind. In his current life as Arthur, not only is he still able to control the four elements as a quadra-elemental mage, but he is also able to control the deviant forms of the first two, ice and lightning.
  • Element No. 5: Thanks to Arthur being able to control the four elements as well as Sylvia’s beast will, he is able to tap into aether. Following the loss of his mana core at the end of the war, he creates an aether core to replace it which leads to aether becoming his sole power.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Regis calls him "Princess" much to his exasperation, as when he first manifested Arthur had become much more effeminate in appearance thanks to Sylvie sacrificing her body to preserve his own. Not helping matters is that even after Arthur regains his physique he resembles a Long-Haired Pretty Boy, meaning the nickname is still applicable to him. Similarly, Mica jokingly refers to him as "General Masochist" as a nod to Arthur's nature as a Determinator and Implacable Man making him endure inhumane levels of pain and suffering to accomplish his goals and protect those that he cares about.
• Enemy Mine: In spite of knowing the true extent of Kezess’s atrocities, Arthur begrudgingly resumes their alliance against Agrona when Kezess summons him back to Epheotus to negotiate with him following his reconquest of Dicathen.
• Excalibur in the Rust: He finds Dawn’s Ballad hidden away in the Helstea Auction House disguised as a cane. When he infuses Sylvia’s will onto the sword, he is able to activate it. Arthur even compares the sword to Excalibur itself as he is trying to pry it out of its scabbard.
• Excellent Judge of Character:
  • Upon meeting Kai, he feels the need to be wary as he senses something off about him. He is proven right when Kai turns out to be The Mole for the Radicals.
  • When he is brought face to face with the Legacy, he notes that Cecilia is Not Herself, as rather acting like the same tortured woman who committed Suicide by Cop in their fateful duel she instead despises him as much as Nico did. He infers that Agrona must have done something to her either before or after her reincarnation to make her hate him. Sure enough, it is later revealed that Agrona had subjected both Nico and Cecilia to Mind Rape and gave them False Memories as he had them Reforged into a Minion.
  • While he has no trust of the asuras after learning of their true nature, Arthur is able to sense that something is very amiss during his interrogation of Oludari after he returns from the Hearth. While Oludari as a Sovereign is prone to being evasive, he notes that the body language and reactions of Windsom and Charon suggest they are hiding something as well. By using King's Gambit, Arthur is able to infer that Oludari cut a deal with the dragons to give them exclusive information while withholding it from him. However, he is not able to discern what the nature and specifics of their deal were before the interrogation comes to an end and Oludari is due to be returned to Epheotus.
• Experienced Protagonist: Thanks to retaining his memories as a battle-hardened king, Arthur is a skilled combatant even at a young age. When he is just four years old, he is able to hold his own against a veteran adventurer during a friendly spar, help his family fend off a bandit ambush, and kill a group of slave traders all by himself. A few years later, Arthur is able to match an even stronger adventurer in combat during an examination to assess his own skill as an adventurer. Later on, he is able to slay a monstrous elderwood guardian on his own after most of his party got wiped out.
• Expy: Arthur draws inspiration from several different characters.
  • Primarily, given the novel's inspiration from Mushoku Tensei, Arthur is based on Rudeus Greyrat, himself the Trope Codifier for the Reincarnate in Another World variant of the Stock Light-Novel Hero. However, Arthur takes it a step further than most other examples in that he is an outright Captain Ersatz of Rudeus.
    • To elaborate on the similarities, both are adult men who died only to Reincarnate in Another World to a family that consists of a loving healer mother, martial father who dies later on, and Little Sister Heroine, first demonstrated their magical prowess at a young age by destroying part of their house, were separated from their families at due to a tragic accident only to later reunite with them, became an extremely talented mage and adventurer and later attend a Magical Academy, own a supernatural Canine Companion, have a suit of Powered Armor, are brought into contact with enigmatic deities who later turn out to be their enemies, encounter people from their past lives, attract the attention of several different Love Interests including a Childhood Friend Rescue Romance with a silver-haired elf, and discover their reincarnations have made them a Paradox Person.
    • That being said, Arthur is a Virtuous Character Copy of Rudeus due to one major difference: Where Rudeus was a Manchild consumed by his sexual urges until his Character Development, Arthur is not only more mature, but is a Celibate Hero who shuns most girls who show interest in him due to the mental age gap. However, over time Arthur undergoes Derivative Differentiation and becomes completely different from his inspiration in terms of personality, fighting style, and powers.
    • As the story goes on, Arthur takes on elements of the other Trope Codifier, Kirito from Sword Art Online, specifically during the Alfheim Arc. He and his Love Interest are Adoptive Peer Parents to a non-human daughter, he is seeking to rescue said Love Interest from the captivity of the Big Bad with the aid of their daughter and another female companion, and wears an all-black ensemble.
  • Arthur also draws inspiration from Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Both are reincarnated protagonists able to draw upon the experience from their past lives, wield the four classical elements, and have a small pet with white and black fur who can fly. They disappeared before the start of a major war that they later returned to participate in only to lose said war and were presumed dead in the aftermath, but once again returned to bring it to an end for good. In addition, both are revealed to be Genocide Survivors (albeit Arthur being a descendant of said survivors) from a race of Perfect Pacifist People that were exterminated by an antagonistic faction associated with dragons.
  • He also has shades of Guts from Berserk. Both are Master Swordsmen, wear a suit of ebon-black armor, are The Dreaded among their mortal enemies, were betrayed by a close friend who took their Love Interest for themself and subjected her to a Fate Worse than Death and have lost much of his friends and family thanks the machinations of Jerkass Gods whom they seek to overthrow and whom said Evil Former Friend has become a willing servant of.
  • Post Volume-9, Arthur being a Black Knight accompanied by a spectral wolf is perhaps a visual nod to Artorias from Dark Souls.
• Extremely Protective Child: His desire to protect his loved ones was there right from his rebirth. He was willing to take a blast to protect his pregnant mother even though it knocked him off the mountain they were traveling. No wonder he takes failing to be there to prevent the death of his father in a rather severe fashion.
• Eye Color Change: Whenever he taps into Sylvia’s beast will, his eyes turn purple like hers. After Sylvie’s Heroic Sacrifice, his eyes become permanently gold like hers as she had sacrificed her own body to reconstitute his own.
• Facial Markings: Using Sylvia's beast will gives him golden markings around his eyes much like hers.
• Fantastic Nuke: Combined with Atomic Super Power. In his journey in the Relictombs, he acquires a godrune called Destruction that can destroy an entire continent at its full power. In Volume 10, Arthur uses it to destroy an entire military facility in Vechor.
• Fatal Flaw: How extreme Arthur is generally about his personal relationships. It goes all the way from being aloof and extremely distant in his previous life, out of fear his personal connections might be used against him, straight to being overprotective to the absurd. This costs him dearly, as this mindset railroads him into situations that could've been avoided. Later from the beginning of Volume 8 onwards he gets better about handling his relationships.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Several of Arthur’s allies came to his side in the first place thanks to fighting alongside him. These include Tessia, Elijah, Curtis and Kathyln (and to an extent the rest of the Disciplinary Committee), Caera, and Chul.
• First Love: Cecilia was this to him as Grey, as she reciprocated his feelings. Seeing himself as unworthy of her, he proceeded to push her into the arms of Nico who was also in love with her.
• Flaming Sword: After his Re-Power, Arthur is able conjure swords made of aether that burn with its signature purple flames.
• Flash Step: Burst Step, and later actual teleportation with God Step.
• Flight Is the Final Power: When he becomes a white core mage, Arthur gains the ability to fly like the other Lances. Bear in mind, unlike the other Lances Arthur did not use one of the Artifacts of Power that they used to jump straight to the white core stage even though Virion gave him the late Alea’s. Subverted later on when, after losing his original powerset and being forced to Re-Power himself with aether, he regains the ability to fly through the insight provided by King's Gambit, which he acquired from the third djinn keystone.
• Flying Brick: After acquiring King's Gambit, he effectively has this powerset. His newfound insight from the godrune has allowed him to regain the ability to fly, his enhanced asuran biology grants him superhuman physical capabilities and the ability to regenerate wounds, and he possesses an aether core that acts as a Swiss-Army Superpower and a suit of Powered Armor that runs on aether. On top of that, King's Gambit and Realmheart effectively act as his Super-Senses, with the former granting him temporary Super-Intelligence and the latter allowing him to cancel spells.
• Forged by the Gods: In his youth, Arthur wielded an asuran-made sword known as Dawn’s Ballad. During his time in Epheotus, he trained under the maker of said sword, Wren Kain IV, who embeds an acclorite within his hands that would manifest its powers if given a year. After Arthur ends up in the Relictombs, the acclorite Wren gave him finally manifests in the form of Regis.
• Freudian Trio: After Sylvie's resurrection at the end of Volume 10, he and his two bonds exhibit this dynamic. Regis is The Id, Sylvie is The Superego, and Arthur is The Ego.

G to L

• Genius Bruiser: Arthur is not only a powerful Magic Knight, but is rather intelligent and strategic given him being Wise Beyond Their Years thanks to his reincarnation. His genius leads to him becoming a quadra-elemental mage whose power surpasses that of most mages. This works in his favor when he is fighting much more powerful opponents. Not only that, when he becomes a military leader during the War Arc, he not only serves as a general but also provides support on the technological side of affairs. He frequently checks on Gideon and Emily regarding new innovations, and later on brings Wren back from the Hearth to work alongside them. It becomes even more pronounced after he acquires King's Gambit, which grants him a form of Super-Intelligence by allowing his mind to temporarily host multiple thought processes at once.
• Genocide Survivor: He learns that he and his family are descendants of the djinn from a djinn Virtual Ghost he finds in the Relictombs. In the distant past, the djinn were the victims of a genocide perpetrated by the Indrath Clan when they refused to share their knowledge of aether with them. While Arthur had heard of the genocide beforehand from Sylvia's second message upon his arrival in the Relictombs, learning he has blood ties to the djinn makes his vendetta against the Indrath all the more personal.
• Give Him a Normal Life: The end of Volume 10 reveals that when he was born, Grey was given up by his biological parents to an orphanage as they did not have the financial stability to raise him.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: As a sign of his power, there are several instances where Arthur's eyes are glowing bright.
• A God I Am Not: After returning to Dicathen and putting an end to Taci’s rampage with his newfound aether powers, some of the survivors claim he is a true god and praise him as their savior. Arthur, who is a Nay-Theist and a Humble Hero with no love for the asuras and their atrocities, dismisses these remarks.
  Arthur: I’m not your savior. The leaders who brought you here…they are. I’m not here to become the focus of your false hope, a replacement for that source of wonder the asuras gave you.
• Good Armor, Evil Armor: Initially plays this straight before getting a Subversion. When he becomes a Lance during the War Arc, he is given the same silver and red armor worn by all the Lances in combat. During his endeavors in the Relictombs after the war, he acquires a suit of djinn Powered Armor only he can wear due to being descended from them. Said armor is ebon-black with gold highlights and horns on his head. However, despite the armor's appearance, Arthur donning the armor coincides with him becoming the Big Good and turning the war against both Agrona and Kezess.
• The Good King: In his past life, King Grey was one of these. He was known for being a fair and honorable ruler who always looked out for his subjects.
• Good Is Not Soft: While Arthur is a pleasant individual, when it comes to the pursuit of his goals - in particular protecting his loved ones - he will not back down easily. Crossing him is often a fatal mistake.
  • During his time in Xyrus Academy, Arthur begrudgingly tolerates Lucas in spite of their past history and Lucas continually trying to torment him out of jealousy without knowing his true identity. Lucas’s jealousy of Arthur causes him to fall in with the Radicals and lead their attack on the academy. In the ensuing carnage, Lucas massacres several students and faculty on top of threatening to desecrate the incapacitated body of the Student Council President and Arthur’s Love Interest Tessia. For that transgression, Arthur takes the opportunity to make it the last mistake Lucas will ever make in his life in a rather graphic fashion.
  • During the War Arc, Arthur is not afraid to resort to torture to extract information from a captured prisoner.
  • In his time in Alacrya, Arthur brutally slaughters ascenders hired as assassins to Make an Example of Them, and later on exterminates the family that had hired them when they would not take the hint.
  • During the reconquest of Dicathen, Arthur always offers his Alacryan enemies a chance to surrender, as his true enemies are not them but their Vritra overlords. When they refuse, Arthur shows them how big of a mistake they just made in rejecting his mercy.
  • When Arthur retakes Xyrus, the Alacryan governor attempts to get him to back down by summoning a group of Dicathian Les Collaborateurs to defend her. In doing so, she attempts to convey to him that some Dicathians have appreciated Agrona’s rule and are willing to fight to keep Arthur from restoring the antebellum status quo. She underestimates his resolve as he proceeds to slaughter them all regardless, before reiterating that she and all Alacryans and their collaborators in the city must leave now.
• Good Wears White:
  • When he becomes a Lance, Arthur is given the same white, red, and gold ceremonial uniform as the rest of the Lances.
  • Arthur wears a white cloak on top of the djinn armor, as seen in the cover of Volume 9.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: With his sister Eleanor. He excels in swordplay and close combat, she prefers to fight at range with a bow.
