Kybas

Kybas is a Chulu goblin wizard whose education centres on alchemy, magical botany, beast husbandry, and raising his crocodilian familiar Harmless. His cheerful fascination with dangerous creatures develops into a plan to breed defenders for his tribe and a battlefield partnership capable of horrifying even veteran monster hunters.

Biography

The Path of Potions to Celebration

Kybas meets Alex Roth in introductory potions while explaining his plan to feed body-enhancement mixtures to the young Harmless. He asks Professor Jules how those potions affect growing creatures, then focuses his studies on the combination of alchemy and magical beasts rather than competing for general academic prestige. His second-place standing in magical-beast studies confirms that the apparently comic project rests on sustained expertise. (Chapters 47–90)

As Harmless grows, Kybas custom-blends stronger potions with income earned harvesting dungeon cores. By his third year he studies alchemy, magical botany, beast husbandry, and blood magic, intending to create monsters that can protect the Chulu and to learn teleportation so he can support his distant home. The goal gives his dangerous enthusiasm a communal motive: he wants his education to make his tribe harder for enemies to threaten. (Chapters 173–180 and 696–810)

During the final assault, Kybas chooses to remain at Greymoor with Harmless and Ripp while the main strike force hunts the Ravener. He enhances the crocodile, throws a conjured fungal puffball that transforms spawn into multicoloured fungus, and treats the tunnel battle with alarming delight. They survive, celebrate the victory, and later prepare to travel with Grimloch on further monster hunts, turning a university experiment into his chosen adult vocation. (Chapters 851–906)

Appearance and personality

Kybas is a very small goblin with many sharp teeth and quick, animated movements. His grin is repeatedly compared to Harmless's toothy expression. He is exuberant, fearless around dangerous beasts, macabre in his humour, and relentlessly optimistic. That confidence can become recklessness, but it also lets him treat hardship as something to answer with preparation and decisive retaliation rather than worry. (Chapters 47–54, 696, and 851–906)

Magic, abilities, and skills

Kybas combines formal alchemy with beast husbandry. Body-enhancement potions temporarily energise physical processes, while repeated custom formulations during Harmless's growth help the crocodile become exceptionally large and strong. The work requires ingredients, money, dosage knowledge, and years of feeding and care; Kybas explicitly uses dungeon-core income to afford higher-quality mixtures, so the result is neither instantaneous nor an unlimited growth spell. (Chapters 47–48 and 696)

His later studies include magical botany and blood magic, supporting his ambition to breed or create useful monsters. In battle he casts enhancement spells on Harmless and conjures a throwable fungal growth whose spores rapidly overtake Ravener-spawn. The attack has targeting limits—Kybas warns Harmless not to eat the resulting fungus—and his own safety still depends heavily on his familiar, other defenders, and a fortified position. (Chapters 696 and 851–881)

Kybas also understands animal behaviour well enough to train Harmless from a small familiar into a disciplined monster hunter. He directs the crocodile, rewards it with specialised food, and channels its appetite toward chosen enemies. Harmless remains a living predator rather than a construct under perfect control, making affection, feeding, and learned commands as important as magical enhancement. (Chapters 47–48, 696, and 851–906)

Relationships

• Harmless: Familiar, research focus, and beloved hunting partner whom Kybas raises through potions, spells, training, and abundant food.
• Alex Roth: Fellow student and friend who respects Kybas's specialised knowledge despite being unsettled by its applications.
• Grimloch: Monster-hunting companion with whom Kybas plans further postwar expeditions.
• Ripp: Fellow defender of Greymoor who fights beside Kybas and Harmless and finds both profoundly alarming.

Items

Kybas uses alchemical mixtures, botanical reagents, and beast-training supplies, but no individual possession is identified as a separately catalogued notable item.