Liam

Liam is a Pagna swordsman and one of Raze Cromwell's longest-serving companions. Initially an undisciplined academy student known for crude jokes and twin-sword combat, he survives a fatal attack when Zon reconstructs him with the Vyka nanobot system. Liam gradually learns to combine that system's analysis with his own Qi, copied martial arts, enchanted weapons, and finally Red's advanced combat functions, becoming a tactical fighter capable of finding openings even in the defenses of the Grand Magi.

Biography

Blue headband beginnings

Liam enters the Dark Faction Academy as a red-haired, one-eyed Blue Headband student with little interest in behaving respectfully. His first approach to Safa is a flirtatious joke accompanied by one of his Qi pills, and he immediately antagonizes Simyon, whose protectiveness toward her makes Liam an obvious rival. Under the bravado, however, Liam is another low-ranked student trying to rise within an academy whose headband hierarchy exposes weaker pupils to intimidation from stronger ones. (Chapters 108–121)

The monthly assessments give Liam a stage on which to prove that his confidence is not entirely empty. He fights aggressively with a sword, refuses to stay down when stronger students dominate an exchange, and remains close to Safa and Simyon as their initially prickly association becomes a working group. His humor still functions as provocation, but shared danger changes its context: the boy who teased them becomes someone who worries about whether Raze can win and faces dimension beasts beside them instead of looking for an excuse to leave. (Chapters 131–182)

Training with the group

As the academy conflict deepens, Liam trains beside Simyon and accepts help from Dame Narfous, even though his impatience and pride keep surfacing. He studies sword techniques, practices against Simyon's increasingly durable body, and supplies irreverent observations when the group needs to interpret an unfamiliar threat. His contribution is not yet equal to Raze's or Dame's, but he remains present because he wants the strength and recognition that the academy's lower tier has denied him. (Chapters 184–328)

That desire becomes loyalty when attacks on the academy stop being controlled exercises. Liam and Simyon coordinate around the latter's extraordinary durability, with Liam calling for the “meat shield” because both understand the role Simyon has chosen rather than because Liam considers him disposable. When the students are separated, Liam focuses on lasting long enough to regroup and make a plan. These choices turn a comic rivalry into trust: he depends on Simyon's defense, while Simyon and Safa increasingly treat Liam as part of the same small circle centered on Raze. (Chapters 352–388)

Vyka's reconstruction

The Lethal Bite Clan's assassination attempt nearly ends Liam's life. Vice Clan Head Royo severs his arms and leaves him dying, but the distress associated with Raze's cross-world magic brings Zon into the dimension. Zon kills Royo and decides that keeping Liam alive is the only way to preserve his link to the mage he is seeking. The rescue is not ordinary healing: nanomachines rebuild Liam's lost body parts, restore his failing organs, and install a system called Vyka throughout his body. (Chapters 398–400)

Vyka changes what Liam can become, but it does not make him instantly expert. The system can analyze an observed technique and teach a version his current body is capable of performing, heal injuries, read physical signals, and alter his cells to resist some passive pressures. Its own warnings establish that it is limited by Liam's perception and physical level; if he cannot see a movement or endure the exact form, it cannot simply grant mastery. Liam therefore practices the copied strike after waking and initially hides both his reconstruction and Zon's involvement from his friends, worried that he may be leading the outsider toward Raze. (Chapters 399–415)

His secrecy does not sever his loyalties. Once reunited with Safa, Simyon, and Dame, Liam resumes fighting beside them and uses the system to become a more dependable swordsman. The experience also gives him a private measure of how far he still has to go: he has been handed a miraculous second life, but its value depends on the decisions he makes with it. Rather than withdraw after almost dying, he keeps following the same endangered group through the academy's escalating conflict. (Chapters 406–495)

Faction tournament and the system's limits

At the faction tournament, Liam wants the audience to remember him, and Vyka lets him compete far above the level of the swordsman he was before reconstruction. It reads muscle tension so he can begin moving before an opponent's strike, recommends counters, accelerates recovery, and helps him and Safa win a noncombat trial by seeing details concealed under fabric. Against Hannah, Liam combines those predictions with two swords and magnetic earrings that attract and repel the blades, deliberately creating attacks from multiple directions. (Chapters 629–647)

