Pagma

Pagma is a yangban-born half-god who becomes a legendary blacksmith, Great Swordsman, and defender of the Behen Archipelago. His belief that every life has equal value leads him away from the Hwan Kingdom, but fear and isolation later drive him to betray Braham, contract with Baal, and conscript dead heroes to stop Hell's invasion. His inheritance gives Grid the foundation for a greater craft, while his final repentance and liberation preserve both his heroism and accountability. (Chapters 2, 1177, 1327, 1684, 1853, 1855, and 1865)

Biography

Pagma's Legacy and Winston

Pagma first enters the story through what he left behind. When Grid reads Pagma's rare book under threat from Ashur's knights, the inheritance turns him into Pagma's Descendant, resets his level, masters ordinary blacksmithing skills, and opens a legendary growth path. Winston preserves a more personal story: roughly 130 years earlier, Pagma immediately recognized the quality of Albatino's swords, demonstrated swordsmanship powerful enough to seem to pierce the sky, and then refused the works. He believed weapons containing their maker's soul should not be spent on his own “small bowl” when future heroes could use them. The murals behind Loran Falls likewise preserve his sword dances and recognizable appearance, making his craft, restraint, and foresight part of Grid's route long after his death. (Chapters 2, 27, and 78)

His early-known works also suggest that Pagma did not create only for personal strength. He collaborated with Braham for nine years and eleven months to produce pavranium, a labor that joined legendary blacksmithing to great magic. At the request of Fifth Pope Franz, he also sealed the full power of several Rebecca Church artifacts because their myth-grade power was killing the women chosen to wield them. Braham initially described Pagma as healthy during their collaboration and said that he died of old age soon afterward. Later revelations prove that account incomplete: Pagma had already prolonged his life by stealing Braham's lifespan, and his final years involved far more than an ordinary natural death. (Chapters 114 and 123–124)

Reidan and the Overgeared Alliance

The Mysterious Forest initially makes Pagma's combat reputation tangible through a doppelganger that copied his appearance and techniques. Although the copy is explicitly not Pagma and remains an unfinished imitation, its blacksmithing and swordsmanship greatly exceed Grid's at the time. Fighting it forces Grid to study Pagma's footwork, timing, and variations under Piaro's guidance instead of treating inherited skill windows as complete mastery. The encounter consequently turns Pagma's legacy from a collection of production abilities into a demanding martial discipline, while the gap between the doppelganger and the descendant shows how much of the original legend still has to be reconstructed. (Chapters 230–234)

Wendy's diary later identifies the copy as Randy and reveals Pagma's intervention. He finds the gentle doppelganger protecting Wendy, repairs its metal-like body, and lends it his appearance and some of his strength in exchange for guarding the forest. The immediate choice protects Wendy and the region from a predatory lord, but a century of killing degrades Randy's intelligence, memories, and warmth. Grid's final class quest reinterprets this as Pagma exploiting a pure being to contain war rather than creating a malicious monster. After Baal falls, Pagma shelters Wendy's soul inside his own fading soul and lets her say a proper farewell to Randy, using his last moments to atone for a life he had turned into a tool. (Chapters 235, 1450, and 1853)

Braham later overturns the simple image of a heroic blacksmith. Pagma had murdered him and stolen his remaining lifespan, then accepted a contract with Baal when demons threatened the Behen Archipelago. The contract granted necromantic authority: Pagma exhumed dead legends, raised them as death knights, armed them, and compelled them to guard the islands. His goal was to stop Hell's invasion and preserve the world, but he pursued it by discarding individual bonds and the dignity of the dead. Braham therefore sees him as both the former friend who betrayed him and a man who chose overwhelming power for world peace. This revelation reinterprets Pagma's strength as inseparable from coercion, sacrifice, and a contract that ultimately claimed his own soul. (Chapters 403–404, 407, and 484–485)

