Lovia

Lovia is an elder of the City of Silver's six-member council, a powerful Shepherd of the Secrets Suppliant pathway, and later a Sequence 4 Black Knight. Her belief in the True Creator and the corruption surrounding an expedition to a Fallen Creator temple make Derrick Berg and Colin Iliad distrust her for years. Yet her conduct in the Giant King's Court culminates in a deliberate sacrifice for the City of Silver, confirming the loyalty that suspicion had obscured.

Biography

Role in the Central Conflict

Lovia enters the council as an exception. The City of Silver knows only the Secrets Suppliant pathway through Sequence 5 Shepherd, but she is strong enough to defeat a high-level evil spirit and Graze it, giving her power close to a demigod. Her shifting demeanor, habit of moving between “I” and “we,” and the rumor that she consumed her husband after an expedition make other residents fear her. Those traits are connected to the Shepherd's souls and flesh-and-blood practices rather than proof of a single simple motive. She remains a council elder because the isolated city cannot afford to discard one of its strongest defenders. (Chapters 138, 202, and 1123)

The expedition she leads to a ruined temple of the Fallen Creator returns contaminated. Derrick notices changed personalities and suspects Lovia; Colin confines the team, but also reveals that Lovia herself reported the others' abnormalities before Derrick did. She is eventually released and becomes one pole in Colin's deliberate balance between powers associated with the True Creator and Derrick's mysterious Fool. The arrangement never establishes that Lovia is uncorrupted. It shows that Colin treats her as both a danger to monitor and an indispensable force whose goals still overlap with the city's survival. (Chapters 384–399, 614–616, 668, and 897–899)

Lovia repeatedly supports expeditions toward the Giant King's Court. She fights beside Colin and Derrick at Nois City and in the first court expedition, uses the True Creator's gaze to disperse an environmental degeneration effect, and defers when Colin decides the team should retreat. She then gathers the formula, ingredients, and ritual materials to advance to Sequence 4 Black Knight before the final attempt. Her choices keep serving the city's route to the outside world even when her methods, patron, and internal condition remain frightening. (Chapters 937–939, 1039, 1113–1123, and 1216)

In the final battle against Dark Angel Sasrir's evil spirit, Lovia fights as a Black Knight and Shepherd, switching Grazed souls to penetrate the enemy's defenses. When her own Spirit Body is collapsing under corruption, she binds Sasrir with transformed flesh and shadow and signals Colin and Derrick to attack through her. Sasrir's holy flames destroy her soul and body, but she shields a large human skull—linked by the narrative to the husband she once lost—from further damage. Her last declaration is that she never betrayed the City of Silver. Derrick later returns her ashes, characteristic, and Sealed Artifacts to the city she died protecting. (Chapters 1252–1263 and 1267)

Appearance and personality

Lovia is a fair, beautiful woman in her thirties with long, curly silvery-gray hair and pale-gray eyes. She wears a long black robe embroidered with mysterious purple patterns and stands close to 1.9 meters tall, making her short only by City of Silver standards. After advancing, she can appear in black full-body armor with her eyes hidden behind the visor. (Chapters 614, 899, 1113, and 1252)

She is normally calm, distant, and difficult to read, but her mental presentation can shift abruptly between an aloof state and a smile or between singular and plural modes of speech. Those changes frighten Derrick and may reflect the souls she has Grazed, corruption, or both; the corpus does not isolate one complete cause. She is pragmatic enough to report her own expedition team, accept surveillance, obey Colin's decisions, and risk a Grazed soul to probe danger before exposing companions. Her devotion to the True Creator is genuine, as is her final loyalty to the City of Silver. (Chapters 202, 386–399, 614, 899, 1122, and 1260–1263)

Pathways and abilities

Lovia follows the Secrets Suppliant pathway through Sequence 9 Secrets Suppliant, Sequence 8 Whispered, Sequence 7 Shadow Ascetic, Sequence 6 Rose Bishop, Sequence 5 Shepherd, and Sequence 4 Black Knight. The pathway is associated with hidden knowledge, corruptive whispers, shadow, flesh-and-blood transformation, Grazing, and the domain of Degeneration. Its power is inseparable from severe mental and spiritual risk: true-god ravings, accumulated souls, transformation of the body, and exposure to degeneration can all erode identity or cause loss of control. (Chapters 138, 393, 1116, 1216, and 1252–1263)

Flesh, shadow, and corruption

Lovia demonstrates Rose Bishop-derived control of flesh by tearing off and regrowing a finger, swallowing flesh and organs, and turning her body into extended, skinless tissue capable of binding a target. She can also wield shadow as a cloak or corrosive medium. These transformations are functional but not harmless cosmetic changes. In the Sasrir battle, her body collapses toward an amorphous mass and her Spirit Body approaches complete corruption; rationality and determination remain only because she knowingly uses the final interval before losing control. (Chapters 938, 1116, and 1263)