The same duel exposes the boundary between assistance and judgment. Vyka can model Pagna techniques, but it cannot fully account for the magical pull on Liam's swords, so he must invent the combined pattern himself; Hannah then identifies the repetition underlying his copied responses and defeats him. Liam is disappointed because the system has made him stronger without resolving his need to prove himself. He nevertheless stays beside the injured Simyon afterward, checks every medicine for poison, and recognizes that Safa's exhausting healing—not his own performance—saved their friend. (Chapters 646–663)

Anna later makes the lesson explicit when she sees Liam relying on recommended moves against unfamiliar opponents. The system learns through him: he must gather information, use his own Qi and experience, and provide the choices from which it can optimize. During their linked fight, he follows the guidance of a more experienced system user without surrendering agency, and afterward he remains uneasy about being judged as undeserving of the gift. The result is a more analytical fighter, not an automatic one. (Chapters 698–702)

Portal crises and the Rylon investigation

Liam's reconstructed body and paired weapons keep him useful through the Behemoth and portal crises, where the group's opponents increasingly exceed ordinary academy standards. He uses his twin blades, System-assisted reactions, and the weapons' cloning property while watching Raze, Safa, and Simyon acquire powers of their own. When he initially dismisses the cloning blades as wasteful because every copy consumes Qi, their progress pushes him to think beyond the artifact's obvious function and combine it with what his system can control. (Chapters 742–903)

When Raze diverts the group with information left by Himmy, Liam joins Safa and Simyon in investigating the Rylon religion rather than waiting safely at the academy. He can access the foreign data device because his nanobots share a technological basis with Anna's system, then records a sacrificial magic circle in perfect detail for Raze. In the churches, he throws cloned swords against Light-magic users and, even after an artifact suppresses his Qi and system interface, physically helps Safa keep hold of the Lux Spear. (Chapters 948–970)

The investigation places Liam in a supporting role by choice. Safa drives the search for answers about her past, while Liam supplies memory, analysis, and another combatant who will not leave when the trail turns into a chamber of bodies and sacrifices. He returns to Flendon with the copied circle and follows Safa north when Raze disappears, treating the possibility of trouble as a reason to move toward it. His joking contest with Dame continues on the journey, but it now rests on long familiarity and a shared willingness to help Raze. (Chapters 961–1015)

Simyon's death and the war for Pagna

The struggle for the Golden Globe draws Liam into a coalition far larger than his academy group, yet his priorities remain personal. He stays near Safa and Simyon, uses cloned weapons against Alter-linked enemies, and asks whether Raze's blunt insistence that he cares only about his own goal is really necessary. Liam understands that Raze's actions repeatedly protect Pagna even when Raze refuses the language of heroism; his teasing exposes the gap between Raze's stated detachment and the loyalty his companions have already chosen. (Chapters 1014–1105)

That loyalty is tested when the Deleters mortally wound Simyon. Liam reaches him while Safa is pouring out Light magic and uses the system to confirm that Simyon is still alive, but the reprieve does not last. After Simyon's death, Liam does not soften his anger toward the people responsible; when Raze identifies a surviving attacker as a Deleter, Liam retracts his careless comments and offers whatever help is needed to get answers. The loss turns his long-running banter with Simyon into grief and removes the friend whose defense had repeatedly made Liam's risks possible. (Chapters 1144–1173)

In the ensuing war, Liam remains with Raze and Safa rather than seeking a separate command. He helps analyze Heino's time reversal by having Vyka measure its exact two-minute interval, enabling the group to predict where Heino will reappear. Against Cicle, Liam discovers that his own copied Void Pulse cannot match an artifact reproducing a technique at its observed strength, but Safa saves him and then entrusts him with that sword. The victory gives him a weapon that complements his analytical system rather than merely imitating it. (Chapters 1191–1244)

Pagna's victory leaves Liam with power he could not have imagined as a Blue Headband. He keeps the attack-copying sword, also gains a blade described as able to cut through anything, and accepts Red's one-of-a-kind system from Zon. Zon presents the replacement as a final means to help Raze in Alterian; Liam accepts despite not yet understanding its full capabilities, and its nanobots begin replacing Vyka's original network. By the time he crosses worlds, the former low-stage student is counted among Pagna's strongest fighters. (Chapters 1266–1278)

