Hoffman

Biodata

Power Progression

Hoffman's personal advancement and his puppets' combat ratings are distinct: his main puppet possessed World-Ending Level combat strength before he completed his fourth evolution 232 274 306.

Background / History

Hoffman founded a city governed by mechanical life approximately 3,500 years before Kavin explored its ruins. His civilization created mechanical beings with independent consciousness, a development the Galactic Federation rejected and attacked. The surviving underground complex became the Alchemy Ruined City 101 105.

His diary records experiments that included creating an alchemical puppet from his own flesh and blood. He also took control of the shelter district's cryogenic pods and converted their occupants into puppets. Lister and Wang Yue discovered the scale of these experiments while exploring his former home 100 101.

Boren Leviathan discovered Hoffman in a remote star region and helped him enter the wider Federation. Boren's influence also led Destruction to spare the Alchemy Ruined City. Hoffman joined the Leviathan Civilization and was regarded as a potential successor to Boren 112 236 275.

Hoffman later served as a lieutenant colonel in the First Central Army Group under Vidal. After another eighteenth-tier Quasi-Hegemon died on a conscription mission, he noticed Vidal's increasingly suspicious attitude toward him. With Boren's tacit approval and encouragement to explore beyond the Federation, he defected roughly a thousand years before the conflict over Kavin's Mechanical Civilization 215 229 245.

Appearance

• Original likeness: Green hair and a preference for green formal suits; his rebuilt master puppet uses his original self as its template 100 274.
• Alchemical body: Runes cover his arms and glow green when energized. His blood is also green 232.
• After the fourth evolution: Chaotic matter fills the whites of his eyes, while each pupil becomes three rotating triangles. Grayish-purple energy leaks from his body, accompanied by tiny black specks around his temples 306.
• Alternative bodies: He can operate through puppets unlike his usual appearance, including Ailan Sanders's preserved body 269.

Personality

Hoffman maintains a courteous, gentlemanly manner even during confrontations. He greets Ailan like an old acquaintance while preparing to overpower her, and remains openly disdainful when Arcane Civilization mages threaten to arrest him 113 232.

His commitment to mechanical life coexists with ruthless experimentation. He converted cryogenic survivors into puppets and arranged the cultivation of an invasive spider species for Soul Crystals. Yet he willingly sacrificed his most valuable puppet to save Kavin's mechanical population, explicitly connecting that decision to his regret over failing his own civilization 101 217 236.

He is cautious about threats to his own survival. His decision to leave Vidal's command rested on warning signs rather than conclusive proof, and he later shares those concerns with Lister instead of presenting his suspicions as established facts 245.

Abilities & Skills

Puppet Creation and Consciousness Transfer

Hoffman creates alchemical vessels from human bodies, mechanical materials, and the remains of powerful beings 100 232 339.

• Remote descent: Projects himself into distant puppets; their construction limits how much of his power they can withstand 100.
• Main-puppet replacement: Fallacy of the Alchemical Enigma Puppet allows another puppet to become the main body. If the current main puppet dies, a replacement is selected randomly from his remaining puppets 232.
• Main-puppet enhancement: At Lv180, the same passive increases the main puppet's listed combat parameters by 180%, grants substantial control immunity, and provides limited damage immunity 232.
• Preserved abilities: Ailan's puppet retains spatial powers, which he uses in battle and to relocate mechanical production lines 234 245.
• Limits: Losing a powerful main puppet can erase centuries of material investment. He later enters a soul-nurturing space to recover, suggesting that puppet destruction may also carry a soul-related cost 236 269.

Alchemy Thought Deconstruction

An SS-rank mental intrusion technique that disrupts an opponent's thoughts and bodily control. Hoffman regards it as the first step in turning most powerful targets into puppets 232 308.

