Maiad van Declan

Maiad van Declan is the ruler publicly known as the Star Chaser and the hidden Lord of the Rift. They first approach Jaehwan as a generous guide through the Abyss, but their manipulation of the Grand Auction, war against Big Brother, and attempt to create Only One World make them his principal late-stage rival.

Biography

Catastrophe and the Abyss Expedition to Ancient Gods and the Grand Auction

Maiad's name reaches Jaehwan before the two meet. Sirwen Armelt warns that Maiad will not remain idle if they learn he has opened Creation. When Maiad eventually appears, however, they conceal that danger behind the public identity of the Third World Federation's king. They welcome Jaehwan, take him to Ignel's shop, pay much of the cost of his new equipment, provide an inventory necklace, and escort him to the Grand Auction. Their almost undetectable presence and easy generosity establish both their extraordinary control and the disarming manner that leads subordinates to call them a kind-hearted swindler. (Chapters 79 and 178–181)

The hospitality gives Maiad the proxy they need. The Seven Seats Agreement prevents them from bidding personally, so they furnish Jaehwan with a blank check and promise him one of the Three Divine Artifacts if he secures Deus Ex Machina. That offer is misleading from the beginning: Maiad is also the artifact's seller, the displayed machine is a substitute, and the auction lets them recover the money while using Jaehwan's Naked power to break the self-aware guardian called X. They also promise to locate Kim Yoonhwan, exploiting Jaehwan's most urgent personal goal to keep him inside the plan. (Chapters 183–190)

Once Jaehwan defeats X, the real Deus Ex Machina appears and Maiad takes control of it. They cut through intervening gods with elementary vertical and horizontal sword strokes, defeat Jaehwan from the machine, and reveal that the warm sponsor is powerful enough to stand among the Seven Divine Thrones. Yet Maiad then leaves the cockpit to continue the contest directly, answering Jaehwan's stab with a matching technique and wielding the white sword Coexistence. Their seven tower Parts amplify an already immense World Power until it breaks Jaehwan's Solitary Existence. Andersen holds Maiad back at the cost of her life, allowing Jaehwan to escape while Maiad claims Caspion's vacant Divine Throne. (Chapters 190–194)

Ancient Gods and the Grand Auction to The Great Forest and the Rift

Maiad's auction scheme belongs to a much older organization. Alongside Nameless and Buddha, they founded the Rift to oppose the structure associated with Big Brother. The Rift's Great Disappearance Simulation subjects recruits to repeated situations in which they must kill familiar people, seeking to force Awakening and admit only those who can withstand its psychological threshold. Maiad uses Yoonhwan as an unusually productive subject even after 1,954 failed attempts: his refusal to kill a friend frustrates the intended route, but the persistence itself produces a Unique World and draws Maiad's interest. The result shows the double edge of their leadership—an eye for exceptional souls combined with a willingness to manufacture trauma around them. (Chapters 196–200 and 205–207)

The Rift then allies with the Great Lords and turns its accumulated strength toward conquest of the Abyss. That apparent alliance does not mean Maiad has accepted the Great Lords' service to Big Brother. The founders' practical aim is to replace the existing System with another order they can control, and Maiad treats cooperation with its servants as a usable stage in that project. A world appraisal performed through Yu Seolha exposes the deeper compromise: Maiad does not truly intend to face the star they perceive as Big Brother. Their army can wage war in the System's name while still presenting the campaign as liberation from it. (Chapters 208, 211, 213, and 215)

On Revolution Day, Maiad fires Deus Ex Machina at the visible star and causes it to fall. The spectacle persuades the Abyss that Big Brother is dead, recasts the Rift's violence as heroic necessity, and begins an age named after the organization. Maiad knows the event has not killed Big Brother; it is a political and metaphysical performance that clears the way for the Rift's replacement System. By the following campaign they are pale, unshaven, and exhausted, yet they continue using the Great Disappearance to screen the Lost Ones, purge those deemed incapable, and unify the surviving worlds for a final war. Victory has enlarged their authority while leaving the original enemy untouched. (Chapters 223–226)

Only One World to The First Nightmare and Revision

Maiad's path began more idealistically than their late methods suggest. They first fought for humanity and then for existence itself, only to conclude that individual strength could not overturn the System. The ancient Awakened Ones Nameless and Buddha recruited them, revealed what they knew of Big Brother, and made Maiad the Rift Lord because their soul was the strongest and healthiest of the three. Nameless eventually left in despair, while repeated reincarnation damaged Buddha. Maiad remained, but the inability to reach the sky eroded the purpose they had inherited until replacing the System seemed more attainable than destroying it. (Chapters 226–229)

