Laufen

Young-looking and slight of frame, Laufen pairs brown eyes with orange hair cut into short, slanted bangs and gathered into a pair of buns, each dressed with a ruffled band, a dangling yellow tassel, and two red beads. Her navy dress goes sleeveless and bares the shoulders, marked with white accents and side slits, its bodice crossed front and back by broad white straps; a red gem and twin white tassels sit where the front straps meet. Underneath she wears black shorts, and her bracers reach the elbow while her boots rise to mid-calf, both echoing the dress and finished with their own small tassels.

Laufen says little, but a soft heart shows through: she frets over the bodies of fallen mages left as monster bait and flatly refuses to walk away from Denken when Frieren downs him and threatens torture. Those same moments expose her greenness, a naivety born of inexperience, though across the first two stages she pulls her weight as a dependable, team-minded partner. She grows fond of Denken, who dotes on her as though she were his granddaughter, to the point that she calls him grandfather and speaks up for him in front of Richter.

Sorting for the first stage in Äußerst drops Laufen alongside the second-class mages Denken and Richter as the thirteenth party. Under Denken's direction the trio set out to poach a Stille from the second party, working out that the rival team is luring the birds by cordoning off a water source. Once Frieren bags a Stille, Laufen blurs in with her Jilwer spell, snatches the catch, and vanishes, leaving her teammates to brawl. Frieren soon runs her down and recovers the bird, lashing her and Denken to a tree, but the thirteenth party regroups, muscles a Stille away from another team through a fistfight Denken picks, and clears the first stage with Laufen patching up his wounds.

For the second stage she joins Denken's cooperative push through the Ruins of the King's Tomb, slipping past traps until gargoyles and then Spiegel-made clones bar the way. She trades blows with a duplicate of herself before Methode finishes it, unsettled by how exactly the copy mirrors her. When Frieren's clone proves overwhelming, the gathered mages pool their plans; Laufen holds the line against Methode's clone, surprised by how easy the bout feels, and reaches the treasure chamber once Frieren shatters the Spiegel.

Before the final stage she tags along with Denken to Richter's shop and smooths over his clumsy manners. Facing Serie in the interview, she is among those cut on the spot. Though Denken brands her a novice, Laufen holds her own against the Methode clone of a future first-class mage, and her gifts back it up: nimble and athletic, she dodges gargoyle strikes, fights hand-to-hand with her staff doubling as a club, and can whip that staff into a lashing length. Her prize trick is Jilwer, a folk spell of a southern mountain tribe that rockets her to speeds the eye cannot follow, letting her bolt from a dead stop as if blinking out of sight. She rounds out her arsenal with ordinary Zoltraak.