Hell Difficulty Tutorial 3 characters

Also known as Nat

Appears from the start

The book's first-person narrator: a detached, calculating young man with heterochromia (one grey eye, one brown) who has cleared three prior floors of the lethal 'tutorial' on its hardest 'Hell' difficulty. He opens the third book as the undisputed power center of his reunited band of survivors, now settled in a fourth-floor city, leveraging his strength into guild politics while running relentless, physically dangerous experiments on his own mana and body. Fierce about protecting the people he counts as his own, he holds most others at arm's length behind rigid emotional control.

Also known as Izzy

Appears from the start

Sophie's much younger sister, around ten, and Nathaniel's near-constant companion since the previous floor. A fire-based fighter, blunt about violence yet unusually perceptive of others' feelings, she is openly devoted to Nathaniel and needles him out of his isolation. Early in the book she is given her own point-of-view chapter, and she keeps up a running, affectionate rivalry with him over the group's telepathic corgi.

Appears from the start

Isabella's older sister and a powerful manipulator of minds and emotions. Fully reconciled with Nathaniel after the previous floor's 'clean slate,' she now works closely with him, including on a scheme to sell a stranded ancient ally's world coordinates through the system shop for a fortune. Her mind control meets little resistance from this floor's natives, making it quietly one of the group's most dangerous tools.

Appears from the start

One of the people Nathaniel has known and trusted longest, and among his closest allies: a fierce fighter who wields lightning and self-guided javelins. Calm and quietly persuasive, she helps run the group's day-to-day operations and is one of the few people Nathaniel opens up to. Like him, she privately pursues entry to 'Beyond,' a trial difficulty even harder than Hell.

Appears from the start

The group's primary healer, fully recovered since the previous floor, who also fights with a terrifying disintegration touch that few enemies survive. Gentle but relentless, she continues a patient, openly stated romantic interest in Nathaniel that he neither accepts nor firmly refuses, and pushes herself hard to grow strong enough to stand at his side.

Appears from the start

One of the group's steadiest hands, anchoring its logistics alongside Tess, whose drilled, watchful bearing suggests a law-enforcement past. His body-strengthening skill has grown so potent he can casually overpower armed, mana-using attackers unharmed. Gruff and physically tough, he carries an old, complicated history with Nathaniel that has long since settled into loyalty.

Appears from the start

A diligent survivor who fights with controllable projectiles that slow whatever they strike, and one of Nathaniel's training partners. Earnest and eager to grow stronger, he works to overcome a tendency to freeze under pressure, and over the book comes into his own as one of the group's most formidable members.

Appears from the start

The group's telepathic corgi, under Nathaniel's sworn protection and increasingly autonomous. He communicates in single telepathic words, fights with manifested mana tentacles, and has grown steadily stronger; Nathaniel and Isabella keep up an affectionate rivalry over his loyalty. His signature exchange with Nathaniel is a shared nose-boop.

Appears from the start

A warrior of the Lynthari, the cat-featured, long-lived race that rules the fourth floor and regards humans roughly the way people regard cats. High-levelled and fixated on Nathaniel and his mismatched eyes since the group's arrival on this floor, she spars with him, has gifted him rare items, and hovers close to his group with a protective, proprietary interest that sets her apart from her aloof kin.

First appears in chapter 11

A capable fighter of the group who works with self-made mana armor and shape-shifting weapons. Off the battlefield she reveals an unexpected softer side, taking up the violin again after abandoning it years earlier over a painful adolescence she recounts with dark humor.

First appears in chapter 19

A small white snake with emerald eyes, hatched early in the book from a mysterious beast egg and belonging to Isabella. Of an unrevealed ancient bloodline, it grows noticeably larger over the floor and becomes another focus of doting attention within the group.

First appears in chapter 9

The guildmaster of one of the fourth-floor city's five major guilds: a short, battle-eager, stone-natured fighter who answers Nathaniel's open invitation to spar at a meeting of the city's guild leaders. Unlike her more hostile peers, she comes away from the beating friendly rather than resentful, declaring him a promising future sparring partner.

First appears in chapter 5

The guildmaster of another of the city's five major guilds, known to the group since the previous floor's expedition as calmer, more professional and more perceptive than her peers. She seeks Nathaniel out personally at his group's house, preferring direct dealings to intermediaries, and shapes up as one of the city's more valuable potential allies.

Also known as The Lynthari Matriarch

First appears in chapter 35

The ruling matriarch of the Lynthari, the fourth floor's dominant native race, revealed to be the same eccentric socialite who had earlier tried to buy the group's telepathic corgi. Ancient and immensely powerful, she presides over the city's guilds and holds knowledge of the planet's hidden past that reframes the floor's calamities.

Also known as Hive Confluence Sentinel

First appears in chapter 47

The leader of the ant Colony, one of the fourth floor's calamities: a matte-black, light-absorbing ant with wings of mana and thousands of visible mana threads running to every ant under its command, its level completely unreadable. Intelligent and disturbingly ego-driven, it leads the assault on the city in person and singles Nathaniel out with an open, mocking challenge.

First appears in chapter 61

The reborn incarnation of an ancient, near-omnipotent being who guided and tested Nathaniel on earlier floors and once sacrificed herself for him. Stranded since the previous floor, she reappears in person near the end of the fourth floor. She claims a history of past disciples and carries a severed arm belonging to another being of her own extraordinary rank, both of which she leaves unexplained.

Also known as Minion

First appears in chapter 65

A six-year-old half-demon child, with small horns and red eyes, assigned to Nathaniel as his charge at the start of the fifth floor, where the quest is to raise and protect a disciple. A starved, guarded survivor of a ruined world, she is fiercely self-protective at first and responds better to transactional trust-building than to kindness; under Nathaniel's harsh but devoted mentorship she slowly grows into an affectionate, increasingly capable student. He gives her a name partway through their time together.

First appears in chapter 68

Nathaniel's first significant native contact on the fifth floor's ruined, monster-overrun world: a wary survivor reached over a looted communicator, suspicious that the stranger on the line is connected to the deaths of his own people. He questions Nathaniel closely, sets careful terms for an items-for-medicine trade, and insists on verifying the story before extending any trust.

First appears in chapter 72

Darren's second-in-command at the fifth-floor survivor bunker, a skilled blade-fighter who serves as Nathaniel's main liaison and guide there. More openly forthright than her leader, she helps arrange Nathaniel's work with the bunker and its long-sealed workshops.

First appears in chapter 68

A single, extraordinarily dangerous monster stalking the fifth floor's ruined world, far taller and stronger than the lesser human-derived creatures overrunning the dead city, its level unreadable even to Nathaniel. Blade-armed and patient, it is first seen catching three skilled, cloaked survivors and slowly eating them alive while Nathaniel watches without intervening. What it is and what drives it are unknown.