Ian Denzel

Ian Denzel is an elderly Earthling Magician affiliated with the Haramark Royal Family. A field researcher, Alchemist, and trusted adviser, he combines technical curiosity with an irreverent manner. His expedition records outlive his first death and become an important part of Seol Jihu's understanding of Paradise.

Biography

The Forest of Denial and Haramark's service

Ian joins Samuel's expedition as the authority who supplied its information about the Forest of Denial and the hidden tomb. He prepares stabilizing potions, warns that emotional corruption can spread between companions, and treats the forest as a problem to test rather than a legend to accept. When Seol remains unaffected, Ian helps compare competing explanations and records the group's observations. His research gives the expedition a method for interpreting an environment designed to undermine judgment, even though it cannot prevent every member from making fatal choices. (Chapters 26–30)

After the survivors return, Ian offers to form a team with Seol, whose unconventional decisions have impressed him. The plan does not proceed because the royal family gives Ian a larger research budget and freedom to undertake outside expeditions in exchange for remaining in its service. Ian admits that the concessions appeal to him, but also says he cannot abandon the loyalty and bonds built with Haramark. His choice establishes the balance that governs his later work: he is a royal asset without giving up field research or independent friendships. (Chapter 32)

Ian continues to advise Seol outside formal assignments. At the city library, he helps him investigate the Royal Oath and the history behind Paradise's institutions, while his reputation makes other Earthlings take information seriously when it bears his name. King Prihi Hussey later identifies Ian as one of the few Earthlings he trusts, showing why Seol must negotiate with the crown when he asks to borrow the Magician for another expedition. (Chapters 36, 41, and 55)

Expeditions and a record larger than one hero

When Seol secures permission to take Ian on the Pagoda of Dreams expedition, Ian contributes magical expertise and the perspective of a veteran researcher. He subsequently participates in the Banquet and writes an account that centers Seol's decisions and achievements. Seol publicly corrects the resulting heroic narrative, insisting that the Triads, Umi Tsubame, and Carpe Diem made his success possible. The disagreement does not break their friendship; it instead shows Ian's tendency to recognize a pivotal individual while Seol insists on the coalition behind him. (Chapters 55, 73, and 79)

Ian's value to Haramark also ties his fieldwork to the kingdom's survival. He contributes to the plans surrounding Arden Valley and remains among the experienced fighters and advisers mobilized when the Parasites attack. His accumulated research lets him interpret the enemy's interest in Seol as more than an ordinary battlefield objective. That conclusion makes his later sacrifice a considered decision rather than an accidental death beside a famous comrade. (Chapters 83–90)

Sacrifice at Arden Valley

During the fortress battle, Ian is catastrophically wounded by Undying Diligence while protecting Seol. Hidden in the watchtower wreckage, he refuses Seol's attempt to search for a Priest and explains that the enemy's willingness to commit overwhelming forces proves the value of the “Star” it fears. Ian says he does not regret protecting that possibility. His last regret is personal: he wishes the team he once imagined with Seol and their friends could have existed. He dies smiling after asking Seol to pursue that shared dream. (Chapter 90)

Ian's absence is immediately legible to Seol when every other important Haramark visitor reaches his sickbed. Seol later confesses to Jang Maldong that he believes Ian died because of him, but Jang refuses the premise that Ian lacked agency. The death therefore becomes both a source of grief and a lesson in respecting another person's chosen sacrifice. It also leaves the royal family and Seol without an adviser whose loyalty had bridged their political and personal worlds. (Chapters 95–96)

Records, warnings, and the friend in the dream

Ian's work continues to affect events through the record books he leaves behind. Seol connects those records with the attack on Seo Yuhui and a wider pattern of manipulation among Earthlings, then later receives the compiled material from Jang. The books preserve precedents that individual witnesses had dismissed and give Seol a basis for treating humanity's institutional corruption as a strategic vulnerability. When he later begins reforming Paradise's Earthling organizations, he passes Ian's records to others rather than keeping their warning private. (Chapters 102, 124, and 168)

The same intellectual inheritance informs later expeditions. Kazuki Ayase recalls Ian's explanations of Astral Worlds, while Seol remembers the old Magician's counsel when confronting problems Ian did not live to see. In the Path of the Soul, Seol meets a recreated Ian who does not recognize him; Seol's immediate identification of the man shows how firmly the relationship remains part of his inner life. The encounter offers no literal return, but it makes Ian one of the people against whom Seol measures the future he is trying to build. (Chapters 141–145 and 159)

Resurrection and renewed exploration

After the Parasite Queen's defeat, Seol uses his postwar authority and resources to resurrect Ian and Dylan Edward. Ian regains his memories and chooses to participate in Paradise's revitalization rather than retiring from the world that killed him. He and Dylan investigate uncharted territory and bring information about a promising region to Eva, returning Ian to the combination of exploration, scholarship, and public service that defined his first life. (Chapters 203–205)

Ian's later work extends beyond initial reconstruction. He agrees to accompany Dylan on a rescue expedition when Seol disappears into another crisis, supplying the same trusted expertise that once supported the Forest of Denial party. A book bearing Ian's name is also adapted for Earth audiences; its dedication is to the friend who promised to guide him to a utopia. Whether readers know the history behind it or not, the publication converts the future Ian and Seol once imagined into a cultural record shared between worlds. (Chapters 189, 248, and 253)

