Rauffen

Rauffen (ルーフェン, Ruufen) is a professor at the Royal Academy and the dormitory supervisor for Dunkelfelger.

Rauffen is a “hot-blooded gym teacher type” with a passionate love for the sport of ditter. He is a good sportsman who enjoys having a skilled opponent: When Ehrenfest defeated his own Dunkelfelger students in a match of treasure-stealing ditter, he praised the victors for their strategies and was delighted by the quality of the match. He tends to shout when he gets overexcited.

When Rauffen entered the Royal Academy as a student, his enthusiasm for ditter managed to catapult his duchy into the top rankings, where it has remained there ever since.

As a professor, Rauffen primarily teaches apprentice knights. However, he also helps first year students learn mana compression and schtappe fundamentals.

Professor Rauffen, along with Professor Hirschur, is one of Rozemyne’s supervisors during her mana compression course. She finds his enthusiastic encouragement more distracting than helpful. Later, he is one of the teachers in the first year class for schtappe fundamentals, where he teaches Rozemyne to use the incantation rott.

When Lestilaut, an archduke candidate from Dunkelfelger, gets into a dispute with Rozemyne over the custody of Schwartz and Weiss, Rauffen asks Prince Anastasius to allow them to resolve the issue with a game of treasure stealing ditter, to which the prince agrees.

Rauffen is delighted when Rozemyne, despite being an archduke candidate and a first year, decides to join the match personally, admiring her dedication and spirit. Despite his close connections to Dunkelfelger from growing up there and being the overseer of their dorm, he is nevertheless very happy about the quality of the match and the miraculous victory Rozemyne manages to lead Ehrenfest to, praising her unorthodox, yet effective tactics, even going so far as to compare her to Ferdinand.

Spoiler from Part 4 Volume 6

Rauffen and Primevere are the instructors assigned to teach the archduke candidates schtappe transformation during Rozemyne's second year at the academy. Rauffen is particularly thrilled about teaching Rozemyne, due to him misinterpreting the girl's personal participation in a ditter match as meaning she is a fellow ditter enthusiast and would be taking the knights course alongside the archduke candidate course in the future just like her guardian Ferdinand once did. When he learns that this isn't the case he is surprised, but doesn't seem to give up just yet.

The first part of this course is for the students to transform their schtappe into a shield. The pupils are encouraged to create a shield of uniform size, so that knights could better cooperate to form a shield-wall. Since she has trouble to visualize a shield other than the divine instrument of Schutzaria and her not intending to become a knight, Rozemyne asks if she is allowed to form a round shield, which the professor reluctantly allows, after which she forms a near identical copy of Schutzaria's Shield, except it's slightly translucent yellow instead of the solid gold of the actual divine instrument. Every other detail however, down to the size and placement of the feystones is precisely the same.

Part of the exam for the course is to use the shield to defend against a thrown feystone. In typical Dunkelfelger manner, Rauffen does not explain this in advance or even ask Rozemyne whether she's ready to take the exam, but just tells her to hold up her already summoned shield and launches the stone at it, leaving her no time to inform him or even think about her defensive charms before a bracelet on her arm lights up. Right after the stone is bounced back, she just has enough time to shout a quick warning at the professor to defend himself against a counter-attack, which Rauffen is able to ward off thanks to his honed reflexes.

Rozemyne explains that her guardian had fitted her with a variety of custom-made protection charms and thankfully the thrown feystone only triggered the weakest response. To learn that this response was merely the weakest counter-attack greatly surprises Rauffen due to how powerful even this defense had been.

For the second part of the lesson - transforming the schtappe into a close-combat weapon - Rozemyne once again chooses to create a copy of a divine instrument, this time the Spear of Leidenschaft. Due to thinking of her time when she used the spear in combat against a feybeast, the spear comes out already filled to the brim with mana and crackling with power. Usually to pass the exam students are required to attack one of the target dummies, but sensing the immense power held in the spear Rauffen quickly tells Rozemyne to unmorph her schtappe and passes her without needing to attack, to guarantee the safety of her fellow students, after which he ruefully mutters that he could have seen it's destructive powers if only they had been in the knight's building.

After having already passed her exam, Rozemyne still lingers with the other students - who give her a wide berth after witnessing the power of her defensive charms - where she end up changing her schtappe into a water gun by accident. Rauffen immediately pounces on her, assuming she invented a new kind of weapon that revolutionize warfare in the future. She insists that it is merely a children's toy, but Rauffen not believing her insists she uses it on the target dummies. Much to the professors disappointment the "weapon" turns out to truly be just a children's toy that only squirts out a small stream of water, that doesn't even reach the target. Just like the water created with waschen the water disappears without getting anything wet mere moments after it hits the floor.


 * Rauffen’s katakana name (ルーフェン, "Ruufen") is more directly transliterated as "Rufen”. His name may have been inspired by "rufen" which means "to call" in German. The official English translator chose not to use "Rufen,” because a five-letter name would look very short in comparison to other noble names. Instead, the new name was based on the similar-sounding and fitting word “raufen,” meaning “to brawl”. The translator also added an extra “f” in “Rauffen” to make the name at least seven letters long.


 * Cambridge Online Dictionary
 * Wiktionary, the free dictionary