Grand Duke Lynch — World’s End: My Keyword is One More Than Others

Grand Duke Lynch, also named Bard Lynch, is the Lucerne Kingdom's most powerful non-royal noble and a Grand Magus who controls a third of the kingdom's army and much of its magical establishment. His effort to protect his daughter Xima Lynch turns Holly Arlaus into a condemned scapegoat, but Holly's possession by Du Ge reverses their positions. Defeat forces Lynch to become one of King Holly's most valuable—and initially most resentful—political, magical, and strategic subordinates.

Biography

Using Holly to protect Xima and challenge the crown

Before meeting Du Ge, Lynch stands close to the peak of mortal authority. He is the Lucerne Kingdom's only duke without royal blood, commands roughly one third of its army, serves as grand elder of the Magic Guild, and is honorary principal of the Magic Academy. This concentration of power makes the king wary of him and allows Lynch to enforce judgments without ordinary scrutiny. His beloved daughter Xima is engaged to the royal heir, Prince Nelson, giving the family both a path into the royal house and a political constraint Lynch cannot ignore. (Chapters 379, 382, and 385)

When the drunken Holly enters Xima's room at a noble banquet, Lynch accepts her claim against him and uses his authority with devastating speed. Holly's father loses his title and territory to Lynch, the wider family is exiled, and Holly is sentenced to a guillotine execution that the duke plans to oversee personally. Xima later admits that she used the incident because she did not want to marry Nelson; Holly had not touched her and could not have overpowered a gifted mage. Lynch's choice therefore protects his daughter and helps sever an unwanted royal match, but it treats an expendable disreputable noble and his family as instruments rather than people entitled to investigation. (Chapters 379 and 397–398)

The later reckoning exposes ambitions beyond paternal protection. Old Gao accuses Lynch of stealing his work on mixed-magic instant casting and imprisoning him, while Lynch's coerced public confession states that royal suspicion had led him to plan a rebellion and seek the throne. The confession is made under Du Ge's threat, but it corresponds to Lynch's extraordinary military base, his fear of the crown, and his earlier willingness to remove Nelson from Xima's future. These circumstances explain why Lynch initially interprets the transformed Holly as a royal or papal weapon aimed at breaking his independent power. (Chapters 392, 397, and 400–403)

Trying to recruit Holly and losing at the Rhine River

Holly arrives at the ducal mansion with a vast Sea God martial soul, defeats Lynch's disciples and guards, and demands that his conviction be reversed. Lynch suppresses his shock and chooses negotiation because Holly's mental power appears comparable to his own and a ten-star martial soul makes ordinary guards irrelevant. He first tries to identify the supposed royal conspiracy, then offers greater rewards than Holly's imagined patrons and finally proposes marriage to Xima. Each offer follows the same political instinct: convert a dangerous unknown into family power while preserving the Lynch name. Holly rejects the marriage and insists on public vindication, turning a negotiable scandal into a direct struggle over authority. (Chapters 396–398)

Lynch accepts a duel outside the city because a victory would restore control without exposing the public to their destructive magic. He permits Holly to choose the Rhine River and enters combat confident that instant casting, forbidden spells, and superior magical equipment can compensate for the terrain. His staff releases Meteor Shower, a scroll invokes Frozen World, and a shield ring blocks the meteors when Holly throws them back. Yet the river magnifies Du Ge's control of water beyond anything Lynch understands: Frozen World lasts only a moment, invasive streams suffocate him and force him to divide his attention, and his prepared Earthquake scroll never activates. (Chapters 398–399)

Confronted by a hundred-meter water giant and magic that needs neither incantation nor gesture, Lynch concludes that the Sea God must have descended through Holly. He kneels because a mortal cannot defeat a deity, only for Du Ge to continue the attack, freeze him, strip away every magical item, and bind him in the river. The humiliation destroys Lynch's confidence in direct resistance. He still recognizes Holly's claim of righteousness as coercive sophistry, but he accepts the terms when Du Ge threatens his life, Xima, his disciples, and his legacy. Survival replaces victory as his immediate objective. (Chapters 399–400)