• Had to Be Sharp: Has been subjected to this trope throughout practically his entire existence, spanning both of his lives. In his past life, he lived in a war-torn Crapsack World defined by Asskicking Leads to Leadership. As such, he was constantly forced to fight just to get by in life. This drive is what gradually turned him into an unmatched warrior and eventual king. In his current life, while it takes place in a world that is more peaceful at first, Arthur has been put through some rather harsh situations where he had to exhibit that same drive from his past life to make it through.
  • This trope becomes especially evident from Volume 8 onward after Arthur learns the truth about how the Divine Conflict started and who his true enemies ultimately are. As he is going up against the God and Satan analogues of the setting, who have at their disposal warriors that can effortlessly defeat the strongest mortal mages with ease, Arthur has to become as powerful as them just to give him and his loved ones a chance to stand against them let alone survive the conflict. Not only that, but he has to step up as the Big Good as the other potential Big Goods (Virion^note Who has been broken by all the suffering he and his people have undergone during the war and can only serve as a Supporting Leader at most, Seris^note Who he cannot easily work with due to the prejudices of the occupying asuras and eventually gets forced back into Agrona's service by way of his blood allowing him to control her and her followers, and Mordain^note Who has been keeping his people in seclusion for millennia to avoid the wrath of both Agrona and Kezess and refuses to become Neutral No Longer) can only act in a supporting capacity, especially since Arthur's unique abilities and experiences are what allow him to act in an inspirational fashion that none of them can hope to achieve.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Arthur when he was born was a human with djinn ancestry. Later on after Sylvie sacrificed her body to save him, he became part-dragon and basilisk as well.
• Healing Factor: Using Sylvia’s beast will allows Arthur to heal his own body. After becoming part-asura, Arthur is able to regenerate grievous wounds including lost body parts using aether.
• Heavy Sleeper: Has noted he has difficulty waking up. His sister once did an elbow drop on him to get him to wake up. Later on, Bairon decided to wake him up from a nightmare by throwing a lightning bolt at him, though Arthur managed to wake up and catch the bolt.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: His preferred choice of weapon in both his past life and his current one is that of the sword. He originally used a Cool Sword called Dawn’s Ballad which was Forged by the Gods, before replacing it later on with swords he can generate out of raw aether.
• Heroic BSoD: Suffers a massive one after his father's death, as he had failed to protect one of the people whom he cared for the most.
• Hero on Hiatus: This happens to him in the leadup to the climax of Volume 11 as a result of his plan to acquire the final keystone. He had been warned by Mordain that once he entered the keystone he would not be able to leave until he had gained the insight it sought to teach him - let alone being trapped in it forever if the task proved impossible - and that his physical body would be vulnerable the entire time. As such, he is forced to conceal his location from practically everyone - friend and foe alike - until he completes the keystone (with the only Secret-Keepers who know of his true location being Sylvie, Regis, Eleanor, and Wren, and the former two being his bonds follow him into the keystone). The subsequent chapters focus on other characters' POVs as they get caught up in Agrona's final assault with Arthur nowhere to be found.
• Heroic RRoD:
  • At the climax of Volume 7, Arthur is forced to fight a losing battle against not only the Alacryan army but also the Scythes Cadell and Nico. In order to buy time for his allies to escape, Arthur is forced to overexert not only his mana core but also his beast will, which slowly tears his body apart. It takes a Heroic Sacrifice from his bond Sylvie to not only spirit him away to safety, but to keep his body together. In the aftermath, Arthur finds out his mana core has been damaged beyond recovery.
  • In Volume 10, at the end of the Siege of Vildorial, Arthur collapses after getting the Alacryans to lift the siege. Beforehand, he had fought off a squad of Wraiths and used their tempus warp to end up in a military facility in Vechor which he promptly destroyed using the Destruction godrune. As he could barely fight at that point, Arthur had to hold aloft one of the Wraiths’ severed heads while uttering a Blasphemous Boast against Agrona as a bluff. Arthur remains incapacitated for a day and a half, and even then once he does wake up he has still not recovered from his injuries.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • While he, his family, and the Twin Horns are on their way to Xyrus, they end up getting ambushed by bandits. During the ambush, Arthur is forced to take a blast for his pregnant mother, which knocks him off into the valley below. He only survives the whole ordeal and what follows thanks to Sylvia’s intervention.
  • When the Class Trip to Widow’s Crypt goes awry upon the group encountering stronger monsters than expected, Arthur has to stay behind to buy Professor Glory and his classmates time to escape. He ends up being knocked into a crevice, but manages to survive the fall.
  • At the close of the War Arc, Arthur is forced to overexert Sylvia's beast will while fighting a losing battle against the Scythes Cadell and Nico on top of the rest of the Alacryan army in order to buy time for the Dicathians to escape. In the process, his body begins tearing itself apart, and Sylvie is forced to sacrifice herself to save him, causing him to end up in the Relictombs.
• Heroic Neutral: Arthur's first priority is keeping his loved ones safe, but at the same time his conscience does not allow him to ignore those in need.
• He's Back!: After enduring the Trauma Conga Line in Volumes 7 and 8 – which included losing the war, the deaths of his loved ones, being stranded in an alien land and left powerless, learning the truth about the asuras and how the Divine Conflict really started, and seeing the sins of his past life brought back to haunt him in his reincarnation – Arthur is able to Re-Power himself and Came Back Strong. By the end of Volume 9, he is able to deal both sides of the Divine Conflict humiliating losses while finally being able to return home and reunite with his family.
• Hiding Your Heritage: During his time in both the Relictombs and Alacrya, Arthur hides the fact that he is a Dicathian from his Alacryan compatriots. He goes by his past name of Grey during this period. Only Seris, who recognizes his description when Caera describes him, is aware of who he really is as they had encountered each other during the war and she keeps it secret from her protégé. Caera and the others only put two and two together when reports of a man similar to Grey’s description leading the Dicathians in retaking their homeland start circulating among Alacryan troops suddenly returning from Dicathen in defeat. Eventually, when Arthur returns to assist Seris's rebellion, she properly introduces his true identity as a Dicathian to her assembled supporters.
• His Story Repeats Itself: As much as Arthur wishes to leave his past life as King Grey behind, events in his reincarnated life end up paralleling that of his past one, and oftentimes the lowest points of it. It does not help that much of these unfortunate parallels are Invoked, either directly or indirectly, on Agrona's part.
  • He loses a Parental Substitute at a young age, whose death sets him on the path he follows throughout his life (Olivia Willbeck/Sylvia).
  • He has a best friend who grows to resent him, eventually becoming an Evil Former Friend. It turns out that both are one and the same, with the one in his current life being the reincarnation of the one in his last one (Nico/Elijah).
  • He has a female childhood friend that he and said best friend develop an interest in whose life gets embroiled in tragedy. Making matters worse, while unlike his best friend these two are separate individuals, the one from his past is summoned using the unwilling body of the one in his current life as her vessel (Cecilia/Tessia).
  • In his past life, he declared war on the nation responsible for the death of his Parental Substitute, causing an untold amount of innocent casualties in the pursuit of his vengeance. In his current life, the situation has been reversed, and it is now his homeland that is on the receiving end of such a war as Agrona wishes to conquer his homeland as a stepping stone in his war against the Jerkass Gods that exiled him for uncovering their Dark Secret. Further driving in the parallels is that both Grey and Agrona were motivated by Revenge Before Reason, but Grey came to regret his actions while Agrona became consumed by his desire for vengeance.
  • King Grey had white-blonde hair and wore a black suit of armor with white cloth draped around it. In his current state, Arthur has Mystical White Hair and wears a black suit of armor and a white cloak. He even briefly reassumed the name Grey during his time in the Relictombs and Alacrya.
• Home Field Advantage: In the climax of Volume 9, Arthur takes Taci into the Relictombs to finish him off without causing Collateral Damage. As the Relictombs are made up of aether and as such are entirely devoid of mana, he gains a decisive advantage over the asura and finishes him off.
• The Homeward Journey: Whenever he gets separated from his family in light of tragic circumstances, Arthur's main goal is to eventually make his way home and reunite with them.
  • While on the way to Xyrus, Arthur, his family, and the Twin Horns get attacked by bandits, and in trying to defend his pregnant mother Arthur gets knocked off a cliff and presumed dead. He survives thanks to Sylvia's intervention and makes his way to her abode where he recovers. Then after being spirited away by Sylvia to save him from Cadell, Arthur rescues Tessia from slave traders and escorts her back to her kingdom. He ends up staying with her family while he recovers from prematurely awakening his mana core (though he lets his parents know he is alive thanks to Rinia relaying a telepathic message to them). After three years have passed, he takes a teleportation gate to Xyrus to finally reunite with his family.
  • After finding himself stranded far from home following the end of the war and Sylvie's Heroic Sacrifice, Arthur's main goal is to find a way back to Dicathen in order to liberate it from the Vritra Clan and their Alacryan servants. Achieving this is a lot more complicated than it sounds, for not only was Arthur Brought Down to Normal at the end of the war, but he ends up living among the Alacryans themselves and comes to the realization that they are just as much victims of the Divine Conflict as his own people. Eventually, after Coming Back Strong as an aether-powered demigod and humiliating the Vritra at the Victoriad, Arthur is finally able to return home after about a year since his apparent demise and leads his remaining allies in retaking their homeland.
• Hope Bringer: After he returns to Dicathen from his time in the Relictombs and Alacrya, Arthur has become incredibly powerful as he is able to kill Taci and save the resistance, crush the Alacryan army, and reclaim entire cities all by himself. In the process of liberating Dicathen, he manages to restore the morale of his people to an all time high, with the mood in Xyrus having even returned to the level it was before the attack on Xyrus Academy years ago.
• Horned Humanoid: Sports a pair of these when donning the djinn armor.
• Horseback Heroism: In his past life, King Grey rode a Mechanical Horse into battle to rally his soldiers.
• Humble Hero: Despite his power, in both his past life and his current one all Arthur wants the most is for him and his loved ones to live in peace. In his past life, he retired from his position as king due to growing tired of leadership after all he had been through. Upon returning to Dicathen and saving the resistance from Taci, Arthur admits that he can't fight the asuras on his own and will need their help to do so. Later on when Kezess sends down his forces to occupy Dicathen, Arthur reaffirms that even though he does not desire to rule Dicathen, he is willing to act as a leader to give the people of Dicathen the strength to believe in themselves and the hope for a better future.
• Hypocrisy Nod:
  • Arthur wants his parents as far away from the fighting as humanely possible. His father calls him out as Arthur himself is at the forefront of virtually every engagement. He gets better about it later on.
  • He is aware that Seth Milview is in no way, shape or form responsible for the actions of his sister during the war - namely her charting a path to Elenoir, leading to the enslavement of thousands of elves, and eventually the complete and utter destruction of the country and its inhabitants. And yet he cannot bring himself to treat him with anything short of open hostility. As with the above situation, he gets better.
• Hypocritical Humor: In an original scene in the Webcomic, Elijah tells Arthur about a club he joined just so he could pick up girls, to which Arthur asks him if he had been “deprived of love in [his] past life or something” in response. This is a rather hypocritical response for Arthur, as in his past life he was forced to kill Cecilia, the one woman who he ever had feelings for, in a duel. Making matters worse is that while he does not know it at the time, Elijah is in fact the reincarnation of his childhood friend and Cecilia’s fiancé, Nico, and his apparent murder of her is what led Nico to swear vengeance against him.
• I Didn't Mean to Kill Him: When he is confronted by Nico and Cecilia in Nirmala, Arthur finally tells them that he never meant to kill Cecilia in their fateful duel in their past lives and that it was a complete accident. While Cecilia refuses to listen as Agrona's influence has blinded her, Nico is eventually shown to have a My God, What Have I Done? moment later on as he realizes he had hated his best friend and caused him so much suffering over absolutely nothing.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: There are several individuals whom Arthur feels quite guilty over not being able to save in both his past and present lives.
  • In his past life, the death of his Parental Substitute Olivia Willbeck was what set Grey and his friends on the path they would take for the rest of their lives, which in Grey's case led to him not only becoming king, but declaring war on the nation that orchestrated her death and causing untold casualties in pursuit of his revenge. In addition, on the path to become king, Grey was forced to duel his former Childhood Friend Love Interest Cecilia. Their duel culminated in Cecilia committing Suicide by Cop by throwing herself on Grey's blade, which not only traumatized Grey but marked the end of his friendship with her fiancé and his former best friend Nico. In his new life, Arthur has resolved to become strong enough to protect his loved ones from the same fate as those from his past life.
  • And yet, his desire ends up proving all for naught as Arthur continues to lose people he cares about to Agrona's war. As with Olivia Willbeck, Arthur was powerless to prevent the murder of his new Parental Substitute Sylvia. Then during the War Arc, Arthur fails to save his father, the entire Council except for Virion, and Sylvie who sacrifices herself to save him from being captured by the Vritra (though he does eventually succeed in resurrecting her).
• Idiot Ball:
  • Leaving Tessia to return to Xyrus Academy alone despite knowing how vulnerable she is because of her beast will integration. Made worse by the fact that ignoring this fact almost resulted in his own death twice before that. And sure enough, she arrives right as the Radicals launch their attack on the academy and gets incapacitated as she is Targeted to Hurt the Hero.
