Garad

Garad Jinryu is the second son of the Jinryu family, one of the three great houses of Haizen and the hereditary guardians ("watchmen") of the Haizen dungeon. A Faun with red-tinged black hair, small black horns, and a striking diagonal scar across the middle of his face, he is a large, hard-trained man who carries a greatsword on his back. He is a blunt, valiant "muscle-brained" fighter of the power type, honest and direct in temperament, and the narrator repeatedly compares his intimidating aura and raw strength to that of Agaro. Long believed dead, he in fact survived and spent much of the story concealed behind a legendary mirrored helmet, known to others only as the enigmatic "Mirror Face."

Garad's downfall is bound up with the collapse of his house. After the sudden deaths of his father Hagan and elder brother Jingi, he grew suspicious of his younger brother Baarow and of Raada. Deceived by Raada's information, he entered Haizen's Forbidden Land at the dungeon's deepest layer alongside the Gauro head Poor Man Crab and a handful of elites, where he broke a seal and unleashed the dungeon anomaly, a great spider. Fleeing through the forest he clashed with Raada and fell from a cliff; presumed dead, he was saved by what he took to be the will of Haizen. He then rejoined Poor Man Crab, hid his identity as Mirror Face, and joined a plan of the Zenzera and Gauro houses. Learning of his brother Baarow's atrocities, he insisted on ending the Jinryu line with his own hand and personally struck Baarow down, taking away the assassin's role that had rightfully belonged to Hoss.

Garad's on-page role begins when Poor Man Crab introduces him to the protagonist Wof and he unmasks. Unconvinced that a child could defeat the dungeon anomaly, he challenges Wof to a training duel: their weapons shatter to a draw, and Wof then wins the ensuing grappling exchange, after which Garad openly acknowledges him. He wields a greatsword that can be wreathed in flame, and his Relic is Distortion, warping and bending his blade (his "Distortion Sword") by experience and feel rather than any support Relic. He goes on to join the Forest Wave expedition party, explaining the event's mechanics, the toll villages, and the finger-rock terrain, and fighting alongside the group.

Beneath his gruff exterior Garad is a man weighed down by guilt and regret. He acknowledges the arrogance of the three great houses and confesses that his own flight from Haizen widened the bloodshed that followed. Having never wished to head the family, he had intended to leave and live as an explorer once Jingi inherited. Later he resurfaces far away in Hydrangea, where Wof tells him the Jinryu house is now utterly gone; Garad accepts the guilt and resolves to earn his way back to Haizen only when he is ready, treating the long, hard road as his own path of atonement.