Loretta

Loretta is the master of Fairy Garden and a First Dungeon administrator who guides Kang Shin from his early climb to the dungeon's end. Once a Hero who failed to save her own world, she turns her experience, artifacts, and knowledge against the design that bound failed Heroes to the dungeon, while her support for Shin becomes an openly personal commitment. (Chapters 12, 234, and 350–352)

Biography

Testing a Promising Explorer

Loretta first reaches Shin through a Floor Shop puppet, where her duty is ostensibly to sell goods fairly to the explorers assigned to her. His three-year delay below the seventh floor contrasts sharply with his sudden acceleration, and she responds by issuing a timed challenge to test whether his new momentum reflects real potential. Shin's success costs her a bet, but she honors it, studies how he approaches later bosses, and continues provoking him toward risks whose rewards she cannot state openly. What begins as commercial teasing therefore becomes a controlled evaluation of whether he can grow beyond ordinary dungeon expectations. (Chapters 12–16)

Her guidance is indirect because the shop role limits how freely she can favor one explorer. Loretta explains how trained ability differs from inflated statistics, sells counters tailored to upcoming floors, and hints that first achievements and solo victories have special value without simply giving Shin an answer. He learns to trust the direction while still preparing independently, and Loretta sees that he can turn a clue into disciplined action rather than reckless dependence. Their recurring bets preserve the appearance of a shopkeeper-customer relationship, yet her growing investment is visible in the relief and pride she shows when he survives. (Chapters 13, 24–25, and 31–40)

The most consequential early choice is the reward she gives after Shin's solo conquest of the Wraith Queen: the Collector's Pocket Watch, an artifact made in Loretta's lost world. At first it presents only as a mysterious route to a subclass, then awakens the Skill Collector functions that extract equipment skills and store them for use. Loretta already expects this activation when Shin shows it to her, though neither he nor the reader yet knows why she selected that particular artifact. The later revelation that she chose him with his identity in mind turns an apparently generous quest reward into the first move of a long safeguard against the Dungeon Lord. (Chapters 18 and 30–31; Chapters 350 and 352)

By the time Shin advances into the twenties, Loretta's concern no longer fits comfortably inside her official pose. She warns him about lethal enemies, offers information through staged slips, shares meals, and reacts strongly when he speaks of their connection as something beyond buying and selling. She remains willing to push him toward danger because growth is necessary, but her wishes increasingly conflict: the failed Hero in her wants an explorer capable of surviving a world enemy, while the woman attached to him wants the daily encounters to continue without loss. This tension defines her support long before either of them speaks openly about love. (Chapters 43 and 46–50)

Fairy Garden and Direct Support

When Loretta's assigned group moves beyond the floors covered by her puppets, she gives Shin a crystal key that connects his mansion's Fairy Spring to Fairy Garden. The gift preserves contact outside the Floor Shop and introduces him to her real body, position, and home, though she still withholds the history behind them. In Fairy Garden she is not a replaceable shop image but an elf with authority over its residents and access to places governed by mystical laws. By letting Shin into that private domain, Loretta changes their relationship from institutional contact to chosen companionship. (Chapters 63–74)

That access immediately has practical consequences. Loretta equips Shin for the Frozen Elemental's Prison, warns him about its cold, and grants Queen Elf's Blessing. The blessing helps the hostile free elementals respond to him and contributes to his ability to calm and contract Ruyue, while Loretta later explains the punishment suffered by the Elementalist who drove Ruyue mad. Her emotionally flat account of repeated fallen worlds briefly exposes how much catastrophe she has witnessed; Shin's answer that he would be sad to lose her pulls her back toward the personal warmth she had tried to contain. (Chapters 74–77)

Loretta eventually asks Sherafina to dismantle 4,187 shop puppets and replace them with personnel from the administrative guilds, forcing Lin to assume more of her management work. This is not a cosmetic reassignment: she gives up a system through which she supported thousands of explorers so that her real body can support Shin directly. Once installed at his Floor Shops, she offers instruction, recovery, warnings, and a stable presence between battles. Her choice narrows her official reach but deepens her responsibility for one Hero whose potential she believes can overturn the dungeon's history. (Chapters 104–108)

