Mercedes

Biography

Kingdom Building and the Great Demons

Mercedes entered the story as the Saharan Empire's First Knight and envoy to the newly founded Overgeared Kingdom. Her inborn sight exposed parts of Grid's strength even when he resisted, yet her purpose was political rather than personal: she delivered Emperor Juander's demand for tribute and for Prince Lord to be educated in the empire. She respected Grid's potential but placed imperial law above sympathy. That same severity governed her response when fellow Red Knights died at Valhalla. Rather than openly share their grief, she organized a punitive expedition, treating vengeance as the duty through which their deaths would be honored. (Chapters 630–631, 714)

The expedition forced Mercedes to confront the wound beneath that loyalty. She had grown up idolizing Piaro and Asmophel, but believed the old Red Knights had betrayed the empire; meeting Piaro alive therefore turned hope and grief into an attempt to kill him. Asmophel's confession exposed the conspiracy, and Mercedes immediately chose investigation over denial. Gyuratan, secretly Astaroth, exploited her unauthorized campaign and moved against her, while Grid intervened to save her. Mercedes still refused to flee: clearing Piaro's name and preventing a demon from controlling the empire mattered more than her safety. Her return bought time and made her private debt to Grid part of a larger reckoning with the institution she had served. (Chapters 787–790, 797–799)

East Continent and Imperial Reckoning

Mercedes's investigation culminated in open combat with Astaroth. His lightning manipulated metal and turned the weapons and armor of a knight against her, leaving her close to defeat. Juander's order to survive gave her conviction a new direction: her swordsmanship advanced, silver wings manifested, and Knight's Resolution restored and strengthened the knights around her until they could destroy the weakened demon together. She had exposed the truth, but Juander removed her as First Knight and ordered her to serve Piaro as atonement for the empire's injustice. Mercedes accepted the judgment, left the empire, and ultimately offered her sword to Grid, transferring her loyalty without abandoning her identity as a knight. (Chapters 803–811)

Service in the Overgeared Kingdom changed the content of that identity. A reunion duel with Piaro exposed her contempt for his farmer class, and his strength forced her to write a chivalric code rejecting prejudice. Grid's equipment then taught her that refusing good tools was pride rather than virtue, so she wrote another code that magnified the performance of high-rated items. These insights made her stronger and more adaptable, but not instantly flexible. During the East Continent expedition she abandoned an assigned rescue to pursue the displaced Grid, believing a knight must remain beside her lord; his rebuke showed that loyalty also required trusting his orders and protecting those placed in her care. Her apology marked a continuing transition from rigid obedience to responsible judgment. (Chapters 812–814, 825–826, 833)

Her encounters with the empire gradually changed the meaning of Juander's judgment. At the Vatican, Prince Dulandal called her a traitor and displayed her cousin Susan among the rebuilt Red Knights; Mercedes accepted the personal reproach but warned Grid that the grandmaster training the new order could not be dismissed. When imperial forces later attacked the Overgeared Kingdom, Grid summoned Mercedes and Piaro against Rigal, and Mercedes helped destroy the duke's air force before returning to guard Grid's household. Those confrontations suggested that exile had not severed her from imperial history—it had placed one of the empire's greatest products where she could help the power Juander was reluctant to destroy. Diworth inferred from the timing of Juander's renewed spirit, his lack of restraints on Mercedes, and his limited commitment to the war that he had knowingly sent her toward Piaro and Grid. Lauel and Basara separately reached similar conclusions. Their reading is not direct confirmation of Juander's private intent, but it reinterprets Mercedes's removal as likely exile with a protective or diplomatic purpose, not merely punishment. (Chapters 879–880, 1003–1005, 1015–1017, 1041)

Yangbans, Gods, and New Legends

Mercedes next became one of the principal defenders of Grid's expanding commitments. In the World Tree's forest, she fought the war god's followers on land protected by Grid and Beniyaru, read through an opponent's attempt to blind her, and wrote a code allowing her to equip normally restricted item types while increasing their performance. The gain had boundaries: special equipment could still reject her, elementals avoided her because the gods watched Keen Insight, and she could not completely measure powers far above her own, such as Biban. She nonetheless used that same sight to pierce barriers, discover concealed pages in Dantalion's book, and obtain new techniques, turning divine hostility into pressure for further growth rather than a reason to retreat. (Chapters 1111–1114, 1121–1129, 1250–1258)