  • So it becomes apparent that the Big Bad - who is a known Manipulative Bastard - is capable of taking over Sylvie with no warning and for extended periods of time in the very heart of the good guys' impregnable fortress. What does Arthur do? He decides that he has better tasks to do as Agrona goes around every night threatening people into submission, which eventually leads to Alduin and Merial being forced to collaborate with Agrona when he reveals he has sway over Tessia's life thanks to the beast will Arthur had given her and dooming Dicathen.
• Implacable Man: Becomes this during the reconquest of Dicathen. Arthur is hell-bent on retaking his homeland and repeatedly hands the Alacryan armies a string of crushing defeats. Even when he is severely injured he comes back to continue his reconquest. Case in point, by the end of the Siege of Vildorial Arthur was able to get the Alacryans to retreat even though he had sustained severe injuries including losing an arm, and by the time he went back into the field had healed up like nothing had happened. He cannot be argued with either, as he will make sure the negotiations are all in his favor and almost never compromising.
• Inevitable Mutual Betrayal: After Arthur retakes Dicathen, he is summoned back to Epheotus by Kezess. Even though Arthur knows by now that Kezess is a genocidal tyrant responsible for his fair share of atrocities, he begrudgingly agrees to negotiate with him. In return for Arthur telling him all that he has learned about aether, Kezess would guarantee Epheotus’s protection should the Vritra invade. Both parties know that once Agrona and the Vritra are dealt with that hostilities are bound to resume between them. After all, Kezess is not going to let Arthur’s slights against him off that easily, while Arthur intends to bring Kezess and all of Epheotus to justice for their crimes.
• Instant Expert: Arthur easily applies the know-how from his past life as King Grey and adapts it to his new life, giving him an edge compared to other characters his physical age. Case in point, upon figuring out how similar the mana system of his new life is towards the ki system of his old life, Arthur applies his knowledge to become a quadra-elemental mage like in his past life.
• Instant Armor: The djinn armor that Arthur acquires in the second ruin can be summoned at his beck and call.
• Interspecies Adoption: He (a human) and Tessia (an elf) are the surrogate parents of Sylvie (a dragon/basilisk hybrid). Sylvie even goes so far as to adopt his surname over either of her biological parents after learning of the atrocities committed by their respective clans, on top of having been raised by Arthur her whole life and identifying more with him and his family over her own Warring Natures.
• Interspecies Romance: His main Love Interest, Tessia, is an elf.
• Invincible Hero: Played With. At first, Arthur appears to be a straight example. Not only is he reincarnated with all the memories and knowledge of his past self, he also proves to be incredibly gifted as a mage, being a rare quadra-elemental augmenter with two deviancies, and he inherits the beast will of a dragon, which allows him to enhance his physical capabilities, regenerate his wounds, and even briefly tap into aether. To give an idea, the only being that even comes close to killing him is the elderwood guardian, a gigantic S-class mana beast, and that is only because Arthur was previously injured by Lucas’ surprise attack. To complement that, he is also smart enough to wrap anyone he needs around his little finger. And that is only before getting into what he becomes after his Re-Power...
  • However, Arthur ends up being a Deconstruction of this trope. In spite of how powerful Arthur is, his Arch-Enemy Agrona is an Invincible Villain due to being a Chessmaster and Manipulative Bastard par excellence, and so Arthur ends up being Out-Gambitted by him on several occasions due to not knowing the true extent of his plans. Case in point, Arthur fails to stop Agrona from conquering his homeland and capturing his Love Interest to be the vessel for the Legacy. Not to mention, Agrona and several of Arthur's other enemies make liberal use of Targeted to Hurt the Hero in order to get an edge over him.
• It's Personal/It's Personal with the Dragon: Several of Arthur’s enemies, some of whom are Agrona's own Scythes, earned his enmity because of this trope. Especially if they threatened, harmed, or outright killed his loved ones.
  • Lucas. When they were in the same party, Lucas caused a Total Party Kill during a botched expedition and got off practically scot-free thanks to his corrupt family’s influence. Arthur was forced to take precautions to protect himself and his family from Lucas’s family. Lucas would go on to torment Arthur during his days in Xyrus Academy despite not knowing his identity. Suffice to say, when Arthur gets the opportunity to end him for his role in the attack on Xyrus, he does so in a cathartically graphic fashion.
    • His execution of Lucas ends up earning him the enmity of Lucas's older brother Bairon, who views it as a grave offense to his family's honor. This enmity lasts a very long time until Arthur returns from Alacrya, as by then both he and Bairon have been put through hell during the war and its aftermath, on top of Bairon having undergone a Heel Realization after finally turning against his corrupt family.
  • Uto, the Retainer responsible for killing Alea Triscan, the Lance whom Arthur found dying at the bottom of Widow’s Crypt. The memory of her Cruel and Unusual Death makes Arthur swear to bring her killer to justice, especially since he had become her replacement as a Lance.
  • Cadell, the Scythe who killed his Parental Substitute Sylvia. Seeing him again at the close of the War Arc reignites Arthur’s childhood trauma, and when they do clash Arthur is outmatched by him. However, once Arthur Came Back Strong after the war, he was finally able to slay him at the Victoriad.
  • Nico, his Evil Former Friend from his past life as King Grey and the true identity of Elijah Knight. In this instance, the trope goes both ways. Nico hates Grey for the apparent murder of his fiancée Cecilia, and to spite him captures his Love Interest Tessia for use as the vessel for Cecilia’s reincarnation. While Arthur does call him out on it on top of the atrocities he has committed in Agrona’s name, at the same time he feels that he failed Nico both in their past and present lives. This results in him exacting a Restrained Revenge on Nico during the Victoriad where he defeats and cripples him but does not kill him outright.
  • Cecilia, his former Childhood Friend Love Interest from his past life as King Grey. Like with her fiancé Nico, the trope goes both ways. Cecilia was not only summoned using Arthur's current Love Interest Tessia as her vessel, but had been subjected to Mind Rape by both Agrona and Nico to turn her against him. Arthur wants to find a way to free Tessia and separate both of them, but Cecilia's outright vitriol against him and her status as the Legacy making her his equal in power complicates his efforts.
  • Agrona himself. Arthur’s conflict with him becomes extremely personal when he learns Agrona had reincarnated not only him but also his childhood friends Nico and Cecilia and had the two of them Reforged into a Minion, and in the case of the latter had ordered his Love Interest Tessia be captured for use as her vessel. Coupled with his schemes leading to the conquest of Arthur’s homeland of Dicathen and the deaths of many of his loved ones, and Arthur has every reason to bring Agrona to justice.
• Kangaroo Court: Has the misfortune to fall victim to this twice, though fortunately both times he gets acquitted thanks to the intervention of a higher power.
  • At the start of Volume 5, Arthur finds himself brought before the Council after having been arrested in the aftermath of the attack on Xyrus. While the Eraliths are sympathetic to him, the majority of the Council being manipulated by Agrona and the Vritra who orchestrated the attack on Xyrus. As such, the intent of the trial is to neutralize Arthur and Director Goodsky by getting them convicted of the attack. It is only thanks to the intervention of the asuras Windsom and Aldir in purging the Council of corruption that the verdict does not come to pass.
  • In Volume 9, upon arriving in Alacyra Arthur is put on trial by Blood Granbehl for the deaths of Kalon, Ezra, and Riah in the previous volume. This time around, Seris Vritra is the one responsible for getting Arthur acquitted as she began pulling strings so that he would survive in Alacrya and be of use in her own schemes against the Vritra.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: There are quite few times when Arthur is forced to keep secrets from people he trusts, even though it pains him to do so.
  • He keeps his reincarnation a secret from his parents for years, but ultimately decides to come clean to them right before he leaves to train in Epheotus for the coming war in order to lift the burden from his mind. They are mortified to learn of his secret and resent him for it, and he quickly comes to regret telling them as it drives a wedge between him and his family and makes their parting a cold one. However, they eventually come to accept him in the end.
  • Regrets having to keep so many secrets from Caera when she has been nothing but a true and loyal friend to him. She decides to forgive him later on. Unfortunately, he is forced to keep her and all of his Alacryan allies in the dark regarding his plan for the fourth keystone as he is not taking any chances over how much control Agrona has over them, though he at least tells her why he has to keep her Locked Out of the Loop before enacting his plan.
  • In order to acquire the final keystone, Arthur's mind will be trapped in the keystone until he attains the insight needed to pass it, which will leave his body Remote, Yet Vulnerable. Knowing how Agrona has eyes everywhere, he uses King's Gambit to formulate a complex plan involving fortifying key locations across Dicathen to bait Agrona into attacking where he is not. To make sure the plan goes off without a hitch, he keeps practically all of his allies Locked Out of the Loop (especially his Alacryan ones as mentioned above) regarding the true nature of his plan. He does not like having to lie to people he trusts on top of putting them in the line of fire (which itself is against his desire to protect them in the first place), but he has no other choice if he wants to gain the insight needed to end the Divine Conflict.
• Ki Manipulation: While the world of Arthur’s past self King Grey had Elemental Powers like the one he finds himself reincarnated into, it was called ki rather than mana. Grey was able to master all four arts of ki and thus manipulate the four classical elements.
• Kill the God: At the climax of Volume 9, Arthur slays Taci, the asura who had been sent by Kezess to exterminate the Dicathian resistance. Even though Taci was merely a boy by asuran standards, he still managed to fight the remaining Lances to a standstill all by himself on top of causing untold amounts of casualties during his rampage before Arthur stopped him.
  Arthur: You want to know what I’ve become? Godkiller should be appropriate.
• Kill the Ones You Love: A major incident in his past life as King Grey saw him being forced to duel his childhood friend Cecilia for the position of king. Cecilia, who had been sought for her power as the Legacy and was tired of being used as a puppet, took the opportunity to commit Suicide by Cop during their duel. To say he did not take it very well is an understatement, as did his former best friend and Cecilia's fiancé, Nico.
• Killing Intent: There are several instances throughout the novel where Arthur’s intent is able to overpower everyone around him.
  • During the Helstea Auction, the Glayders’ court conjurer Sebastian covets Arthur’s bond Sylvie. When he tries to kidnap her, Arthur forces him to back off with his intent. However, everyone in the room senses it, and it is only thanks to Arthur’s father Reynolds apprehending an intruder that Arthur is let off the hook. At the end of the auction, Sebastian manipulates King Glayder into getting him Sylvie. After refusing Glayder’s offer thrice and delivering an Armor-Piercing Response the third time, one of the royal guards attacks Arthur. Thanks to Sylvia’s beast will, Arthur is able to neutralize the guard, followed by him breaking Sebastian’s leg and reminding him with his intent to know his place.
  • At the climax of the attack on Xyrus, Lucas gloats in front of Arthur about how he will enjoy desecrating Tessia’s incapacitated body. Arthur, who has had enough of Lucas at this point, proceeds to use his intent to completely overpower Lucas into a standstill. Bear in mind, Lucas had been empowered by a stronger version of the serum the Radicals were using and was on such a Power High that not even the fear of his own older brother Bairon could cower him into submission.
• Klingon Promotion:
  • Non-fatal example. Arthur manages to become a professor at Xyrus Academy by defeating the professor in charge of his Practical Mana Manipulation class after the initial demonstration went awry and threatened the students in attendance. The Webcomic version expands on this by revealing the whole reason the demonstration went wrong was that Arthur had gotten on the professor’s bad side in an incident that occurred before he entered the academy, and so upon noticing Arthur was in his class said professor sought to humiliate him. This backfired as Kathyln reported the situation to Director Goodsky, opening the door for Arthur to become his replacement.
  • Similarly, when the regent Lyra surrenders to him on behalf of the remaining Alacryan forces on Dicathen, she declares him as the new regent. This is a title that the dragons do not recognize, seeing as it was a title created by the Vritra and passed onto him by a traitor to them.
• Life Drain: A move possible only on creatures made of aether in the Relictombs.
• Lightning Bruiser: As an augmenter, Arthur excels in close combat, is capable of moving and striking fast, and can empower himself using Sylvia’s beast will to enhance his own strength, speed, and elemental mastery. When he becomes a Lance, he gets the requisite suit of armor that allows him to withstand severe blows. After becoming part-asura thanks to Sylvie’s Heroic Sacrifice, Arthur’s physiology is enhanced to a degree that surpasses that of most mortals. Not only can he survive far more grievous injuries and regenerate from them, but he acquires a more powerful suit of djinn Powered Armor to replace his previous one as a Lance.
• Line-of-Sight Name: He comes up with the alias "Note" due to the Cool Mask that he acquires having a blue mark on its right side that resembles a musical note.
• Living Lie Detector: Not only is he is an Excellent Judge of Character and can usually tell when someone is not being trustworthy, but when he uses King's Gambit he is able to detect the smallest micro-movements allowing him to figure out if anyone is lying to or deceiving him. When he interrogates Oludari, his usage of the godrune allows him to infer that the Sovereign had cut some sort of deal with Windsom and Charon in order to withhold information from him.
• Living with the Villain: In Volume 9, Arthur is forced to live incognito in Alacrya, the domain of Agrona and the Vritra Clan. It is not until just before the climax that Nico discovers his presence and reports it to Agrona, though it turns out he was already aware of Arthur's survival and let Nico find out for himself.