That devotion does not make her an unquestioning jailer. When Shin chooses to become a Dimensional Mercenary despite being Earth's Hero, Loretta accompanies him to the registry and insists that the administrator respect a role he never asked to bear. She fears the risk and makes him promise to return, yet defends his right to act rather than confine him for his world's safety. As Field Dungeons and other worlds' disasters accelerate, she also urges him to preserve his ordinary life while it is still possible, revealing that the peaceful time she wants with him includes his family and Earth rather than escape into the dungeon alone. (Chapters 102–114)

Loretta finally explains that Earth's apparent twenty-year margin is tied to a protective barrier and that the First Dungeon is not the highest challenge available. Her information helps Shin recognize Beyond and the urgency of raising his entire League, while her certainty that he can rewrite dungeon history reinforces his resolve. She is still selective about what she discloses, partly because administrators guard the system's secrets and partly because she wants to shield him from its burden. By the end of this phase, however, she is no longer merely testing whether he is worthy; she has staked her daily life and administrative position on helping him reach the end. (Chapters 137–140)

Two Years Against a Double Crisis

Earth's Double Crisis compresses Loretta's cautious horizon from decades to roughly two years. She calculates the invasion pace, dismisses outside doubt about Shin's rate of growth, and tells him that both he and his allies must conquer their respective dungeon paths quickly enough to face the arriving forces. Her confidence is not detached optimism: she understands that a Hero who remains hidden in the dungeon too long effectively abandons the world's power. The failed Hero in her therefore knows exactly what Earth may become, making every warning an attempt to prevent Shin from repeating her own defeat. (Chapters 166–168)

Her love creates a direct conflict with the institution she serves. Loretta tells Shin that, if the burden becomes unbearable, she will not blame him for abandoning Earth, even though doing so violates the Dungeon Lord's philosophy and condemns the world he leaves behind. The offer reveals that his survival has become more important to her than the impartial purpose for which the administrative guilds exist. Shin refuses, promises to conquer the dungeon and save Earth, and asks her to keep supporting him. Loretta accepts his decision rather than trying to overrule it, transforming fear into a renewed partnership built on his chosen responsibility. (Chapter 166)

As Shin's wars expand, Loretta continues making the Floor Shop a logistical and emotional base. She secures improved equipment through Lin, provides potions, tickets, scarecrows, warnings, and blessings, and receives reports about worlds and enemies that the dungeon's rules do not fully explain. Her generosity sometimes threatens the neutrality expected of an administrative guild master, but it also keeps Shin supplied through increasingly punishing floors. Their reliance is mutual: he grows accustomed to her care, while she uses his returns as proof that her support is not simply repeating the futile aid given to Heroes who eventually failed. (Chapters 166, 198–206, and 214–217)

Loretta's immense personal strength becomes clearer as Shin approaches the realm of a Transcendent. She can deform a heavy axe with her hands, terrify demons with killing intent, and remains so far above him that even after learning Overlord he believes he could only barely injure her. Yet she cannot simply solve Earth's wars for him: the dungeon's administrative structure restricts her freedom to leave, and her power is entangled with maintaining its operation. Her apparent passivity is therefore not lack of ability but a binding between duty, location, and the power entrusted to her. (Chapters 212, 214, and 217)

Failed Heroes and Open Defiance

The disappearance of Sipua forces Loretta to expose the foundation beneath that binding. She takes command in the stalled dungeon, organizes the qualified guilds, and explains that all five administrative guild masters were once Heroes who lost to their world enemies while retaining their worlds' powers. Loretta refused death because she wanted revenge and did not want later Heroes and Guardians to suffer the same end. She joined Sherafina's cause, helped connect threatened worlds, and maintained a training system whose blessings could raise defenders beyond the limits that had doomed its founders. (Chapter 234)

That purpose also made Loretta a prisoner. The dungeon depends on the administrative guild masters' power, stops functioning when one abandons a post, and would collapse if two left. Members can barely travel outside without explorers accompanying them, while the accumulated strain has driven former administrators to suicide or rebellion. Loretta chooses to restore the system rather than excuse Sipua's flight for love, dispatching Shin, Lin, and Daisy to return her. When the mission places them against a world enemy, Loretta's fury comes from both institutional danger and fear of losing them, exposing how close she has come to the same divided loyalty she condemns. (Chapters 234–240)