The Hell Gao battle made this growth consequential for both Mercedes and Grid. She identified safe ground inside overlapping fire and meteor patterns, led the advance, guarded Grid with her shield, and read Hell Gao's intentions even when her body could not fully match his speed. Grid, who habitually protected finite-lived companions, trusted her to share his burden for the first time. When her balanced knightly offense proved too weak to finish the fight, her determination that a powerless sword could not protect its master produced a new code that sharply raised attack power, critical-hit probability, and vital-point accuracy. Their victory therefore created two developments at once: Mercedes overcame part of her class's offensive ceiling, while Grid learned to rely on rather than merely shelter her. (Chapters 1317–1319)

Their private relationship advanced more slowly than their battlefield trust. Inspired by Piaro's willingness to love despite a shorter lifespan, Grid told Mercedes that he wanted to love both Irene and her but needed time to understand how; Mercedes acknowledged her own feelings by promising to wait. Years later, Marie Rose's claim on Grid made Mercedes visibly jealous, yet Mercedes still accompanied him into the vampire's castle and put his safety first. The journey also exposed a self she rarely displayed in public: she interpreted the castle's paintings at length, and Grid realized both her interest in art and how little attention he had given the person behind the knight. His decision to learn her tastes did not resolve the romance immediately, but it shifted their bond from mutual attraction toward knowledge of one another as private people. (Chapters 1121, 1395, 1398–1400)

Apostles, Dragons, and the Overgeared World

By the time Grid's divinity formed the Overgeared World, Mercedes's service had become apostleship. The change did not erase her dangerous single-mindedness: an observer who had once expected her inflexibility to cause an early death judged that Grid had redirected that conviction and allowed her potential to mature. She acquired Gravity Formation because Keen Insight let her adapt to its constantly changing force, then applied it to speed or slow movement and, on a much larger battlefield, to suspend a barrage long enough for troops to withdraw. Against the martial god Zeratul, however, analysis supplied only a survival estimate; his speed exceeded even her sight's ability to follow, and she could do little more than weaponize broken armor fragments before stronger intervention arrived. (Chapters 1409, 1414, 1432, 1503–1512)

Romance finally became commitment because delay itself began to hurt Mercedes. Years after the mutual confession, she feared Grid's feelings had changed and struggled even to tell him that his appearance could never lessen her love. They then confirmed their relationship physically and emotionally, but Grid's political marriage to Basara left Mercedes grieving and jealous. Basara recognized that suppressing the older bond would turn it into a wound and urged Grid to go to Mercedes, arguing that relationships should support rather than obstruct one another. Grid proposed that night, Mercedes accepted before he could finish, and their private vows gave public language to what the story later calls his knight, lover, and family. (Chapters 1549, 1556, 1558, 1663)

Her later battles showed how apostleship widened her duty beyond standing immediately beside Grid. When Amoract projected Conflict from hell, Mercedes's first attempt to inspect it turned her against an ally, but she deliberately looked again, partially deciphered the phenomenon, and resisted it. In hell she recognized that a demon's supposed Sword Saint soul was an artificial fusion, avoided its flawed imitation of Kraugel's Space Sword, and persuaded the demon to stop obstructing the expedition. These were victories of interpretation as much as force. Alongside her shield techniques and chivalric codes, which protected allies and reinforced their confidence, they established her as a field leader capable of exposing an enemy's premise, assigning meaning to it, and turning that knowledge into collective action. (Chapters 1637, 1662, 1666–1667)

The hell-moon operation exposed the remaining danger in acting on that responsibility alone. Mercedes correctly located the mass of flesh projecting the moon and went underground to identify it, but the supposedly nonaggressive souls she allowed to touch her engraved their pain, anger, and sorrow onto her own soul. Their grievance became her obsession, driving her to attack without reporting or waiting for the other apostles. Exhausted and unable to regather the sword energy of dramatic victory, she was nearly strangled by the blackened Grid before Grid arrived and rescued her. She then assessed the cost clearly: even harmless souls accumulated mental damage, the core continually moved beyond Keen Insight's reach, and a larger force was required. Grid and Mercedes retreated together. The failure turned her usual lesson inside out—insight could identify a crisis, but emotion borrowed from its victims could corrupt judgment, and leadership sometimes meant withdrawing to return with enough shields. (Chapters 1663–1665)

