Lauel

Lauel is an American player, strategist, and administrator whose decision to serve Grid turns the Overgeared Guild from a talented group into a kingdom and, eventually, the central power of the Overgeared World. Although he begins as the top-ranked qigong master and one of the first Ten Rookies, he deliberately sacrifices individual combat growth for the Flow Master class and devotes himself to directing wars, governing territories, recruiting talent, and carrying out Grid's ambitions. (Chapters 110, 180, 402, and 2035)

Biography

Reidan and the Overgeared Alliance

Lauel first becomes known through competition rather than government. Despite starting Satisfy later than established rankers, he reaches first place in the qigong master rankings and becomes the most prominent of the Ten Rookies. At the first National Competition, he represents the United States and demonstrates both tactical realism and personal skill: he assesses Grid's moving golden blades, accepts that directly opposing both Grid and Yura would be wasteful, and survives alone longer than his teammate expects. Watching Grid defeat Hurent changes Lauel's priorities. He is tired of being confined to the label of “rookie,” knows that talent alone cannot erase the level gap created by his late start, and concludes that Grid's unique ability to produce powerful equipment offers a better route to the summit than Zibal's money. He therefore rejects the Snake Guild's lucrative offer and chooses to follow Grid. (Chapters 110, 174, and 180)

His initial decision is openly self-interested, but he quickly invests himself in Grid's future. Lauel becomes one of Grid's knights, treats the position seriously, and rebukes Grid for wasting a long-cooldown knight summon on a casual conversation. Alongside Huroi, he argues that Grid's potential is being squandered as the blacksmith of a small guild and presses him to establish an independent force. Once Grid agrees, Lauel plans to absorb the Tzedakah members by appealing to their dependence on Grid's items and their personal attachment to him. The resulting Overgeared Guild gives Lauel the institution through which he can exercise his talents, while his promise to protect Grid's carelessness begins turning a calculated partnership into sustained loyalty. (Chapters 186, 187, and 202)

Reidan makes Lauel responsible for consequences rather than proposals. As Grid's chief of staff, he plans agricultural recovery, monster suppression, resource acquisition, smithy development, and eventual commercial growth while Grid concentrates on blacksmithing. His early judgments are not infallible: he initially dismisses Piaro as an unhelpful farmer and assigns him an unreasonable workload, only to discover how badly he underestimated him. Lauel adapts instead of defending the mistake, incorporates Piaro's farming and water-finding into Reidan's recovery, and learns to build policy around exceptional people whom Grid gathers. At the same time, he chooses Flow Master as his third advancement, accepting inferior personal combat power in exchange for the ability to alter terrain and weather for Grid's wars. That decision fixes the shape of his career: he will be less a duelist than the person who creates the conditions in which his allies can win. (Chapters 218–220, 339–343, and 402)

Kingdom Building and the Great Demons

As Reidan's conflict with Eternal escalates, Lauel applies deception as readily as conventional diplomacy. He approaches Gauss as Grid's representative, exploits Marquis Valtin's hostility toward Earl Ashur, and falsely presents Grid's independence movement as an opportunity for Gauss to help seize Patrian. The attractive tariff and tribute agreement draws ten thousand Gauss soldiers into Lauel's plan, allowing Reidan to turn another kingdom's ambition into military leverage. This operation shows both his agency and his moral method: he is willing to flatter, misdirect, and make calculated promises because he treats the survival and expansion of Grid's power as the governing objective. (Chapter 501)

The Belial raid forces Lauel to combine that strategic mind with his support class under direct pressure. He abandons retreat, uses a Flow Master's ultimate weather change to bring thunder and rain against Belial's flames, and spends the raid analyzing why some attacks fail while Splitting the Sky succeeds. Victory creates the opening for a kingdom, but it also multiplies his responsibilities. Lauel designs the founding ceremony as both state theater and recruitment propaganda, strips Reinhardt Palace of Eternal's symbols, and anticipates diplomatic isolation rather than being surprised by it. His answer is long-term influence: quests, player movement, and visible strength will spread Overgeared culture until other kingdoms have to recognize it. (Chapters 570, 575, and 596)