• Locked into Strangeness: In the aftermath of the climactic battle at the end of Volume 7 wherein his bond Sylvie had performed a Heroic Sacrifice to save him after he had almost tore his own body apart using Sylvia's beast will, Arthur discovers that his hair and eyes had turned to the same white-gold as Sylvie's. He realizes that Sylvie had given up her own physical form to reconstitute his own.
• Lonely at the Top: He remember being so lonely in his past life to the point of that it led him to Abdicate the Throne. Reconstructed when he is reincarnated and seeks to amend this in his new life, especially after Sylvia encourages him to cherish those around him.
• Love Confession: In Volume 7, he declares his love for Tessia and they promise to get married after the end of the war.

M to R

• Magic Knight: As an augmenter, Arthur is adept at distributing mana throughout his body which strengthens his physique and makes his powers more optimal for close combat. Arthur combines his magical prowess with his skill in swordplay. Later on, Arthur becomes one of the Lances, the strongest knights in Dicathen whose magical prowess far surpasses most mages. In becoming one of the Lances, he is given a proper suit of armor. Even after the loss of his mana core and replacing it with an aether core, Arthur easily adapts his fighting style to his new powerset. On top of that, he also acquires a suit of djinn Powered Armor to cement his image as an aether-wielding Black Knight.
• Magnetic Hero: Arthur has this as one of his strengths. While he is not especially charismatic, it is moreso due to his feats that he ends up attracting allies to his cause. He is inspirational to Dicathians, Alacryans, and even some asuras, who all join him in the hope that he will bring an end to the Divine Conflict.
• Master of All: Is able to master all four classical elements, the deviant forms of half of them, and aether.
• Master Swordsman: His one claim to fame as Grey. He might not have had the ki pool to match his opponents blow for blow, but he was an absolute nightmare to deal with given a hand and a sharp stick. This translates into his second life, where he just gets better.
• Meaningful Name: His name is Arthur and in his past life he used to be a king. Sound familiar?
• Missed Him by That Much: After Arthur and his party return from the third djinn ruin within the Relictombs, Bairon attempts to notify him of the arrival of Caera, who has been incarcerated for the time being until he can validate her statements. Arthur could have secured Caera's release right there were it not for the unexpected arrival of Avier bearing summons from Aldir, which Arthur immediately prioritizes instead. This eventually leads to Arthur being stuck in the aether realm for two months in order to resurrect Sylvie, resulting in Caera languishing in prison for much longer than she should have. Not helping Caera's predicament is that Kezess ordered his forces to occupy Dicathen as part of his deal with Arthur, and the occupying dragons naturally treated her rather badly given their hatred for Vritra-blooded Alacryans like her.
• Mook Horror Show: During the reconquest of Dicathen, Arthur delivers a string of crippling defeats onto the Alacryan forces. If they had not already given up due to Arthur’s reputation as The Dreaded, then they get to witness him unleash the full display of his newfound powers as entire armies are routed with ease.
  • Case in point, when Arthur uses the tempus warp the Wraiths had left behind and ends up in a military facility in Vechor, the commander of the Alacryan troops stationed there tries to get his troops to calm down by pointing out how Arthur is barely clinging on to life. He is proven horribly wrong as they promptly get a front row seat to Arthur unleashing the full power of the Destruction godrune and are completely obliterated in the process.
  • There are notably a few times where the Alacryans have some common sense and try to avert this. When Arthur arrives in Xyrus, an Alacryan soldier tells him that none of them want to cross swords with the man who slew Cadell. This does not stop the Alacryan governor from pitting a force of Dicathian Les Collaborateurs against him to get Arthur to give up retaking the city by thinking he would not be willing to spill the blood of his countrymen, which also fails. It pays off in the end, as when Arthur arrives in Etisin, the regent Lyra surrenders on behalf of the remaining Alacryan forces on the continent.
• Morality Chain: As part of the advice he receives from Rinia, Arthur is told to find an anchor and set himself a goal. For Arthur, it is the power to keep his friends and family safe.
  • Arthur’s friends and family in Dicathen, especially Tessia, serve to keep his head in the right place. The desire to not only protect them from harm but to also reunite with them after the end of the war helps drive him forward to survive in both the Relictombs and Alacrya. In particular, his desire to save Tessia from her fate as the vessel for the Legacy serves as a major goal for him after he returns to Dicathen and reconquers it, especially since he had made a marriage promise with her during the war and feels extremely guilty about the harm he had allowed to happen to her and her family.
  • His time in Alacrya exposes him to the fact that the Alacryans are not entirely evil and are just as much victims of the Divine Conflict as the Dicathians are. In particular, the bonds Arthur forges with his students at Central Academy play a major role in him developing this realization, which he specifically cites as the defining factor for this change of perspective when he is properly introduced to Seris's rebellion. When he bargains with Kezess, he asks for the populace of Alacrya to be spared from any potential retaliation.
• Morality Chain Beyond the Grave:
  • The memory of both Sylvia and Sylvie (though she gets better) are what keeps him from going back down the path his past life went and wanting to exterminate all of the asuras for the atrocities they have done onto him and his people. It serves as a reminder to him that the asuras are not entirely evil and it would be wrong for him to assume that they are. After all, exterminating the asuras would make him no better than either Agrona or Kezess themselves. It also makes his arrival into the Hearth a less hostile experience for him, even though the asura who summoned him there was the one who destroyed Elenoir.
  • Even after her death, Rinia’s prophetic advice to him serves as a reminder for him not to relapse into being the vengeful King Grey.
• Motivational Lie: As part of his plan to acquire the final keystone, Arthur intentionally deceives all of his allies by making them think they will be defending his Remote, Yet Vulnerable body, when in fact they will be defending decoy locations. Even though it pains him to lie to his allies and put them in the line of fire, he does so to make them fight harder and in turn trick Agrona and his forces into striking where he is not.
• Mr. Fanservice: Arthur is not only rather handsome, but there are quite a few times where he is shirtless which reveals him to have a rather athletic build.
• My Greatest Failure: The memories of him being unable to prevent the murder of his surrogate mother Olivia Willbeck and Cecilia’s Suicide by Cop during their duel in the King’s Tourney haunt King Grey for the rest of his life. Even in his new life as Arthur, the memories still continue to haunt him. He resolves not to let what happened to the loved ones of his past life happen ever again.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Arthur views his new life as a second chance. While in his past life as King Grey he earned his position at the top through his fighting prowess and leadership, it came at a severe cost to him as he lost his loved ones and started a senseless war out of Revenge Before Reason. To prevent such tragedy from happening again, Arthur vows to become strong enough to prevent what happened to his loved ones in his past life from happening again.
  • Unfortunately for him, Arthur's desire to not repeat what happened in his past life ends up being all for naught as he loses people he held dear to him to Agrona's war such as his father, Sylvie (though she gets better), and the Eraliths (save for Virion and Tessia). Making matters worse is that Agrona had also reincarnated Nico and Cecilia as well and had them both Reforged into a Minion. With the events of his past life coming back to haunt him in his new one, Arthur desires not just to protect his remaining loved ones from the same fate, but to right his own wrongs.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: When it comes to his little sister Eleanor, Arthur is protective of her against not only threats, but also would-be boyfriends. He briefly has an Imagine Spot of her getting with a spoiled young noble that causes him to recoil in horror. Later on, part of the reason he contemplates getting her a bond is because it could also drive away any potential suitors. When he meets her bond, a guardian beast she named Boo, for the first time, he gives the bear his approval when he drives away a boy that had been attempting to flirt with Eleanor.
• Mystical White Hair: Whenever he taps into Sylvia’s beast will, his hair turns white like hers. After Sylvie’s Heroic Sacrifice, his hair becomes permanently white like hers as she had sacrificed her own body to reconstitute his own.
• Nay-Theist: In the Crapsack World of his past life, Grey never believed in the existence of God, and even if there was, said god "wasn’t very merciful or loving, let alone fair" to allow such a world to exist. In his current life, Arthur views the asuras with apprehension at first since he learns Sylvia and Sylvie are among them. Even after he accepts them as allies, he does not worship them as Virion tells him that the asuras are not beings to be worshipped. After learning the truth of how the Divine Conflict started and seeing the asuras for the genocidal Jerkass Gods that they are, Arthur resolves to bring them down.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: In the aftermath of slaying Taci after finally returning to Dicathen, Arthur internally laments how he never got to see some of his friends alive ever again as they ended up as casualties of the asura's rampage, such as Aya, Feyrith, and Albold.
  Arthur: I didn't expect so many goodbyes, so soon after my return.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Despite viewing himself as Wise Beyond Their Years due to his reincarnation and wanting to protect his loved ones by any means necessary, there are a few instances when Arthur wanting to do good for them has led to severe consequences in the future.
  • Wanting to improve technological advancement on Dicathen and to acquire special artifacts for himself and his family, Arthur gives the famed artificer Gideon the blueprints for a steam engine. This is used to power the Dicatheous, an experimental steamship meant to voyage to the recently discovered continent of Alacrya. Unfortunately, what nobody on Dicathen would know is that the Alacryans are under the rule of the Vritra Clan, who seek to invade Dicathen. Either through capturing the Dicatheous or through retrieving the blueprints via their spy network, the Alacryans use Arthur's design to create an armada of steamships for use in transporting their army to Dicathen.
  • Killing Lucas in an especially gruesome way earns him the enmity of his brother Bairon. This proves critical in situations where both need to trust each other, as Bairon instead sought to make Arthur pay without risk of reprisal. The two eventually reconcile after Arthur returns from Alacrya as they had both been put through hell at the end of the war.
  • Arthur gives the beast will of the elderwood guardian to Tessia as a gift. What neither of them knew was that said monster was in fact a failed Vritra experiment. This comes to bite them both at the close of the War Arc, when Agrona reveals that he has control over Tessia's life thanks to said beast will. As such, he blackmails Tessia's parents into letting his forces into the Council Castle. In turn, Tessia wanting to save her parents leads to a catastrophic chain of events. Not only are her parents executed, but the climactic battle that ensues results in Sylvie being forced to perform a Heroic Sacrifice and Arthur being stranded in the Relictombs with his mana core damaged beyond recovery.
  • After returning to Alacrya, Arthur attempts to assassinate Exeges only to find the Sovereign mysteriously dead in his throne room before being forced to fight the Legacy and the remaining Scythes. In the aftermath, Arthur learns that Agrona framed Exeges's death on him and by extension the Indrath Clan in order to rally the populace of Alacrya back to his side and galvanize them into war with Epheotus. Not only that, but as Agrona offers clemency to Seris and her followers, it ends up being the final nail in the coffin for her revolt as they are forced to abandon the Relictombs and seek asylum in Dicathen. Notably, even if Arthur's mission had gone as planned, Agrona would have done the exact same response.
  • Speaking of which, him bringing over Seris and her rebellion to Dicathen ends up being turned against him. When Agrona enacts the final stages of his plan, he possesses Seris and all of her followers and forces them back to his side after making examples of the few who resisted him. It almost leads to Arthur's family being killed when Agrona possesses Caera when she is having dinner with Alice and Eleanor and forces her to kill them, though Eleanor restrains her. However like the above example, even if Arthur did not return to Alacrya to relieve Seris and her followers, Agrona would have still forced them back to his side in the exact same fashion.
• No-Sell: After forming his aether core, mana restraints have no effect on him to everyone's surprise. During his rematch with Cadell in the Victoriad, he negates all of the Scythe's spells like they were nothing. This immunity proves especially handy for him when he returns to Alacrya to relieve Seris's rebellion, as this makes him a Man of Kryptonite to the Legacy given that she has no control over aether.
• Noble Male, Roguish Male: He and Regis exhibit this dynamic. Arthur is uptight and honorable while Regis is snarky and comedic.
• Nom de Guerre: As a Lance, Arthur is known as "Godspell". Later on, his moniker is upgraded to "Godkiller" in light of his slaying of Taci.
• Not So Stoic: Despite Arthur trying to present himself as calm, mature, and level-headed, there few instances where his emotions get the better of him. As Arthur himself puts it:
  Arthur: You can be an all-powerful, immortal tyrant, but in front of your loved ones, the ability to control your emotions eludes you.
  • When he reunites with his family after having been separated from them for four years, Arthur is reduced to tears and repeatedly promising his parents that he was not going to leave them again.
  • Upon finding the body of his father Reynolds following the attack on the Wall, Arthur lets out an anguished Skyward Scream.
• Oblivious to Love: Played With. Arthur isn't indifferent to Tessia's advances, but due to how inexperienced he is in that domain and the mental age gap, he chooses to shelve the issue under "She's too young/It's childish infatuation and it'll pass". When Tessia makes it clear how serious she is, Arthur ultimately gives her an Anguished Declaration of Love. Later in Volume 7, he confesses his feelings for her and they promise to get married after the end of the war.
• One-Man Army: Upon returning to Dicathen after having spent years training in Epheotus, Arthur is able to slaughter a horde of mana beasts all by himself. During the reconquest of Dicathen a year later, he is able to solo entire Alacryan armies with his newfound powers and retake cities all by himself.
• One-Man Industrial Revolution: Heavily Downplayed if not outright Averted. Despite carrying the knowledge from his past life, Arthur eventually has doubts about uplifting Dicathen with any more advanced technology, especially after he gives Gideon the blueprints for a steam engine and wonders if he was right in expediting Dicathen's ability to reach Alacrya. He is proven horribly right when the Alacryans reverse engineer the steam engine and use it to create an armada of steamships meant to transport their forces to Dicathen. Though later on during the Alacryan invasion proper he does give Gideon the blueprints for a train as well.
