Land

Blond on top with a shaved black underside, Land looks out through brown eyes set behind rectangular glasses, his expression usually flat and uninterested. His outfit layers a black long-sleeved shirt paneled with white down the middle beneath an open white coat whose dark, trailing flanks and pale trim hang loose; the coat clasps only across the chest. Belted black trousers and black shoes round out the look. For combat he carries a wooden staff capped by a large bent hook, a near match for the one his late grandmother once used. When he slips into the Empire's Foundation Festival ball at Übel's side, he swaps the coat for a suit, vest, and bowtie.

Detached and methodical, Land approaches everything with a heavy dose of caution and freely admits he trusts no one. His combat style is patient to a fault: he hangs back, lets a foe commit first, studies them for an opening, and sends his duplicates to strike from blind angles so his own body is never exposed. Through most of the exam he keeps to himself, sparing conversation for almost no one but Übel.

For all his coldness, a conscience flickers underneath; Übel observes that he has no wish to be the cause of anyone's death. He proves it during the second stage, refusing the spare escape golem Übel holds out once his own is gone, then hauling her to safety when her clone nearly finishes her off, even after she had threatened his life. Serie credits his nerve in running the whole exam through a proxy while his true self stays home, and two years on Übel still paints him as timid and unwilling to leave others behind.

Land was raised in a village tucked into the woods. He lost his parents early and was brought up by his grandmother, and the pair drew persecution from the Magic Special Forces for reasons never explained. He studied at a magic academy in the Imperial Capital while still ranked third-class; not long after, his grandmother slipped away peacefully in old age, and within three years he had climbed to second-class.

His signature craft is clone magic, a power that spins up copies of himself so faithful they are all but impossible to tell from the original. He can puppet two or more at once across great distances, well enough to sit out the entire First-Class Mage Exam from his home village while his duplicates do the work. Slotted into the fourth party next to Fern and Übel for the opening stage, he helps snare a Stille before Wirbel's team scatters them. Cornered by Scharf, whose petal magic gashes his arm, Land turns the tables when one of his clones steals up behind the man and drops him with a strike to the neck.

Übel, hungry to copy his cloning art, fixes on him for the rest of the trials, shadowing him with Sorganeil and shrugging off his demands to be left alone. In the Ruins of the King's Tomb her Spiegel duplicate ambushes and wounds him, then makes off with his escape golem. He still refuses the golem she offers in return, and when her own clone corners her, a hidden Land copy buys the moment she needs to cut it down. He rejoins the others to weather wave after wave of Spiegel clones until Frieren and Fern bring the monster down, clearing the second stage.

At the interview Serie sees through him instantly, naming him a clone who has not set foot in the testing ground; when a second Land claims to be genuine, she pegs that one as a copy too and discloses that his actual body has never once stepped out of the village, a trick not even Übel managed to detect. Impressed by his audacity, she passes him into the first-class ranks. Beyond his clones, Land excels at masking and reading mana, slips unseen even among the Magic Special Forces, and fights as a shrewd tactician; he also wields defensive barriers, a paralyzing shock, flight, and telekinetic force, and Serie later grants him a spell to find his family's remains.