Kandiaru

Kandiaru manifests as a towering stone carving shaped into a hooded angel, six wings crowning the figure that can divide to grow four extra limbs, totaling eight arms. Embedded in his brow sits a narrow, oblong purple gem, and crimson eyes glow against dark sclera. The carving wears a grin that lands as both sadistic and unsettling, mirroring the one seen on the Statue of God.

Beneath the mask hides his actual face. Only once Jinwoo's punch cracks a piece of the covering loose does the truth show: pale bluish skin under light blue eyes ringed by deep blue sclera.

Egotism and a towering sense of superiority drive Kandiaru, who prizes his own craftsmanship and looks on humanity with contempt. The instant he understands that Jinwoo is beating him in battle, that self-regard shatters into furious, disbelieving screams. Toward the Monarchs his attitude flips entirely; he reveres them outright, treating them as gods.

Such devotion makes betrayal unbearable. Outrage consumes him once it becomes clear that Ashborn, having joined forces with the Rulers, had simply sold him out, because the very beings he idolized had turned against him.

A native of the magic world, Kandiaru studied sorcery and chased one driving ambition: to surpass Yogumunt and claim the title of Monarch of Transfiguration. After the Monarchs began their assault on humanity, he came to Ashborn with an offer, pledging to locate a fitting human host and asking immortality as his reward, and to speed that hunt along he created the System. He also partnered with Tarnak to make Ammut, then locked Ammut inside the Pyramid Field for reasons never explained.

Years of fruitless searching eventually led him to one candidate who cleared every test and outdid all his expectations: Sung Jinwoo. He doubted the pick all the same and objected when Ashborn chose Jinwoo regardless. After Jinwoo hit level 100, Kandiaru called the hunter once more into the Double Dungeon and threw his puppets, the Statue of God among them, at him as a trial. When those guardians fell, he stepped up as the final test and assigned a deadly quest carrying a ten minute timer. Jinwoo flipped the fight and beat him with two minutes and fourteen seconds left on the clock.

Certain his pact was about to bear fruit, Kandiaru sank Jinwoo into a trance and awaited the Shadow Monarch. Instead a band of hunters slipped inside, Cha Hae-In and Choi Jong-In among them, with Woo Jinchul as well. He attacked them as sacrifices, sparing Cha alone after sensing the shadow Jinwoo had planted in her. Then Jinwoo broke free unaided, seized Ashborn's black heart, and smashed the statue's face, leaving Kandiaru to realize he had been discarded. His try at shutting down the System failed, since access had already been stripped from him by Ashborn. Cursing Jinwoo with a prophecy of death at the Monarchs' hands, he was torn apart, and Jinwoo later grasped that this body was only a decoy while the real Kandiaru lived on elsewhere. In the timeline reshaped by the Cup of Reincarnation, the Architect dodged the slaughter of his kind, fled past the known universe, and bound himself to an Itarim, betraying his own world and setting off the Outer God War.