Undercover at Wilton and Central Academy

Alterian initially fascinates Liam more than he wants to admit. Modern comforts and pervasive magic undermine his plan to dismiss Raze's home world, while the group's cover as transfer students gives him another academy hierarchy to navigate. He uses the new system to assess illusion distances, copy Raze's written examination answers, interpret enchanted equipment, and conceal the fact that his apparent “magic” often comes from items, Qi, or system control rather than a conventional magic core. (Chapters 1278–1314)

At Wilton Academy, Liam's humor remains intact, but his choices show greater restraint than in his first school. He tracks Londo, uses an enchanted wand's lightning while keeping his sword in reserve, logs coded phrases for Raze, and listens closely enough to catch Dame admitting that he lost deliberately. During the Underfang crisis, Liam relies on prediction and blade work against high-pressure water attacks and helps guard students instead of exposing the group's full purpose for personal glory. (Chapters 1321–1379)

The Central Academy exchange again places Liam beside competitors with more celebrated names, but by then Raze considers him capable of handling elite students such as George. When Ibarin turns the event into open battle, Liam uses the copying sword to reproduce Raze's Eclipse Strike and throws the weapon into position at a decisive moment, giving Raze another option against the Grand Magus. He leaves Central with the group after Ibarin's defeat, no longer merely using a system to imitate experts but applying what he has recorded in service of their shared objective. (Chapters 1384–1520)

Red Mode in the Underside

During Gizin's attack on the Underside, Liam meets an opponent that exposes a new limit: the masked Cerebus warrior is an energy body that simply reforms after being cut apart. Liam tries magnetized cloned blades, the all-cutting sword, the copying weapon's catalogue of Light, Dark, and Demonic techniques, and even Raze's attacks, but every option consumes Qi without making the wounds permanent. Faced with the old fear of being useless beside stronger allies, he demands a better answer from the replacement system. (Chapters 1607–1608)

The answer is Red Mode, a function Liam has never activated and must learn during the fight. The system requires an external energy source; Liam realizes that his cultivated Qi can fill the role that power-stone energy served for Red and Zon. Once linked, it converts Qi into red energy, processes hundreds of simultaneous attacks, accelerates the nanobots in his body, and lets him answer volleys with precisely matched beams. Its tutorial and large outputs still cost time and power, while regeneration remains a counter that raw destruction alone cannot solve. (Chapters 1608–1611)

Liam finally turns the new power into a team victory. He recreates Red's field of energy swords to trap and repeatedly destroy the masked warrior, then opens a controlled gap so Dame can reach in and extract the energy sustaining its regeneration. The swords kill the opponent only after that source is drained. Instead of treating Dame's intervention as diminishing the win, Liam accepts that their different abilities complete the solution, demonstrating the growth from a student who wanted every eye on his individual performance. (Chapters 1611–1613)

Noble Land and the final war

After the Underside battle, Liam remains with Raze through Alterian's political fracture and the search for Safa. He is strong enough that other coalition members compare themselves unfavorably to him, but he still works as part of the infiltration team—springboarding Alen onto Noble Land's wall, clearing guards, and protecting the smaller group as they advance. When Idore's defenses force a retreat, Liam follows Raze through the Golden Globe rather than mistaking persistence for a reason to sacrifice everyone. (Chapters 1661–1720)

Pagna's reinforcements let Liam apply his system at battlefield scale. He identifies that a mobile tower's reflective barrier cannot manage two attacks on the same point, feeds it a red-energy laser, and drives the all-cutting sword through the weakened defense and core. Against Idore, he studies the trajectories of attacks entering and leaving the Grand Magus's spatial loop, then coordinates his red needles with Forma's arrows from the opposite side. Their simultaneous pressure deadlocks the linked portals and creates the opening for the coalition's combined strike. (Chapters 1721–1754)

Liam survives Idore's defeat and returns to Pagna with the others. Ten years later, he is still in Flendon, helping assess attacks by clans resisting the united order rather than retiring from the dangerous work that shaped him. The system and swords remain part of his strength, but his latest role is consistent with the development behind them: he uses analysis to protect the home and people he chose, carrying forward the practical loyalty once expressed through jokes, rivalry, and a refusal to abandon his friends. (Chapters 1765–1782)