• Papa Wolf: This is perhaps one of his most defining characteristics. Arthur is very protective of his family, friends, and loved ones, and harming them is what pretty much triggers his Berserk Button. He is especially protective of his Love Interest Tessia and their adoptive daughter Sylvie. He also calls out Seris when he believes she endangered his students Seth and Mayla before realizing she was only trying to figure out how their runes were so strong. However, his desire to protect his loved ones does lead his enemies, especially Agrona, to do just that as a form of Flaw Exploitation.
• Paradox Person: It is revealed at the end of Volume 10 that the only reason why Arthur did not end up being Reforged into a Minion like Nico and Cecilia is because his bond Sylvie, whose soul had been displaced across time and space after her Heroic Sacrifice at the end of Volume 7, ended up being present when Agrona snatched the soul of Arthur’s past life King Grey and intervened by wresting the soul away from Agrona’s grasp so that Grey would be reincarnated into Arthur instead of Agrona’s vessel of choice. Sylvie herself only ended up the way she is because Arthur was the one to raise her for her entire life. As such, Arthur only exists due to a Stable Time Loop that he was indirectly responsible for.
• The Paragon: As one of the Lances, Arthur is supposed to set an example to the people of Dicathen. He does so admirably, moreso than some of the other Lances. He becomes even more of a paragon when he returns to his homeland after the end of the war to successfully liberate it from Alacryan occupation. In his endeavors, Arthur hopes to inspire the people of both Dicathen and Alacrya to not only be better than what they are now, but to take a stand against the Jerkass Gods who have laid waste to the setting in their Divine Conflict.
  Arthur: Dicathen needs not only hope, but strength. We need to empower humans, dwarves, and elves alike so that their only choice isn’t to bow to whatever higher power they see as the lesser evil.
• Parent-Child Team: He and his bond Sylvie form this dynamic, especially once Sylvie assumes both human form and his surname over either of her biological parents. Sure enough, shortly after he resurrects her Sylvie accompanies her adoptive father and his party when they enter the Relictombs to relieve Seris’s rebellion.
• Parental Substitute: He and Tessia are Sylvie’s surrogate parents, though given how Sylvie isn’t able to assume human form until much later on, they treat her more as a pet at first. Once she does, people begin mistaking Sylvie for Arthur and Tessia’s Our Phlebotinum Child and they begin to see her as their daughter.
• Parents Walk In at the Worst Time: In the Webcomic, shortly before their Class Trip Arthur attempts to help Tessia integrate the beast will that he gave her into her mana core. However, the attempt gets derailed by playful teasing between the two of them which leads to Tessia tackling Arthur to the ground. At that moment, Tessia's grandfather Virion walks in on them and remarks that he didn't expect to come across something that he thought was far more intimate. This causes Tessia to realize that she is straddling Arthur in a rather compromising position, causing her to jump off him in embarrassment.
• Person of Mass Destruction: In his current form, Arthur is a borderline demigod able to rout entire armies with ease thanks to his aether powers. On top of all that, his possession of the Destruction godrune allows him to unleash a Fantastic Nuke, which he uses to devastating effect on a military camp in Vechor.
• Poke in the Third Eye: A somewhat literal instance of this trope. When he witnesses Aldir (who has his Eyes Always Shut except for his Third Eye) using the World Eater technique to destroy Elenoir via the Scrying artifact, Aldir is able to sense him observing him. Aldir does not recognize that it is Arthur, but when Seris informs him that Arthur survived, he puts two and two together. This leads to Aldir becoming a Defector from Decadence as he realizes Arthur’s survival could upend the Divine Conflict and, given his own disillusionment with Kezess over forcing him to commit genocide for ultimately nothing, is willing to throw in his lot with Arthur to bring the conflict to an end and overthrow his former master.
• Post-Victory Collapse:
  • After slaying the elderwood guardian, Arthur collapses from the strain of using his beast will. He eventually wakes up to find that Elijah had been tending to both him and Jasmine while they were unconscious.
  • After causing the Alacryans to retreat from Vildorial, Arthur collapses from his injuries. He had just fought off the Wraiths and had unleashed the full power of the Destruction godrune on an Alacryan military facility in Vechor, which leaves him unconscious for a day and a half.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: Using Sylvia's beast will gives him Mystical White Hair like hers.
• Power Incontinence:
  • Due to having awoken his mana core prematurely, Arthur briefly suffers from bouts of searing pain as his young body is not strong enough to handle the power which threatens to destroy his body if he cannot bring it under control. It is only thanks to Virion’s tutelage that Arthur is able to recover.
  • When drawing upon the third phase of Realmheart, it actively starts killing him. He does not realize this and instead feels invincible in that state.
• Power Limiter: Right before he begins attending Xyrus Academy, Arthur approaches the artificer Gideon for a seal that would hide his fire and water attributes in order to hide his identity from Lucas. He does make the most of his situation by using it as an opportunity to improve on the elements that he is weaker in.
• Powered Armor: In Volume 9, Arthur acquires a relic suit of djinn armor powered by aether itself that is far stronger than most armors and enhances his own physical capabilities.
• Pressure Point: Arthur is capable of mana flow rupturing, which allows him to incapacitate a mage by striking certain mana channels in order to prevent their mana from circulating their body.
• Promotion to Parent: He basically becomes his little sister Eleanor's guardian during the War Arc as their parents are away with the Twin Horns.
• Punched Across the Room: His rematch with Nico at the Victoriad sees him send the latter flying across the arena with a single strike.
• Purple Is Powerful: Whenever Arthur uses his aether powers (such as whenever he taps into Sylvia’s beast will), it manifests in the form of purple-colored elements such as fire or electricity. This trope is especially evident following Arthur’s Re-Power, as at that point Arthur has become an aether-wielding demigod and one of the strongest non-asuran mages in the entire setting.
• Rage Against the Heavens: From Volume 8 onward, he learns that the whole reason the Divine Conflict started was that the Indrath Clan, the rulers of Epheotus, committed genocide on the ancient djinn, an atrocity that led to the Vritra’s Start of Darkness as the Indrath exiled them for uncovering the truth. Coupled with the Indrath destroying Elenoir and nearly consigning the elves to extinction along with orchestrating the extermination of his friends and family on Dicathen, and Arthur dedicates himself to making all of the asuras pay for the atrocities they have committed. In wanting to protect his loved ones, Arthur is willing to stand against all of the asuras if that is what it takes to ensure their safety.
  Arthur: If Kezess led his dragons to burn Dicathen tomorrow, I would fight them no matter how hopeless the battle.
• Rags to Royalty: His past life as King Grey is an example of the Hard Way. When he was born, Grey was given up to an orphanage by his biological parents as they did not have the financial stability to raise him. From there, Grey would rise to the top of the social hierarchy and become king through his skill in combat and strength of arms. Along the way, he would defeat many contenders that stood in his way.
• Raised by Rival: That dragon that he has been raising since he was a little boy? Little would he know at the time that she is the only living descendant of the two deities who have made him what he is now and would cause untold amounts of suffering to both him and his loved ones.
• Real Name as an Alias: Variant. In his time living incognito among the Alacryans after the war, Arthur goes by the name of his past self, Grey. He does so in order to hide his true identity as a Dicathian.
• Rebel Leader: Upon returning to Dicathen after the war, Arthur immediately takes command of the resistance from Virion and proceeds to lead them in successfully retaking their homeland from the Alacryans.
• Redeeming Replacement: Combined with Klingon Promotion. When he arrives to retake Etisin, Lyra not only surrenders for the remaining Alacryan forces on the continent, but pronounces him as the new regent. This example is Downplayed as he was already serving as the acting leader of the Dicathians at that point and would have continued to do so after retaking the continent regardless of whether or not Lyra had relinquished her title to him.
• Reincarnate in Another World: The novel begins with King Grey mysteriously dying in his bed, only to be reincarnated as a boy named Arthur Leywin. As it turns out, he was reincarnated by Agrona, who was seeking to harness the power of Grey’s deceased childhood friend Cecilia, the Legacy. To fulfill his goal, Agrona reincarnated both Grey and his other childhood friend Nico to act as anchor points for the Legacy. Grey only avoided the fates of his childhood friends as brainwashed servants of Agrona thanks to the intervention of the temporally-displaced Sylvie, who retrieved his soul from Agrona's grasp.
• Reincarnation-Identifying Trait: In a Webcomic original scene, Arthur and Elijah are sparring in the former’s private training facility when the former knocks out the latter. When Arthur reaches his hand out to his friend to help him get back up, Elijah recognizes the gesture as one Arthur made in his past life complete with him seeing the specter of King Grey appearing behind Arthur. What follows is Elijah immediately being overwhelmed by a string of hateful emotions towards Grey’s apparition. It is at this moment that Elijah, or rather his true personality Nico, recognizes Arthur as the reincarnation of his former childhood friend whom he has grown to despise.
• Reluctant Ruler: Noted to have been this as King Grey. He achieved his lifelong ambition of becoming king, but at the cost of everything else.
• Remote, Yet Vulnerable: As the act of acquiring the fourth keystone would leave his body completely vulnerable for an unknown amount of time until he acquired the insight from it, he secludes himself beneath the djinn sanctuary for protection, on top of fortifying key targets across Dicathen to bait Agrona and his forces into striking where he is not.
• Re-Power: Arthur goes from being a quadra-elemental prodigy to an aether-powered demigod. After barely surviving a losing battle thanks to Sylvie pulling a Heroic Sacrifice to save him from his Heroic RRoD and preserve his body, Arthur ends up alone in the Relictombs with his mana core damaged beyond recognition. He learns Sylvie’s sacrifice had made his body part-asura, which increased his affinity for aether. Through developing an aether core to replace his destroyed mana core and increasing his own understanding of aether in the process, Arthur Came Back Strong as he becomes exponentially more powerful than ever.
• Reunion Vow: After enduring the Trauma Conga Line between Volumes 7 and 8, Arthur vows to bring back both Sylvie (who sacrificed herself to save him at the end of the war) and Tessia (who had been captured and turned into the vessel for the Legacy). So far, he has made good on the first one in that he was able to resurrect her thanks to Aldir's own sacrifice. As for the second one, he is still looking for a way to free her from Cecilia's control.
  Arthur: I'll find you, Tess. I promise...Even if it takes all the aether in the Relictombs, I'll get you out of there, Sylv.
• Rescue Romance: After saving Tessia, she develops an attraction to him which only grows as he spends three years living with her family until he leaves to reunite with his family. Arthur does not reciprocate at first due to knowing that he is mentally much older than her.
• Restrained Revenge:
  • After Trodius’s refusal to drop the Wall on the oncoming horde of mana beasts led to the death of his father Reynolds, Arthur, while justifiably angry out of grief, knows that killing Trodius would be uncalled for at this point. Instead, he strips Trodius of his position and orders him to be imprisoned.
  • When he confronts Nico at the Victoriad, he has every reason to hate Nico as much as the latter hates him. After all, Nico had captured Tessia so that she could be made into the vessel for his dead fiancée Cecilia not only in accordance with Agrona’s plan but also just to spite Arthur for killing Cecilia in their past lives, on top of all the other atrocities he has committed in Agrona’s name as one of his Scythes. However, knowing how Nico used to be his best friend in both his current and his previous lives, Arthur feels that he failed him both times. As such, while he could easily kill Nico with his newfound aether powers, Arthur merely knocks him out in a Single-Stroke Battle and allows him to be taken away.
• Retirony: The day he resigned from his position as king, Grey went to sleep and never woke up again, with him finding himself being reincarnated as the newborn Arthur. Then it is revealed that Agrona had been the one who caused his reincarnation in the first place, meaning that his resignation might have been caused by Agrona slowly weakening his soul before taking it.
• Revenge Before Reason: In his past life, his desire to avenge the death of his adoptive mother led to him starting a war that he would later come to regret due to the Collateral Damage he had caused. Even after his reincarnation, he holds onto this mindset until Sylvia knocks it out of him.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • Thoroughly Averted with Uto. So here is Arthur, having come back from the land of the asuras themselves after undergoing Training from Hell, to challenge Uto, Lance Alea's murderer. So surely the hero will come out on top in a bit of poetic justice, right? No. He instead gets utterly trounced and almost killed along with Sylvie by Uto, who No-Sells anything that he throws at him. It takes the intervention of Scythe Seris, herself a being several orders of magnitude more powerful than Uto, to save his life. A cold reality check that for all his gifts he is still a simple mortal trying to take on what are essentially demigods.
  • Averted again the close of the War Arc when he loses against Cadell, the murderer of his Parental Substitute Sylvia. If he could barely hold his own against a mere Retainer like Uto, then what chance did he have against the strongest of the Scythes and a known asura-killer?
  • Finally Played Straight in the climax of Volume 9 wherein after he Came Back Strong by Re-Powering himself with aether, Arthur ends up crippling Nico and killing Cadell as payback for all the suffering they caused to both him and his loved ones. On top of that, he follows that up by killing Taci, who had been ordered by Kezess to exterminate his loved ones back in Dicathen.

