Alverd von Rutberto

Alverd von Rutberto is a 19-year-old ordinary human man and the third son of the prestigious Rutberto family. He is a First-Class Explorer bearing the epithet 'The Ruiner of Destruction' (Hakai no Housha) and serves as Clan Master of Koon Hunt, the largest clan in the city of Hydrangea. Physically he is described as an almost supernaturally beautiful young man with flowing golden hair, sharp black eyes, and a refined, androgynous, near-sacred air; he wears a red cloak over pristine white armor and a tear-mole beneath his right eye, cutting a figure so striking that observers compare him to a walking painting. He is consistently ranked among the very strongest First-Class Explorers, with his name coming up alongside 'The Sword of Swords' whenever the strongest explorer is debated.

His character profile paints him as intensely, almost inflexibly serious. He lives by a personal code of rules and agreements governing explorers and rigidly upholds them; he is strong-willed, humorless, and cannot take a joke, but he holds a deep sense of obligation and always repays a debt. His Relic is of a destruction type, wielding powers such as Impact (a shockwave), Crush (shattering whatever he touches), and Blechen (destroying whatever he touches), culminating in the pseudo-deification Relic Sauzando Kill-Arcos. Notably, his Relic is described as the same 'type' as Wof's, and he uses it with a technical, efficient mastery that Wof cannot match, controlling it by gaze rather than by shaping it.

Alverd enters the story as an antagonist: acting on a named commission from Narcissus Utopia, he ambushes Wof in a Hydrangea back alley to abduct him. Despite Wof unleashing his strongest attacks (including going into his Jeneras state and using Phantasmagoria), Alverd calmly neutralizes everything, destroys Wof's equipment, and beats him into unconsciousness. Wof manages only to leave a single scratch on his cheek, an event Alverd remarks he has not experienced in years. This total, humiliating defeat marks the first time Wof ever feels genuine rage and the desire to win, and Alverd thereafter becomes the fixed goal and rival that drives Wof's training arc.

In power terms Alverd is treated as a top-tier threat: even in his normal state his menace is said to rival an upper Gold-class monster, and his true power is his pseudo-deified form and its black gladius, the Sombre Gladius. He fights with the noble blade Sazankros (Southern Cross), given to him by his eldest brother, and wears the White-Heaven Armor. He commands a circle of powerful subordinates, including his right-hand man Jucy Tasan, a Koon Hunt grand executive and member of the 'Fourcut.' Later he reappears at the Great of Rounds, the five-yearly assembly of all First-Class Explorers held in Hydrangea, where Wof finally stands on the same stage as his rival.