Raymund Ballast

Raymund Ballast is a three-tailed Vulpine who enters the Fifth Cohort training program hoping to save his failing world and find his missing younger brother, Techetadore. His ability to seize and redirect another image's force develops under Randidly Ghosthound, and he eventually commands the Vulpis Squad through the war around Elhume's crystallized Aether. (Chapters 1514–1579 and 2233)

Biography

The elite squad and a brother's trail

Raymund arrives at the Fifth Cohort Rally Station carrying Techetadore's cryptic warning about Gabriel Swacc and the burden of a home world whose Aether allotment is drying up. Although he earned his elite uniform through testing rather than influence, he resolves to distinguish himself under Randidly so he can gain the standing needed to investigate. The training exposes weaknesses in his image control, but persistent work with Vualla and Helen turns his desperation into a weapon capable of stealing even Vualla's own punch and returning it against her. (Chapters 1514–1516, 1556, and 1579)

Apparent death and revival

On reaching the Fifth Cohort battlefield, Raymund follows what appears to be Techetadore away from the military camp. The reunion becomes an ambush: the six-tailed Vulpine tears out Raymund's esophagus, crushes his chest, and leaves him cooling on the mountain after Raymund still tries to steal breath from the air. Chapter 1606 therefore presents Raymund as apparently dying, but the sequence does not end there. In Chapter 1607 Randidly reaches him before his Soulspace fully disintegrates, sustains it with Aether and Nether, and floods his body with Yggdrasil's vitality until Raymund breathes and his flesh begins to rebuild. (Chapters 1606–1607)

Order Vulpis and the final campaigns

Raymund converts the discipline of recruitment into institutional leadership. He sets rules for the Vulpis Squad's tournament participation, insists that Order Vulpis prepare for full campaigns, and directs security sweeps when Randidly deploys the unit. During the assault through the crystallized Aether mountains, he commands the squad against porcelain automatons, drains energy from hundreds of them, and helps project the formation's colossal spectral Vulpine. His military composure survives repeated crises, but the war ends on a private wound: after Techetadore's fall, Raymund cradles his brother's body while the surviving squad mourns. (Chapters 1813, 1857, 2233, and 2313)

Appearance and personality

Raymund is a roughly three-meter-tall humanoid Vulpine with rich fur, yellow eyes, clawed hands, and three thick tails. During recruitment he wears the forest-green uniform of the elite squad. Years of harsh training leave his fur grown wild and his arms and shoulders crossed by jagged scars, reinforcing the physical savagery that his earlier disciplined presentation restrained. (Chapters 1514 and 1595)

He is dutiful, proud, and deeply protective, with both his ambition and his guilt centered on Techetadore and their dying world. Raymund initially fears being remembered only as his gifted brother's lesser sibling, yet he responds well to merit-based discipline and grows into a commander who places unit readiness above display. His greatest vulnerability is also relational: the hope of finding Techetadore overrides his caution and draws him into the near-fatal ambush. (Chapters 1514–1515, 1606, and 1813)

Abilities and progression

Raymund begins with a warm image resembling his world's god, an image similar to Techetadore's. Under suppression he can use that image to drive his body manually, and his considerable physical force allows him to sunder terrain while pursuing his brother. Training develops the image into Fiero's Audacity, which lets him grasp force expressed through another image, deprive the original technique of momentum, and manifest a borrowed version for his own attack. He first demonstrates the principle by stealing Vualla's punch; later he arrests a Swacc formation's projected golem and turns a borrowed halberd projection against another construct. Images that are unusually uniform or weakly joined to their makers are especially easy for him to sever. (Chapters 1515, 1579, and 1642)

His mature applications work at squad scale. Raymund can borrow energy from hundreds of porcelain automatons at once, leaving them stalled so the Vulpis formation can destroy them, and he coordinates the shared spectral Vulpine rather than fighting only as an individual. Borrowing remains contextual rather than unlimited: it depends on a force he can grasp, and the story does not establish that he can permanently retain what he takes. His near death also demonstrates that surprise and emotional shock can prevent him from mobilizing an otherwise formidable image. (Chapters 1606, 1692, and 2233)

Relationships

• Randidly Ghosthound: Drill sergeant, rescuer, and later commander. Randidly trains Raymund, preserves his collapsing Soulspace, and entrusts him with field command of the Vulpis forces.
• Techetadore: Raymund's gifted younger brother and the center of his long search. Love, envy, guilt, attempted reconciliation, and final bereavement all shape Raymund's development.
• Helen: One of the instructors who transforms Raymund's image use and hardens him through prolonged training.
• Charlotte Wick: A fellow recruit and senior Vulpis fighter whose assertiveness repeatedly tests Raymund's preference for professional limits.
• Vualla: Trainer whose punch becomes the first explicitly demonstrated attack Raymund steals with Fiero's Audacity.

Items

Raymund uses a Fifth Cohort identification card and elite uniform during recruitment, but neither receives a distinct history sufficient for a separate article.