Gallo

Biodata

Feature	Value
Name	Gallo (加洛)
Alias(es)	Andanis — the identity recorded for an Undead Mage whom Roland recognizes as Gallo 491.
Species/Race	Originally human; later a Lich with a distributed, collective consciousness 486 492 496.
Gender	Male
Age	In his thirties at his first face-to-face meeting with Roland 168.
Affiliation	Orthodox School, within the Runes School; West Lainer Mage Tower; later Atrelin’s forces in the Doran Kingdom 168 191 474.
Occupation/Role	High Mage and arcane researcher; Alternate Arcane Committee Member; educator; later Battle Mage commander 209 265 474.
Teacher	Grand Mage Watson 168.
Status	Deceased; his distributed soul entities are contained and eliminated by Roland’s operation 497 498 499.
First Appearance	Chapter 30, “Alternate Committee Member Gallo” 30.

Power Progression

Stage / Realm / Level	Chapter	Notes
Awakening of Legendary Destiny	61	Experiences heightened clarity and inspiration while promoting the Ous Alphabet Phonetic-Symbol Scheme. He interprets opposition to square characters as his possible legendary destiny; this is not a confirmed Legendary-rank advancement.
Reconstructed Soul-Stealing Art	265	Recreates a soul-stealing spell that he judges no weaker than its ancient counterpart. His later notebooks document extensive practice and mastery of its applicable metamagic techniques 490.
Aggregate of collective consciousness	478	Combines stolen souls, mechanized self-awareness, and artificial-intelligence research to produce multiple genuine soul entities sharing his identity. Their numbers overwhelm Rain in a mental realm.
Lich rebirth	479 486	Survives his human body’s officially declared death and acquires the body prepared for Rain’s rebirth.
Expanded clustered lifeform	492 494	His incarnations develop shared, phylactery-like connections. Further improvements permit the transfer of life, souls, mental energy, and mana into hosts capable of High Mage-level spellcasting.
Severing the original body	497	Uses Sever the Self and destroys his mummy body, attempting to continue solely through countless incarnations. His transferring soul is intercepted by the Tower Spirit.
Attempted Demigod Lich ascension — failed	498 499	Burns his avatars’ soul power to ignite divine fire, unaware that Roland controls the apparent ascension inside “Gallo’s World.” He never completes the advancement and is ultimately eliminated.

Background / History

Opposition to Oracle and Seris

Gallo initially reassures the Orthodox School that Oracle’s scholarly merits will not guarantee adoption. When experimental records demonstrate its exceptional magical performance, he shifts from predicting its disappearance to questioning its practical reliability. He assigns Oksaya to publish criticisms in the Arcana Communications Journal 31.

Despite their opposition, Gallo and his colleagues attend a salon to learn Oracle themselves. He subsequently promotes the Ous Alphabet Phonetic-Symbol Scheme and begins to regard preventing square characters from spreading as a personal destiny 52 61. Roland’s success leaves him resentful, although Gallo remains a serious candidate in the Morningstar Award voting 67 85.

His attempt to remodel Seris calligraphy into an alphabet-influenced system, privately called “Ugly Script,” is rejected after review 166 167. At the Seris Calligraphy Association’s founding celebration, he meets Roland directly for the first time. Gallo advocates reforming Atrelin while retaining its cultural foundations; Roland instead declares that Seris should replace Atrelin as the Empire’s official language. Newspapers sensationalize their civil exchange into a confrontation between schools 168.

West Lainer and Elite Education

As the schools compete for influence in Lainer, Gallo proposes a restricted educational system: nobles would recommend apprentices, who would undergo harsh competition to produce useful retainers. Roland criticizes this model for wasting talent and neglecting the wider population 186 190.

After the Corlens family supports Roland’s broader proposals, Gallo moves to the West Lainer Mage Tower and develops his competing apprentice system 191. He also attempts to counter Seris fashion and dance by commissioning works promoting Orthodox and elven culture 212.

Research Competition and Apprentice Deaths

With Scroll Association support, Gallo studies an ancient Time Stop scroll and develops his own Yellow Millet Dream project. Its overlap with Roland’s research intensifies his determination to win 256 258.

An early experiment kills four of five poorly performing apprentice volunteers; the survivor suffers abnormal changes to his soul and consciousness. Gallo dismisses Piero’s objections and treats the dead as expendable failures 259. Further experiments produce knowledge-infusion results, but visibly damage their subjects. His paper on scroll-based applications is accepted, giving West Lainer the first major published result in the competition 261.