Appearance and personality

Liam is introduced with spiky red hair and an eyepatch over his left eye. His single visible eye and the eyepatch become material for his own jokes rather than a source of reserve. After Royo dismembers him, Vyka reconstructs his arms and restores his failing body, but Liam is still wearing the eyepatch when he wakes; the corpus does not establish that the covered eye itself was restored. During the Alterian academy cover, he continues to be identified by the eyepatch and carries himself as an unusually confident transfer student. (Chapters 108, 399, and 1355)

Crude humor, flirtation, and competitive boasting are Liam's most visible habits. He uses jokes to needle Simyon, Dame, teachers, and enemies, sometimes at moments when restraint would be wiser. That manner can obscure insecurity: losses trouble him because he compares his usefulness with Raze's overwhelming strength and with companions who possess rarer gifts. He can also become angry or panicked, but danger usually turns those reactions into movement rather than paralysis. (Chapters 119, 646–649, 1015, and 1607–1609)

His defining trait is loyalty expressed through action rather than solemn declarations. Liam watches physicians treating Simyon for poison, helps Safa retain the Lux Spear after losing his powers, offers Raze assistance immediately after Simyon's death, and stays in fights where his first solutions fail. By the final war, he is willing to trust Dame and Forma with plans that require exact cooperation, showing that his old desire for individual notice has matured into confidence in a team. (Chapters 662–663, 970, 1172, 1613, and 1754)

Magic, cultivation, and abilities

Pagna cultivation and swordsmanship

Liam begins as a low-stage Pagna warrior trained in Dark Faction sword arts. He channels Qi through his body and blades for strength, speed, and cutting power, fights with one or two swords, and learns techniques by practice even after the system begins offering optimized versions. His foundation remains important because both Vyka and Red Mode depend on what his body can perceive, survive, and power; neither system substitutes for cultivation. Repeated war and nanobot enhancement eventually place him among Pagna's strongest fighters, although the corpus does not assign his latest cultivation stage. (Chapters 121–170, 399–415, and 1272)

His paired style uses positioning as much as direct sword contact. Magical earrings let him attract and repel his blades, while later weapons can create copies at a cost in Qi. Liam combines those functions into attacks from several angles, hides cloned swords in terrain, and magnetizes blades around an opponent. The system initially struggles to model item magic, forcing him to invent the combination himself. The approach is versatile but expensive, and purely physical cuts cannot permanently harm opponents whose bodies continually reform from energy. (Chapters 646–647, 875–877, and 1607)

Vyka nanobot system

Zon installs Vyka when Liam is dying from blood loss and dismemberment. The nanomachines reconstruct his arms, restore damaged body functions, integrate throughout his tissues, and communicate through a voice and visual interface. Afterward they accelerate healing, monitor vitals and substances, preserve detailed visual information, adjust cellular reactions to some environmental pressures, and provide calculations beyond unaided human precision. They do not make Liam invulnerable: sufficient attacks still injure him, power-suppression can cut off the interface, and repair consumes time rather than preventing damage. (Chapters 398–400, 448, 649, 948, and 970)

Vyka's combat analysis reads posture and muscle tension to predict movement, recommends efficient counters, and can derive a learnable version of an observed martial technique. Its output is bounded by Liam himself. Movements beyond his perception cannot be recorded, techniques beyond his body's capability are reduced, unfamiliar opponents provide too little data at first, and magical item effects fall outside models built for Pagna arts. Liam progresses by feeding it observations and making choices it cannot make for him, eventually using the system as a partner in judgment instead of an instruction list. (Chapters 399–415, 645–646, and 698–700)

Red system and Red Mode

Before the journey to Alterian, Zon replaces Liam's original nanobots with the unique system removed from Red. The update retains the system functions on which Liam relies while adding a more advanced combat architecture whose full capabilities are initially undisclosed. Its ordinary uses include precise timing, copying written movements, analyzing equipment and illusions, tracking targets, and coordinating the attack-copying sword. The replacement makes Liam extraordinarily capable, but its unfamiliar functions can still surprise him at the worst moment, as shown when Red Mode first demands a tutorial during mortal combat. (Chapters 1272, 1290–1299, 1325–1326, and 1607–1608)

