Chapter 11.5: The Captains
I want to introduce you guys to my OC since they play a crucial role in the whole story. They are the captains in the Grey Numbers Corps. And I like them, I'm having fun creating such characters. Since they would get some more screen time in the future, I guess it's not a bad idea to formally introduce them to you. So here we go.
Ophelia
Sex: Female
Age: 19
Height: 172cm
Hair color: Black
Background: Ophelia was born in the family of a blacksmith. She's the youngest of four children. She likes to watch her father's work when they have a blacksmith store in their house. The whole family moved to Tempest after the Tempest Founding Festival. She finds it interesting that such a piece of iron could be transformed into useful tools.
Starting with making her own knife to help with her mother's cooking, she became fully drawn into it after her mother praised the effectiveness of her new knife.
She initially wanted to follow in her father's footsteps, but during her lifetime at school, she discovered that blacksmithing wasn't the only work that transformed raw materials into something more useful.
She learned to brew potions, make simple medicines, and woodcraft. However, one thing that caught her interest more was machinery.
She was mesmerized by the unity of what seemed to be a bunch of simple-shaped metal into a whole working object. She studied golems, cameras, projectors, or even as simple as a flushed toilet.
However, things took a turn when her friends decided to try enrolling in the military. As someone who always wanted to have a companion, she didn't want to lose her relationship with her friends and decided to join as a cadet.
Luckily, during that time, Tempest was on a path to modernize some of its military sector.
She immediately found her place in military engineering. She immediately excelled in spirit engineering and war machines. Starting from making a simple blueprint of a "mechanized mini catapult", and then continuing into one of the first engineers who tried to reverse-engineer the Magic Tanks from the Eastern Empire.
She has a natural talent for understanding a mechanical system, it was also supported by her unending experience working with machines.
She became the brightest cadet in terms of engineering and was immediately accepted as a combat engineer after the training was finished.
Personality: Aside from her ingenuity in machinery and engineering, she is pretty much a normal girl. She still likes to spend her time with her friends by going shopping or just hanging out in restaurants and café.
You can still find her having love talks with her friends, and sometimes she would shyly try to make a relationship with someone she's interested in.
She always needs some sort of validation about her work, and cannot live without any sort of companion. It's not like she was spoiled, it's just her part of personality.
She can work alone, but she prefers to have a team.
With such a personality, she can be described as pretty much outgoing and doesn't mind with new people. But she can still make a decent gap between a friend and a work colleague.
Hobby: Playing origami.
Trivia: She had just been promoted as a captain only 1 month prior before the Gate appeared near the Ameld River.
Nien
Sex: Male
Age: 23
Height: 183cm
Hair Color: Black
Background: Nien was an adopted child from a Knight family somewhere in the Western Countries. His biological parents have already passed away due to the harsh environment and poverty.
However, during his time in an orphanage, he showed a great amount of discipline and was well-behaved. He would give all he had for any task given to him. This trait somehow piqued the interest of one of the servants from a small knighthood family in the region. This led to his adoption by the family when he was turning 6 years old.
Raised in the family of a knight, he received a good education and training from the family. He technically becomes the second son of two children. His adoptive parents gave him a strict and harsh education, but they still give him enough attention as natural as a relationship between a parent and a child.
His stepbrother was prepared to inherit the family, leaving him as a spare.
His father thought it was kind of a waste to just leave him as a spare, so he granted him the freedom to choose his future as long as it's not tarnishing the family's name.
Nien spend his early teenage by becoming an adventurer. Thanks to his strictness and great discipline, he manage to rise into a C-plus rank adventurer. His life turned around during the war between the Jura Tempest Federation and the Eastern Empire.
Already admiring the charm of Hero Masayuki, he decided to join the Volunteer Corps. Although his combat ability didn't help much during the war, his attitude was well-praised even by the Tempest's officials.
From there, he finds it interesting to join the military unit from Tempest.
His parents support his interest by saying it would be an honor to make a name for himself in the monster nation. Perhaps, by becoming a military soldier there, his family's fame could rise to some extent.
And therefore, he makes a decision to become a citizen of Tempest without discarding his family name. He then started to enlist himself into the military.
His overall trait managed to impress the trainer. He would always become "the last man standing" in every course. Although he's not the best trainee, his unwavering determination to give his all has become his main charm.
No matter how harsh the training, he would always be the one who confronted it with a straight face. And no matter how often he failed, he would always come back again and again.
He may not be the brightest in terms of physical strength or intelligence quotients, but his relentless effort and the attitude to never back down to the last minute made him earn huge respect among the trainers.
In the end, after a series of harsh training, he was trusted to become a Captain, not long after his graduation.
Personality: He's pretty much a stoic man, with little talk and expressions. He's a very serious man who sometimes couldn't differentiate between a joke and a serious matter.
