Larry Dershaw

Larry Dershaw is a former heir of the ruined Dershaw family, one of Marlo Bravi's earliest students, and Lex Williams's oldest cultivation-era friends. Born unable to cultivate, he develops an extraordinary metal-based constitution from a metal spirit embryo fused into him by his father. His search for the family taken from him drives his rise from a battered beginner on Earth to a Heaven Immortal fighting beside Rafael's inter-realm team.

Biography

From disgraced heir to cultivator

Larry meets Lex in Marlo's beginner self-defense class only weeks after becoming a cultivator. Frail in appearance and quick to flirt, he initially seems less serious than the other students, but he returns bruised after Marlo beats him unconscious during the first lesson. Larry wants more than basic survival: having once been powerless, he believes a strong start under a renowned teacher can let him accomplish something meaningful, and he accepts Marlo's punishing instruction as the price of that ambition. (Chapters 14–18)

His persistence grows from the destruction of the Dershaw family. The family had controlled banks and spirit mines before an explosion killed its senior cultivators, rival powers seized its holdings, and the surviving Dershaws were banished to the Moon. Larry remained on Earth because he could not cultivate even after an enormously expensive medical procedure. Enemies deliberately spared him to watch the former heir struggle, yet he takes work as a paid sparring partner, enduring repeated beatings for resources because even a small chance of changing his fate is preferable to surrender. (Chapters 37 and 49–52)

That vulnerability shapes his bond with Lex. Larry shelters with him during house arrest, explains the hidden cultivation institutions that Lex has only just discovered, and guides him into an underground market; Lex, in turn, gives Larry a safe listener rather than treating his family history as entertainment. Their hours of conversation turn a class acquaintance into a durable friendship grounded in exchanged knowledge and mutual discretion, linking Larry's damaged place in Earth's cultivation society with Lex's still-ordinary public life. (Chapters 49–54)

Loyalty during Earth's upheaval

When attacks on Marlo's students begin, Larry urgently checks whether Lex has been harmed, showing that his easygoing manner does not diminish his loyalty. The same impulse governs his response to Matilda, whose connection to the rebel council makes her a target. Larry hacks the Bluebird system and erases her trail after she is wounded, then promises to hide her even though helping her exposes him to the authorities hunting both of them. His refusal to abandon a fellow student transforms political violence into a direct threat against his own life. (Chapters 67–69 and 172–175)

Larry reaches the Inn riddled with bullets after an assassination attempt. A Recovery pod cannot treat him conventionally because his living tissue is mixed with spiritual metal, but Lex supplies the metal needed to close his wounds. Once awake, Larry explains Matilda's danger and the conspiracy around them while withholding the deepest secret of his body, even from a trusted friend. The choice marks a boundary rather than a rupture: Lex protects him without demanding complete disclosure, and Larry continues relying on the friendship while guarding knowledge that could make him a resource to be harvested. (Chapters 160–176)

Absorbing a metal Midnight Games coin both repairs Larry and drives his cultivation toward Qi training, revealing that the same constitution which makes ordinary healing difficult also offers an exceptional path forward. He later joins Marlo in defending Earth and develops into a Golden Core cultivator by consuming rare metals. Larry's response to persecution is therefore not withdrawal alone; he converts each refuge and recovered resource into strength, while his continued support for Marlo and Matilda keeps his progress tied to the people who stood beside him when he had little power. (Chapters 176, 196, and 281)

Refuge, independence, and the search for answers

Repeated kidnapping and assassination attempts eventually push Larry to live largely at the Midnight Inn. He refuses to make safety equivalent to dependence: through the Guild room, he builds a business that buys scrap and supplies purified metals, using his own absorption and separation ability to fund both his residence and cultivation. The work makes the Inn a genuine base rather than a hiding place, while friendships there and his relationship with Irene give him a life beyond the role of a hunted Dershaw survivor. (Chapters 281 and 332)

Larry and Matilda also pursue leads concerning their missing families, so a supposed offer of information from Suzuki is difficult to ignore. After Noman Butt exposes the approach as deceptive, Larry verifies the evidence through his own computer skills and challenges Suzuki in the Inn's Murder Grounds. He defeats the system wielder after a six-day fight, losing an arm but rebuilding himself by consuming metal. The victory removes an immediate assassin and publicly demonstrates that his metal body is both a weapon source and a regenerative reserve, though serious damage still demands replacement material. (Chapters 283, 332–333, and 454–457)