Her prayer to the True Creator can draw that deity's gaze. On the Giant King's Court staircase, the gaze disperses an environmental power of degeneration that had turned a teammate's own hidden impulse against him. It also alerts another true god and places the expedition under direct divine attention. Lovia's faith can therefore provide protection inside the True Creator's domain, but the patron is itself a source of ravings, degeneration, and corruption. Service does not confer general immunity: Sasrir's higher authority scrambles her thoughts, weakens her, and ultimately destroys her. (Chapters 1116 and 1260–1263)

Shepherd and Grazing

As a Shepherd, Lovia can Graze the soul and Beyonder characteristic of another being and use powers fixed from that target. She carries multiple souls, including a Silver Knight evil spirit whose surviving strength approaches Sequence 4, a Devil, and a soul capable of Blink or Teleportation. This breadth makes her exceptionally versatile: she can project the Silver Knight, fire its attacks, switch to Devil language, or use spatial movement as the battlefield demands. Grazing a demigod-level spirit is explicitly rare and dangerous even for a true Shepherd. (Chapters 138, 777, 899, 1116, 1121, 1256–1257, and 1260)

Grazed souls are neither simultaneous unlimited powers nor willing assistants. In a constrained combat state, Lovia can use only one soul's ability at a time, forcing her to choose between Blink and a Silver Rapier rather than combine them freely. Switching creates tactical openings, purification is a direct counter, and losing a projected soul can permanently remove that resource. Grazing also imprisons what remains of the target and contributes to the moral and psychological horror surrounding Shepherds. (Chapters 809, 1196, 1256–1257, and 1260)

Black Knight

Lovia completes the prepared advancement to Sequence 4 Black Knight before the last Giant King's Court expedition. The new rank gives her godhood, black armor formed from Degeneration power, a stronger degenerate aura, and higher-order attacks from that domain. A Black Knight's Cull of Spiritual Flesh can corrode flesh, destroy a soul, cleave barriers, and strip the defenses of a living being that contains degenerate thoughts. Lovia's presence is weakened by Derrick's Unshadowed Domain, establishing Sun purification as a direct pathway counter. (Chapters 1216, 1252, and 1256)

Her demigod status strengthens but does not remove Shepherd limitations. She still switches Grazed souls for specialized effects and suffers when holy attacks strike her degeneration-aligned armor and flesh. Against Sasrir, the difference in authority is overwhelming: her body and soul corrupt despite her Sequence 4 strength, and the enemy's solar purification finishes her. Black Knight gives her enough force to create a decisive opening, not enough to survive a King of Angels' evil spirit. (Chapters 1256–1263)

Relationships

• Derrick Berg: Derrick fears and monitors Lovia for years, yet repeatedly fights beside her. Her final sacrifice forces him to recognize that belief in a dangerous deity did not erase her loyalty to their city.
• Colin Iliad: The Chief supervises Lovia, uses Derrick as a counterbalance, and still trusts her strength in the city's most important expeditions. He understands her final intention without needing an explanation and orders the attack she requests.
• The True Creator: Lovia's deity and the source of the Degeneration authority that protects and endangers her. She invokes the gaze directly, but divine attention never guarantees safety or freedom from corruption.
• Lovia's husband: He dies during an earlier expedition, after which rumors claim Lovia ate him. Her protection of a large skull at death strongly connects her final act to that loss, although the corpus does not provide a full direct account of what happened.
• Klein Moretti: As Gehrman Sparrow, Klein joins her final expedition. He distrusts her patron but relies on her combat versatility against the Giant King's Court and Sasrir.

Items

• Grazed Silver Knight evil spirit: Lovia's most powerful stored soul, originally high-level enough to give her near-demigod combat strength before her own advancement. It supplies armor, ranged silver attacks, and Silver Knight techniques but can be purified or destroyed. (Chapters 899, 1116, 1121, and 1257–1263)
• Grazed Devil soul: A stored soul used for danger sensing and the Language of Foulness. Lovia sacrifices it while probing Sasrir's throne defenses, showing that Grazed resources can be lost. (Chapters 1257 and 1260)
• Large human skull: The object Lovia shields with her dying body while Sasrir's holy flames destroy her. Its narrative placement follows the rumor about her deceased husband, but the text does not independently name the skull's owner. (Chapters 1123 and 1263)
• Black armor: The manifested or pathway-associated armor of her Black Knight state. It carries Degeneration power but is damaged and weakened by Sun-domain purification. (Chapters 1252 and 1256–1257)