Richter

Richter favors formal dress. A maroon coat, buttoned and falling just past the knee, tops maroon trousers and black dress shoes, its lapels, cuffs, and trim picked out in black. A high-collared white shirt shows above the coat's neckline. His dark brown hair stays short and neatly combed, and he bristles whenever anyone calls him middle-aged.

Richter wears his pessimism openly, coming across as surly and standoffish and sparing little courtesy for anyone, whatever their standing. The gruffness hides a softer core: he warms to old teammates once they push past it, and is gentle with an elderly regular at his shop even while hating to be coddled. In battle he turns coldly practical, weighing the moment before he acts and ready to work with others, though he will cut down rival mages without a qualm if it wins the day. His pride shades into conceit, which others exploit; when Frieren stops asking him to fix Fern's staff after his refusal, the slight stings enough that he relents.

For the exam's first stage Richter is drawn into the thirteenth party with Denken, a fellow second-class mage, and the third-class Laufen. After the central lake freezes during the hunt for a Stille, Denken resolves to lift another team's catch. As they trail the second party, the three argue over the Continental Magic Association's cold view of examinee deaths, and it surprises Richter that Denken rejects the old orthodoxy. Once Frieren's spell betrays the rivals, Laufen steals their Stille and vanishes while Denken takes on Frieren and Richter squares off with Lawine and Kanne.

Told to delay the pair rather than kill them, Richter lectures the girls on the prize at stake, any single spell granted by the Great Mage Serie, a road to riches, power, or a cure for any sickness. His earth spell, Bargland, splits the field and strands the two on a plateau, where he dominates at first while critiquing the lineage of defensive magic. Everything turns when Frieren unravels Serie's barrier and rain pours in; Lawine pins his hands with ice and Kanne's Reamstroha smashes his hexagonal shield, flinging him off the cliff. He concedes to Denken. Spent but unwilling to quit, the team wins a bare-fisted brawl for another pair's Stille and advances among the six surviving groups.

For the dungeon stage under the King's Tomb, Richter joins Denken's cooperative band with Laufen, Laenge, and Methode. They dodge an early trap, free Laenge from a closing spike-room with her golem, and fell a Laufen double before Frieren's far deadlier clone forces a retreat. Richter argues for hypnosis or binding against a stronger foe, only to hear Frieren is immune to both and that the mirror-made clones have no minds to hypnotize. Teamed with Lawine, he wrecks the Kanne and Lawine copies, but Sense's clone ambushes them and leaves both gravely hurt, forcing them to break their bottles. He wakes outside, mended by a golem, bewildered by the woman, Edel, tending him; the loss ends his exam at the second stage. Sour over it, he snaps at Denken and Laufen when they visit his shop, then softens when Frieren brings Fern's staff on the townsfolk's word, first scorning it as junk before recognizing its careful upkeep and repairing it.