Lord El-Melloi II

Waver Velvet, who appeared in Fate/Zero. This is him roughly ten years after those events. He was half-forced to inherit the title of El Melloi II by Reines and spend his days working hard to repay his debt and repair the family’s Magic Crest while teaching students as a professor.
To find out more about him, go check out “Character material.” Even in the Fate/Apocrypha world, he fought alongside Rider, Iskander, in a subspecies Holy Grail War against Kayneth—that’s the setting here, anyway.
After the end of the novels, Caules Forvedge Yggdmillennia also ends up joining El Melloi II’s class.

It goes without saying, the main character of this story.
His real name is Waver Velvet. One of the few survivors of the Fourth Holy Grail War.
His elemental affinity is Earth. His specialty in magecraft is Counteraction¹. A destroyer of Mystery — though his talent for magecraft is mediocre, he was blessed with an incredible talent for deconstructing.
In reality, he doesn’t really possess all that much more knowledge than other magi. When he became the head of the Faculty of Modern Magecraft, he gained access to an incredible amount of materials, but with the amount of work he is saddled with, the amount of those materials he actually has time to study is limited.
His real talent is the speed and accuracy with which he can connect the people and events happening before him with his knowledge.
Just as Gray pointed out several times, rather than the Mystery or the incidents themselves, he looks more at the magi behind them. Why does such a Mystery exist? Why did they reach for such a Mystery? His eye for judgment is, in the end, reserved for judging people.
In particular, his impression that “this riddle is meaningless” that he expressed at the beginning of the Castle of Separation incident shows how well that ability of his was suited to that incident. In contrast, after the Rail Zeppelin incident, once he began pursuing Heartless, that same eye for judgment is what allowed Heartless to drag him along. Without cooperating with Heartless, the riddle couldn’t be solved — such a methodology was the perfect kind of hacking to use against El-Melloi II.
After the events of Case Files, in order to stop Gray’s transformation, he turned to the numerous thesis and essays left behind by his predecessor, Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald. As a result, he ended up reanalyzing and reclassifying the huge number of theories his predecessor had idly scribbled down…
And that was the beginning of the grimoire known as “Lord Kayneth’s Encyclopedia of Secret Arts,” which would someday be written.

Translator’s Notes

1. ^ The kanji used for the term Counteraction are 解毒, literally “undo, cancel” and “poison”. Thus another possible reading of it would be “Detoxification,” making it precisely opposite of Adashino Hishiri’s specialty of “毒” (Poison).

Overview

A magus working at the Clock Tower, the headquarters of the Mage’s Association.
One of the twelve Lords that rule and manage the Clock Tower, and the current head of the El-Melloi family. His skill in magecraft is mediocre, but his talent for teaching is recognized by everyone. Apparently.
His real name is Waver Velvet. Before being adopted into the El-Melloi family, he was no more than the eldest son of a fledgling magus. However, the Fourth Holy Grail War drastically changed his life, and before he realized it, he was suffering under the weight of the El-Melloi family’s mantle.

Appearance

British, male, in his thirties.
Though he possesses well-chiseled features, his constant expression of displeasure means he is rarely considered to be handsome.
185cm tall, 72kg. Black eyes and hair.
He wears his long hair straight, but it is kept quite well, so it is not too stifling or unkempt. He regularly smokes cigars, but only as a way of calming himself, with no interest in their flavor.

Personality

Lawful Neutral.
Extroverted, confident, proactive.
Has a wicked tongue, and hates people in general… or so he appears. In truth, just and upright.
Always speaks with a kind of disdainful condescension, but that doesn’t come from looking down on his interlocutors. Rather, it stems from a self-deprecating feeling of “compared to that, what am I even doing? I look like an idiot. I’m the biggest fool here!” Intelligent, possessing good judgment, and more than anything else having lost all sense of vanity, he is able to accurately accept himself as he is. As a result,

“Really, I wanted to complete it myself. But I knew it was impossible for me. The moment I realized that, I noticed that everyone around me was brimming with potential, but wasn’t making use of it. Is there any more infuriating way of life? It takes everything I have to protect what little pride I have left, so why do I have to worry so much about how those idiots live?!”