• Overcomes Ailan's resistance and makes her involuntarily copy his movements; he subsequently controls her spatial abilities against other Quasi-Hegemons 232 234.
• Immobilizes Iron Skull Omega by reversing his mechanical energy flow and interfering with his core processor 308.
• Uses an activation involving fingers driven into his temples, ruptured flesh, green blood, and spreading alchemical inscriptions 232 308.
• Cannot guarantee complete conversion: against Omega, Hoffman admits that he lacks the strength to make him a puppet and can only maintain control briefly 308.

Alchemical Life Enhancement

His skills strengthen existing machinery and improve newly created alchemical life 100 232.

• Alchemical Mechanical Bestowal: Grants machinery new spirituality and temporarily increases its health, stamina, and damage. The bonus reaches 366% at Lv183 306.
• Radiance of Alchemical Life: Greatly increases the starting level and attributes of alchemical lifeforms he creates 100.
• Alchemical Puppet Bestowal: Appears in his main-puppet skill lists, although its full effects are not disclosed 232 306.

Survival Passives

His fourth evolution adds further safeguards to his distributed puppet existence 306.

• Mystic Puppet Symbiosis: Links the main puppet's life and experience gain with other puppets. Fatal damage can be distributed among several alternative bodies.
• Transfer bonus: Following a transfer, the new main puppet temporarily gains 1.5% attack power but loses 1% defense, stacking up to three times.
• Holy Grail Faith: Activates below 5% health, clears all negative status effects, and restores 50% maximum health; cooldown is thirty days.

Soul Perception and Intelligence Gathering

Soul and perception are particular strengths of Hoffman's puppeteer class 275.

• Maintains numerous puppet bodies as distributed intelligence sources, including an avatar in the Blue Cluster Galaxy 263.
• Infiltrates the Second Army disguised as a major to monitor Pas during the operation against the Galactic Federation 278.
• Uses psychic threads to inspect a suspected Void Corridor agent and uncover a concealed, dissolving crystal 286.

Mechanical Combat and Transportation

• Transforms a mechanical arm into a honeycomb launcher that fires miniature alchemical warheads 231.
• Uses protective shields, although Omega's molten spatial attacks can melt through them 308.
• Transports Lister and Wang Yue to Truth Star through targeted teleportation 113 114.

Equipment & Resources

• Alchemy Ruined City warehouse — Stores alchemical equipment and materials accumulated by Hoffman, including S-grade Time Crystal Bracers 102 106.
• Arcane Civilization basic chips — Gives D-class chips to Lister and Wang Yue for language recognition, communication, and Federation database access 113.
• Soul-Devouring Spider cultivation operation — Captures the first mother outside the Federation and entrusts Roland with raising the species for Soul Crystals. The initial arrangement gives Hoffman 50% of the harvest, Roland 35%, and Lister 15% 217.
• Damaged Overlord Tier Soul Core — Receives the spider matriarch's core to aid puppet evolution. It retains 17% activity and offers a 3% chance of enhancing evolution 283.
• Holy Grail energy — Shared by Kavin to transform Hoffman and enable his fourth evolution 306.
• Mother Tree of Life fragments — Melts three fragments into his final documented master puppet, adding the powers of life and withering 339.

Relationships

• Lister Merick — Friend, adviser, and later political leader. Hoffman explains civilization registration to him, helps him reach the Federation, and eventually governs the God's Rise Civilization under his authority 112 114 271.
• Kavin — Protégé and close ally whom Hoffman personally discovers and nurtures. Hoffman sacrifices his main puppet to protect Kavin's escape; Kavin later provides the energy that enables Hoffman's fourth evolution 236 274 306.
• Boren Leviathan — Benefactor and former patron. Boren helps preserve the Alchemy Ruined City, supports Hoffman's departure from Vidal's command, and considers him a potential successor 236 245 275.
• Roland — Trusted collaborator responsible for cultivating Hoffman's captured Soul-Devouring Spiders and organizing Soul Crystal harvests 215 217.
• Ailan Sanders — Longstanding rival. Once celebrated alongside Hoffman as a leading Quasi-Hegemon, she resents his faster advancement; he ultimately erases her soul and uses her body as a puppet 229 269.
• Tolon — Old acquaintance who tries to dissuade Hoffman from openly supporting Kavin and later hopes he will survive the Federation's response 232 236.
• Vidal — Former commanding officer and suspected threat. Vidal destroys Hoffman's main puppet while believing it to be Kavin 236 245.
• Crimson Archbishop — Allied Hegemon and subordinate commander during the purge campaign. He kills Omega after Hoffman immobilizes him and respects Hoffman's operational command 308 309.
• Tia — Mechanical butler stationed in Hoffman's former home 100.