When Jaehwan confronts them, Maiad asks him to join the Rift and help open a new world. They defend Revolution Day by arguing that the claims surrounding Big Brother are unverified, even while hiding the emotional wound left by their own failed challenges. Their real final stage is Only One World. Deus Ex Machina's Plausibility Destruction severs the links between gods and Vicegerents, Catastrophe infects those Vicegerents through Time Infection, and Gestalt distorts their perception through Cognitive Dissonance. The victims then yield their World Power to Maiad's Mountain of Corpses, Sea of Blood, transforming that Unique World into a replacement System that drains allies and enemies alike. (Chapters 231–234)

The plan fails because Jaehwan receives World Power from the far larger population of 《Chaos》, whose Awakened Ones freely choose to believe in him. That voluntary support breaks Only One World and destroys the combined Three Divine Artifacts. A year later, Jaehwan remembers Maiad exhausted in the surviving cockpit of Deus Ex Machina, admitting defeat. Maiad reveals that they challenged the sky 127 times and that its star—or Jaehwan's eye—blinks once every thousand days, creating a brief route upward. After warning him that time is existence's greatest enemy, they close their eyes and die. Their last act turns hard-won knowledge from repeated failure into the opening Jaehwan uses to pursue Big Brother. (Chapters 235–240)

Later evidence places Maiad's project in a still older pattern. The Ancient Three Gods had once combined their Sanctuaries to create an incomparably greater Only One World: the System itself. Their alliance then fractured when Deus attacked Gestalt and Catastrophe, but the imposed order they created endured. Maiad did not invent the model they reproduced; they rebuilt a diminished version from the Three Divine Artifacts and their own Unique World. This correction does not erase the political choices behind the Rift, but it shows that their proposed alternative remained trapped inside the same history of compulsory unity they hoped to surpass. (Chapter 242)

Appearance and personality

Maiad is tall, with ash-gray hair, a brilliant warm smile, and a pure-white cape marked by a star. Their presence is so thoroughly suppressed that even Jaehwan has difficulty sensing them at close range. By the final Rift campaign, strain has altered that immaculate appearance: their complexion is pale, their face is lined with stubble, and they have grown visibly thinner from exhaustion. (Chapters 178–179 and 225–226)

They are charismatic, observant, and habitually generous, buying gifts and lowering others' suspicion before asking for what they need. The kindness is not wholly false—Maiad remembers loneliness, speaks of learning that one imagination cannot fill a world, and is willing to leave Deus Ex Machina to duel Jaehwan directly. At the same time, they repeatedly treat people as instruments: Jaehwan becomes an auction proxy, Yoonhwan a simulation subject, and the inhabitants of the Abyss fuel for a unified System. Their tragedy is not lack of an ideal but the conviction that centuries of failure justify imposing it. (Chapters 179–181, 189–194, 207, and 227–234)

Powers and limitations

Awakening, concealment, and World Power

Maiad is an exceptionally advanced Awakened One whose controlled presence can seem absent even inside Jaehwan's perception range. Their World Power exceeds that of ordinary gods and is large enough to place them under the Seven Seats Agreement. Seven tower-shaped Parts can multiply that power further, and Complete Sanctuary unfolds their Unique World as a red landscape dominated by a star and towers. The amplification is immense rather than inexhaustible: Constellation Rending wounds them, prolonged campaigns leave them physically depleted, and the collapse of the World Power supporting Only One World ends their ability to fight. (Chapters 178, 183, 191–194, and 225–237)

Swordsmanship and Coexistence

Maiad's swordsmanship is defined by economy. Simple vertical and horizontal cuts carry enough World Power to destroy gods, while a stab modeled on Jaehwan's own technique can neutralize the Way of Wave. Their primary named weapon is Coexistence, a pure-white sword associated with their direct combat outside Deus Ex Machina. Matching the form of Jaehwan's stab does not grant Maiad Naked or Solitary Existence; it is a technically and energetically overwhelming counter performed through their own Awakening. Jaehwan can still wound them once his Destruction and World Power exceed the defenses around that method. (Chapters 190–194 and 231–236)