Lauel's statecraft remains constrained by labor, money, and time. When Grid proposes mass-producing Grid sets as quest rewards to attract settlers, Lauel identifies the missing resources and manpower without dismissing the idea. He converts it into a long-range production program involving advanced blacksmiths, the treasury, and expansion of the black-iron mine, while urging Grid to accept that a nation must develop steadily rather than instantly. He is similarly obsessed with professional NPCs because ordinary workers cannot simply fill every specialist role. This dependence deepens his respect for Grid: Lauel increasingly recognizes that his own systems work because Grid repeatedly wins the loyalty of rare people whom conventional recruitment cannot obtain. (Chapters 610 and 646)

By the next National Competition, Lauel can still fight, but his priority remains the collective. He recognizes a false Grid and warns the others before the deception can divide them, then helps coordinate the battlefield against Kraugel. His iron fan and control allow him to block Kraugel briefly and work in a precise pincer with Pon, yet Kraugel eventually catches and defeats him. The encounter confirms both sides of Lauel's development: his fundamentals remain those of an elite player, but his greatest value lies in reading situations, arranging allies, and buying decisive time rather than overcoming the world's strongest combatants alone. (Chapters 745 and 748)

East Continent and Imperial Reckoning

Years of administration turn the once-desolate kingdom into a military power. While directing the rapid elimination of threats around Reinhardt, Lauel looks back on earlier disasters and takes pride in what the army has become through the combined work of Grid, Piaro, and Asmophel. He nevertheless refuses complacency. Agnus's rapid rise makes him reconsider the apparent madness of a player who repeatedly risks death, and the Saharan Empire remains an even larger structural threat. Lauel interprets an imperial unification war as a struggle that would determine the freedom and opportunities of players across the West Continent, so he continues recruiting, training, and expanding even after the kingdom is secure. (Chapters 838 and 917)

That pressure also reveals the limits of Lauel's approach. He spends heavily on equipment, tax exemptions, and recruitment quests, yet finds few candidates who meet his standards. Grid then brings Hurent to him almost casually, reminding Lauel that charisma and personal relationships can accomplish what his elaborate systems cannot. Rather than resent this, Lauel accepts Grid's different strength and reassures him that becoming king was meant to enlarge his freedom, not imprison him in public expectations. Their relationship has therefore moved far beyond Lauel's original desire for items: Grid trusts him with the kingdom, while Lauel protects both Grid's political position and his right to act as himself. (Chapter 917)

The struggle over the evil eyes' king shows Lauel operating across intelligence, diplomacy, and battle. When the empire destroys Media and Valhalla obtains the White Dragon's Eyes, Lauel reconstructs the hidden objective: the artifact could reflect the king's destructive gaze and remove a species the empire fears. He recognizes that Valhalla has maneuvered Overgeared into a costly negotiation, but Grid's Ether Glasses create another path. Lauel immediately leads the retainers to protect the evil eyes' village, rotates defenders around the ordinary evil eyes' limited active time, and keeps the group fighting until the true relief force arrives. The result preserves a strategic ally without surrendering to either the empire or Valhalla's leverage. (Chapters 971–976)

During the imperial war, Lauel continues turning weaknesses into institutions. Discovering that Overgeared has cannons but almost no trained artillerymen, he recruits the top one hundred players in the neglected class and chooses an interim commander based on battlefield judgment rather than prestige. He also uses public celebration as psychological warfare, staging fireworks at Reidan to advertise composure while imperial soldiers expect a desperate defense. These measures are not isolated tricks; they reflect his growing attention to internal cohesion. He memorizes the abilities of hundreds of guild members, realizes that neither he nor Grid knows the newer recruits well enough, and pushes the leadership to strengthen the organization from within while it resists the empire from without. (Chapters 1010–1013)

Yangbans, Gods, and New Legends

As the scale of Grid's enemies expands, Lauel becomes an interpreter between extraordinary events and practical action. He helps analyze the being who descends through Agnus, concedes when Grid's firsthand knowledge of Pagma and the great demons outweighs his hypothesis, and identifies Skunk as the explorer best suited to Grid's next task. This willingness to revise a conclusion matters as much as his ability to form one. Lauel's authority comes from converting incomplete information into a usable plan, not from pretending that his first answer is always correct. (Chapter 1108)