After their return, Loretta admits that contact with explorers was introduced to give the bound administrators new life, even though attachment could undermine their duty. She has already fallen in love with Shin despite initially meeting him through a puppet, and the possibility of his death makes her understand the desperation that drove Sipua. Rather than abandon the dungeon, she asks Shin to remain the person whose choices inspired her and openly confesses her love. His reciprocal confession resolves years of evasive support into a declared partnership, but it does not remove the conflict between their future and the seat that holds her in place. (Chapter 240)

Loretta's meeting with Sherafina sharpens that conflict. Before taking Shin to the Dungeon Lord, she activates her innate Evil Eyes of Charm for the first time in three centuries to verify that he can resist comparable compulsion. Sherafina's exclusive focus on dungeon outcomes and refusal to let Loretta aid Earth directly leave Loretta angry, although she still accepts that Shin's safety may require cooperation with Ciara Kenex. Loretta is therefore not yet in open revolt, but she has begun judging the Lord's decisions by their effect on Shin rather than assuming that the dungeon's design is sufficient. (Chapters 253–254)

Her confrontation with Kain later reveals another wound behind that distrust. Loretta once helped him as an explorer and expected him to use his strength for others, only to see him hide after abandoning his ruined world. She argues that she also lost parents, siblings, friends, comrades, and every life she wanted to protect, but chose to build the dungeon rather than wait for death. Shin prevents her from treating service as an enforceable debt, and Loretta accepts that her faith in Kain had created her own disappointment. His eventual aid comes through a personal favor and persuasion, clarifying that the support Loretta now gives Shin must remain compatible with his agency. (Chapters 288–290)

Meanwhile, the Collector's Pocket Watch proves that Loretta's doubts have already become preparation. Its Skill Synthesis produces Overlord and a form of Enigma beyond anything Sherafina is said to have created, demonstrating that Loretta's gift was never an ordinary quest trinket. Shin recognizes its unusual scale before learning its final purpose, while Loretta continues helping him reach battles where that hidden independence will matter. Her resistance remains quiet because premature exposure would let the Dungeon Lord counter it; affection, institutional knowledge, and the artifact from her lost world converge into a plan only fully explained at the end. (Chapter 292; Chapter 350)

The Safeguard Against the Dungeon Lord

As Shin nears the final floors, Loretta changes from guide to teacher. She passes on her knowledge of mana control and Dimensional Travel once his League and command of Enigma are high enough to use it, allowing him to solidify projected mana, control multiple energies, bless recognized partners, and cross between worlds without dungeon support. These lessons address the central weakness of an explorer dependent on Sherafina's pathways: even if the dungeon turns hostile, Shin can move and fight through techniques the Lord does not mediate. Loretta's cabin also provides a space beyond the reach of Sherafina's and Ciara's observation, making instruction itself part of the safeguard. (Chapters 327 and 332; Chapter 351)

Their exchange of protection becomes literal when Shin gives Loretta the Death Lord's Axe. The weapon carries the Death Lord and lies beyond Sherafina's appraisal, so Loretta keeps it as defense while Shin climbs beyond her immediate reach. She, in turn, contributes mana and trusted judgment during the final evolution of his spear. These actions show a mature partnership distinct from her early one-sided patronage: each prepares the other to survive a confrontation they may have to face separately. (Chapter 331)

The empty upper Floor Shops confirm that the administrative order is breaking apart. Sherafina attempts to secure Loretta but withdraws because Shin has already invested enough power in protecting her to threaten the Lord's own existence. Loretta disappears into her cabin with the axe while Shin advances, and the Collector's Pocket Watch binds the dungeon's external power to him in a form Sherafina cannot reclaim. The artifact can store, synthesize, and convert outside powers; Loretta had realized after the Kain incident that Sherafina had deceived her and had deliberately given Shin the one device she believed could release him from the Dungeon Lord's control. (Chapters 347–350)