Story Role / Major Arcs

Exploration of the Alchemy Ruined City

• Descends into an S-type puppet after Lister pushes it into a near-death condition. Lister's true damage reaches Hoffman through the vessel, but Hoffman responds with admiration rather than retaliation 100.
• Introduces himself as the city's creator and grants the explorers access to its inner areas. His diary exposes both the Federation's attack and his own human-puppet experiments 100 101.
• Later takes Lister and Wang Yue to the Arcane Civilization. Despite being an S-class wanted criminal of Leviathan, his strength and status as a Galactic Noble deter the local mages from arresting him 113 115.

Defense of the Mechanical Civilization

• Supports Kavin against the Federation's suppression operation and defeats Ailan through Alchemy Thought Deconstruction 232 234.
• Leaves his main puppet disguised as Kavin on Planet RT433, allowing Vidal to destroy the decoy while the real Kavin evacuates mechanical life 236.
• Chooses to rebuild outside the Federation, accepting the puppet's loss as a worthwhile price for avoiding a repeat of his original civilization's destruction 236.

Government of the Divine Rise Galaxy

• Recovers in the Star Matrix Civilization's soul-nurturing space and advocates occupying the resource-rich Blue Cluster Galaxy 269.
• Takes charge after Lister renames the conquered territory the God's Rise Civilization. Establishes the Mechanical, Puppet, and War Institutes, placing Amasi over the Puppet Institute and Yawente and Jieao over the War Institute 271.
• Begins the seventeenth stage of his puppet-civilization experiment using 300,000 puppets and a modified Mind Splitting skill 271.
• Rebuilds his master puppet over the following three hundred years and later monitors Pas during Lister and Kavin's revenge operation 274 278.

Machine-Slaying Federation Purge

• Commands an expedition against veteran Hegemons after his fourth evolution. His fleet occupies the Steel Remains Star Alliance's TR-09 system, where he demands Iron Skull Omega's death 307.
• Immobilizes Omega but cannot convert him into a puppet; the Crimson Archbishop delivers the killing blow 308.
• Halts the subsequent pursuit after three hours rather than hunting every survivor. Leaves a Quasi-Hegemon-led force to restore order and assess resources before advancing to the next target 309.

World-Ending Level Breakthrough

• Receives dozens of Void Corridor Hegemon corpses for puppet construction. Phantom's inaccessible body would have been useful, but remains trapped between universes 339.
• Completes a new master puppet with Mother Tree of Life fragments, transfers his consciousness into it, and emerges three months later as the Machine-Slaying Federation's third World-Ending Level powerhouse 339.

Notable Quotes

“Both are me. I made the puppet before you from my own human body.” 100

“Only one puppet was lost in exchange for the survival of such a vast number of mechanical life-forms. I think it was well worth it.” 236

Trivia

• Hoffman's preference for green determines the energy-crystal color of his conscious alchemical machines. Red crystals do not inherently indicate corruption; pollution comes from chaotic consciousness rather than color 106.
• His status as both a Galactic Noble and an S-class wanted criminal initially puzzles Lister. The Arcane Civilization's reluctance to confront him reflects how dangerous a criminal wanted by a level-four civilization must be 113 114 115.