Baal, Asgard, and the Complete Ending

Mercedes's return to the Vaintz estate joined personal history to divine power. She sought the right to head the family but rejected its inherited devotion to Pluto, refusing to trade Keen Insight for a destructive god's status. During the resulting duel with her father, she analyzed the family's God's Descent technique and invoked Grid's divinity instead. The skill granted her the right to use his orange divinity while making her pay its resource costs; a full descent remained possible but could injure her mind and body. Her father recognized her as one of the emperor's wives, and she later answered the goddess Melory by naming Grid her dear husband. That progression from private proposal, to lover and family, to wife and husband made the marriage an established identity rather than a single romantic scene. Mercedes then defeated Melory through disciplined sword skill rather than being overcome by divine charm. (Chapters 1702, 1718–1722)

Her final arc tested whether being needed was the only way she could understand love. When Grid repeatedly kept his apostles from lethal battles, Mercedes admitted that exclusion made her question her purpose; his promise to rely on them restored their trust. Revealing her Frozen World then exposed the abandonment, guilt, and desire hidden beneath her composure. She absorbed the Heart of the Frost Queen, gained control over its indiscriminate cold and a heart capable of restoring her after death, and later led a team against one of Baal's resurrection facilities. When pregnancy kept her from the final battle with Trauka, Irene stopped her attempted escape and reframed restraint as protection of family. Mercedes lowered her sword and accepted that trust and patience could also be a knight's duty. (Chapters 1791–1809, 1834–1835, 1919)

Appearance and personality

Mercedes is consistently presented as exceptionally beautiful, with very pale skin, clear blue eyes, and an imposing gaze. Her hair is described as white in some earlier scenes and as blue or dark blue in later ones. After she absorbs the Heart of the Frost Queen, it changes to a clear sky blue and her skin becomes whiter than snow. Her equipment reinforces the contrast: the Saharan Red Knights' armor initially identifies her imperial office, while later red-and-purple heavy armor, a transparent white sword, a large shield, silver sword energy, and manifested silver wings create the visual language of Grid's legendary knight. (Chapters 631, 879, 825, 1702, 1808)

Her defining virtue and flaw are the same conviction. Mercedes is direct, disciplined, difficult to intimidate, and willing to place her body between danger and the person or cause she serves. Early on, those traits make her inflexible: she obeys rules beyond their useful purpose, converts grief into duty, and can mistake immediate proximity to her lord for the whole of loyalty. Her chivalric codes record the lessons that gradually complicate that outlook—rejecting prejudice, respecting equipment, strengthening offense, and acting on Grid's will. In private she is more vulnerable than her public reserve suggests, with jealousy, romantic longing, an interest in paintings, and deep pain over parental abandonment. By her last appearance, she can suppress the impulse to fight and accept dependence on her family without treating it as weakness. (Chapters 714, 813, 1400, 1409, 1807–1809, 1919)

Abilities, classes, and skills

Legendary Knight and chivalric codes

Mercedes becomes a Legendary Knight when Juander's command to survive transforms her determination during the fight with Astaroth. Her legend retains the knight class's versatility, equipment bonuses, command authority, and capacity to protect others, but adds an evolving system of chivalric codes. A code is not a temporary declaration: it is a principle proven through experience that permanently strengthens her statistics or develops new effects. Recorded codes raise her overall attributes, reject occupational prejudice, amplify the base statistics of epic through myth-rated equipment, remove many equipment restrictions while improving item performance, and increase attack power, critical-hit rate, and vital-point accuracy. The principles can blossom into new traits and are strongest when her conduct genuinely resolves the contradiction that produced them. Special or exclusive equipment may still reject her despite the broad access granted by a code. (Chapters 807, 813, 825, 1114, 1130, 1316, 1319)

Keen Insight and combat prediction

Keen Insight is an innate power present from birth, not a technique Mercedes learned. It forcibly reads information, detects hidden structures, observes intentions and attack paths, finds weak points and safe zones, and can distinguish falsehoods embedded in barriers, magic, or even souls. In practice, Mercedes combines it with Incomplete Predictions to position her shield before an attack lands, guide allies through otherwise lethal patterns, see through concealment or dimensional boundaries, and evaluate unfamiliar powers until she can devise a counter. The gods are wary of it, and that attention causes indirect costs such as elemental rejection. Direct use can also be dangerous: examining Amoract's Conflict briefly compromised her mind before a second attempt produced partial resistance. (Chapters 630, 826, 1121–1129, 1317–1319, and 1637)