Kingdom Building and the Great Demons

Pagma was born a yangban—a half-god with the potential to become a god—in the Hwan Kingdom, yet he questioned its founding hierarchy and argued that every human life was equally precious. Other yangbans mocked his interest in noncombat crafts while benefiting from the superior tools he made, and Garam remembers tormenting him as a convenient laborer. Pagma's early sword dances were conspicuous ritual movements with openings that stronger yangbans exploited. He gradually turned those movements into evasions and defenses, but his lower physical ability and greater focus on blacksmithing left him unable to complete the dances against his peers. He became the first yangban to fail Chiyou's test and eventually left the kingdom, carrying both his egalitarian convictions and an acute sense of weakness westward. (Chapters 642–643)

The Behen Archipelago shows what that insecurity became under extreme pressure. Pagma filled the islands with dead legends whose equipment and continued existence depended on him, using them as a barrier against the demon army even after his own death weakened their condition. Madra's diary exposes the human cost most sharply: Pagma raised the undefeated king as a death knight, installed a compulsory safety device, and ordered him to defend the final island indefinitely. The command helped keep the invasion contained, but it trapped Madra in solitude and reduced a dead hero to a tool. Grid later purifies these guardians and acknowledges that Pagma saved the world while refusing to excuse the victims created by his method. (Chapters 689, 692, and 701)

East Continent and Imperial Reckoning

Pagma's rise as a blacksmith occurred without Hexetia's instruction, provoking the blacksmithing god to impose repeated hardships in an attempt to stop his development. Pagma overcame them, became transcendent, and produced myth-rated works comparable to a god's creations. Hexetia's resulting alliance with Baal armed the demons, while Baal empowered Pagma to make the conflict more entertaining. In the Behen Archipelago, Pagma nevertheless stood alone against an army of hundreds of thousands and used the sword dance Drop against the great demons. By then he had learned that divine and demonic labels did not map cleanly onto morality. He wept over having judged Braham solely as a demonkin, turning the battle into a late recognition that his certainty had helped cause his greatest betrayal. (Chapter 883)

His encounter with Pope Chreshler reveals the same mixture of principle and instrumental cruelty. Chreshler voluntarily commissions the sacred-wood coffin and transfers his soul into it, outwardly to maintain Marie Rose's seal but also because he wants to remain with her body. Pagma cannot force the transcendent pope into that choice; he instead exploits Chreshler's desire, requests a duel to gain knowledge and linked sword dances, and turns the biological death that follows into a resource for humanity's defense. He nevertheless preserves Chreshler's human body in the No Offspring Tomb rather than discarding or raising it. Grid later infers that Pagma may have anticipated Marie Rose's release and left Chreshler a path to resurrection, but the source presents that motive only as Grid's theory, not Pagma's confirmed intent. (Chapters 997–998 and 1540)

Braham later explains that Zeratul exploited Pagma's low self-esteem and hunger for strength. Even after claiming to reject the war god, Pagma internalized the lesson that cold power was necessary and soon used it against Braham. This context does not remove Pagma's agency: he chose to trust a divine warning over his friend and converted his fear of weakness into a reason to betray. Chreshler's voluntary commission and preserved body show that not every death associated with Pagma follows the same pattern, while the contrast makes his murder of Braham and coercion of dead legends harder to collapse into a single claim that necessity excused everything. (Chapters 1028–1030 and 1540)

The Sword Grave supplies evidence that remorse eventually changed Pagma's preparations. Behind its field of thousands of swords, the Sword Guarding Grave housed Franz's ego and protected Braham's preserved body. Pagma anticipated that Braham could be resurrected and arranged for his own descendant to reach the site: the rare book led Grid into Pagma's legacy, while that legacy in turn led Braham to a successor capable of creating the vessel he needed. Pagma did not build this mechanism to demand forgiveness. It was restitution performed in his absence, preserving the friend he had killed and giving future people the means to reverse part of the damage. His later acquisition of Mineral Creation was also left within that route, making repentance—not merely power—the final context for several of his hidden arrangements. (Chapters 937, 939–940)