Larry then introduces Lex to Rafael, Anakin, Souta, and Noman as a resourceful friend he trusts. Faced with evidence that hidden prisoners have engineered Earth's conflicts, Larry admits that part of him wants to abandon the planet and use the Inn to leave forever, but the continuing attempts on his life make retreat incapable of ending the problem. The group begins investigating the power behind his persecution, and Larry's private search becomes part of a broader alliance concerned with Earth's manipulation. (Chapters 470–481)

The metal spirit embryo and Jeffery's revelation

When Marlo locates the prison holding Earth's manipulators, Larry joins the assault despite its Nascent-level guards and the likelihood that his family is already dead. His motive has narrowed to answers and revenge, and he trusts Marlo's strength enough to follow him through an explosive breach with only a short window to act. The raid leaves Larry materially outmatched but no longer passive: he chooses a direct confrontation with the person who turned his family's destruction into a prolonged experiment. (Chapters 533 and 536–547)

The target, Jeffery, has already escaped and speaks through a projection. He identifies the treasure fused into Larry by his father as a metal spirit embryo and explains that Larry's successful merger was unexpected. According to Jeffery, he banished the other Dershaws as punishment for using the treasure, left Larry behind to observe how the embryo changed him, and collected data as Larry learned to cultivate. The revelation recasts Larry's unusual body, apparent survival, and years of persecution as parts of the same deliberate cruelty. (Chapter 548)

Jeffery also claims that Larry's parents and siblings are alive in his custody, ensuring that the failed raid cannot provide closure. Marlo forces Larry to retreat as the invasion of Earth begins, then sends him back to the Inn to warn the family and retainers. Larry is left unable to prove whether Jeffery's claim is true, but the uncertainty hardens his objective: alien machines become sources of rare spiritual metal, and he deliberately consumes their remains to grow strong enough to pursue the man who treated his suffering as entertainment. (Chapters 548, 551–553, and 602–663)

Revenge, immortality, and the Tyranum campaign

Years later, an oracle's prediction that attention at the Champions Tourney is the only route to recovering his family persuades Larry to leave the Inn's safety and cultivate in spaceship scrapyards. Rafael eventually gives him a role in marking Jeffery so the fugitive can be tracked; Larry converts fully into metal, flows across the ground, and applies the tracking substance without being detected as a living being. When Lex later reveals that the original Dershaws are dead and Jeffery kept only clones for torment, Larry accepts the painful certainty as better than endless doubt and asks that the clones be freed to live as distinct people. (Chapters 1068, 1235, and 1253)

Larry's reunion with Lex shows how their friendship survives long separations and radical changes in power. They resume familiar teasing before Larry entrusts him with the tracking metal and asks for the truth about his family; Lex answers directly through Mindmeld rather than sheltering him from it. Larry then returns to Rafael's work instead of making grief his endpoint. At peak Nascent, he joins Rafael, Alexander Morrison, Marlo, and their companions in preparing a shared Earth tribulation, carrying the loyalty formed in Marlo's first class into an immortal-scale alliance. (Chapters 1253 and 1530)

During the Champions Tourney and the group's later escape, Lex remains concerned enough to arrange Giselle's protection. She saves Larry and the others from forces above their level, but not without severe costs: after an ambush by a Celestial Immortal and four Heaven Immortals, Larry appears whole only because he has reconstructed his metal body while remaining as weakened as his companions. By the latest chapters he is a Heaven Immortal in the Tyranum realm, working with the same cohesive team under racial suppression while carrying a slowly healing hole in his chest—powerful and resilient, but demonstrably not invulnerable. (Chapters 1852, 1885, 2116, 2188, and 2373)

Appearance and personality

Larry is introduced as a frail-looking young man whose lack of visible fitness contrasts with his new status as a cultivator. His body changes markedly with cultivation: after moving to the Inn and developing his metal constitution, he reaches roughly six feet two inches. In advanced use, his human appearance is optional rather than fixed; he can become solid or liquid metal and then reconstruct facial features and the rest of his body, allowing an apparently ordinary human form to conceal a wholly metallic structure. (Chapters 14, 332, 1235, and 1253)

He habitually presents himself as cheerful, flirtatious, and socially shameless, using jokes about women even during reunions and dangerous planning. That surface makes his resilience easy to underestimate. Larry masks fear, exhaustion, and grief behind a grin, yet repeatedly chooses loyalty over safety, verifies claims rather than trusting desperation, and continues acting after devastating revelations about his family. His humor remains part of him rather than disappearing with maturity, but it coexists with technical competence, calculated combat, and a willingness to endure pain for long-term goals. (Chapters 16, 37, 175–176, 455, 481, 787, and 1253)