Keen Insight is powerful analysis rather than unconditional foresight. Mercedes may understand an attack that her body is not fast enough to answer, as against Hell Gao and Zeratul, and beings far beyond her can remain unreadable. Its conclusions also depend on available evidence; accumulated experience with Kraugel's complete Space Sword was what allowed her to expose an imitation. Through Request to Stand With Me, the Duke of Virtue asks Mercedes for help and she chooses whether to respond; when she consents, Keen Insight is implanted in Grid's eyes without depriving her of her own sight or placing her in danger. The cost falls instead on Grid's development: repeated reliance can form habits that do not suit his body or native swordsmanship, so Biban advises restraint. Its long-term ceiling was said to include true foresight, but the supplied corpus does not confirm that she reaches that final state. (Chapters 630, 826, 1121–1129, 1176–1177, 1215, 1317–1319, 1484, 1504, 1512, 1637, 1662)

Swordsmanship, defense, and command

Mercedes is a master of Vaintz swordsmanship and complete weapons handling, able to use one or two swords, a shield, heavy armor, and eventually the transforming mace-and-sword Innocent. Sword energy extends the force and reach of her attacks; her later “dramatic victory” sword energy is the product of repeatedly writing chivalric codes. Knight's Resolution channels silver sword energy to allied knights, restoring their condition, increasing their strength, and renewing courage, while Silver Wings provide mobility and a visible manifestation of her legend. Shield Block, Noble Bravery, predictive placement, and her willingness to body-block make her an exceptional front-line defender. Her weakness is the underlying balance of a knight: before the offensive code written against Hell Gao, she could fill every combat role without reaching a specialized attacker's peak. (Chapters 807, 811, 819–820, 825, 952, 1215, 1318–1319, 1663, 1702, 1807–1809)

Her value also extends to armies. She can establish and lead a knight division, improve its members' growth and loyalty, and strengthen fortifications, siege defense, and soldiers assigned to protect a city. As commander of the Legendary Overgeared Knights Division, she grants broad combat and endurance benefits rather than functioning only as an elite duelist. Later operations show the mature application of this authority: she coordinates withdrawals under bombardment, warns units about concealed terrain hazards, and leads an independent strike team against Baal's infrastructure. Her defensive skills and codes do more than absorb damage; they create the belief that allies can hold formation and act. (Chapters 807, 811, 814, 952, 1318–1319, 1511, 1666, 1834–1835)

Gravity Formation, God's Descent, and learned techniques

Gravity Formation lets Mercedes control gravity in a small area, increasing or reducing effective movement speed and disrupting enemy action. At its initial level it has a short duration and affects the caster as well, so accurate timing and adaptation are essential; Keen Insight is the reason she can operate it while the force changes in real time. She later scales the principle into a wide field capable of suspending a mass bombardment, but maintaining that field immobilizes her and leaves her vulnerable. Other learned gains include Enhancing Strength and the ability to derive useful knowledge from Dantalion's hidden material, although her defining combat system remains the interaction of insight, equipment, and knightly technique. (Chapters 1258, 1414, 1432, 1511)

God's Descent is a divine technique Mercedes reconstructs after observing her family's version. With Grid's permission, she receives the right to use his divinity without consuming his own reserve; Mercedes pays the resources for each use. Grid can descend directly through her if circumstances require it, but that form risks serious damage to her mind and body. Ordinarily she instead surrounds her own swordsmanship with the Overgeared God's orange divinity, as in her victory over Melory. The technique demonstrates both the reach and limit of Keen Insight: Mercedes can understand a sacred system and replace its patron with the god she chose, but using it still obeys explicit costs and the hazards of becoming a vessel. (Chapters 1702, 1718–1722)