Appearance and personality

Ian is a lean man of average height, apparently in his fifties when Seol first meets him. He has salt-and-pepper hair, wrinkles around his eyes, and a white beard long enough to reach his navel. In the field he wears an ivory robe and carries a wooden staff with a bent tip. After his resurrection, he remains slender and short, with the same long white beard that he habitually strokes while thinking or speaking. (Chapters 26 and 204)

His warm smile and measured explanations make him appear like a conventional wise elder, but he delights in crude jokes, teasing, alcohol, and feigned innocence. The humor can cross boundaries and irritate his companions, yet it coexists with patience toward inexperienced Earthlings and seriousness when evidence or lives are at stake. Ian is driven by curiosity, readily trading comfort for research access, but his decision to remain with Haramark and his final conduct show that loyalty is not merely a joke he tells to disguise a better salary. (Chapters 26, 32, 36, 73, and 90)

Ian also resists reducing danger to superstition. He proposes theories, tests them against observed results, revises his judgment, and leaves written records so later investigators can check his reasoning. That habit can lead him to frame Seol too strongly as a singular hero, but it also allows knowledge to survive both witnesses and institutions. His most consequential quality is therefore not magical power alone, but the decision to make experience transferable. (Chapters 28, 79, 102, 124, and 168)

Abilities and class

Ian is a Magician affiliated with the Haramark Royal Family and an accomplished Alchemist. Before the Forest of Denial expedition, he formulates potions that stabilize the mind and explains their limitations: they are countermeasures, not complete immunity to the forest's corruption. He also prepares purification magic and evaluates how hostile phenomena interact with emotion. The corpus does not supply a numbered level or a complete Status Window for him, so no more specific rank should be inferred. (Chapter 26)

His magical value lies as much in breadth as in direct combat. Ian can analyze unknown environments, compare magical hypotheses, research historical and divine systems, and recognize evidence others overlook. Later specialists treat his teachings on Astral Worlds as credible even after his death. These accomplishments establish him as a veteran scholar, but they do not make him omniscient: his theories require tests, his Banquet account overstates Seol's individual role, and the final fortress battle proves that an Army Commander can overwhelm him physically. (Chapters 28, 36, 79, 90, and 141–145)

Ian is also an experienced expedition member capable of functioning under battlefield pressure. He supports multiple dangerous missions and helps protect Seol during the Arden defense, but his body remains that of an elderly mortal. His injuries from Undying Diligence cannot be corrected by an ordinary potion, and he dies before medical help can reach him. His later return is the result of Seol's postwar resurrection, not an Alchemical or personal revival ability. (Chapters 55, 73, 83–90, and 203–204)

Relationships

• Seol Jihu: Ian first studies Seol as an unusual novice, then offers him partnership and comes to regard him as the friend who might lead Paradise toward a better future. He protects Seol at the cost of his life, while his records shape Seol's reform campaign. Seol later resurrects him, allowing their interrupted friendship and exploration work to continue. (Chapters 26–32, 79–102, 124, 159, 168, 189, and 203–205)
• Teresa Hussey: Teresa and Ian share years of service to Haramark, expressed through mutual trust and irreverent banter. She helps negotiate the concessions that keep him with the royal family, and his research supports her fortification plans. His death is one of the personal costs borne by the Haramark circle after the valley victory. (Chapters 29–32 and 83–96)
• Prihi Hussey: Prihi regards Ian as one of the few Earthlings worthy of royal trust and is reluctant to release so valuable a Magician without a compelling reason. Ian remains in royal service because loyalty and expanded freedom make the arrangement meaningful to him, rather than because he is simply compelled by the crown. (Chapters 32 and 55)
• Jang Maldong: Ian helps draw Jang out of retirement, and the two elders become part of the circle Seol imagines as a future team. After Ian's death, Jang preserves his records, gives them to Seol, and challenges Seol's belief that Ian's chosen sacrifice can be reduced to the survivor's guilt. (Chapters 90, 96, and 124)
• Dylan Edward: Dylan and Ian survive the Forest of Denial expedition together and are later restored by Seol after both have died. They become exploration partners during Paradise's reconstruction, with Dylan relying on Ian's confirmation of uncharted discoveries and inviting him on later rescue work. (Chapters 26–32, 203–204, and 248)

Items

• Wooden staff: Ian carries a wooden staff with a slightly bent tip when he joins the Forest of Denial expedition. It identifies his profession visually, but the corpus does not assign it a name or a unique power. (Chapter 26)
• Alchemical potions: Ian distributes mental-stabilization potions before the party enters the Forest of Denial and carries ordinary recovery supplies in battle. He explicitly warns that his preparations are limited, and a potion cannot reverse the injuries he receives from Undying Diligence. (Chapters 26 and 90)
• Research papers and record books: Ian writes field notes, a Banquet report, and compiled historical records. Although his account can reflect his own emphasis, the surviving books provide evidence that Seol and his allies use to investigate manipulation and reform humanity's organizations. (Chapters 28, 79, 102, 124, and 168)