Confessing in public and serving the Nation of Justice

After the duel, Lynch protects Xima by constructing the least destructive confession he can: she will say that Nelson's misconduct drove her to frame Holly, while her youth and remorse will invite public forgiveness. He warns her that refusal could send her to the same guillotine once meant for Holly, showing both genuine fear for her survival and a readiness to subordinate her wishes to political necessity. At the ducal mansion he then redirects the gathered nobles' loyalty toward Holly, publicly acknowledging that the former prisoner has become the territory's ruler. (Chapters 401–402)

On the execution platform Lynch confesses to plotting rebellion, framing Holly, and taking Old Gao's magical achievements. The admission is compelled by Du Ge's water restraint and threat of death, but it gives the other nobles a model for surrender and supplies the public testimony that transforms Holly into King Holly. Lynch loses the reputation he spent a lifetime building, while Du Ge gains the legitimacy and territory needed to declare the Nation of Justice. Because Du Ge keeps Lynch's mental prison in place, the duke cannot turn formal submission into immediate betrayal and must help administer the new order from inside the coalition. (Chapters 403–406)

Lynch remains politically indispensable despite his disgrace. His army, guild authority, magical system, disciples, and academy connections give the new state institutions it could not create overnight. Du Ge spars with him to improve his own magic and uses the duke's name to absorb the reputational cost of dangerous policies. Lynch understands that he is being treated as both an expert and a potential scapegoat; his resentment persists because King Holly can claim benevolence while assigning him the blame and labor. That awareness makes his early service pragmatic obedience rather than ideological conversion. (Chapters 405–407 and 411)

Seeking autonomy through arduous cultivation

Du Ge asks Lynch to test a method of repeatedly breaking, healing, and strengthening the body. Lynch initially objects that such cruelty would make the king look tyrannical, then realizes that his own academy position can recruit a controlled experimental group. He establishes the Self-Torture and Self-Strengthening Squad with warriors, mages, and ordinary people. When repeated injury and healing produce real increases in soul power, he joins the trials himself; after nearly a decade without improvement, even a slight increase in his magic fills him with hope that the human limit of Grand Magus may not be final. (Chapters 406–408)

His motives are mixed. Lynch wants enough strength to survive Du Ge's future judgments and, if possible, erase the humiliation of the Rhine. He forms a scholarly group to investigate Du Ge's unfamiliar ideas about cells and division, subjects Xima to the painful method while healing her injuries, and initially presents the discovery as his own achievement. Old Gao exposes the appropriation, repeating the pattern that led to his imprisonment. The incident shows that Lynch can recognize and develop a transformative idea while still pursuing status through ownership of another person's work. (Chapter 408)

The technique changes Lynch's behavior even without granting him Du Ge's regeneration. He practices while traveling, becomes increasingly diligent whenever the Sword of Judgment reveals another person's secrets, and watches Du Ge split and restore his own martial soul. These demonstrations weaken Lynch's belief that eventual revenge is realistic. The training yields only gradual gains bought through extreme pain and healing support, whereas Du Ge's body and martial soul recover immediately; Lynch's path can make him stronger, but it never closes the qualitative gap between an aging Grand Magus and the Alien Star warrior controlling him. (Chapters 408 and 411–415)

Choosing the stronger coalition and hunting Alien Star warriors

Lynch's value to the coalition becomes clearest when it encounters organized resistance. He deduces that enemies spreading rumors about Holly must have moved or heavily protected Holly's family, preventing a simple rescue. He identifies the Pope and Magic Guild president as the most likely powers capable of confronting the king, and warns that the latter surpasses Lynch and can cast forbidden spells instantly without scrolls. These judgments come from decades inside Lucerne's political and magical elite, allowing him to anticipate institutional threats that Du Ge's raw perception cannot explain. (Chapter 416)