Red Mode links Liam's own Qi to the technological system as an alternative to the power-stone source used by Red and Zon. The conversion produces red energy beams and blades, processes many attacks at once, and accelerates the nanobots for bursts of strength and speed. Liam develops the mode from matching hundreds of projectiles to creating Red's sword-rain field and later firing needle-like volleys precise enough to test Idore's spatial portals. These effects consume his cultivated energy, and the mode cannot by itself stop regeneration or guarantee a way through spatial redirection. (Chapters 1608–1613 and 1754)

Copied techniques and tactical analysis

Liam can reproduce techniques through two distinct mechanisms. His system studies Pagna movements and teaches versions limited by his own body, while the attack-copying sword can reproduce an observed attack at the recorded strength. Through them he uses forms associated with multiple factions and several of Raze's Dark Edge attacks, including Eclipse Strike. Large-scale copies rapidly drain him, and the sword's replication does not grant the underlying affinity as permanent personal magic; it is an equipment-derived effect. (Chapters 399–400, 1234–1244, 1511, and 1607)

His most consequential ability is often the analysis preceding an attack. Liam times Heino's reversal to exactly two minutes, spots how the Noble towers' barriers respond to simultaneous pressure, and discovers that Idore's linked spatial portals can deadlock when both ends receive overwhelming attacks at once. In each case the system supplies precision, but Liam frames the question and turns the result into a cooperative plan. By the final battle, this blend of observation, timing, and trust is his principal contribution against enemies stronger than he is individually. (Chapters 1244, 1724, and 1754)

Minor demonstrated competencies include the system's perfect recall of diagrams and phrases, poison and material checks, assisted handwriting, sensory measurement, concealment, and the use of enchanted academy wands. These functions make Liam useful for investigation and undercover work, but the wand's lightning and other item effects should not be treated as proof that he independently cultivated those magical affinities. (Chapters 634, 663, 961, 1290–1314, and 1325–1326)

Power progression

Relationships

• Raze Cromwell: Liam begins as another student orbiting Raze's unusual strength, then chooses his cause repeatedly across Pagna and Alterian. He notices the compassion behind Raze's denials, accepts Red's system specifically to help him, and ultimately serves as both swordsman and tactical analyst in the final war.
• Safa: Liam's first interaction with Safa is flirtatious and deliberately provocative, but their relationship becomes a durable battlefield partnership. He protects her, trusts her judgment, helps preserve the Lux Spear under suppression, and is among those most alarmed when she disappears.
• Simyon: Their crude banter and rivalry conceal genuine dependence. Liam uses Simyon's defensive strength in team tactics, monitors his treatment, and is deeply affected by his death; later fights still draw on techniques, items, and choices shaped by Simyon's sacrifice.
• Dame Narfous: Dame trains Liam and jokes with him as an equal-opportunity target. Their relationship matures into practical trust when Dame extracts the energy sustaining the masked Cerebus warrior while Liam controls the Red-system sword field around it.
• Zon: Zon saves Liam from fatal wounds by installing Vyka, later entrusts him with Red's unique replacement system, and asks him to use it in support of Raze. Liam's hybrid use of Qi as a technological power source extends what Zon gave him beyond its original design.
• Anna: Anna recognizes the system in Liam, criticizes his overreliance on its recommendations, and teaches him that it must learn through its user. Her advice becomes the foundation of his later balance between analysis and independent tactical choice.

Items

• All-Cutting Sword: One of the two major weapons Liam retains after the Pagna war. It pierces a Noble tower's weakened reflective barrier and cuts through its core, although energy-bodied enemies can still reform after being severed. (Chapters 1272, 1607–1608, and 1724)
• System Sword: Taken from Cicle's battlefield after Safa defeats him and entrusted to Liam. It reproduces observed attacks, including techniques from Raze, but large copies consume substantial energy and do not solve an energy body's regeneration. (Chapters 1234–1244, 1511, and 1607)
• Vyka and Red system implants: Nanobot networks integrated into Liam's body rather than carried equipment. Vyka reconstructs him and supplies his original analysis functions; Red's one-of-a-kind replacement adds Red Mode and Qi-powered red energy. (Chapters 398–400, 1272, and 1607–1613)