Hell Difficulty Tutorial 6 characters

Also known as Nat

Appears from the start

The book's first-person narrator: a detached, exacting young man with mismatched grey and brown eyes who has survived the lethal 'tutorial' on its hardest 'Hell' setting into its later floors. He opens the book leading his tight-knit group through heists and mine expeditions in a central region, running relentless experiments on his own mana and body. Fiercely protective of the few people he counts as his own, he keeps most others at arm's length behind rigid self-control and hides his rarest abilities from strangers.

Appears from the start

Nathaniel's group's primary healer, who also fights with a devastating disintegration touch and an axe she is growing from her own reinforced bone. Warm and steady, she is deep into research on regeneration and body modification, much of it aimed at reinforcing Nathaniel, and holds a patient, openly stated fondness for him.

Appears from the start

Telepathic twin brothers, near-impossible to tell apart, who coordinate through a private mental link and a shared skill that lets them jointly hijack locks and abilities. They open the book running a string of stealth heists using mana-masking gear Nathaniel builds for them, under his punishing ongoing training regimen. Cautious and self-interested but invaluable to the group.

Also known as Lioren

First appears in chapter 2

A knowledge-construct of a long-dead, white-haired demon lurker who once nearly killed Nathaniel, now a permanent presence inside Nathaniel's own mindscape. He appears in recurring dream-training sessions on an imagined lunar surface, teaching kinetic-energy technique by breaking Nathaniel down and rebuilding him, and spars him relentlessly. Prickly and combative, he is a fixture Nathaniel cannot be rid of.

First appears in chapter 4

The group's telepathic corgi and a seasoned veteran of the tutorial in his own right, returning dramatically after roughly two months away to an affectionate reunion with Nathaniel. He communicates in short, food-fixated phrases, floats and fights with manifested mana, and joins the group's mine expedition as a full member.

First appears in chapter 4

The single strongest fighter of the mine-city Hollowgate: a Thylarin woman with an unusually large, deep-blue mana crown veined in purple, said to join a mine expedition only once every ten years and to spend the rest of the decade recharging that crown. She joins the same mine expedition as Nathaniel's group, a bodyguard at her side.

First appears in chapter 14

Isabella's older sister and a powerful manipulator of minds, reunited with the group after a long separation. By now she has risen high among the mind mages of a great mind-mage city. Among the group's most dangerous and versatile members, she carries a fragment of a dead champion's bond entity.

Also known as Izzy

First appears in chapter 14

Sophie's younger sister and one of Nathaniel's longtime near-constant companions, a fire-based fighter blunt about violence yet unusually perceptive of others' feelings. Reunited with the group after months apart, she is openly devoted to Nathaniel and quick to draw him out of his isolation.

Also known as Set

First appears in chapter 14

One of the people Nathaniel has known and trusted longest: a calm, quietly persuasive fighter who wields lightning and javelins, and long one of the group's steadiest leaders. Reunited with Nathaniel's half of the group after roughly six months apart, she remains its most combat-disciplined member.

First appears in chapter 14

A versatile fighter of the group who works with self-made mana armor and shape-shifting weapons, reunited with the others after months apart. Wry and easygoing off the battlefield, she supplies much of the group's day-to-day humor while remaining one of its more dangerous members in a fight.

First appears in chapter 14

A young survivor who fights with gravity and telekinesis sharpened by an implanted 'eye,' and one of Nathaniel's longtime training partners. Reunited after a long separation, he is confirmed to have developed his own rare, gravitational primordial energy in the interim.

First appears in chapter 17

Daughter of the mind-mage city's ruling Archon and leader of one of its three dominant factions, whose circle hosts the garden dinner Nathaniel attends soon after arriving. Poised and politically central, she keeps her exact loyalties ambiguous behind the courtesies of the evening.

First appears in chapter 21

A faction leader of the mind-mage city, a power broker who has built his faction around a collection of powerful captives. Nathaniel exposes that Namior has been covertly manipulating Sophie through hidden 'thought anchors' planted in her mind across multiple meetings, intending to make her one of his vassals. Confronted, he is killed by Nathaniel.

Also known as The Devourer

First appears in chapter 27

A monstrous, giant eye-entity long sealed inside an astral prison, freed when the mind-mage city's great pooled-cognition ritual breaks the prison's spatial locks. It reanimates the ritual's dead into giant flesh golems and rampages through the city. Nathaniel holds it off almost alone in an extreme mana-absorption state, wounding it badly, but no clean kill is confirmed on the page.

Also known as The Disciple

First appears in chapter 32

The young half-demon girl Nathaniel raised and named as his disciple in an earlier book, seen in this one first through her own interlude chapters: traveling far from him under the direct, demanding tutelage of Lady Lissandra. Her wellbeing remains one of the few things Nathaniel is unconditionally protective of.

First appears in chapter 32

The ancient, near-omnipotent woman who trained Nathaniel in earlier books, describing herself then as a flawed copy of a greater original. She reappears here raising a disciple of her own, recovering from a new heart she built and implanted in herself from an absolute's and a champion's remains, and quietly preparing some means of synchronizing with Nathaniel from afar. Blunt, exacting, and scornful of powers who lean on system-given tools they do not understand.

Also known as Carrot Cake

First appears in chapter 33

The winner of an earlier tournament round: an immensely strong melee fighter who trains by deliberately damaging his own body, traveling with the healer Lucien. On meeting the group he senses Sophie's manipulation-type ability and moves to attack her outright, declaring that people with such powers must die; the standoff is defused, but his hard personal code leaves the alliance uneasy from the start.

First appears in chapter 49

A senior Lumoran technician at Champion Feroy's frontier deployment camp, who takes Nathaniel, Sophie, and the twins on as contract assistants in his workshop when the group signs on as non-combatant camp workers. Working under him embeds the group in the camp's daily operation and its war effort.

First appears in chapter 51

Commander of the war armor Exoria and of the frontier deployment camp where Nathaniel's group hires on, making him their employer for the campaign against the Absolute-grade threat overrunning the world. On the camp's arrival at the dangerous second front he makes a deliberate, unexplained choice: cutting his own camp off from the planet's protective web, plunging it into an isolated blizzard.

First appears in chapter 59

An ancient, dying absolute of a long-lived race, dwelling alone on a shattered moon fragment, who takes Nathaniel on for a five-day companionship quest that trades answers for company. His hereditary 'Parallax Eyes' grant extreme layered perception across great distances. Over their exchange he delivers the book's central lore, then abruptly ends it early for reasons he keeps to himself.