During the confrontation with the Pope, Lynch is one of the few observers who realizes that Du Ge is exaggerating his injuries to control the crowd and strengthen his position. He stays because flight would leave him exposed to whichever side wins. Once Du Ge stops performing and overwhelms the fully equipped Pope with water, Lynch's remaining hatred collapses; compared with the treatment inflicted on the Pope, his own defeat seems almost merciful. He urges Du Ge to retreat when divine intervention threatens, but afterward accepts that neither mortal politics nor conventional magic offers a safer patron. (Chapters 418–420)

His cooperation remains grounded in survival rather than complete faith. Lynch regards Du Ge as a born evil god whose persuasion can sway even angels, but decides that joining the coalition is safer than gambling on opposition. After the Pope is subdued and Nelson is crowned, Du Ge sends Lynch, Old Gao, the Magic Guild president, and other conquered experts into foreign countries to investigate Alien Star warriors. The former regional power broker thus becomes an intelligence asset in a world-spanning campaign, using the knowledge and contacts that once protected his autonomy to extend King Holly's reach. (Chapters 421–425)

Losing his soul in the planetary harvest

The forced termination of the Alien Star Battlefield removes Du Ge and the other contestants from their hosts before Lynch's assignment can produce a stable new order. Their abandoned bodies are taken over and used to attack the world's ancient gods, demon kings, rulers, officials, and population. Lynch loses the protection of the coalition's original decision-makers without receiving any opportunity to choose a new allegiance or prepare his territory; the struggle that had seemed to concern kingship and divine war is replaced by an external harvest beyond mortal resistance. (Chapters 444–447)

Pan-Universal Entertainment's sweep eventually reaches Lynch. His soul is extracted along with those of the Pope, Du Ge's other former comrades, and almost the entire population, leaving fewer than one percent of the planet's inhabitants untouched. The collected souls and preserved knowledge are used to form a Simulation Field. Lynch's rise, defeat, experiments, and reluctant service therefore do not secure the survival he pursued: his final condition is not that of a restored grand duke or advancing mage, but a harvested soul incorporated into a controlled reconstruction of his world. (Chapters 446–447)

Appearance and personality

Lynch is nearly sixty years old and is described, after losing his equipment, as an ordinary old man in his sixties. His public image depends less on distinctive features than on the material signs of rank: rich clothing, a staff, multiple enchanted accessories, and the ability to fly above his mansion. When danger first emerges, he approaches with deliberate humility rather than theatrical pride, reflecting a noble accustomed to judging threats before revealing hostility. (Chapters 396 and 399–401, 408)

He is proud, suspicious, politically imaginative, and extremely pragmatic. Unexpected power immediately leads him to search for a royal, papal, or divine conspiracy, while defeat leads him to bargain rather than die for pride. Reputation matters intensely to him, as shown by his rage at the indignity of the Rhine battle and his appropriation of magical discoveries. He nevertheless adapts quickly, recognizes strategic realities, and supplies useful warnings even while resenting the person he serves. (Chapters 397–401, 408, 411, and 416)

His love for Xima is genuine but possessive and instrumental. He destroys Holly's family after her accusation, tries to marry her to the newly powerful Holly, coerces her confession to keep her alive, and later breaks and heals her ribs to draw her into arduous cultivation. Tears accompany the last act, but he still proceeds because he believes greater strength and survival outweigh her pain and refusal. The same mixture of care and control defines his broader rule. (Chapters 379, 398, 401–403, and 408)

Magic, martial soul, and authority

Lynch is a Grand Magus, the highest mortal magical title, whose mental power and command of elemental magic are comparable to the upper ranks of martial-soul warriors. He has no Alien Star keyword or derived skill interface. His power comes from trained mental power, spell knowledge, magical equipment, political resources, and a lion martial soul, with a later small increase from arduous cultivation. None of these assets lets him resist Du Ge's superior mental power and divine control of water once the fight moves into the Rhine. (Chapters 385, 392, 397–401, 408, and 418)

