Riv

Riv is a mysterious, uncanny swordswoman and one of the three members of the Rank-III explorer party Torquetum. She has short, peach-white hair that glows with a soft natural light, sleepy crimson eyes, and pale skin that never tans. Although classified in-world as an ordinary human ("fufen-jinzoku"), her true nature is deliberately left ambiguous: she wears a jet-black jacket over a skintight, ultra-high-tech white bodysuit covered in geometric lines, marks and numbers, and carries a one-piece black blade bearing logos and serial numbers. Wof, the protagonist, immediately reads her as something not of this world -- an android, an alien, or a vampire -- and the story quietly confirms she is a "resident of the sea of stars" (star-born) and most likely a soldier. Her age is listed as unknown; she speaks in a flat, halting, detached cadence peppered with her verbal tic "n..." and refers to herself in the third person as "Riv."

Riv possesses an extraordinary supernatural sense of smell that lets her detect the scent of Elixir and Relics. It is this ability that first connects her to Wof: after an unknown benefactor secretly revives the wiped-out Torquetum party with a legendary Elixir, Riv later recognizes that same Elixir scent on the boy Wof at Arifa's antique shop, and correctly deduces that he possesses a Relic. Beyond scent, she has an almost preternatural combat and crisis awareness -- she can locate hidden enemies even through walls, an ability tied to her "Kiki-hanbetsu" (danger discernment) intuition -- making her one of Torquetum's most reliable assets.

Her weapon is her Oreparts, the Pleiades Blade -- a single-cast military close-combat armament originally designed to work against creatures immune to lasers and bullets. Riv activates it by voice command ("...form of the void... Subaru"), a restriction she imposed on herself even though she can wield it purely by thought. The blade has seven modes named for the Pleiades stars: Alcyone (black, gravity slashes), Merope (blue, drastically boosts her physical abilities at the cost of locking the other modes), Celaeno (yellow, becomes a remotely-controlled flying sword), Electra (white, brief laser blade), Asterope (splits into two blades for dual-wielding), Taygete (green, turns slashes into protective barriers), and Maia (red, fires red slashing waves). Combined with her Maximilian AMD Suit -- described as the hardest armor in the series -- her swordsmanship rivals Rank-II level.

Emotionally, Riv is far warmer than her deadpan manner suggests. Though she initially wanted no reward for saving Wof, she strikes a bargain that she will unconditionally aid him if he ever needs it, and she repeatedly risks herself to protect him, insisting she cannot bear to let someone die. She is also lazy, playful, and teasingly flirtatious, calling Wof "boy" and joking about wanting him to "play" with her again as his "onee-san." Ruthless when needed -- she reasons that enemies who intend to kill must simply be killed -- she nonetheless carries guilt when she goes too far, at one point breaking his knife and vowing to repair it herself. She remains a steadfast member of Torquetum alongside Lupinus and Pakira (and later Bidd) throughout the story, fighting beside Wof across many arcs.