Mountain of Corpses, Sea of Blood

Mountain of Corpses, Sea of Blood is the world Maiad shares with the Rift's founding history. Its Great Disappearance Simulation repeats morally destructive scenarios to push candidates toward Awakening, with adjustment periods and a threshold that many subjects never cross. In Only One World, Maiad expands the same world into a proto-System capable of entering other Unique Worlds and drawing their power toward one center. This expansion depends on coercion, the Settings contributed by the Three Divine Artifacts, and a sufficient population of linked souls. Freely offered belief from Chaos supplies Jaehwan with a larger counterforce and demonstrates that Maiad's imposed unity cannot command every world. (Chapters 207, 227, and 232–236)

Deus Ex Machina and the Three Divine Artifacts

Deus Ex Machina is equipment Maiad acquires through the Grand Auction scheme, not an innate aspect of their soul. Its System Deus multiplies the user's World Power, its control-type Setting supplies Augmented Reality, and its extremely durable body can restore armor by consuming the user's power. Its Plausibility Destruction also severs System connections, which becomes one component of Only One World's Hidden Phase. Jaehwan's Naked can penetrate its joints and cockpit, while destruction of the other artifact functions and exhaustion of the user's power leave only the cockpit intact. (Chapters 185–193 and 231–237)

The full Hidden Phase depends on three separate artifacts and should not be attributed to Deus Ex Machina alone. Deus provides Plausibility Destruction, Catastrophe provides Time Infection, and Gestalt provides Cognitive Dissonance. Their Settings disconnect Vicegerents, contaminate them with the replacement System, and alter what they perceive so that their submission feels voluntary. Destroying the synthesis breaks that process and the artifacts supporting it; Maiad's personal sword skill and Unique World remain conceptually separate from the machine even though the final plan combines them. (Chapters 232–236)

Perception of Big Brother

Maiad is one of the rare Awakened Ones able to perceive Big Brother's gaze as a star in the sky. They challenge that boundary 127 times but never reach its owner, becoming trapped by time before returning from each attempt. The experience yields a precise observation—the gaze briefly closes once every thousand days—but also forms their central limit. Maiad cannot overcome the Time Waterfall or verify Big Brother directly, and despair eventually drives them to stage the star's death and substitute a controllable System for an enemy they could not reach. (Chapters 215, 223–224, and 231–240)

Power progression

Relationships

• Jaehwan: Maiad sponsors and deceives Jaehwan at the Grand Auction, then repeatedly tries to recruit or defeat him. Their conflict contrasts imposed unity with freely shared belief. In defeat, Maiad gives him the timing and warning needed to attempt the ascent they could not complete.
• Nameless: Nameless helps found the Rift and selects Maiad as its Lord because of the strength of their soul. His eventual departure leaves Maiad carrying the organization after one of its original idealists has given up.
• Buddha: Buddha is the other ancient founder who introduces Maiad to the secrets surrounding Big Brother. His repeated reincarnations damage him, narrowing the leadership still able to pursue the Rift's original purpose.
• Yu Seolha: Yu Seolha serves as a Rift commander. Her power to appraise worlds reveals that Maiad has no genuine intention of attacking the star, exposing the compromise behind Revolution Day.
• Kim Yoonhwan: Maiad uses Yoonhwan's location to secure Jaehwan's cooperation and subjects Yoonhwan to the Great Disappearance Simulation. Yoonhwan's refusal to kill a friend defeats the expected route but awakens a Unique World that interests Maiad.
• Andersen: Andersen intervenes when Maiad's tower-amplified World Power overwhelms Jaehwan. Her fatal resistance buys Jaehwan the time to escape the Grand Auction.
• Catastrophe and Gestalt: Maiad incorporates their distinct artifact Settings into Only One World. The three powers remain separate contributions joined for the replacement System, not interchangeable expressions of Maiad's own ability.

Items

• Deus Ex Machina: A Divine Artifact acquired through Maiad's staged auction. It multiplies World Power, supplies Plausibility Destruction and Augmented Reality, and forms the machine body from which they conduct the final plan.
• Coexistence: Maiad's pure-white sword, used when they leave Deus Ex Machina to fight Jaehwan directly.
• Seven tower Parts: Tower-shaped components that amplify Maiad's World Power and help them overpower Solitary Existence. They are associated with Maiad's own combat system rather than Deus Ex Machina's Hidden Phase.
• Infinite Dimensional Void Coat: An outer-universe garment Maiad purchases at the Grand Auction, demonstrating knowledge that worlds exist beyond the Phantasmal Tree.