Seven-element magic and instant casting

Grand Magi can precisely control seven magical elements and combine them in ways ordinary mages struggle to break. Lynch possesses a complete system of incantations and casting methods and, unlike most mages, can use instant spells. His proficiency supports flight, elemental offense and defense, magical sealing, and the operation of forbidden-spell equipment. Magic consumes mental power according to its scale, while gestures and incantations ordinarily communicate with the surrounding elements; his speed and equipment reduce those constraints without eliminating resource costs. (Chapters 393, 395, 397–401)

His strongest demonstrated limitation is environmental and positional. Mages normally counter martial-soul warriors at range but become vulnerable when an opponent closes the distance. Lynch's instant casting lets him risk close combat, yet Du Ge controls every water element in the Rhine and prevents him from reclaiming even the ice he creates. Water entering Lynch's body causes pain, suffocation, and divided concentration, leaving less mental power for spells. His broad elemental mastery cannot override a higher-order power that has already seized the medium around and within him. (Chapters 398–399)

Mixed-element mental cage

The mental cage seals a person's magic power or martial soul by inserting controlled elements into the forehead, crown, temples, and heart, interrupting the continuity between internal mental power and the outside world. Lynch places a mixed-element cage on Old Gao, whose remaining internal magic can sustain only a few spells. Because Lynch uses the precision of a Grand Magus and combines several of the seven elements, an outside rescuer needs greater mental power and exact elemental control to remove every component without backlash. (Chapters 392 and 395)

The technique is a control measure rather than a killing spell. It can imprison a dangerous mage while leaving the target conscious and physically functional, which makes it useful for Lynch's political punishments. It also depends on the caster's mental superiority and a stable placement of elements. Du Ge studies the structure, removes Lynch's cage from Old Gao, and develops a more extensive version for his own captives; Lynch consequently loses the exclusivity that once made imprisonment an extension of his authority. (Chapters 395–397 and 402–405)

Forbidden spells and battlefield scale

Lynch carries access to large-scale forbidden magic suited to sieges and armies. Dragon's Roar contains Meteor Shower, which creates numerous earth masses roughly two meters across; his scroll of Frozen World, also called Icebound World, freezes the Rhine; and an Earthquake scroll is capable of shifting mountains and altering rivers. Meteor Shower and Frozen World are used together to trap and crush Du Ge, while Earthquake is prepared to force him from the river even at the cost of flooding the surroundings. (Chapters 398–399)

These effects are powerful but equipment-derived and tactically constrained. Du Ge catches and returns the meteors, reverses the frozen river almost immediately, and overwhelms Lynch before Earthquake can be released. Earthquake is designed for broad destruction rather than a single target, and Lynch recognizes that activating it near the river would endanger civilians. The spells therefore give him army-level reach but cannot guarantee victory against a faster opponent who controls the battlefield and attacks his body directly. (Chapter 399)

Lion martial soul

Lynch can manifest a majestic lion martial soul while confronting the Pope. Its appearance establishes access to the world's martial-soul system in addition to his Grand Magus training, but he does not display a named soul technique or a separate combat effect from the lion. His established fighting style remains magical, and his own assessment treats magical mastery and equipment—not the lion—as the basis on which he might resist Holly or the church. (Chapters 397–401 and 418)

Arduous cultivation

Lynch adopts Du Ge's arduous method after experiments confirm that cycles of broken bones, damaged muscles, healing magic, nutrition, and recovery can increase soul or magic power faster than conventional practice. He personally endures guards hammering his body and records a slight increase after nearly ten years of stagnation. The method becomes both personal training and an institutional project under the Magic Academy, giving him a rare route beyond the apparent Grand Magus ceiling. (Chapters 406–408)

The gain carries severe conditions. Practitioners endure extreme pain, require repeated healing and adequate support, and risk bodily harm if resources are insufficient. Lynch lacks Du Ge's immediate regeneration and does not reach godhood or a new named magical rank. His continued practice is driven by fear that King Holly may eventually sacrifice him and by hope of surviving judgment, so its practical result is greater endurance and a small reserve increase rather than liberation from Du Ge's control. (Chapters 408 and 411–415)