He often curses others in that fashion, but he also says things like, “I can’t bear to watch such a disgraceful waste. You, come over here!” as he regularly looks out for others.
Though he appears cynical and pessimistic, that is only because of how keenly aware he is of his own limits. At his heart, he believes in helping the weak and disciplining the strong. He does not like getting involved in affairs that appear irritating to deal with, but those same affairs tend to capture his attention and prevent him from focusing on other matters, so he often cooperates to resolve such situations, cursing the whole time. While his experiences have taught him to act courageously, he is still rather cowardly. That is the source of his predilection with making sure his preparations are perfect before making a move.

Manner of Talking

He uses the personal pronoun “watashi.”
For people he is meeting for the first time, or is not especially familiar with, he refers to them by “Last Name”-san or “Name”-kun. He drops the honorific when speaking to his own students. He refers to enemies by their full name with no honorific.
Reines is a special exception, where he refers to her as “kimi” (you) or “ojou-sama” (young lady) in an effort to avoid using her name as much as possible.

When requesting help from someone, he will refer to them as “lady,” “miss,” or “mister.”
He speaks like a young man who spends a great deal of time around old people. His sentences are long and meandering, like a university lecturer, and he often speaks with bitterness. He often adds qualifiers like “seems likely,” “that’s the situation,” or “perhaps that is the case.” giving the impression he is speaking of someone else’s concerns.
He speaks in a rather formal way, but often covers a wide array of topics, regularly diverging into talking about the newest things. Kind of like “for an old guy, you’ve got pretty young tastes!”

Most of his words are fairly strict, but when speaking with someone standing at a crossroads in their life, he becomes much more pleasant and agreeable, bolstering his reputation as a teacher. He is rarely excited by much, but behind closed doors, he becomes furious with his students’ shenanigans (like Flat’s).
“And now you’ve just made more work for me! I’m not even going to have time to sleep! Yes, I understand now, this is actually Hell, isn’t it? There are many depictions of Hell around the world, but one of those is surely where your students are running around causing problems at every waking moment!”
And of course, always around to watch him rant is the young lady Reines, wearing a smile as sweet as the worst medicine.

Abilities

Element: Earth.
Specialty: Counteraction, Leyline/Organic Adjustment, etc. Extremely plain.
The quality of his magic circuits is on the lower end of mediocre. As Waver, he could produce about 20 units of magical energy. At the time he became Lord El-Melloi, that increased to 70 plus 10 (similar to hidden savings thanks to magical artifacts he possesses and the rituals he uses).
※For comparison, Shirou could produce 25, and Rin could produce 500. The cutoff for a full-fledged magi is considered to be 100.

As you can see, he falls below the line for a full-fledged magus. Though his talent for adjustment lends to his abilities as a teacher, his talent in that field mostly stems from his character and personality.
Totally unsuited to combat. Though he has a number of mystic codes for self defense, he rarely carries them around.

Assistant: “That talisman in your pocket is the only one you have, Professor?! Don’t you have any other mystic codes?!”
El-Melloi: “No. They’d be useless against a real magus anyway. There’s no point carrying a thousand of them around to extend my life by a couple seconds. I’d suffocate under them before they ever got to me.”
A: “How have you survived so long then?!”
E: “That should be obvious. I don’t go anywhere that an talisman like this isn’t enough to protect me.”

Though he has learned techniques to use in combat, his output is so low that he tries to avoid using them. He doesn’t carry small weapons like handguns around either. His last line of defense is his cigars, which contain (about ten units of) magical energy.
“You thought I smoked these stupidly expensive things just to look sophisticated and eccentric?”
“Well, I guess that’s not really wrong.”

History

Eldest son of the Velvet family, who first started their study of magecraft at the beginning of the 1800s. He was considered a bit of a prodigy in his hometown.
Full of hope, he applied to enter the Clock Tower, and through his connections somehow managed to join the classroom of a certain Lord, Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald. Thus he entered a rather elite course.
However, with only two hundred years of history under their belt, the Velvet family were infants to the world of magecraft. From the perspective of the Lords, he was only fit to serve as a member of the magical working class.
Rebelling against the authority and old-fashioned structure of the Clock Tower, he joined the Fourth Holy Grail War to prove his talents. In the end, he returned as the only survivor from the war. Thus ended what he thought would be the greatest battle of his life. He returned with a quiet resolve to face the battle that was the life waiting for him.

