Blood-Red Commander Igris

Towering and lean, Igris appeared as a knight encased head to foot in blood-red plate. Four horns rose from his helmet, one of them broken, and a Y-shaped slit framed the white glow of his eyes, while a long red plume swept off the back. Down to his calves hung a tattered crimson cape. His weapon was a massive bronze sword matching his own height, and beneath the cape he kept several daggers at his belt. Sharp, angular lines defined every plate, all of it dusty and worn from the long ages he had lasted.

Above everything, loyalty shaped him. He withheld his service from Jinwoo as a shadow until Jinwoo handed him a reason worth following. He held to fairness and chivalry too, throwing his own sword away the instant Jinwoo elected to fight him with nothing but his hands.

No A-Rank foe Jinwoo had ever met matched Igris for danger, and Jinwoo chalked his victory up partly to luck, figuring the knight could have given the finest A-Ranks alive real trouble, though this version trailed far behind the Igris who had served beneath Ashborn. With his strength he carved through stone pillars like butter, flung Jinwoo into walls, and drove craters into the floor; his speed caught Jinwoo flat-footed; and his durability turned aside dagger cuts completely, giving way only to a strike at the eye and even then enduring repeated stabs to the neck. So far did his swordsmanship outclass Jinwoo that Jinwoo dropped blades for bare fists, and he could draw on a weaker form of Ruler's Authority, called Ruler's Hands, to recall his sword across a distance.

The moment Jinwoo reached the boss chamber deep in the dungeon, Igris threw himself into the battle, hammering his opponent to the edge and tossing him like a rag doll into the throne behind them. As the knight lifted his sword for a clean kill, Jinwoo shocked him by catching the blade with bare palms and ramming a dagger straight into the eye on his left, which threw off his footing. After the knight wrenched the dagger free, Jinwoo pulled it back through his inventory and wielded Fatal Strike to jab over and over at the bare flesh beneath the knight's neck. With no defense left, Igris silently yielded as Jinwoo plunged the dagger into his head and his eyes faded to dark. Word emerged afterward that Igris had served as a lieutenant in Ashborn's original shadow army, set in that dungeon for the express purpose of testing Jinwoo in combat as the heir Ashborn had chosen.