Frozen World and the Heart of the Frost Queen

Frozen World is Mercedes's mental world, a landscape formed from abandonment by her parents, the old Red Knights who raised her, guilt over failing to save them, and her attachment to Grid. Intruders face ice recreations whose blades inherit the power of her equipped weapon. When her mental world unites with Grid's during the creation of Innocent, the two can read one another's thoughts and its cold directly influences the forging process. This also provides the controlled environment in which Mercedes judges that she can absorb the Heart of the Frost Queen rather than let its curse overwhelm everyone around it. (Chapters 1807–1808)

The absorbed heart gives Mercedes command over extreme cold that originally could not distinguish ally from enemy. The item's forced effect becomes subject to her will, allowing applications such as freezing the superheated swamp at Baal's spawning facility without condemning her own unit. More radically, her new heart can restore itself after being broken, so she will resurrect even if killed. The text presents this as continued bodily restoration, not proof that no power can ever counter or contain her, and it does not establish the timing or limits of repeated resurrection. Her sky-blue hair, snow-white complexion, red frost fragments, and cold aura are the visible consequences of the change. (Chapters 1808–1809, 1835)

Power progression

Relationships

• Grid: Mercedes first evaluates him as an imperial envoy, then owes him her life and chooses him as her sovereign. Their bond develops from formal loyalty into mutual reliance, apostleship, marriage, and an expected child. Her growth teaches him to trust finite-lived companions in battle; his protection and faith allow her to change convictions that once seemed certain to kill her. (Chapters 630–631, 797–811, 1121, 1317–1319, 1549–1558, 1663–1665, 1702, 1718, 1919)

• Piaro: Piaro is Mercedes's childhood captain, teacher, and model of knighthood. Believing him a traitor causes one of her deepest crises. Learning the truth and losing a duel to him force her to abandon prejudice, while his later recognition of her growth closes much of the distance created by the old Red Knights' destruction. (Chapters 787–790, 811–813, 1015–1017, 1417)

• Asmophel: Mercedes once reveres Asmophel alongside Piaro, then sees him as a fallen hero. His confession reveals the truth of the imperial conspiracy. She thereafter treats him as a comrade whose guilt is real but whose testimony and continuing service help restore the honor of their former order. (Chapters 787–790, 811, 1041, 1417)

• Irene: Irene receives Mercedes as part of Grid's family rather than as a rival subordinate. Their clearest confrontation occurs during Mercedes's pregnancy, when Irene prevents her from joining the Trauka battle and teaches her that protecting a child, trusting comrades, and accepting the family's protection are also duties. (Chapters 879, 1121, 1556, 1919)

• Yura: Mercedes's jealousy initially complicates her view of other women close to Grid. By the Baal expedition, she recognizes Yura's prolonged isolation and work in hell, greets her with respect, and wants to emulate her steadiness. (Chapters 1395, 1556, 1834–1835)

• Gyuratan: Gyuratan, the demon Astaroth in disguise, is the enemy who turns Mercedes's investigation into a test of whether imperial obedience matters more than truth. His attempt to frame and kill her leads directly to her legendary awakening and final separation from the Saharan Red Knights. (Chapters 788–790, 797–811)

Items

• Mercedes's White Tiger Sword: Grid first lends Mercedes the transparent sword, whose earth power and terrain effects complement her defensive fighting style and Keen Insight. It becomes her signature weapon for a long period. The sword does not create her later dramatic-victory power; it channels the sword energy Mercedes produces through repeatedly writing chivalric codes. It is considered outdated by the time Grid creates her later exclusive weapon. (Chapters 819–820, 1114, 1663, 1702, 1807)

• Hero King's Armor: Grid makes this red-and-purple myth-rated heavy armor specifically for Mercedes. Her class bonus increases its defense, while her equipment-focused chivalric code raises its base statistics further. Its offensive options reward continued combat and help her accept that equipment is part of a knight's strength. (Chapters 824–825, 952)

• Dantalion's Sword: Mercedes receives this weapon after the Dantalion raid. Its offensive character gives her an alternative to the more defensive White Tiger Sword and supports weapon-swapping according to the demands of a fight. (Chapter 1258)

• Innocent: Forged from Trauka's materials within the union of Grid's and Mercedes's mental worlds, Innocent changes between a sword and a mace as red, snowflake-like fragments assemble around it. It is designed as her exclusive successor to the White Tiger Sword and expresses both her all-weapons mastery and the frozen mental world she had previously concealed. (Chapters 1807–1809)