S to Z

• Save the Princess: He ends up having to rescue Tessia quite a lot, which is not helped by the fact that her being his Love Interest means that Tessia frequently gets Targeted to Hurt the Hero by Arthur's enemies as a form of Flaw Exploitation.
  • They first met when Arthur, after having eluded capture by the Vritra thanks to Sylvia’s Heroic Sacrifice, stumbled across a group of slave traders that had taken Tessia captive after she ran away from home. He is able to kill them all before escorting her back home in the hope that the elves would have some means for him to reunite with his family.
  • During their first day of class at Xyrus Academy, Tessia suffers Power Incontinence from the beast will Arthur had given her beforehand, which puts her right in the crossfire of Curtis’s World Howl. Thanks to Sylvie sensing Tessia is in danger, Arthur is forced to ditch his duel with Lucas to save her. However, thanks to having expended most of his mana in his duel with Lucas as well as using his own beast will to close the distance, Arthur can do nothing but shield Tessia from the blast with his own body. Fortunately, both survive, although Arthur is put in the infirmary for a few days.
  • After the Class Trip to Widow’s Crypt, Sylvie once again senses Tessia is in danger. Arthur finds out that her beast will has overtaken her and has to work with Virion to calm her down. He ends up throwing the orb Windsom had given him at her, which succeeds in releasing her from her berserk state. Not only is Tessia able to make a recovery, but in the aftermath Arthur and Virion find out that her mana core had jumped to the silver stage.
  • During the attack on Xyrus Academy, Tessia is incapacitated by the Radicals, with Lucas threatening to desecrate her right in front of Arthur’s face. This ends as poorly as one would expect for Lucas, as Arthur, having been fed up with Lucas eluding punishment for his actions for so long, decides to finish him right there in a truly graphic yet cathartic fashion.
  • At the close of the War Arc, Tessia goes back to the Council Castle on her own to try to rescue her parents in spite of their treason, only to find them executed by the Alacryans. In the process of having to rescue her, Arthur is forced to stay behind to hold off the Alacryan forces. In turn, this leads to his near-death and him ending up in the Relictombs.
  • When Arthur is confronted by both Agrona and the Legacy at the end of the Victoriad, he is about to perform a Mercy Kill on the latter when Tessia suddenly takes over and begs him to save her. He realizes that Tessia is still Fighting from the Inside thanks to the beast will he had given her, which was the only reason why the Legacy's soul had not overwritten hers. With this knowledge in hand, he begins looking for a way to save her from her fate once he returns back to Dicathen.
• Secret-Keeper: Arthur surprisingly finds himself keeping quite a lot of secrets.
  • He and Elijah become mutual keepers for each others' secrets following the botched expedition to the Dire Tombs. Elijah, who witnessed Arthur and Sylvie's true powers, agrees to keep that knowledge secret. In turn, Arthur becomes the only person who knows of Elijah's Mysterious Past.
  • After discovering the dying Lance Alea in Widow’s Crypt, Arthur brings her dog tags back to Director Goodsky as proof of her demise. Other than the Council and the other Lances, Arthur is the only other person who knows that a Lance has been killed at that point, and Goodsky keeps the fact that he was the one who discovered her body secret from the others who are supposed to know.
  • Following the incident with Tessia’s beast will, Arthur asks Virion about how the Lances came to be, to which Virion decides to tell him information that had been classified for only the royal families of Dicathen for generations. He reveals to Arthur that long ago, a deity appeared to the forefathers of the three royal families and gave each of them two artifacts each to empower chosen individuals who would become the first Lances. In turn, these initial Lances would teach those that they deemed capable how to harness mana, which give rise to the first mages on Dicathen. If the truth of the Lances’ power were to come to light, it could lead to civil wars over their artifacts.
  • As Windsom is escorting Arthur to Rinia's abode so he can say his farewells to his family before he leaves to train in Epheotus, the asura tells him why Sylvia was there in Dicathen in the first place, a secret known only to a few members of the Indrath Clan. That secret being that Sylvia, against her father's wishes, had secretly stowed away with the strike force he had sent to assassinate Agrona, and that they all met their end when Agrona was waiting for them with his forces, both true asuras and their half-breed descendants.
  • When Aldir sacrifices himself to allow Arthur to resurrect Sylvie, he bequeaths Arthur his weapon Silverlight as proof of his death and asks him to say that he brought him to justice for his crimes against both Dicathen and Epheotus. The only other individuals to know the truth outside of the Hearth are Sylvie, Regis, and Wren as Arthur is wary of Kezess finding out given that he forbade him from allying with Aldir in their agreement, especially since Kezess had sent his forces to occupy Dicathen in the time they were in the aether realm and the resulting consequences could be disastrous for the Dicathians.
• Semi-Divine: Thanks to Sylvie sacrificing her own body to preserve his own at the close of the War Arc, Arthur has become part-asura.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: During Arthur’s training in Epheotus, Wren fakes a scenario wherein Tessia is seemingly kidnapped by a basilisk. When reviewing Arthur’s performance, Wren assumes Tessia is Arthur’s mate and even goes so far as to ask if the two have consummated their relationship. Naturally, Arthur denies that they are in a relationship, all while visibly blushing with embarrassment.
• Significant Birth Date: His birthday is May 29, which he shares with the novel’s author, TurtleMe.
• Single Line of Descent: After merging with Sylvie's physical body, he has the genes of Agrona, Sylvia, Kezess, and Myre.
• Single-Stroke Battle: His rematch with Nico during the Victoriad ends up being this. After Nico unleashes a flurry of attacks, Arthur nonchalantly knocks out Nico in a single blow with his aether powers, causing Nico to be sent flying across the arena. To add insult to injury, the attack destroyed Nico’s mana core, which is karmic considering the outcome of their last confrontation during the war led to Arthur’s own mana core being damaged beyond recovery.
• Sixth Ranger: Right as the War Arc begins, Virion makes Arthur one of the Lances, replacing the late Alea.
• Space Master: Of the three disciplines of aether known to the Indrath, Myre ascertains that Arthur's affinity is towards the spatium path through the beast will he inherited from her daughter Sylvia. He is able to manipulate space around him whenever he harnesses aether. In his climactic battle with Cadell and Nico at the end of the War Arc, Arthur entering the third phase of his beast will leads to him warping space around him as if he were an outright Reality Warper.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation: Arthur's mastery over the elements allows him to create elemental weapons. This capability is demonstrated during his fight with Jagrette when in order to finish off the Retainer, Arthur creates a spear of ice which he impales her on after having Sylvie take her up into the skies and drop her. However, this trope becomes much more prominent as part of his enhanced aether powers following him developing his aether core, as he is able to manifest weaponry made out of pure aether.
• Stock Light-Novel Hero:
  • Arthur fits the criteria for an Isekai protagonist in that he reincarnates as a child in a fantasy world and becomes a prodigal mage and adventurer. He is a Magic Knight able to control the four classical elements and his power accumulates over the course of the story. To illustrate how quickly his power grows, he unlocked his mana core at a much younger age than usual which grants him a considerable head start compared to others his physical age. He also has a dragon for a familiar and can take on the powers of one, which combined with his magical prowess grants him unique abilities such as being able to manipulate aether. In short, he effectively won the Superpower Lottery in his new life.
  • However, he does play with the trope in a few areas. Rather than having been an Ordinary High-School Student, Otaku, or Salaryman in his past life like most versions of the trope, he used to be a monarch named King Grey and as such him being a Genius Bruiser and Instant Expert even in his youth originates from him drawing on his past experiences on the battlefield and applying the know-how to his new life. While does attract a harem of his own, he shuns every girl who shows interest in him due to being aware of the mental age gap and having been a Celibate Hero in his past life.
  • In addition, in spite of his power Arthur is not an Invincible Hero and suffers his fair share of failures and tragedies courtesy of the Big Bad. After a major Wham Episode, Arthur ends up getting De-powered and thus Brought Down to Normal, which forces him to look for a way to Re-Power himself while fighting to survive in an alien land. He does so through increasing his understanding of and affinity towards aether, and in the process of winning the Superpower Lottery yet again ends up Coming Back Strong in a form that matches if not outright surpasses that of his previous powerset.
• Stoic Woobie: During his time in both the Relictombs and Alacyra, Arthur is forced to hide the emotions he is feeling from the Trauma Conga Line he went through after the end of the war, especially since he is far away from home and in the company of the people who had just conquered his homeland. To the Alacryans who become his associates, he comes off as emotionally withdrawn and reclusive. Even after returning home to Dicathen, Arthur has to put on a front of strength as he has now become the Big Good for the Dicathians.
• Storm of Blades: As part of his enhanced aether powers following his Re-Power, Arthur is able to create multitudes of aetheric swords that he can project against his enemies.
• Strong and Skilled: He combines his maturity, knowledge, and experience from his past life with his unparalleled mastery over mana and later aether in his current one to become the strongest mortal mage in the setting.
• Suggestive Collision: In an original scene in the Webcomic version, Tessia ends up pinning Arthur to the ground after he playfully teases her about how scared she used to be when they first met. It is not until her grandfather Virion walks in on them that she realizes that she is straddling Arthur in a rather compromising position, which causes her to jump off him in embarrassment when it gets pointed out.
• Super-Intelligence: King's Gambit allows Arthur to temporarily split his mind and think several thought processes at the same time.
• Superhuman Transfusion: To save Arthur's life at the close of the War Arc, Sylvie sacrificed her own body to restore him. In the aftermath, Arthur learns that his body had become part-asura, granting him superhuman capabilities and the ability to regenerate injuries.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: After Sylvie’s Heroic Sacrifice, his eyes become permanently gold like hers.
• Superpower Lottery: Arthur wins the lottery, then loses it, and then wins it again.
  • Thanks to retaining his experience from his past life, he awakens his mana core at the age of three, which leads to him become a quadra-elemental mage with control over fire, water, earth, and wind, as well as lightning, ice, and even aether which no one alive but the asuras can wield. He receives the beast will of the dragon Sylvia, which allows him to tap into her powers and assists in his ability to control aether, as well as her daughter Sylvie who acts as his bond. Later on, he visits Epheotus where he receives Training from Hell, furthers his understanding of aether, and receives new weapons. Once he returns to Dicathen for the War Arc, Arthur has become a One-Man Army able to slaughter entire hordes of mana beasts.
  • In Volume 8, Arthur learns that after the climactic battle of the previous volume, his mana core has been damaged beyond recovery. From there, he ends up Re-Powering himself and Came Back Strong. He learns that Sylvie's Heroic Sacrifice has made his body part-asura, develops an aether core which grants him a Swiss-Army Superpower, acquires game-changing spells known as godrunes and a suit of ancient Powered Armor, and awakens the acclorite which manifests as a shapeshifting Guardian Entity named Regis. Thanks to his own insight into aether and the power of his bonds, Arthur is poised to master all three paths of aether, with him wielding spacium, Regis wielding vivum, and Sylvie wielding aevum, which in turn could lead to him mastering the ultimate form of aether, fate.
    • The godrunes themselves deserve special mention as they grant Arthur an array of overpowered abilities. Aroa's Requiem allows him to undo damage to inanimate objects by reversing them back to an earlier state of time, Destruction is an Atomic Superpower Fantastic Nuke, Realmheart allows him to cancel spells, and King's Gambit temporarily grants him a form of Super-Intelligence by allowing his mind to hold multiple thought processes all at once.
• Superpowerful Genetics: Being a descendant of the djinn means Arthur has an affinity for controlling aether. This proves handy when he is trying to Re-Power himself after losing his mana core, which leads to him developing an aether core to replace it. It also allows him to activate many of the djinn relics he finds during his endeavors in the Relictombs as they recognize him as a descendant.
• Swiss-Army Superpower: As aether is nowhere near as limited as mana, he keeps discovering new and inventive ways to use it upon his Re-Power.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Even though Taci caused a considerable amount of casualties during his rampage in the djinn sanctuary - including the deaths of Rinia, Aya, Lenna, Feyrith, and Albold and very nearly killing his mother and sister - Arthur briefly feels remorse over killing him as Taci was little more than a boy (by asuran standards) whom Kezess had brainwashed into being little more than a disposable tool.
• Taking the Bullet:
  • When his family gets ambushed by bandits on the way to Xyrus, Arthur notices one of them about to blast him and his pregnant mother. To protect her and his unborn sibling, Arthur takes the brunt of the blast, which knocks him off into the valley below. He only survives thanks to Sylvia’s intervention.
  • On his first day of school during the mock duel in his Team-Fighting Mechanics I class, Arthur is forced to ditch his duel with Lucas in order to shield Tessia with his own body from Curtis’s World Howl. Although both survive, Arthur ends up in the school infirmary for a few days.
• Technicolor Fire: Whenever he manipulates aether, it manifests in the form of purple flames.
• Technology Uplift: There are a few times when Arthur decides to implement technological innovations from his past life into the world of his current life.
  • When he visits Gideon to acquire artifacts that he needs for himself and his family, he shows the artificer the blueprints for a steam engine which he could use to power the Dicatheous. However, Arthur begins having reservations about giving Gideon any more pieces of technology from his past life as he is afraid of the potential threat it could pose to his homeland. He ends up being proven horribly right as he learns years later that the Alacryans reverse-engineered the Dicatheous to create an armada of steamships to transport their army to Dicathen.