He's the type who would follow the rule no matter how odd or harsh it is. If you ask him to come by in 15 minutes, he will arrive in 15 minutes, not earlier or later.
Sometimes people find him innocent as he never even had an interest in romance, or even spent some of his free time to drink in a bar. You would mostly find himself just doing some menial things such as cleaning his room or doing maintenance to his weapons in his free time.
Little was known about how he found those things as fun activities.
His friends sometimes made fun of him by sharing some vulgar manga or "accidentally" brought him to… let's say, "fun-with-girls" places. But no matter how much they put in an effort, his expressions would stay flat and didn't stutter. Some rumors even said that he's impotent.
Nevertheless, he still has a caring side. He didn't like to spend much time with his friends, but he would help them even with no benefit to him. He would lend you money even with the knowledge that you probably wouldn't pay it back in a short time.
He cherishes his parents and family, and to some extent, he would do it so with his friends.
Hobby: None
Trivia: Because of his traits, his colleagues would refer to him by the title of "The Wall".
Rudiger
Age: 25
Sex: Male
Height: 193cm
Hair Color: Crimson Red
Background: Rudiger was born in the rural area of Blumund Kingdom. His father likes to hunt, while his mother was a former nun at a nearby Holy Church. Sadly, she had passed away when giving birth to his third sibling.
Being the first child, Rudiger has to help his father to make ends meet for the whole family. Luckily, he inherits his father's outgoing personality, and it leads him to love a challenge.
His father works as an adventurer. That leaves him as the man of the family for most days since his father's work would force him to leave the household for days. But thankfully, the age gap between him and his sister doesn't that far so they make a good team to run the household.
Rudiger mostly spent his time doing manual labor in the house such as collecting water, chopping wood, plowing his little fields, or sometimes hunting some animals for food.
He has a lot of friends and when his work in the household is finished, he spends his time playing with them.
Being a child who had to run the household most time he treasured every moment he had with his childhood friends. They would play a lot of dangerous games such as swimming in a strong current, jumping to a river from high ground, climbing the highest tree, or even doing silly contests such as finding out who could make the longest pee.
As the time he became a teenager, his father realized he had spent too much time outdoors. So he wants to make amends by reducing his working time and spending more time at home.
Sadly, however, his decision made the monetary situation get worse.
Rudiger and his sister didn't want to stay doing nothing so they decided to look for jobs. Besides, they still have the youngest brother who only turned 4 at that time. They need to support him by any means, while still respecting their father's decision to spend time more at home.
The siblings found a promising job in Tempest. Rudiger found a job as a security force while his sister found a vacant job as a waitress in one of the restaurants.
Not wanting to spend a lot of time to back-and-forth between Blumund and Tempest, they decided to bring along the whole family to Tempest.
After spending some time becoming a security guard, Rudiger found a chance to enlist in a military force. And with his above-average physical strength and easy to make a bond with his comrades, Rudiger rose into a Captain in Grey Numbers Corps.
Personality: Rudiger is almost like the antithesis of Nien. He was very much an outgoing person, so much so he could be pretty annoying for someone who was still new to him.
Most of his traits are inherited from his father. His father was successfully charming his mother who was a nun at that time. Albeit there is no rule which banned a nun from marrying, for a devout believer of Luminism it was pretty difficult to make a relationship.
Generally, he has a good-looking face, but he doesn't care too much about it. Since his priority was having fun as much as possible, the intricacy of romance paid little interest in him.
Because of his time with his childhood friends, Rudiger loves anything that is dangerous and challenging. He was pretty much addicted to activities that could pump a massive adrenaline in his body.
Many of his friends and even his own family had little hope about his brain capability. But surprisingly, he has a decent functional brain.
Although not as good as his sister, he pretty much inherited some of his mother's cleverness. That is why he could do some advanced math, and a little bit of engineering.
That is why he could achieve his position as Captain of the Artillery Unit in Grey Numbers Corps.
Hobbies: Anything that dangerous.
Trivia: Aside from pushing his adrenaline, he likes to drink alcohol in his free time.
Zeno
Age: 34
Sex: Male
Height: 184cm
Hair Color: White
Background: Zeno is surprisingly a former Crusader. He even participated during the attack on Tempest led by Captain Lennart. He joined the Crusaders when he was in late teenager, starting from the ranks of Templar Knights in Ingracia.
He resigned from a Crusader not long after the Holy Empire Ruberios started to make a diplomatic relation with Tempest.
He wasn't particularly disappointed with the Holy Church, but he found it way too fishy why Ruberios suddenly changed its stance toward monsters. He even joined the ranks of Hinata's faction to cleanse the 7 Luminaries' influence in the church.
However, after it was done, he decided to respectfully resign with a reason to spend his life on a new path.
He loves the peace that the holy church has brought in the entire Ruberios, but after seeing how Tempest could achieve that peacefulness while endorsing a multi-ethnic society, it's an understatement to say he was obsessed with knowing the reason.