He also defends Grid's freedom of action against narrower administrative logic. When Grid destroys the insane dragon iron that had underpinned the kingdom's profitable arms industry, Rabbit demands that Lauel force him to restore the supply. Lauel refuses: the material always belonged to Grid, and a true servant should first understand why he acted. That trust is not passive obedience. Lauel continues evaluating costs, labor, and political effects, but his years beside Grid have taught him that an apparently irrational sacrifice can address dangers beyond an administrator's immediate balance sheet. (Chapter 1230)

When several great demons strike at once, Lauel leads the Overgeared Guild to the allied gathering and explains that Grid has chosen to hold the Berserk King alone while everyone else kills Ronove and Dantalion. His calm presentation steadies forces whose rival leaders had been posturing moments earlier, and Grid's risk gives the coalition the time its plan requires. Later, Lauel answers the revival of the Yatan Church with a different kind of campaign: he spends treasury resources on unusually strong novice equipment and conditions the rewards on joining the Rebecca Church. The policy trades immediate finances for faster player growth, more subjects, and a stronger religious alliance, showing how he can pursue the same strategic aim through incentives instead of battle. (Chapters 1247 and 1292)

Lauel's responsibilities extend to crises that Grid does not initially treat as strategic. Orc nobles rebel while the kingdom's strongest people are dispersed, forcing Lauel to balance suppression against defense of the capital during Lord's coming-of-age ceremony. Grid's instinct is to intervene personally, whereas Lauel worries about the other duties only Grid can perform. Their disagreement no longer threatens their partnership; it reflects an established division in which Lauel guards the entire system and Grid breaks open problems the system cannot comfortably absorb. (Chapter 1388)

Apostles, Dragons, and the Overgeared World

By the time Grid openly opposes the gods, Lauel's administration often moves before formal orders arrive. Grid commands him to remove Zeratul's symbols, only to learn that Faker has already been running the operation for two weeks. During the Great Human and Demon War, Lauel selects expedition members, preserves forces needed for other fronts, secures supply routes, and assigns protection for Irene even when an apostle is already guarding her. These choices arise from the same pressure that has followed him since Reidan: he must account for simultaneous threats and cannot gamble the realm's survival on a single layer of defense. (Chapters 1413, 1468, 1472, and 1530)

His need for control can make him severe. When the Muto Merchant Group grows powerful enough to dominate imperial commerce, Lauel does not accuse its loyal leader of betrayal; instead, he plans to raise a rival merchant group before any future operator can turn that concentration of power against Grid. He plants informants, exploits competition, and uses the new group's investment to help fund the hell elevator. The scheme protects the empire and expands its resources, but it also demonstrates why others can see Lauel as ruthless: he treats even trusted allies as institutions that require checks, because personal goodwill cannot guarantee the behavior of every subordinate forever. (Chapter 1578)

The creation of the Overgeared World vindicates the scale of Lauel's faith in Grid. He recognizes the surface divine world as humanity's greatest bastion and as the opening of an age beyond nobles and kings. His joy is comically interrupted by his horror at Grid's naming sense, yet the deeper consequence is serious: the political project Lauel began in Reidan has become a world where gods and Absolutes accept Grid's authority. Lauel remains essential precisely because the ruler has risen so far beyond ordinary government; he is the human administrator who keeps that expanding order coherent. (Chapter 1626)

Lauel does not remain safely behind the lines when Baal's forces must be confronted. In hell, his weather control supplies the wind and rain that amplify Piaro's battlefield, making Lauel the assassination target whose death would collapse that advantage. Grid-made armor absorbs the first attack, while the Iron Wire of Bitter Grief kills the attacking henchman; these are item-derived defenses rather than evidence that Lauel's body has become exceptionally durable. Piaro then eliminates the remaining threat, and Lauel celebrates the experience gained from returning to the battlefield. The episode captures his mature combat role: his personal equipment keeps him alive, but the decisive power comes from the environment and ally coordination he enables. (Chapter 1650)