Yangbans, Gods, and New Legends

Later visions correct Garam's claim that Pagma fled simply because he was ashamed of failing a martial test. As a young yangban, Pagma denounced the abuse of Blue Tiger, tried to free the captive despite knowing he was weaker than his pursuers, and endured imprisonment beside her. When the injured cub began dying, his inability to save her convinced him that ideals without strength could not protect anyone. Chiyou cut their cage and taught him Transcend, Restraint, Pinnacle, and Kill before telling him to escape west. The successful rout at the dock is not Pagma's historical feat: during Chiyou's Test, Grid is controlling Pagma's recreated body and uses his own advanced combat experience to defeat Garam's group. Chiyou explicitly says the original Pagma barely escaped with Blue Tiger by a miracle. The past still grounds Pagma's pursuit of strength in compassion, but it does not grant him Grid's later performance. (Chapters 1177 and 1298–1299)

Death did not end the consequences of his contract. Baal held Pagma's torn soul in Hell and repeatedly burned it apart, while Pagma deliberately maintained his reason so he would remember his sins rather than escape the pain. Grid confronted Baal, called Pagma a hero without denying the people he sacrificed, thanked him, and promised him a chance to apologize to Braham. Pagma's soul answered with the sword dance Dragon, allowing Grid to pierce Baal and create an opening for Yura. The skill's heavy resource cost left Grid unable to move; he forced Yura through the gate to the human world and was killed by Baal rather than escaping with her. The encounter nevertheless expanded Pagma's legend, raised the rating of his surviving works, and made his final legendary chapter part of Grid's narrative. Pagma's legacy became an origin that Grid could acknowledge, criticize, and develop beyond. (Chapters 1127, 1129, 1327, and 1331)

Apostles, Dragons, and the Overgeared World

As Grid's own divinity and production techniques matured, Pagma's knowledge ceased to belong to one successor alone. Dantalion's legacy scrolls could grant an ordinary class user one of Pagma's blacksmithing skills, while Grid's evolved techniques were explicitly judged to have surpassed Pagma and matched a god. That advancement opened the last successor quest: free the soul Baal continued to torture. The quest framed Pagma as a hidden hero remembered publicly mainly for blacksmithing, but it also catalogued the betrayals, graves, and manipulated lives behind his victory. Grid accepted the goal because he had learned the motives beneath those actions, not because the system erased their moral cost. (Chapters 1423 and 1449–1450)

Pagma's soul later regained enough agency to speak while Grid and Yura challenged Baal. He warned that every failed assault gave Baal experience and watched Grid continue to fight beside companions rather than sacrifice them. Pagma admitted that, despite living among the weak in the Hwan Kingdom, he had never fully understood humans and had repeatedly made wrong choices because he could not connect with them. His admiration for Grid was therefore also self-criticism: Grid had inherited his craft without inheriting his isolation. The exchange develops Pagma beyond silent penitence, allowing him to identify trust and shared action as the answer he had missed while still enduring Baal's punishment. (Chapter 1684)

Baal, Asgard, and the Complete Ending

After Baal's defeat, Pagma and Alex were released and Grid's final class quest was completed. Pagma offered what remained of his talent, protected Wendy's soul inside his own fading form, and received Grid's assurance that many people had been saved through him. In a concurrent struggle near the river of reincarnation, his soul possessed Kraugel, combined two swords for him, and faced Madra's condemnation. Pagma felt remorse and wanted to apologize, yet also understood that he would make the same desperate choices if returned to the same impossible crisis. Kraugel's stronger swordsmanship could not use Pagma's comparatively flawed dances, but he defended the value of Pagma's inheritance by arguing that the right successor had distributed its benefits responsibly and helped humanity survive. (Chapters 1853 and 1855)

Baal's last malice delayed Pagma's rest: a curse secretly bound his soul to Kraugel and was designed to make Pagma seize the host's body, provoking one final apparent betrayal. Braham recognized the trap, dismantled the curse, and heard Pagma admit that trusting and relying on him could have changed the past. Braham neither declared Pagma innocent nor demanded more punishment; he told him that his efforts had ultimately enabled Grid to save the world. Grid likewise refused to call every choice right, but thanked Pagma and asked him to rest. Pagma apologized, expressed gratitude, ascended, and received Grid's blessing to be reborn somewhere in the world. Long afterward, Braham still described creating a new pavranium with Grid as repeating the collaboration he once shared with Pagma, leaving their craft as the relationship's enduring coda. (Chapters 1865 and 1958)