He migrated to Tempest as soon as his resignation was approved and started to make a fortune in Tempest by enrolling as a teacher.
At first, he felt rather disturbed by the fact that his students are pretty much his former enemies such as monsters and majins. But after some time, he started to get used to it. By that time, he had grown a little hatred toward the Holy Church and labeled these living beings as enemies of humanity in the past, when in reality they weren't that much different from humans.
Feeling regret for his past, he decided to protect this peaceful nation as a security force. His love for this country became endless as even though he formally resigned as a teacher, sometimes he spent his free time to become a guest teacher.
He wants to spread the idea of coexistence as a way to achieve peace as much as possible while protecting the peacefulness that has already been achieved.
Now, imagine his hatred toward the Eastern Empire who deliberately intended to invade this lovely nation when the war broke out. He didn't hesitate even for a little to join the Volunteer Corps. He's joining the corps not because of Hero Masayuki's presence, but solely to protect this dystopia.
However, he was greatly disappointed since he didn't get a chance to smack those mongrels Empire soldiers. He blamed himself for being weak. He thinks that the reason why he didn't get sent to the frontline was because he was too weak so the upper echelon didn't send him out.
After all, he knew very well how Rimuru despised death. Especially, a death in vain.
He believed Rimuru was too kind to sacrifice the people to protect this nation. He would choose a people who really can fight to defend this homeland.
From that point on, he once again resigned from the security forces. He decided to become an adventurer so he could challenge the Dungeon anytime he wanted.
He relentlessly spends every day to train himself in the dungeon. He didn't take much of fortune from the Dungeon, except for weapons who he deemed would be helpful to get him stronger. His focus was to train his body to the limit, to the point at some moment he asked to remove the [Pain Nullification] effect on his [Ressurection Bracelet] so he could feel the dread of facing death in hopes it would evolve his soul.
His determination has successfully made him reach the 70th floor in the end.
He surprised many of the Dungeon Masters by defeating the Elemental Colossus on the 60th floor, despite Gadra's assistance.
However, that's how far he could go. With a system of [Save Point], he could come back to the 70th floor every time he entered the Dungeon. Yet, the boss on that floor was too formidable for Zeno. Because the boss on the 70th floor was none other than Albert, the Death Paladin.
No matter how many times he challenged Albert, his physical limit didn't allow him to win against the Death Paladin.
However, thanks to the relentless effort, Albert took an interest in him.
He asked Zeno for what reason he came back to challenge him again and again. And when Albert got an explanation, his heart filled with admiration.
Albert asked him if he wanted to become his disciple, which was immediately accepted by Zeno.
And thus, the rigorous training from Albert began. Zeno kept training under Albert's guidance, sometimes with the help of Adalman and Wenti, to the point he managed to evolve into a [Incomplete Saint].
After achieving that stage, Albert suggests Zeno join the military instead spend his time in the Dungeon. Although there's nothing wrong with it, in Albert's point of view, there's something more he could achieve in the military rather than keep challenging the dungeon.
With Albert's suggestion, Zeno decided to stop becoming an adventurer and join the military ranks. And thankfully, when he joined, it was the time when the Grey Numbers Corps was planned to be formed.
Personality: Zeno is what we could say a "seasoned warrior". He's the middle between Rudiger and Nien. He's not strict, but not playful either. He's a man who would never stray from his goal but is very flexible in terms of the way to achieve it.
He always has a desire to protect everyone. He values life more than anyone. That's why he loves the peace so much and thinks everyone deserves such a beautiful life.
His love was also extended to some stuff he had received. To the point of a term "hoarder" might be an accurate depiction for him.
He kept most of his unused stuff in his warehouse. Even something menial such as a pen, pencil, or blank paper. Most of these items have some "emotional value" to him.
Despite that, he could be merciless to anyone who he deemed as a threat. He would indiscriminately punch anyone, whether it was a monster or a human who dared to hurt a child.
He didn't have many close friends, but he was loved by a lot of people. Except for the people who ever crossed paths with him. It might be a dreadful experience for people who have such experience with him.
And he's not so forgiving person either. He could make a bond with anyone, even with his former enemy.
But aside from all of that, he didn't hesitate to show his spitefulness to anyone who ever became who he deemed an enemy.
To this day, he still has a negative view of the Holy Church. And worse, he also avoided to make a relation with anyone from the Eastern Empire, except it was for professional reasons.
It's better to make a good impression on him as soon as you make an acquaintance with him. If not, it would be very difficult to fix your impression of him.
Hobbies: Talk with neighbors.
Trivia: Secretly, he's been interested in one of the waitresses in a restaurant he become regular with. After all, he still wanted to make a family of his own someday.
I purposively didn't make any description about their appearance except for their height and hair color. I made it so because I want you to fantasize it by yourself(also it's because I can't draw). Thanks for reading!