Baal, Asgard, and the Complete Ending

Lauel continues managing threats to Grid's legitimacy even after the empire becomes the strongest power on the surface. When Zeratul's followers demand a holy-war stage in Reinhardt, he fears the political consequences of defeat but recovers his confidence after Irene reminds him to trust Grid. He permits the contest while refusing to let the followers build their own permanent facility, commissioning a grand stage that can serve as Zeratul's symbolic coffin. After victory, he coordinates its conversion into the base of the Tomb of the Gods and anticipates how the flying fortress will project Grid's power to the world. (Chapters 1713, 1729, and 1732)

The war against the cultivation world becomes Lauel's clearest late demonstration as a commander. He predicts that the cultivators will counterattack the Tomb of the Gods, sends the imperial armies to assault their Full Moon Fortresses before the enemy arrives, and silently endures torture rather than activate the base's warp gates. When the cultivators disperse to defend their homes, Lauel lets himself die, immediately resurrects at the Tomb, and declares that a commander cannot leave his base. The returning Overgeared forces then surround the weakened enemy. His plan depends on the players' return and resurrection systems, but he withholds that explanation so surviving enemies cannot learn how to counter it. The victory is therefore not merely a successful ambush: it is the culmination of Lauel's talent for treating rules, logistics, timing, and morale as parts of one battlefield. (Chapters 2000–2001)

After the cultivators' defeat, Lauel's authority extends even over beings far stronger than himself. Gods, Transcendents, and Absolutes listen when he interprets the three masters' motives, and he is described as the human backbone of the Overgeared World. He then turns from war to recovery. Faced with an empire whose prosperity has weakened labor and territorial competitiveness, he provokes the Overgeared lords into competing over better reconstruction policies. Lauel does not need to win the contest; by making the nobles eager to prove him wrong, he causes every territory to work toward the financial recovery he wants. (Chapters 2035 and 2044)

His final development is personal as well as political. Years beside Grid have softened the tendency to treat people only as pieces in a larger calculation. When Grid worries that he exploited Minor's talent, Lauel considers Minor's family circumstances and explains that Grid gave him the means to prolong his mother's life rather than stealing his future. Once Lord succeeds Grid and personally oversees a peaceful, prosperous empire, Lauel concludes that he has no remaining reason to stay prime minister. He retires after twenty-three years of recruiting and governing, turns his attention to reality, and uses the same political leverage to help arrange Grid's marriage. At the wedding, he handles heads of state with practiced diplomacy, ending the corpus not as an ambitious rookie seeking equipment but as the trusted friend who has carried Grid's affairs in both worlds. (Chapters 2053 and 2056–2057)

Appearance and personality

Lauel's avatar is introduced as a very young, silver-haired man with a controlled, often expressionless face. He is associated with sweeping back his hair or covering half his face while delivering theatrical declarations. Sustained overwork visibly affects him: he develops a habit of touching his head while worrying about real-world hair loss, and later scenes describe him as tired after days without proper sleep. The corpus does not provide a complete, stable account of his clothing or facial features beyond these recurring details. (Chapters 174, 596, 917, and 1292)

He combines sober calculation with pronounced chuunibyou affectations. His talk of past lives, sealed dragons, destiny, and dark flames embarrasses his companions, but it is not a sign that his strategic judgment is unserious. He can move immediately from melodramatic performance to budgets, troop movements, or diplomatic leverage. That contrast also helps explain his intense dislike of Grid's “Overgeared” naming scheme: for all his theatricality, Lauel cares deeply about grandeur, presentation, and the public meaning of symbols. (Chapters 202, 887, 972, and 1626)

Lauel is loyal, proud of his intelligence, and willing to accept moral blame for decisions he believes will protect the realm. He explicitly considers conscience a luxury when millions of lives depend on his choices, and he manipulates both enemies and allies without expecting affection in return. Yet this severity is not static. Grid's example gradually teaches him to recognize emotional circumstances, encourage freedom rather than merely optimize behavior, and offer comfort grounded in another person's needs. By the end, the text directly contrasts his earlier sociopathic tendencies with his improved capacity for empathy. (Chapters 917, 991, 1578, and 2053)