However, that was not to be the battle of his life. What awaited him on his return would determine the course of the rest of his life. With Kayneth and Sola-Ui gone, the Archibald family began to decline. The other Lords wasted no time in pillaging the rights, mystic codes, personnel, and wealth of the fallen family. In the few months Waver spent preparing for his return from Japan, the Clock Tower had undergone a great upheaval.
Upon his return, the Archibald family was on the edge of collapse. Feeling partially responsible for Kayneth’s death, Waver did what he could to at least preserve the El-Melloi classroom, but it was all for nothing. The young and powerless Waver had no way of saving the dying El-Melloi name.

Even so, he managed to sustain the El-Melloi classroom for three years. Keeping the magi of renowned families from leaving was an impossible task, so instead he set his sights on the younger generation, those studying modern magecraft. With little interest in gathering power for himself, he had no aversions to the new agers. Convincing an old lecturer that had lost his place in the Clock Tower in a previous power struggle to take the podium once again, he created an emotional fulcrum for the new agers to operate around.
Starting as little more than a school club, they eventually rose to the level of the other classrooms of the Clock Tower, and before he realized it Waver himself had completed the necessary courses to teach the classroom in an official sense as a graduate student.
Though he had a terrible reputation among the ruling class, he had become a star of hope for the younger generation, his own distaste for that fact cementing his popularity among the students. (Occasionally, his underclassmen and friends had to fend off assassins sent by the ruling class and the Archibald family.)

Around the time the difficulties of his life had created a permanent wrinkle in his brow, he received an invitation to meet with a branch family of the Archibalds, the Archisorte family. Confused by the invitation, he was presented with Kayneth’s body that they had retrieved (with its destroyed Magic Crest), and a report on the details of the Fourth Holy Grail War. The young head of the Archisorte family, Reines, claimed to have watched his every move with admiration since he had returned to the Clock Tower. She was one of his fans, she claimed with a grin.
Waver, of course, didn’t believe her for an instant, and expected to be killed at any moment. From the perspective of the Archisorte family, Waver was the cause of their collapse. But he hadn’t stopped there. He had also stolen the rights to the El-Melloi classroom away from them, and even if it was in a bid to preserve it, ended up transforming it into something repulsive. Killing him would hardly be enough to satisfy their grudge.
Confirming that Waver was well aware of that, Reines presented him with an offer. If he accepted her terms, she would keep the details of the Fourth Holy Grail War a secret, and furthermore would guarantee his safety. In exchange, he had to agree to the following three terms:

• Repay all of the El-Melloi’s debt.
• Maintain the seat of Lord until Reines is old enough to take it herself.
• Restore Kayneth Archibald’s Magic Crest (the Archi Crest).

He understood how impossible those terms would be to fulfill, but also that if he refused, he would likely be killed immediately. He did feel he bore some responsibility, so he reluctantly accepted her offer.
W: “But what do you mean by that second condition? Isn’t it basically the same as paying back the debt?
R: “Ah, that. To put it simply, someone has to take the job of Lord until I’m old enough.”
Waver immediately felt suspicious.
W: “Wait. Are you saying—”
R: “Exactly. I’m sure dealing with the other Lords will be a pain, but I’ll leave it all to you, Lord El-Melloi II. Or should I just call you my beloved older brother?”

Waver immediately collapsed. Before he could so much as stand, she continued.
“Ah, I forgot one thing. There’s a fourth condition. You also have to be my private tutor. Having a brother not related to me by blood giving me private instruction is a great form of impropriety,” said the suspiciously grinning young girl.
Ever since then, Waver took up the mantle of Lord El-Melloi II (since he was Kayneth’s successor) in the Clock Tower. Such was the birth of one of the Clock Tower’s most charismatic lecturers, destitute yet holding the position of Lord and running his own classroom and department.

“It’s not like I’m asking you to work for the rest of your life. I just want your help until the rightful glory of the title of Lord has been restored. That sounds fair to me.”
“That’s the same as saying ‘work until you die,’ you demon.”