Appearance and personality

Pagma is depicted as exceptionally beautiful, with a slender, egg-shaped face, sharp hawk-like eyes, pale skin, red lips, and long dark hair. His build is lean rather than imposing, though the murals emphasize balanced musculature and the controlled lines of a dancer. The Mysterious Forest doppelganger reproduces this appearance closely enough for people who know the murals to mistake it for Pagma, while the vision of his youth describes a face beautiful even by feminine standards. His composed movements and elegant clothing can make him seem gentle or remote, an impression sharply at odds with the ferocity of his later combat and speech. (Chapters 78, 230–231, 883, and 1298)

At his core, Pagma believes that lives do not become less valuable because they belong to humans, animals, or those beneath the Hwan Kingdom's rulers. He respects craft as an expression of its maker, rescues Blue Tiger despite overwhelming danger, and accepts personal ruin to oppose Hell. He is also proud, blunt, emotionally volatile, and deeply insecure about his weakness. Those traits harden into a utilitarian conviction that the end can justify betrayal, desecration, and compulsory service. He repeatedly chooses for others instead of trusting them, then treats his own suffering as the price that makes the choice bearable. (Chapters 27, 642, 1177, 1298–1299, and 1684)

His final development is not a simple absolution. Pagma recognizes that his distance from ordinary humans made him insensitive to the people he meant to save, admires Grid's ability to rely on companions, and regrets betraying Braham. At the same time, he does not pretend that a clean alternative was available during the Behen invasion, and he believes he would still defend the world under the same conditions. He therefore ends as a remorseful but stubborn hero: accountable for concrete victims, unwilling to dismiss the lives his actions preserved, and finally able to accept compassion from the friend and successor who survived his mistakes. (Chapters 1327, 1684, 1853, 1855, and 1865)

Abilities, classes, and skills

Pagma's demonstrated power changes across his life. He begins as a physically inferior yangban who prioritizes craft, becomes a transcendent legendary blacksmith and Great Swordsman through independent development, and gains necromancy and enhanced insight from Baal late in life. Abilities displayed by Grid's evolved descendant class are not automatically proof of Pagma's personal final repertoire.

Legendary blacksmithing and production knowledge

Pagma develops blacksmithing without divine instruction and survives trials intended to prevent him from transcending. Once transcendent, his works can reach myth rating and be compared directly with Hexetia's. His range includes weapons, armor, tools, church artifacts, sealing structures, artificial minerals, and equipment for undead legends. He can recognize an unfamiliar masterpiece and its intended use almost immediately, handle sacred wood despite its hostile branches, and cooperate with a great magician on pavranium. Creating that mineral requires nearly a decade of joint research, showing that even his greatest production achievements can depend on specialized knowledge and collaboration rather than a single instant skill. (Chapters 27, 114, 883, and 997–998)

His inherited blacksmithing system teaches ordinary and legendary production methods, improves the chance of producing high-rated equipment, and gives the user dexterity-based value through repeated craft. Pagma's own surviving knowledge is broader than the first version of the rare book, and later scrolls can transmit individual techniques to people outside the descendant class. The corpus also establishes progression beyond him: Grid eventually fuses and develops the inheritance into a god-level production system. Pagma therefore remains the legendary foundation and a maker of myth works, but not the latest ceiling of blacksmithing, and the exact numerical rates of his personal production skill at death are not supplied. (Chapters 2, 624, 1423, and 1449–1450)

Mineral Creation and Item Combination

Mineral Creation formalizes the cooperative work that produced pavranium. It creates one new mineral by mixing multiple existing minerals, but requires the blacksmith to sign a research contract with a magician. The magician's level determines how many mineral types can be mixed and how long the research takes, leaving both values uncertain until a partner is selected; knowledge without usable magic is insufficient. Pagma and Braham's nearly decade-long collaboration produces pavranium with infinite durability and its own will, while their prior experience would make later research faster. The inherited skill panel allows only one created mineral, but the corpus does not supply Pagma's original panel or establish that he personally created another mineral afterward. (Chapters 114 and 940)