Political and institutional command

Lynch's nonmagical power is itself a strategic capability. Control of a third of Lucerne's army, influence over almost the entire Magic Guild, senior academic offices, disciples, laboratories, scholars, and noble networks let him mobilize resources at a national scale. He can establish experimental squads in a day, disseminate a cultivation practice, identify the strongest political opponents, and later investigate foreign Alien Star activity. This reach depends on office and reputation: public confession ruins his standing in White Stone City, Du Ge takes his territory, and the mental prison prevents him from converting remaining contacts into an immediate countercoup. (Chapters 385, 402–408, 411, 416, and 425)

Relationships

Du Ge: Lynch first treats Holly as a disposable offender, then as a possible royal agent, marriage asset, divine incarnation, and finally an unavoidable king. Their relationship is built on defeat and coercion, but Du Ge also gives him a genuine path to increase long-stagnant magic. Witnessing Du Ge overwhelm the Pope removes Lynch's hope of revenge and turns resentful obedience into pragmatic coalition service.
Xima Lynch: Xima is Lynch's beloved daughter and the immediate cause of his conflict with Holly. He repeatedly tries to secure her future, yet does so through control: he accepts her framing scheme, offers her in marriage, forces her public apology, and imposes arduous cultivation on her. His tears and threats show that affection never outweighs his conviction that he must decide what will keep her alive.
Prince Nelson: Nelson's engagement to Xima binds Lynch to the royal family while constraining both father and daughter. Lynch helps turn Nelson into the public villain of the Holly scandal, then travels with the coalition that returns him to Lucerne and supports his coronation. The reversal makes Nelson king while Lynch, once suspected of seeking the crown, serves the broader campaign.
Old Gao: Once Lynch's gifted disciple, Old Gao accuses him of stealing the theory of instant mixed magic and using a mental cage to imprison him. Their conflict exposes Lynch's hunger for scholarly fame. After Du Ge frees and elevates Old Gao, the two become rival experts compelled to work in the same coalition and are eventually sent abroad together.
Pope: Lynch initially believes that only a deity or the Pope may be able to remove King Holly. During their confrontation, however, he recognizes Du Ge's staged weakness and then sees the Pope suffer a far more decisive defeat than his own. The comparison erases Lynch's remaining hatred of Du Ge and convinces him that the church is not a viable refuge.

Items

Dragon's Roar: Lynch's nearly two-meter staff amplifies magic power by fifty percent, attracts thirty percent of the surrounding elements, increases casting speed, and stores Meteor Shower. Its multiple functions make it central to his ability to cast high-level magic quickly, but Du Ge confiscates it after the Rhine duel. (Chapters 398 and 401)
Frost Moon: Crafted by Alchemy Master Loka, the belt amplifies Lynch's magic and automatically activates a whirlwind shield when it suffers a severe impact. It provides passive protection but is removed with the rest of his equipment after his defeat. (Chapters 399 and 401)
Hurricane Boots: Also made by Loka, the boots have an affinity for air and halve the magic-power cost of flight spells. They support Lynch's aerial mobility and endurance rather than direct offense. (Chapter 401)
Shield ring: A defensive spell sealed in Lynch's ring blocks the meteorites Du Ge returns at him. The ring must be deliberately activated and handles the redirected barrage, but it does not stop water from attacking his body or prevent his capture. (Chapter 399)
Storage ring and spell scrolls: The storage ring carries ordinary supplies and a wealthy noble's reserve of forbidden magic, including Frozen World and Earthquake. It lets Lynch deploy effects beyond routine casting without first preparing an incantation, but each scroll is consumable, must be drawn and activated, and can be interrupted before release. Du Ge takes the ring and its contents at the Rhine. (Chapters 398–401)
Defense bracelet and magic-boosting equipment: Lynch wears a defense bracelet and additional enchanted gear alongside his named belt, boots, rings, and staff. Their combined protection and amplification let him approach a martial-soul warrior at close range, but their value depends on remaining equipped; once Du Ge freezes them away from his body, Lynch is reduced to an injured, magically sealed old man. (Chapters 399–401)