Abilities, classes, and skills

Lauel's most important abilities form three connected layers: qigong techniques that manipulate qi, the Flow Master advancement that scales those techniques to weather and terrain, and exceptional strategic intelligence that determines where those powers and his allies should be applied. His declining emphasis on individual leveling is deliberate. As the realm grows, equipment and team coordination allow him to survive important battles, while his primary mastery shifts toward command, administration, and system analysis. (Chapters 202, 402, 748, and 2035)

Qigong master

Lauel begins as a qigong master and rises to first place in the class ranking. The corpus distinguishes qi from mana, allowing qigong techniques to function against an Anti-magic Shield that blocks conventional magic. His named techniques show a broad support-oriented kit: Dragon Claws raises stone or earth into barriers and pillars; Dragon's Whispers increases the damage a target receives by thirty percent; Wind Dragon's Wings can bind a target; and Dragon's Scream supplies a finishing attack. He can use the same earth control outside combat, overturning a large area of hard ground rapidly during Reidan's restoration. The exact acquisition process, resource costs, cooldowns, and maximum range of these techniques are not stated in the cited scenes. (Chapters 198, 201, 203, and 218)

His class is naturally suited to rear-line damage, but Lauel adapts it to the needs of Grid's party. Instead of competing with Grid's attack power, he blocks incoming force, exposes enemies to greater damage, binds them for an ally's strike, and times commands around dangerous death effects. This flexibility is a strength, but the early class has clear constraints: Lauel is vulnerable in close combat, and Wind Dragon's Wings can hold an ancient weapon for only one second. His use of Dragon Claws and Wind Dragon's Roar to protect Zibal also fails against Pon's Rail Spear, establishing that good prediction and layered defenses cannot overcome every disparity in power. (Chapters 200–203 and 415)

Flow Master and battlefield control

For his third advancement, Lauel chooses Flow Master instead of a combat-specialist path. The class can temporarily change terrain and weather and is explicitly described as having relatively poor single-combat power, but it exists for war. Master of Flow prepares a large battlefield for Grid's assault; Dragon's Stretching shakes the desert and causes sand to engulf troops; Wind Dragon's Roar creates or redirects powerful winds; Sky Dragon's Tears summons thunder and rain; and Storm Dragon's Fury twists wind direction to support allied projectiles. These effects let Lauel attack, defend, shape movement, reduce environmental hazards, and amplify allies without needing to defeat the main enemy himself. (Chapters 339–343, 402, 570, and 905)

The class's representative successes depend on interaction. Lauel uses wind to improve Reidan's massed archery, rain to dampen Belial's flames, and Storm Dragon's Fury to carry Jishuka's arrows into Grid's clone. In hell, his wind and rain strengthen the natural domain through which Piaro fights Baal's henchmen. Its limitations are equally important: Flow Master reduces Lauel's individual combat growth, does not make him physically durable, and can turn him into a strategic weak point because killing him can end the environmental support. The corpus shows increased scale and continued use across many years, but it does not specify formal skill levels, exact durations, or a later class advancement beyond Flow Master. (Chapters 339–343, 570, 905, and 1650)

Strategy, administration, and command

Lauel's signature competence is his ability to model several systems at once. He reads opponents' incentives, evaluates terrain and force composition, remembers guild members' capabilities, recognizes labor and supply bottlenecks, and converts Grid's ideas into executable policy. Activation is not a game-system command but a process of gathering reports, questioning specialists, and predicting how people will react. Representative applications range from deceiving Gauss into reinforcing his war, designing the Overgeared founding strategy, recruiting an artillery corps, countering merchant monopolies, and dispersing the cultivation world's forces through simultaneous attacks. (Chapters 501, 596, 1010, 1578, and 2000–2001)