Item Combination joins two fully understood items, with the resulting performance governed by their compatibility. In the inherited form, physical hammering and analysis precede completion; the fusion lasts two minutes, costs 1,000 mana, has a six-hour cooldown, and reduces each item's durability by fifty when they separate, while the time required to combine them depends on their structures. Those numerical rules belong to the descendant skill and are not automatically Pagma's personal values. Pagma nevertheless demonstrates his own version after death by hammering Kraugel's Twilight and White Tiger Sword into one stronger weapon. The source explicitly calls Pagma's original skill badly flawed and says it became effective only after evolving in Grid's hands, so Pagma can perform the fusion but does not possess its latest, perfected state. (Chapters 295–300 and 1855)

Pagma's Eyes and item analysis

Pagma's original blacksmithing vision can identify an item's information simply by looking at it. After his contract with Baal, the ability evolves to inspect and copy a target item's statistics, options, and production method. Copying consumes an item Pagma made himself, and that material must be within one rating of the target; the consumed material cannot be recovered. Some embedded skills may fail to copy, the duplicate lasts only one day before permanent destruction, and the demonstrated version has a one-hour cooldown. These restrictions make the Eyes a powerful short-term adaptation and research tool rather than permanent, cost-free replication. Baal can intervene in Pagma's soul to grant this enhancement, tying its versatility to the same contract that ultimately enslaves him. (Chapter 909)

Great Swordsman and ritual sword dances

Pagma converts the Hwan Kingdom's ceremonial dances into swordsmanship. Each technique requires the corresponding dance movement before the sword's effect is completed, so the original style has conspicuous actions and exploitable blind spots. He responds by using the movements themselves to evade and defend, and later learns to link dances so one sequence carries several intentions. Chiyou's instruction gives him Transcend, Restraint, Pinnacle, and Kill; other demonstrated dances include Link, Wave, Revolve, Drop, Flower, and Dragon. The dances can produce energy blades, constrain movement, counter attacks, apply overwhelming force, or concentrate on a decisive target depending on the form. (Chapters 165, 643, 883, 998, and 1299)

His swordsmanship grows through defeat, observation, and live combat. Against Chreshler, Pagma tracks hundreds of divine spears with transcendent vision, completes fused dances, and turns the bombardment back through Flower. At Behen, Drop projects pressure across the battlefield and is particularly threatening to divine beings. Dragon launches its user upward like an ascending dragon and can pierce even Baal, but its resource cost is comparable to a fusion dance and can leave the body unable to move. These later effects are partly observed through inherited system forms, so their displayed numerical values belong to those versions rather than a complete stat sheet for Pagma himself. (Chapters 883, 997–998, 1303, and 1327)

The style has clear limits and successors. Pagma's lower physical attributes initially prevent him from damaging or outmaneuvering elite yangbans even when he completes a dance, and he can reliably link only a small number before later training. Large preliminary motions remain dangerous against an opponent who reads the sequence. Grid eventually changes the movement and power structure until yangbans no longer recognize the result as Pagma's style, while Kraugel's modern swordsmanship is judged superior enough that enabling Pagma's dances would be a loss. Pagma is thus the originator of a flexible ritual-combat system, not its most complete practitioner by the end of the corpus. (Chapters 643, 1299, and 1855)

Baal's contract, necromancy, and the price of command

As Baal's Contractor, Pagma receives the power needed to oppose the demon army after his own skills reach their limit. He can exhume corpses, raise legendary death knights, impose commands and safety devices, and prepare equipment suited to their identities. This creates a force capable of holding the Behen Archipelago, but the undead remain bound to his authority and deteriorate after his death. Madra's prolonged isolation demonstrates that the system can preserve combat power while violating the subject's autonomy. The corpus does not provide Pagma's exact domination capacity, resurrection rules, or a complete list of raised legends, so those boundaries remain unknown. (Chapters 403–404, 407, 689, 692, 701, 1127, and 1129)