After Sherafina's fall, Loretta is alive in Fairy Garden and admits that she noticed the plan later than Lin but is satisfied that her preparation helped. She explains that the pocket watch originated in her world and that she had refused to give it even to Lin, who believed it might let him defeat Sherafina. Shin credits the watch with making victory possible. Loretta's ancient loss is thus not merely background tragedy: the surviving artifact of that world becomes the means by which another Hero avoids being appropriated by the same system Loretta helped sustain. (Chapter 352)

Loretta temporarily receives the Dungeon Lord's seat and a renewable blessing from Shin so the dungeon can operate while he restores separated worlds' powers. This is an interim duty rather than a new eternal chain; Shin intends to dissolve the dungeon and free every administrative member, Loretta included. She uses the temporary authority to create a one-time guest system for Fairy Garden and participates as one of Shin's brides in the planned weddings. Her latest position therefore reverses her earlier fate: she still maintains the dungeon, but now with an identified end, an equal partner, and a future outside the institution. (Chapter 352)

Appearance and personality

Loretta is an elf with long black hair, long expressive ears, golden eyes, and a tall, curving figure. Her true body is distinguished from the many shop puppets through which Shin first meets her, though the puppets reproduce enough of her mannerisms to form a genuine attachment. Her ears visibly rise, droop, or flap with excitement, embarrassment, and disappointment. She habitually presents herself as seventeen despite having lived for more than two thousand years. (Chapters 64, 73, 105, and 137)

She alternates between playful salesmanship and formidable authority. With Shin she is teasing, openly affectionate, jealous, and prone to turning kisses or blessings into excuses for closeness; with subordinates she can be commanding enough to silence Lin and Eleine immediately. Beneath both modes is a deep fear of repeating past loss. Her support can become overprotective, but she also respects Shin's freedom when it matters, and her final preparations show patience, secrecy, and willingness to oppose the leader she served for millennia. (Chapters 104, 113, 166, 234–240, and 350–352)

Powers and abilities

Loretta retains the power of a failed Hero and carries a share of the force sustaining the First Dungeon as Fairy Garden's administrative guild master. Her known abilities combine innate elven traits, Hero-level mana, administrative authority, blessing magic, Evil Eyes, dimensional magic, and physical combat power. The corpus establishes their effects through demonstrations and Shin's comparisons, but does not provide a complete class sheet, energy cost, or formal rank for Loretta herself. (Chapters 217, 234, and 253–254)

Queen Elf's Blessing

As the Queen Elf, Loretta can place blessings on an individual or a group. Her early blessing warms and protects Shin in the Frozen Elemental's Prison, makes faerie-kind more receptive to him, and helps him suppress a maddened elemental long enough to form a contract. A later high-rank blessing lasts four days, blocks low- and mid-rank status effects, preserves consciousness for five minutes in a half-dead state, adds one hundred luck, increases faerie favor, accelerates health and mana recovery, prevents ordinary exhaustion, and raises critical-hit chance. These are temporary enhancements rather than permanent growth. (Chapters 74–76 and 235)

Loretta often delivers the blessing with a kiss, but the narrative explicitly establishes that a kiss is not required and that one kiss can apply the effect to multiple companions. Her relationship with Shin eventually recognizes him as the Elf Queen's partner, allowing him to grant temporary blessings through his own Enigma and divine powers after she teaches him the method. This reciprocal form depends on Shin's League, power sources, and partnership with Loretta; it is not evidence that any recipient can reproduce Queen Elf magic. Loretta remains able to bestow high-rank blessings near the story's end. (Chapters 235, 261, 268, 309, and 327)

Evil Eyes of Charm

Loretta was born with Evil Eyes of Charm rather than earning them through dungeon advancement. When activated, the particles in her golden eyes shine and project attraction strong enough to threaten Shin's self-control despite his exceptional charm and mental defenses. He counters by releasing his own charm through his Evil Eyes, after which Loretta escalates until he stops the test. She states that this is the first activation of her eyes in three hundred years, showing both deliberate restraint and extreme confidence in using them only when needed. (Chapters 253–264)

Her test is an application of judgment rather than seduction for its own sake: she needs to know whether Shin can meet Sherafina without losing his will. High charm can resist the effect, as Shin demonstrates, but the corpus does not define its range, duration, cost, or whether non-charm mental defenses alone can block it. Loretta's threatening gaze in other scenes may reflect the same eyes, killing intent, or ordinary mana pressure; unless the text identifies the activation, those moments should not be treated as confirmed uses of Evil Eyes of Charm. (Chapters 144, 231, and 253–254)