Abilities and cultivation

Metal spirit embryo constitution

The metal spirit embryo fused into Larry by his father merged with him instead of remaining a separable treasure. His body incorporates spiritual metal as functioning tissue, letting absorbed metal replace damaged material and allowing wounds that would normally bleed to be repaired from feedstock. Early treatment requires an external supply of suitable spiritual metal; later, even a lost arm can be rebuilt by consuming metallic objects. The constitution is therefore regenerative and structurally adaptable, but it does not prevent injury, exhaustion, or the need for replacement material after major damage. (Chapters 164, 456–457, 548, and 2188)

At its mature stage, Larry can eliminate all organic matter, convert his full body into metal, and alter its state and shape. He can produce weapons from his own substance, turn into a mercury-like liquid for infiltration, and pass as inert metal to spirit sense. This concealment depends on actually removing signs of living organic tissue rather than creating an illusion. His later reconstruction after catastrophic injuries demonstrates exceptional survivability, while the persistent wound and slow healing in the Tyranum realm show that stronger enemies and difficult conditions can still overwhelm the rate at which the body restores itself. (Chapters 456, 1235, 1253, 2188, and 2373)

Metal absorption, purification, and control

Larry cultivates by absorbing metals, with rare or spiritually conductive material providing especially valuable fuel. He can draw useful metal from scrap, separate and purify it to customer specifications, and consume unusual alloys from alien machines or spacecraft to advance. In combat, his control is precise enough to form blades and other weapons from his body and to apply specialized liquid metal as an undetected tracking mark. The narrative does not establish unlimited control over every external metal: his strongest confirmed feats rely on material he absorbs, carries, produces, or directly manipulates. (Chapters 176, 281, 332, 456, 602, 663, and 1235)

Cultivation and combat

Larry begins below Qi training, reaches Golden Core through his metal-centered path, and later advances to peak Nascent before crossing the immortal thresholds off page. Marlo's instruction leaves him with a deceptively sly, aggressive fighting style that combines bodily durability, generated weapons, and metal control. He can battle for days and fight above the expectations created by his appearance, but his six-day duel with Suzuki costs him an arm, and later immortal battles leave him gravely weakened. His latest explicit realm is Heaven Immortal; no level or mark within that realm is supplied. (Chapters 14–18, 176, 281, 455–457, 663, 1253, 1530, 2188, and 2373)

Computing and investigation

Larry is highly skilled with computers and has access to specialized networks and databases. He hacks Bluebird authorization to erase Matilda's trail, independently verifies information about Suzuki before accepting a lethal challenge, and maintains extensive server equipment while preparing the prison assault. These abilities support infiltration and intelligence gathering rather than replacing cultivation in a fight. They also carry consequences: helping Matilda attracts official attention, while better verification later prevents his desire for family information from making him accept Suzuki's manipulation at face value. (Chapters 174–175, 455, and 537)

Power progression

Relationships

• Lex Williams: Larry meets Lex as a fellow beginner and becomes one of his longest-standing friends. They exchange knowledge, protect one another without demanding every secret, preserve their familiar banter across long separations, and ultimately trust each other with the truth about Larry's family.
• Marlo Bravi: Marlo's brutal lessons establish Larry's combat foundation and teach him to persist through pain. Larry remains loyal to him, follows him into the prison assault, and later joins an immortal group that still treats Marlo as mentor and field leader.
• Matilda: Matilda trains beside Larry and Lex, and Larry later risks official pursuit by erasing her trail and sheltering her. Their shared losses lead them to investigate the disappearance of their families together.
• Rafael: Rafael helps investigate the force hunting Larry, recruits him into the operation against Jeffery, and leads the group through its tribulations and later campaigns. Larry entrusts his revenge to Rafael's plans even when he cannot confront Jeffery directly.
• Alexander Morrison: Alexander is a fellow member of Rafael's long-running Earth and inter-realm team. Their partnership develops from the conspiracy investigation into coordinated immortal combat.
• Giselle: Giselle joins Rafael's team at Lex's request and repeatedly protects Larry and the others from enemies beyond their level. By the Tyranum campaign, she and Larry operate as members of the same cohesive Heaven Immortal unit.

Items

Larry has no finalized notable-item inventory. Metals, coins, scrap, and alien-machine components associated with him are generally consumed as cultivation or reconstruction material rather than retained as distinct possessions.