  • Later on during the War Arc proper, he gives Gideon the blueprints for a steam train to aid in the war effort by easily transporting supplies and soldiers to the major cities of Dicathen. The applications of this technology outside of the war are also brought up, as it would allow for the construction of new cities outside of the teleportation gates where the first cities were founded.
  • Played for Laughs when he discusses what he plans to do after the war is over. He tells his mother and sister that he plans to become a potato farmer and invent french fries.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork:
  • During the War Arc, Arthur tended to not see eye to eye with the other Lances as they were "pretty self-absorbed and insufficient" in his own words. In particular, Bairon hated him for killing his brother Lucas. After the end of the war, the Lances are split up with Arthur finding himself marooned in the Relictombs. By the time he returns to Dicathen, the Lances are forced to fight the asura Taci and barely survive. In the aftermath, Arthur makes up with the remaining Lances, Bairon in particular, and they all resolve to be better than who they used to be. Arthur even uses his newfound insight to break the Power Limiters Kezess put on their Artifacts of Power to make them much more stronger.
  • After learning that Kezess sent his forces to occupy Dicathen in the two months he was in the aether realm trying to resurrect Sylvie, Arthur is forced to begrudgingly work alongside them against their common nemeses in Agrona and the Vritra Clan. Not only do the dragons try to turn public opinion in Dicathen against Arthur and make him a Hero with Bad Publicity, but they also prevent him from openly allying with other factions that they are hostile against, namely Seris and Mordain (and in the case of the former he has to convince them to allow Seris and her followers sanctuary).
• Telepathy: How he tends to communicate with Sylvie and later Regis.
• Teleport Spam: God Step allows him to pull this off by teleporting short distances in rapid succession. It even allows him to keep himself in midair.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The Cruel and Unusual Death he deals unto Lucas has him burn off his left arm, then freeze and shatter his right arm, before using gravity magic to crush both of legs followed by his pelvic region, genitals included.
• Time Master: Downplayed. While his aetheric affinity is towards spatium, Arthur demonstrates a limited affinity towards aevum. Using the first phase of Sylvia's beast will allows him to briefly stop time, and he infers that he is only able to use that ability because it was already embedded into the will itself rather than through his own personal insight and training.
• Tragic Keepsake: After Wren presents Arthur with the broken shards of Dawn's Ballad, Arthur elects to leave the weapon in its shattered state as a symbolic reminder of his own failings.
• Training from Hell: During his time in Epheotus, Arthur undergoes an austere training regimen under the tutelages of Kordri, Myre, and Wren. His training with Kordri deserves special mention as thanks to using the aether orb to rapidly heal his wounds, Arthur’s sparring with Kordri results in him being killed and resurrected over and over again.
• Tranquil Fury: When Lucas gloats about how he will desecrate Tessia to his face, Arthur ignores him so that he can tend to Tessia. He then tells Lucas that he has been willing to overlook Lucas’s actions for so long and had deemed him beneath him, but that enough is enough and that Lucas had finally incurred his wrath. What follows is Arthur unleashing his full array of powers as he subjects Lucas to a Cruel and Unusual Death. During the ensuing ordeal, Arthur remains completely calm as he slowly tortures Lucas to death.
  Arthur: Lucas. I thought you as nothing more than a mere wasp I deemed unnecessary to kill. But if that wasp chose to rear its stinger...even the holiest of saints would swat it down.
• Trauma Conga Line:
  • Volume 7. First, his father Reynolds is killed. Then, the Council Castle falls and he is forced to face Cadell, Sylvia's killer. Next he learns that the beast will he had given to Tessia gave Agrona control over her life, which let him blackmail her parents into letting his forces into the castle. Then Tessia tries to rescue her parents, only to discover that both they and the Glayders have been executed. In the ensuing battle Elijah returns, who reveals to Arthur that he is in fact Nico Sever, his Evil Former Friend from his past life. Arthur and Sylvie are forced to hold back Cadell, Nico, and the Alacryan army. In the process, Arthur ends up in a Heroic RRoD and only through Sylvie's Heroic Sacrifice is he saved from either dying or being captured.
  • Volume 8. In the aftermath, Arthur ended up in the Relictombs, a dimension completely alien to him with no apparent way out. He finds out thanks to the second message Sylvia left for him the truth about the war - that Kezess and the Indrath Clan had committed genocide on the djinn which led to Agrona and the Vritra Clan's Start of Darkness and thus the war itself. He also finds out that his mana core was damaged beyond recovery, and he is forced to go incognito among a group of Alacryans. Finally, he witnesses Tessia getting captured when she returns to Elenoir and turned into the vessel for the Legacy, followed by Aldir completely annihilating Elenoir using the World Eater technique.
• Trojan Prisoner: While on a mission to his birthplace of Ashber during the war, Arthur and his fellow Lances Olfred and Mica are forced to disguise themselves. Their disguise has Arthur and Mica pose as Olfred’s slaves while they investigate a slave ring for signs of Alacryan activity.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Given his mental age, it is no surprise he ends up raising himself, even awakening his mana core at the age of three when that would normally happen a few years later. Not only does he help his family fend off an ambush by bandits, but after being separated from them in the wake of said ambush he ends up killing a few slave traders who had kidnapped an elven girl. A few characters throughout the story note that Arthur is surprisingly mature for his age or notice that his fighting style seems to evoke that of a battle-hardened warrior rather than a child learning how to fight for the first time.
• Understanding Boyfriend: He tends to comfort Tessia whenever she gets emotional, especially whenever she exhibits Anger Born of Worry over his well-being. As he puts it himself, he could never bring himself to despise her.
  Tessia: I th-hought you h-hated me.
  Arthur: Even if there are times when I get mad at you, I would never hate you, Tess.
• Unique Protagonist Asset: As part of winning the Superpower Lottery, Arthur gets a lot of exclusive powers for himself. He is the only mortal mage in the setting with the ability to manipulate all four elements (at least until the introduction of the Legacy) and the beast will of a Physical God. Even though he gets De-powered at the end of Volume 7, he continues to get new exclusive powers. He replaces his shattered mana core with an aether core (the first and only one of its kind in existence), acquires unique spells known as godrunes that only he can use due to his insight into aether, awakens the acclorite that Wren gave him which manifests as a Shapeshifter Weapon Guardian Entity named Regis, and acquires a suit of djinn Powered Armor.
• Uniqueness Value: Arthur being the sole mortal quadra-elemental mage and his possession of the beast will of a member of the Indrath Clan makes him already a high-profile individual in the setting, with his unique capabilities earning him the attention of the rulers of Dicathen and the asuras themselves. He becomes even more invaluable after his Re-Power as an aether-wielding demigod. Not only do both sides of the Divine Conflict covet his knowledge of aether which prevents them from immediately disposing of him despite his opposition towards them, but the other forces that do oppose them start to rally around him as the de facto Big Good given his remarkable powers and feats.
• Unwanted Harem: Over the course of the story, Arthur attracts the attention of multiple female characters such as Tessia, Jasmine^note Although hers is more of a Big Sister Instinct, Lilia, Kathyln, Emily, and Caera. He tends not to reciprocate any of their feelings due to the mental age gap.
• Villain Killer: As a soldier in both his past life and his current one, Arthur is no stranger to killing people, especially if they threaten his loved ones. His slayings of Lucas, Jagrette, Cadell, Taci, and Viessa can attest to that, on top of also slaying entire squads of Wraiths. He is also willing to slaughter the soldiers of several Dicathian noble houses that had become Les Collaborateurs to the Alacryans when the Alacryan governor throws them at him to get him to give up retaking the city.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Or in this case boyfriend. Lucas learned this at the cost of his life.
• Virtuous Character Copy: To Rudeus Greyrat. There are many similarities between them^{For example}Both are adult men who died only to Reincarnate in Another World to a family that consists of a loving healer mother, martial father who dies later on, and Little Sister Heroine, first demonstrated their magical prowess at a young age by destroying part of their house, were separated from their families at due to a tragic accident only to later reunite with them, became an extremely talented mage and adventurer and later attend a Magical Academy, own a supernatural Canine Companion, have a suit of Powered Armor, are brought into contact with enigmatic deities who later turn out to be their enemies, encounter people from their past lives, attract the attention of several different Love Interests including a Childhood Friend Rescue Romance with a silver-haired elf, and discover their reincarnations have made them a Paradox Person, but the main difference is their treatment of women and how they handle their maturity in spite of their apparent age. Rudeus is infamous for being a serial pervert as in his past life he was a Hikikomori whose only knowledge of how to interact with women came from playing H-games, and as such he repeatedly displays sexual behavior even in his infancy until he undergoes Character Development. Arthur on the other hand acts far more maturely than Rudeus as in his past life he rose from street orphan to king, and spurns most girls as he is aware of the mental age gap (on top of having been a mostly Celibate Hero in his past life with the one woman he did harbor feelings for winding up committing Suicide by Cop in a duel against him).
  • A good situation that demonstrates their differences is how they handle being kissed by their childhood friend. Rudeus acts like a regular teenager without considering the mental age gap (on top having previously consented to another of his Love Interests when she wanted to have sex with him years ago without considering the dubious moral implications). In contrast, Arthur is shown to have a brief moral crisis in the aftermath due to said mental age gap, which he follows up on by telling her that they should wait until they are older before they resume their relationship.
  • That being said, Arthur does play around with this trope in that he engages in a few actions that Rudeus would balk at. While Rudeus has a Thou Shall Not Kill code regarding sapient beings, Arthur has no such qualms, especially if they harm his friends and family. Tellingly, Arthur’s past life saw him declaring war on a foreign nation in retribution for the murder of his surrogate mother, an action he comes to regret in his current one due to the Collateral Damage he caused in pursuit of his vendetta.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Has this dynamic with Elijah. Which is tellingly the same when they were Grey and Nico.
• Warrior King: His past life was that of a king in a dystopian post-apocalyptic world torn apart by war. In that life, he was an unparalleled warrior who led armies into battle and resolved disputes through dueling representatives from other nations.
  Arthur: In my previous life...I was a king. I led armies, out-dueled representatives from countries all over the world.
• Was It All a Lie?: After learning of Elijah's true identity as his Evil Former Friend Nico, Arthur feels this way about their friendship as he comes to grips with the fact that his best friend in this life had never really existed and was only a creation of Agrona's mind.
• Watching Troy Burn: Thanks to the Scrying artifact, Arthur can do nothing but watch the climax of Volume 8 unfold as he witnesses Tessia having already been turned into the Legacy's vessel and Aldir destroying Elenoir in a futile bid to kill her.
• We Used to Be Friends: With Nico/Elijah and Cecilia. They used to be childhood friends in their past lives until Grey was manipulated into dueling Cecilia during the King’s Tourney and she took the opportunity to commit Suicide by Cop. This caused Nico, who did not know any better, to swear vengeance against his former friend. If that was not bad enough, Agrona, who sought Cecilia’s power as the Legacy, reincarnated the three of them to serve him. While Grey managed to avoid the Mind Rape and False Memories his friends were subjected to thanks to the temporally-displaced Sylvie’s intervention, he still has to contend with the fact that Agrona had them both Reforged into a Minion and twisted their hatred of him against him.
  Nico: I was your best...friend, and the one whose fiancée you killed in front of me.
  Arthur: Nico...You look like garbage, old friend.
• Weak, but Skilled: In his past life, he had low power but practiced his skills. In this world, he is Strong and Skilled thanks to retaining his maturity and intelligence, which allows him to awaken much earlier than normal mages.
• Why Won't You Die?: After his Re-Power, Arthur becomes capable of surviving even the most grievous wounds so long as he has some aether stored.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Due to maintaining his maturity from his past life, Arthur is noted to act far more intelligently than most kids his age. He is always polite and respectful to everyone around. In his interactions with Gideon, the smartest artificer in Dicathen, he manages to amaze the artificer by showing him the blueprints for a steam engine for use in powering the Dicatheous. Many characters around him note how Arthur is an anomaly given how worldly he acts on top of his unprecedented talents.
• Workout Fanservice: During his time training under Wren, the asura has Arthur strip himself of all clothing in order to better analyze his movements. In the process, Arthur ends up showing off his rather developed and athletic physique.
• World-Healing Wave: Aroa’s Requiem allows Arthur to reverse the physical damage done onto the target of his choosing by using aether to bring the object back to a certain state in time. Sadly he cannot use it to resurrect people, as when he reconstructs the djinn sanctuary after his fight with Taci he is unable to resurrect the lives taken by the asura during his rampage.
• Would Hit a Girl: Gender Is No Object in Arthur’s eyes, after all. When he stumbles across a pair of human students writing some racist graffiti on one of his nightly patrols as part of the Disciplinary Committee, the female student asks him if he would hit her. Arthur replies that he is an adherent of gender equality and so promptly subdues her. Not to mention he has killed several female villains such as Jagrette and Viessa.
• Wowing Cthulhu: Despite viewing the asuras as his enemies after learning the truth of how the Divine Conflict started, Arthur begins to impress a few of them thanks to his own feats and reputation from that point onward. When he meets Veruhn, the latter gives him a set of Tears of the Mother pearls as a gift to him and his family. Arthur learns that shortly afterward from Mordain that Veruhn very rarely gives out these artifacts given the tragic nature of their creation and their ability to save lives, which says a lot about how highly Veruhn must view Arthur. After using one of the pearls to save Chul's life, Mordain is impressed by Arthur's desire to save the life of someone he had barely gotten to know (on top of having sent off Chul with Arthur to get to know him better in the first place) and deems him worthy of earning the third keystone.
