Betty

Betty is the Fourth Seat of the Tower of Wisdom and the first person to contract with Baal. Abandoned after that contract destroyed most of her living body, she survives through the reversibility of her soul and devotes centuries to research, atonement, and resistance against Baal. Her knowledge later guides both Grid and Agnus, and Agnus ultimately sacrifices his own form to restore hers. (Chapters 1227, 1336–1338, 1568–1569, 1653–1654, 1818, and 1904)

Biography

Recurring role and later consequences

Betty first appears as a silent, reclusive tower member who barely opens her door to Grid. When he later seeks help with a vampire soul, she reveals both her laboratory and her history as the first Baal's Contractor. Baal's abandonment left her biologically dead, with a body remembered imperfectly by a soul that prevents final collapse. She uses that condition to study souls and reincarnation, threatens to break Elfin Stone's cycle so he will acknowledge consequences, and warns Grid about the limits of runes. Grid's promise to destroy Baal turns professional assistance into hope that her own cursed immortality can end. (Chapters 1227 and 1336–1338)

When Grid destroys a fragment of Baal's power and survives Ifrit's intervention, Betty rewards him by transferring the Duke of Amplification title rather than teaching necromancy that would interfere with his existing undead. Her concern for him also exposes how strongly the withdrawn tower member has begun to trust another person. She then finds Agnus after Baal abandons him, recognizes a successor who can understand the contract's damage, and leads him to the imprisoned memphis. Rather than kill the maddened creatures, she applies knowledge gained from a prior victim to restore them, accepting responsibility because she once captured their parents for Baal. (Chapters 1565–1566, 1568–1569, 1653–1654, and 1681)

Betty's atonement is psychological as well as practical. She has emptied her mind enough to prevent madness, leaving her without the mental world possessed by the other tower members, and teaches Agnus that Baal's coercion does not erase their own responsibility for past victims. After Baal's death makes an impossible release available, Agnus takes her to a restorative fountain. Betty's curse breaks and her body regenerates, while Agnus becomes a skeleton and disappears after asking her to live normally. Grid conceals that cost from her during recovery, allowing Betty's restored life to begin with relief rather than renewed guilt. (Chapters 1654, 1818, 1904, and 2058)

Appearance and personality

Betty is very short, only a little over 140 centimeters, and appears surprisingly young. She has messy short hair and large, round, dark eyes whose lack of light gives them a lonely quality. Before her restoration, a loose robe hides a torso composed mostly of exposed bone; she is neither a conventional living human nor a lich. After Agnus's intervention, the curse releases her body and she begins regenerating into a fully human form. (Chapters 1227, 1336, 1566, 1568–1569, 1653, and 1904)

She is shy, terse, and outwardly expressionless, but the reserve conceals close attention and care. Betty notices changes in Grid immediately, worries over his safety, feeds him, and smiles through pain to reassure tortured memphis. She refuses the comfort of blaming every sin on Baal and views atonement as a lifelong obligation. Restoring others is therefore not a way to erase her nightmares; it is her chosen answer to the harm she once helped cause. (Chapters 1227, 1336–1338, 1565–1566, 1568–1569, and 1653–1654)

Abilities, classes, and skills

Souls, necromancy, and restoration

As the first Baal's Contractor, Betty has exceptional command of souls and undead. She can perceive a soul inside an object, pull it into physical view, threaten its reincarnation structure, create steps from skulls, and restrain a fluidized memphis with her hands. Centuries of anatomy and experimentation also make her a surgeon capable of repairing bodies Baal mutilated and calming minds driven feral by torture. The work is not morally neutral to her: specimens preserve knowledge obtained through death, and she uses that knowledge to prevent further victims. (Chapters 1336–1338, 1568, and 1653–1654)

Duke of Amplification

Betty's Duke of Amplification power doubles the strength of magic and other techniques by interpreting their formulas in unconventional ways. The same amplification doubles resource consumption and cooldowns, and cooldown-reduction effects operate less efficiently, so it favors decisive short engagements rather than constant use. She transfers the title to Grid without losing the underlying knowledge. Her other defining limitation is the absence of a mental world: emptying her mind keeps centuries of guilt and trauma from destroying her sanity, but prevents the stable internal world developed by the other tower members. (Chapters 1568–1569 and 1818)

Relationships

• Grid: Betty teaches Grid about souls, reincarnation, runes, and Baal, then gives him the Duke of Amplification as a weapon against their shared enemy. His concern and promises gradually draw her out of isolation. (Chapters 1336–1338, 1565–1566, and 1568–1569)
• Agnus: Betty recognizes Agnus as her successor after Baal abandons him and turns their shared guilt toward rescuing the memphis. He later exchanges his body for her restoration at the fountain. (Chapters 1568–1569, 1653–1654, and 1904)
• Baal: Baal makes Betty his first contractor, uses her in atrocities, and abandons her with a body trapped between life and death. Resisting his legacy gives her research and mentorship their central purpose. (Chapters 1336–1338, 1569, 1653–1654, and 1818)
• Noe: Noe initially fears Betty because of the memphis specimen in her laboratory, but she reassures him and uses what she learned from that victim to save his surviving kin. (Chapters 1653–1654 and 1681)

Items

No notable items are documented for Betty in the supplied corpus.