Alexander

Alexander is a "land catfish" (riku-namazu) — a creature that looks exactly like a giant salamander and whose classification as monster or animal is still debated. He speaks human language, smokes a kiseru pipe he pulls from a Relic, and carries himself with an easygoing, self-deprecating old-timer's manner (his speech is heavily colloquial and folksy). He first meets the protagonist Wof when Wof accidentally catches him while fishing — twice — the second time finding him wounded and healing him with Elixir. Grateful for having his life saved, Alexander swears to repay the debt, a promise that repeatedly draws him back into Wof's story.

Behind the humble land-catfish appearance, Alexander is a former First-Class explorer, one of only twenty-seven such "kings of explorers" in the world. He was renowned as the "Dungeon Master" (later styled the First Dungeon Master) and led Raven Saga, a legendary one-night party formed entirely of First-Class explorers that fought the Dungeon Lord Dekatanto. Now retired due to age, he works behind the scenes for the Grand Guild (the head office of the Explorers' Guild): setting up and removing return-teleport circles, checking treasure chests and traps, surveying monster distributions, and investigating anomalies and new dungeons. Companions estimate his current combat power at low-to-mid Gold rank; he wields a yakuza-style short dagger (aikuchi) as his main weapon and can also unleash a bewildering, hard-to-follow blade art called Hanswurst's Bouquet Sword. He slew a silver-rank Mimic Puppet Box in a single stroke.

As a knowledgeable veteran, Alexander serves the story largely as a mentor and exposition figure. In the ruined Great Temple he explains the nature of the dungeon "anomalies" — defective, broken dungeon monsters, in this case The Fool spawned from a corrupted Dungeon Lord — and theorizes that the earthquakes are splitting and re-merging a single great dungeon. Later, at the Fire Dungeon, a single piece of advice from him about focusing one's gaze on a single point sparks Wof's breakthrough into the [Deep Stillness] Relic and its target-pointer technique. A "natural monster," Alexander detests dungeon-born monsters and can tell they are not truly alive.

Alexander's deep past ties him to several key figures. He was the master and teacher of Milées (the Second Dungeon Master) and mentored Agaro (whom he calls his "student," while Agaro calls him "Sensei"). He is revered as master by Pakira, who addresses him as her honored teacher. Raven Saga once counted the Witch among its members, and it fought alongside the First-Class swordsman "Sword of Swords" (Megadia's family line) against a dungeon anomaly in the Elftopia forest. Encyclopedic yet unfailingly courteous, he remains one of the most quietly powerful and well-connected allies in Wof's orbit.