The contract also enhances Pagma personally and allows Baal to touch his soul, but its cost is absolute. Pagma gives Baal his soul, falls into Hell after death, and is tortured for centuries. Baal can exploit the soul's knowledge, suppress its freedom, and carve a curse intended to make it steal a living host. Pagma's necromancy therefore solves the immediate military crisis by turning both other heroes and his future self into collateral. Its latest state is ended rather than retained: Baal is defeated, Braham removes the residual curse, and Pagma ascends toward reincarnation without the contractor's power. (Chapters 909, 1127, 1327, 1853, and 1865)

Yangban nature, transcendence, and Duke of Fire

Pagma is born a yangban—a half-god with the potential to become a god—but he is unusually weak by the standards of his siblings. Leaving the Hwan Kingdom's order separates him from the timeless security claimed by its favored residents, and the centuries he later lives are also sustained by the lifespan stolen from Braham. Repeatedly overcoming divine trials, refining myth works, and fighting transcendent opponents eventually raises him beyond his weak youth. He gains the title Duke of Fire because his passion to protect people is embodied as flame, a legendary authority associated with saving countless lives. (Chapters 642–643, 883, 922, and 1165)

The title reflects both his motive and its limitation. Pagma protects humanity with extraordinary resolve, but the same life is marked by sacrifices that prevent his protective ideal from becoming a broader virtue. His transcendent perception lets him process attacks and act in a compressed world that ordinary fighters cannot follow, while his blacksmithing dexterity supports precision and weak-point recognition. Even at his peak, later Sword Saints and Grid surpass important parts of his combat system. The corpus never supplies a complete final attribute panel for Pagma, so claims about his exact strength, speed, or rank beyond those comparisons would be speculative. (Chapters 998, 1165, 1303, and 1855)

Power progression

Relationships

• Grid: Grid inherits Pagma's craft and sword dances, first venerates the legend, then condemns his betrayals, and finally understands the fear and isolation beneath them without adopting the same methods. He recognizes Pagma as a hero, frees his soul, and blesses him for reincarnation. Pagma in turn entrusts Grid with Dragon and regards his ability to rely on others as the development his own legacy needed. (Chapters 2, 1327, 1684, 1853, 1855, and 1865)
• Braham: Pagma and Braham spend nearly a decade creating pavranium and become each other's closest friend. Pagma later kills him, steals his lifespan, and preserves his body out of remorse. Their final meeting does not erase the betrayal: Pagma admits he should have trusted Braham, while Braham removes Baal's curse and allows him to leave the past behind. (Chapters 114, 403, 939–940, and 1865)
• Baal: Pagma accepts Baal's power to prevent Hell's invasion, gaining enhanced eyes and necromantic authority in exchange for his soul. Baal treats his resistance and centuries of punishment as entertainment, then leaves a final curse designed to manufacture another betrayal. Pagma remains his captive until Baal's defeat and Braham's removal of that curse. (Chapters 403–404, 883, 909, 1327, 1853, 1855, and 1865)
• Garam: Garam torments Pagma, ridicules his equality doctrine and crafts, and remembers him as the Hwan Kingdom's weak failure. Later visions show that Pagma defied him to rescue Blue Tiger, developed strength from that need, and escaped west rather than abandoning his beliefs. Garam's contempt helps shape Pagma's insecurity, while Pagma's resistance exposes beliefs Garam privately knows are true. (Chapters 642–643, 1177, and 1298–1299)
• Chiyou: Chiyou recognizes value in Pagma's compassion when the other yangbans see only weakness. He teaches Pagma that protection requires force, grants him key sword dances, and directs him toward the western continent. That intervention saves Pagma and Blue Tiger, but it also begins the martial path whose lessons Pagma later applies too ruthlessly. (Chapters 1298–1299)
• Kraugel: Pagma briefly possesses Kraugel after being freed from Baal, combines weapons for him, and encounters a modern swordsmanship that has surpassed his dances. Kraugel refuses to call Pagma's inheritance worthless, arguing that Grid's responsible use and distribution of its power helped the world survive. (Chapters 1853 and 1855)

Items

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