This intelligence is powerful but neither omniscient nor costless. Lauel misjudges Piaro, fails to anticipate Valhalla's White Dragon's Eyes maneuver, struggles to recruit people through systems as effectively as Grid does through personal bonds, and can become exhausted by trying to coordinate everything himself. He improves by consulting experts, conceding when Grid possesses better direct knowledge, and building institutions that distribute work. His latest state is not simply that he has become a better schemer: after decades of administration, beings of far greater personal power accept his direction, and he is able to retire because the personnel and political order he helped build can function under Lord without him. (Chapters 218–220, 971, 1108, 1578, 2035, and 2056)

Combat fundamentals and equipment use

Lauel retains high-level player fundamentals despite his noncombat specialization. In the equalized Battlefield environment, he predicts Kraugel's sword timing, blocks with an iron folding fan, and coordinates a fast pincer attack with Pon. The fan is a weapon and guard, not a source of Lauel's qi or strategic abilities. Against Baal's henchmen, his survival and counterattack likewise come from Grid-made cloth armor and the Iron Wire of Bitter Grief. The armor absorbs a limited number of attacks, while the wire deals health-proportional damage and is nearly useless against named targets; it works in that battle because the henchmen are not classified as named. These examples show resourceful equipment use, not permanent superhuman defense. (Chapters 748 and 1650)

Later system and treasure knowledge

After the cultivation update, Lauel rapidly studies spiritual roots, treasures, invocation conditions, and energy efficiency. He explains that mana operates treasures at roughly thirty percent lower efficiency than spiritual energy, tests a defensive millstone with Grid's Annihilation energy, and distinguishes the resulting amplification from Grid's own spiritual energy. A black flame dragon also rises from Lauel's hand during this discussion, but the scene does not establish whether it is a mystical art, a qigong effect, or another manifestation, so its mechanism and combat value remain unknown. His demonstrated mastery here is analytical: he can test new rules, state uncertainty, and turn the results into advice while the wider world is still adapting. (Chapters 1956 and 1958)

Power progression

Relationships

• Grid: Lauel initially follows Grid to gain access to unmatched items, but the arrangement develops into the defining loyalty of his life. He gives Grid the freedom to adventure while carrying the burden of government, accepts morally difficult work on his behalf, and eventually becomes both his closest administrator and a trusted real-world friend. (Chapters 180, 186, 991, 1620, and 2056–2057)
• Piaro: Lauel first mistakes Piaro for an ordinary farmer and tries to drive him away with an excessive workload. After recognizing Piaro's value, he reorganizes development around his agriculture and repeatedly combines Flow Master weather with Piaro's battlefield control. (Chapters 218–220, 646, and 1650)
• Kraugel: Lauel regards Kraugel as both a strategic asset and an opponent whose strength must be treated realistically. They fight during Battlefield, cooperate in later crises, and ultimately participate in the plan that defeats the cultivation world's counterattack. (Chapters 748, 1710–1712, and 2001)
• Jishuka: Lauel helps bring Jishuka and the Tzedakah members into Grid's new guild and later coordinates her fire arrows through Flow Master wind control. Their long partnership includes disagreement and teasing, but rests on shared responsibility for Overgeared. (Chapters 186, 748, and 905)
• Irene: Lauel treats Irene's safety and legitimacy as matters of state, adding layers to her protection during major wars. Her calm encouragement during Zeratul's holy war also restores his own confidence, showing that she supports the empire's officials as well as Grid. (Chapters 1530 and 1713)
• Lord: Lauel plans for Lord to become a sustaining power of the kingdom and helps manage the political consequences of his upbringing. Lord's eventual success as emperor allows Lauel to judge his decades-long administrative project complete and retire. (Chapters 1271, 1388, and 2056)
• Peak Sword: Lauel incorporates Peak Sword's guild and resources into Overgeared's expansion and later works with him in real-world politics. Peak Sword's public leverage helps Lauel secure government approval for Grid's marriage arrangements. (Chapters 263 and 2056)
• Faker: Faker supplies the intelligence and covert force on which many of Lauel's plans depend. By the empire's mature period, the Overgeared Shadows can begin carrying out an anticipated policy—such as removing Zeratul's symbols—before Grid formally issues the order. (Chapters 971, 987, and 1413)

Items

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