• Wrecked Weapon: During the war, his sword Dawn’s Ballad gets broken twice. The first time occurs when he fights Uto, the second time occurs at the end of the war with Arthur being forced to discard it for good. Though later on Wren presents him with the fragments of the weapon, Arthur elects not to repair it as he intends to keep it in its shattered state as a Tragic Keepsake.
• Year Outside, Hour Inside: At the start of Volume 11 when Arthur returns from the aether realm with Sylvie, he learns from Chul that two months had passed since he entered the aether realm to resurrect Sylvie. Making matters worse, he learns in the meantime that Kezess had sent down his forces to occupy Dicathen under the pretext of protection against Alacrya.
• Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning: His aether powers have also manifested in the form of purple lightning.
• Yin-Yang Bomb:
  • Arthur and his family are descended from the long-extinct djinn race. Then thanks to Sylvie’s Heroic Sacrifice to preserve his body, Arthur becomes part-asura, specifically dragon and basilisk considering Sylvie’s own Warring Natures as the descendant of both the Indrath and Vritra Clans respectively. The "Yin Yang" part is that the Indrath committed genocide upon the djinn out of jealousy for the latter's ability to control aether, which the former believed was exclusively theirs to control. This is on top of the atrocities both clans have committed upon Arthur’s homeland of Dicathen in the midst of their Divine Conflict.
  • Two of Arthur's godrunes, Destruction and Aroa's Requiem, have contrasting powers. The former is an Atomic Superpower Fantastic Nuke, and the latter is a World-Healing Wave.
• Yin-Yang Clash: Invoked by Agrona. Arthur has dominion over aether, Cecilia has dominion over mana, and Agrona intentionally pits them both against each other so that the clash between the opposing forces will unveil the true nature of power of the world for him to control.
• You Are Too Late:
  • By the time he arrives to Xyrus Academy at the end of Volume 4, not only have the Radicals caused a considerable amount of casualties, but Elijah has been captured and taken to Alacrya. Lucas even gloats about it to his face just before Arthur finishes him off.
  • Due to him being stuck in the aether realm for two months while trying to resurrect Sylvie between Volumes 10 and 11, by the time Caera is able to bring him over to relieve Seris's rebellion, it is beyond saving. In the two month interval, Agrona had already hunted down most of her supporters and her supplies had run thin. After the botched mission to Nirmala wherein Agrona was able to sway public opinion in Alacrya against Arthur and his allies, Seris and her supporters are forced to abandon the Relictombs entirely and seek asylum in Dicathen.
• You Killed My Father:
  • One of the most pivotal moments of Arthur’s past life was when he returned home to the orphanage one day to find his surrogate mother Olivia Willbeck murdered by agents of a foreign nation. Upon becoming king, Grey declared war on the nation responsible for her death, leading to the deaths of thousands in the pursuit of his vengeance.
  • A Restrained Revenge example occurs when Trodius’s General Failure tactics get Arthur’s father Reynolds killed. Arthur immediately strips Trodius of his position and title and orders him to be imprisoned.
  • When he is confronted by Cadell at the close of the war during the attack on the Council Castle, Arthur’s childhood trauma of witnessing him kill Sylvia resurfaces which compounds his current state of dealing with the fact he lost the war. He finally gets his chance to avenge Sylvia at the Victoriad when he challenges Cadell and slays him.
• Younger Than They Look: He is an A-class adventurer, orange core mage, and ace swordsman by the age of 12, but thanks to the Cool Mask he wears it is hard for those around him to discern his true age. After becoming part-asura, he appears to be at the beginning of his 20s, but is only 16 years old.
  Virion: Sometimes, when it's been awhile since I've seen you, I almost expect to find that sixteen-year-old boy waiting for me. Then I see this hair, these eyes, this face, and wonder if it can really be you.

Regis (Unmarked Spoilers for Volume 8 Onward)

Regis

Debut: Volume 8 (Novel)

"Behold, master. I – Regis, the mighty weapon gifted to you by the asuras so long ago – have finally manifested in all my glory! *Sigh* Honestly, I wish you’d have been conscious for it. It was pretty damn impressive."

During Arthur’s training on Epheotus, the asuran artificer Wren Kain IV embedded into Arthur’s hand a unique weapon that he called an acclorite. Wren promised Arthur that it would be the ideal weapon for him as it would mold itself to match his fighting style, but with the caveat that it would only awaken within a year at the earliest. After Arthur finds himself stranded in the Relictombs in the aftermath of the war, the acclorite finally awakens, manifesting as a spectral wolf called Regis.

---

• Barrier Maiden: In Volume 11, Regis takes Seris's place in maintaining the shield in the Relictombs. It is only temporary as Seris eventually withdraws her forces from the Relictombs to seek asylum in Dicathen, freeing up Regis.
• Beast of Battle: Regis is capable of turning himself into a far larger and monstrous form that allows Arthur to ride him into battle.
• Bioweapon Beast: An unorthodox example. He originated as an acclorite, a unique gem synthesized with the essence of dragons to be an Evolving Weapon for Arthur, and when he did manifest he took the form of a wolf. Though Wren admits to Arthur that he himself would have no idea how the acclorite would manifest, and is taken by surprise to see how Regis turned out.
• Breath Weapon: Is able to breath out flames of pure Destruction.
• Canine Companion: His default form is that of a wolf and he accompanies Arthur from his introduction in Volume 8 onward.
• Canis Major: He can turn into a monstrously sized wolf.
• Cartoony Tail: In his few visual depictions so far, Regis's tail is not only overly bushy, but is also disproportionately long for a wolf's.
• Contrasting Replacement Character: To Sylvie as a companion of asuran origin who is bonded to Arthur, replacing her following her Heroic Sacrifice at the end of Volume 7. Sylvie used to be innocent and childlike but during the War Arc became more serious as developed concern for her bond's well-being. Regis on the other hand tends to tick off his bond with his constant snarky remarks and humor. Following Sylvie's resurrection, the two coexist as Foils to one another as they form a Freudian Trio with Arthur. Not to mention, while both are capable of shapeshifting, Sylvie has assumed a much wider range of forms due to being a dragon while most of Regis's forms are variants of his default wolf form.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Regis appears as a spectral black wolf with red eyes and the horns of the Vritra. However, in spite of his terrifying appearance, Regis is not only one of the good guys and is loyal to Arthur, but he is actually rather comical in demeanor.
• Dual Age Modes: Normally he resembles a massive wolf, but when low on aether his form regresses to that of a puppy.
• Element No. 5: Regis is able to draw power from aether just like Arthur.
• Evolving Weapon: Wren created Regis with the intent of him being able to evolve to match Arthur's fighting style, and when first implanting the acclorite that would become him into Arthur, he informs him that every moment, action, thought, and change in his body would affect how it would eventually manifest. As such, Regis is able to assimilate various objects to become more powerful and grow in tandem with his master.
• Expy: Given the novel's inspiration from Mushoku Tensei, Regis is analogous to Leo the Sacred Beast, as both are oversized supernatural Canine Companions whom the protagonist acquires later on in their journey.
• Face of a Thug: Despite normally resembling a monstrous wolf, Regis's personality is in fact that of a snarky and wisecracking rogue who loves to tick off his master.
• Facial Markings: He has distinct bright purple markings on his eyes and forehead.
• Fantastic Nuke: He holds the Destruction godrune for Arthur.
• Foil: To Sylvie. Both are of asuran origin and are bonded to Arthur, but while Sylvie is serious (though she used to be more innocent prior to the Trauma Conga Line), Regis is snarky and comedic. Sylvie acts as Arthur's Morality Pet and encourages his compassionate side, while Regis reinforces his serious side including his strengths but also his worst aspects.
• Forged by the Gods: He is a Living Weapon made by an asuran artificer.
• Freudian Trio: After Sylvie's resurrection at the end of Volume 10, he forms this dynamic with Arthur and Sylvie. Regis is The Id, Sylvie is The Superego, and Arthur is The Ego.
• The Gadfly: Regis loves to make snarky remarks that tick people off.
• The Genie Knows Jack Nicholson: Because of his telepathic bond with Arthur, Regis is aware of his master's Past-Life Memories, and so he frequently likes to reference popular culture from Earth.
• Giant Flyer: In Destruction form, Regis grows massive wings that allow him to soar across the battlefield.
• Giver of Lame Names: Prone to delivering some rather humorous if not outright embarrassing names as part of his personality. Some of these names include "Princess"^note Arthur, "The Orb of Long-Ranged Stalking"^note The relic that allows Arthur to observe distant events, and "The Horny Trio"^note The Power Trio formed between himself, Arthur, and Caera, which he comes up with after seeing the horns on Arthur's djinn armor.
• Guardian Entity: As the manifestation of the acclorite Wren had embedded onto Arthur, Regis is bound to Arthur and so his master can summon him as if he were a Stand or Persona. Uniquely, Regis has more autonomy compared to similar examples of this trope in that he is not completely bound to Arthur's person and Arthur can temporarily release him if he chooses; he leaves him behind whenever he leaves for Epheotus to have an audience with Kezess, and after joining up with Seris's rebellion has him take her place in powering the shield by having him inhabit Orlaeth's skull.
• Healing Factor: Like Arthur, Regis is able to heal any damage he sustains by using aether.
• Living Weapon: All asuran weapons are Empathic Weapons by default, but Regis takes it a step further in that rather than being an inanimate weapon with a mind and will of his own, he manifests as a spectral wolf.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Despite being left to guard Oludari following Arthur taking the Sovereign captive, Regis was not allowed to be present whenever Windsom and Charon were interrogating him in Arthur's absence. Through the use of King's Gambit, Arthur infers that it was to allow the dragons to cut a deal with Oludari wherein the Sovereign would give them exclusive information while keeping Arthur in the dark.
• The Nicknamer: He is fond of giving out some rather Embarrassing Nicknames, much to Arthur's chagrin.
• Noble Male, Roguish Male: He and Arthur exhibit this dynamic. Arthur is uptight and honorable while Regis is snarky and comedic.
• Noble Wolf: He takes the form of a monstrous wolf, but is one of the good guys.
• Precious Puppy: When low on aether, Regis is forced to assume a smaller form that resembles a puppy.
• Psychometry: He assimilates Uto's horns, which allows him to view the late Retainer's memories. In turn, Arthur is able view said memories through their telepathic bond.
• Purple Is Powerful: Regis is a powerful asuran weapon who like his master is able to harness aether which manifests in the form of purple flames.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Regis has searing red eyes that lack pupils.
• Sapient Pet: In a sense, Regis is Arthur's sapient Canine Companion. However, just like Sylvie before him, Arthur sees Regis as more than just a pet and recognizes his personhood.
• Sapient Steed: Not only can he serve as Arthur's mount when in his Destruction form, but Regis is himself sapient due to his nature as a Living Weapon.
• Secret-Keeper: Like Sylvie before him, Regis's telepathic bond with Arthur has made him privy to all of his master's secrets, in particular his deepest ones.
• Shapeshifter Weapon: Regis can morph into a variety of forms, mostly variants of his default wolf form.
• Shipper on Deck: He tends to tease Arthur about the various women who are into him, even jokingly calling Tessia his "waifu".
• Single Line of Descent: In a sense. The acclorite that would become Regis was synthesized with the feather Sylvia gave Arthur and a scale from Sylvie, which are "both indispensable components of what makes [Arthur] who [he is]" due to his preestablished connections with both of them. Meaning Regis is derived from Arthur, Sylvia, and Sylvie. However, he is also derived from Uto as the acclorite absorbed the mana from the Retainer's severed horns.
• Super Prototype: Ideally, Wren would have preferred to have spent years if not decades analyzing how Arthur fought before creating a weapon that was perfectly suited for him, but with the unprecedented rate that the war was progressing, he opted to instead give Arthur the acclorite as a gamble, as it would take in every variable and factor that Arthur would face during the war before eventually manifesting. Suffice to say, Wren's gamble works, as Regis ends up evolving with Arthur as the latter Re-Powers himself with aether, in the process becoming an extremely powerful Living Weapon.
• Technicolor Fire: Given his ability to harness aether, Regis is frequently shrouded in purple flames.
• Telepathy: He communicates with Arthur in this manner. Later on after Sylvie's resurrection, Regis is able to communicate with her in the same fashion.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: He first manifests during Arthur's Darkest Hour, wherein he has been stranded in an alien land and forced to contend with the loss of the war, the sins of his past life being brought back to haunt him, and the Heroic Sacrifice of his bond (and this is before he finds out the truth of how the war started and that his mana core has been damaged beyond recovery).
• Undying Loyalty: To Arthur as he is bonded to him.
• Unique Protagonist Asset: Is himself one of Arthur's unique assets, due to being an experimental asuran weapon that was made exclusively for him.
• Wreathed in Flames: His ability to manipulate aether means Regis is often seen engulfed in its signature purple flames, as seen in the above image.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: Of the three disciplines of aether known to the Indrath, Regis specializes in the vivum path. This grants him the capacity for both creation and destruction, as he is capable of both healing others and unleashing pure destructive energy.

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