Matthias

Matthias (マティアス, Matiasu) is a mednoble apprentice knight and the youngest son of Giebe Gerlach. His parents belonged to the former Veronica faction.

He is a student at the Royal Academy and one of Rozemyne's name-sworn retainers.

Matthias has dark purple hair and blue eyes. He has a slender build, despite his dedication to training.

Serious and introspective by nature, Matthias prefers to think carefully before making decisions. His friend Laurenz teasingly refers to him as a "worrywart".

Matthias also has a strong sense of responsibility. He wants to make his own choices about who to serve in the future, without basing his decisions on his family's opinions.

As the youngest son of Giebe Gerlach, Matthias was born into the former Veronica faction. He grew up as childhood friends with Laurenz, a child of the same faction who lived in the nearby province. However, Matthias grew to feel defiant toward his father after seeing Rozemyne's accomplishments at the Royal Academy.

Growing up, Matthias began to suspect that his father might be loyal to Georgine, rather than to the nobles of Ehrenfest. That doubt was reinforced when his father was called as a suspect after Charlotte's attempted kidnapping.

In the summer following his third year at the Royal Academy Matthias overhears his father planning an attack on the coaches supposed to bring Rozemyne's temple attendants and the Divine Instruments to a wedding ceremony at the border gate to Ahrensbach. Together with other children of the former Veronica faction dissatisfied with the actions of their parents Matthias decides to defy his father and warn Lady Rozemyne of the danger, however his attempts to arrange a personal meeting are all rebuffed by Rozemyne's retainers. With no proper way to directly contact her, he enlists Roderick to pass a letter to Philine during a shared scholar lecture.

In his fourth year at the Royal Academy Matthias manages to attain honor student status, along with twelve other Ehrenfest children.

Despite not having learned the Rozemyne mana compression method Matthias is able to keep up surprisingly well with those who have. He also showed himself to be a capable leader, with Leonore stating that he is capable of taking charge of others and fill her role of team-captain in her absence.

After his fourth term at the royal academy Matthias is taught a mana compression method by his parents that Lady Georgine of Ahrensbach taught them. In the following summer they pressure their son to also swear his name to Georgine. While his older brothers do that, Laurenz is able to play for time by stating that due to his growing mana capacity on account of the compression method he was taught he no longer has materials of sufficiently high quality to make a name-swearing feystone suitable for his new capacity and thus would like to wait until his capacity has settled when he comes of age.

He successfully manages to keep it a secret from his parents that thanks to his part in the slaying of the Ternisbefallen he already has such materials and is delaying due to being unsure which side of the conflict between Sylvester and his sister he should join.

At the start of the next academy term Matthias and Laurenz go to hunt and gather ingredients in Ehrenfest's gathering spot. There they find out that thanks to the healing ritual Lady Rozemyne performed the previous year, the gathering spot is far more bountiful, but that this also attracted more and stronger feybeasts. While the pair is still able to overcome the beasts in their immediate surroundings, they decide to cut their visit short before they are able to gather everything they wanted and come back later with more people.

During the hunting trip they also discuss the recent actions of their parents and Georgine's visit to Gerlach. Laurenz seems to favor joining the archduke's side, but is willing to defer to Matthias who thinks it wiser to play for time and keep their options open for as long as possible and only join a side once their victory becomes clear.

Once Lord Wilfried and Lady Rozemyne arrive however their and their guard knights' expressions give away that something is up and both Laurenz and Matthias conclude that they have run out of time and need to make a decision which side to join. Matthias ascertains that the offer of fully joining the archduke's faction if they swear their names is still open and then vows to swear his name to Lady Rozemyne. In front of all the gathered students and the archduke candidates he tells them everything he knows about Georgine's plans, including that she claims to know where the access to Ehrenfest's foundation is and that she is almost able to take it over.

A few days after the start of the academy year the students are given an update on the current state of the purge. Surprisingly only very few nobles were actually executed and so only five students need to give their names in the end. As Matthias expected his parents were among the executed traiters and thus he is one of the five. On the same day he, along with Laurenz, swear themselves to Lady Rozemyne, since they both already finished their name-swearing feystones in anticipation of this situation.

The following Earthday Lady Rozemyne leads the students to the gathering spot, so those that don't have them yet can gather the necessary materials for their name-swearing feystones. Matthias teaches them a method to more efficiently gain high-quality feystones which he derived from how Rozemyne beat Dunkelfelger in the ditter match for mastership of Schwartz and Weiss. Under his guidance the students first dye and gather teigenehm fruits. They then feed the charged fruits to weakened feybeasts, making them grow considerably in size and power. Before the beasts can get used to their new mana, the students quickly slay them and thus are able to obtain their high-quality feystones faster and much safer than by the usual methods.


 * Mana Capacity: Matthias' mana capacity reaches the lower end of archnoble level. Recently however it has been growing considerably, afer his father taught him a mana compression technique he in term received from Georgine of Ahrensbach.


 * Leadership: According to Leonore, Matthias is capable of taking over her duty as the field commander of knights.


 * Matthias is a bit self conscious about his comparatively short height. He is also dismayed that despite his physical training he remains slender and thus thinks he looks more like a scholar than a knight.