Mana mastery and dimensional travel

Loretta possesses enough mana knowledge to teach Shin control that his earlier self could not execute. Her instruction covers solidifying projected mana, minimizing waste, treating aura as an extension of thought, and managing the many incompatible energies inside him. She also teaches Dimensional Travel, a spell that uses the caster's own mana to cross worlds without dungeon support. Shin later casts it in a space shielded from Sherafina and Ciara, proving that the technique can bypass the dungeon's ordinary travel network, though its full cost, range, and Loretta's own acquisition method are not stated. (Chapters 327 and 332; Chapter 351)

Loretta demonstrates related spatial control by opening gates into Fairy Garden, using its thought-responsive paths to reach Sherafina's isolated space, and storing large objects inside her body through a unique spatial magic. In her earlier work she also helped create pathways to worlds threatened by world enemies. These feats share a dimensional theme, but the corpus does not explicitly identify them as a single spell or establish that her private storage uses Dimensional Travel. Her latest administrative authority lets her create a temporary guest-access system for Fairy Garden while serving as Dungeon Lord. (Chapters 63–74, 234, 253, 289, 331, and 352)

Heroic power, combat, and administrative authority

Loretta retained her world's power after losing as its Hero and later embedded part of that strength in the dungeon's administration. Shin, after obtaining Overlord, can only begin to perceive the scale within her and estimates that even his transformed power could barely wound her. She can bend a heavy axe with her hands, fire mana bullets, exert killing intent that frightens powerful beings, and wield the Death Lord's giant axe comfortably. The text demonstrates overwhelming force but does not name her original Hero class, define her preferred pre-dungeon combat style, or show her full power in an extended battle. (Chapters 137, 214, 217, 235, and 331)

Her administrative authority operates through both power and office. Loretta once controlled 4,187 Floor Shop puppets, coordinates Fairy Garden's members, opens official routes, grants or sells dungeon resources, and helps keep the dungeon functional with her own power. These privileges carry hard restrictions: leaving the dungeon normally requires explorer support, the master's power cannot be detached without death, and abandoning a guild-master seat destabilizes the entire system. Her temporary tenure as Dungeon Lord broadens her ability to restart operations and create access rules, but it lasts through Shin's blessing and is intended to end when the dungeon is dissolved. (Chapters 64, 104, 234, 240, and 352)

Relationships

• Kang Shin: Loretta first tests and guides him as a customer, then gives up her broad puppet network to support him directly. Their bond becomes romantic, an acknowledged Queen Elf partnership, and finally a marriage arrangement built around mutual protection and her eventual freedom. (Chapters 12–18, 104, 166, 240, and 327–352)
• Lin: Loretta's longtime subordinate and trusted peer in Fairy Garden. She burdens him with administration, relies on his crafting and combat, and scolds him fiercely, while he recognizes threats to her and Sherafina's plan earlier than she does. (Chapters 64, 104, 234–240, and 331–352)
• Sherafina: The Dungeon Lord whose cause Loretta joins after losing her world. Loretta serves her for millennia but grows distrustful, prepares the pocket watch as a countermeasure, and assumes the Lord's seat temporarily after Sherafina's defeat. (Chapters 234, 253–254, and 348–352)
• Kain: An explorer Loretta once supported and trusted to act after his world's fall. His withdrawal wounds her faith in Heroes, but their later confrontation helps distinguish voluntary service from a debt that can be enforced. (Chapters 232 and 288–290)
• Eleine: A fellow administrative guild master whom Loretta outranks in confidence and power. Their arguments also expose contrasting ways of surviving the dungeon's long duty and forming attachments within it. (Chapters 166, 240, and 251–268)

Items

• Collector's Pocket Watch: An artifact from Loretta's lost world that she gives Shin as an early quest reward and later identifies as her safeguard against Sherafina's control. (Chapters 18 and 31; Chapters 350 and 352)
• Death Lord's Axe: Shin gives Loretta the axe, with the Death Lord still bound inside it, so that it can protect her during the final conflict. (Chapters 331 and 352)