Gallo also develops Ouse Magical Script and manual printing methods intended to avoid Roland’s patents 259. Commercial pressure later pushes him toward releasing an unfinished “Wisdom Enlightenment” scroll, despite his own reservations about its readiness 264.

Piero’s Scandal and the Transfer of His Research

After a fatal Soul-Stealing Art experiment, Gallo suppresses the true circumstances, attributes the incident to McMillan’s drunken misconduct, and withholds the details from Watson. He sends Piero to continue related research in a separate laboratory 269.

Piero’s later collusion with demons leads to Gallo’s public detention, even though Gallo also fought in the battle 289. Investigators establish that he personally taught Piero the Soul-Stealing Art and authorized its study. They cannot prove Gallo masterminded Piero’s murder of a Full Mage, but neither can he clear himself of suspicion 292.

Under house arrest, Gallo entrusts his Ous phonetic-symbol materials and Ouse Magical Script to Roland, offering the Time Stop research materials in exchange for preserving his work. He accepts responsibility for inadequate supervision and admits that rivalry consumed too much of his effort 292.

Exile, Rain, and Undeath

During exile, Gallo initially abandons research, then resumes studying spells that require fewer resources. His notebooks reveal attempts to restore the minds and souls damaged by the Soul-Stealing Art. Experiments progress from mice to primates, but repeated practice strengthens his command of the spell and draws him toward human experimentation 489 490.

By the time he commands forces in a remote Doran desert theater, the Orthodox School has abandoned him and his appeals for help go unanswered. He considers military achievement and personal strength his remaining routes back to influence 474.

Rain sends him a Soul Pearl containing hundreds of tormented souls, secretly tampered with for Rain’s own purposes. Gallo suspects a trap but recognizes that greater strength could free him from dependence on Atrelin 474 475. When Rain attacks him mentally, Gallo survives through mechanized self-awareness and overwhelms him with a swarm of genuine soul incarnations 478.

His human body is declared dead, but he returns in Rain’s prepared rebirth body. As a Lich, he renews his ambition to become a Demigod Lich or deity and surpass Roland 479 486.

Pursuit and Final Destruction

Roland captures an Undead Mage identified as Andanis and recognizes him as Gallo. The investigation exposes a larger threat: Gallo’s identity can persist across numerous human and undead hosts 491 492.

As the authorities develop name-based tracking, Gallo expands his network, transfers stolen power between hosts, and prepares to sacrifice his incarnations for ascension 493 494. Roland counters with cloned flesh puppets, true-name links, and a controlled virtual realm designed to draw the entire network into captivity 495.

Gallo destroys his original body during a raid, believing he can escape through his distributed souls. The Tower Spirit instead captures the transfer, and his apparent journey toward godhood continues inside the simulation 497 498.

In the final procedure, his soul repeatedly enters tiny Flesh Puppet mice that are killed in succession. The cycle erodes his mental faculties until he becomes mindless; the last puppet is then destroyed. Roland seals the resulting divine fire in a Soul Stone, and Antonia confirms Gallo’s elimination 499.

Appearance

• Human appearance: Handsome, haughty, and apparently in his thirties, with the bearing of an old-fashioned aristocrat 168.
• Dress and grooming: Wears formal clothing resembling a tailcoat and keeps his hair immaculately combed 168.
• During house arrest: Appears haggard, although his eyes remain bright 292.
• Lich body: Occupies a mummy-like corpse prepared for Rain’s rebirth 479 497.
• Later manifestations: Can appear through hosts unlike his original body, including an otherwise unremarkable boy 494.

Personality

Gallo is proud, intellectually capable, and sensitive to institutional standing. When evidence contradicts his arguments, he usually changes the grounds of criticism rather than conceding the broader dispute. His outward courtesy toward Roland coexists with a conviction that Roland is his lifelong rival 31 167 168.

He is not incapable of recognizing an opponent’s strengths. He acknowledges that Roland’s character-standardization work could elevate Seris, and eventually becomes skilled enough in Seris to write impressive running-cursive calligraphy and a respectable poetic couplet 215 238. His frustration later takes a comic form when he identifies with Zhou Yu in Romance of the Three Kingdoms and considers writing in the character’s defense 268.

His elitism becomes especially cruel in education and research. He values promising apprentices while treating weaker ones as expendable, prioritizing results over deaths and injuries 259 261. His admission of responsibility and attempted restorative research suggest genuine remorse, but that effort becomes another obsession rather than a lasting ethical restraint 292 490.

As his collective consciousness expands, his original emotions fade and absorbed wills increasingly influence him. He recognizes the change but accepts it as the price of becoming a god, remaining confident that he can manage the worsening mental backlash 496.

Abilities & Skills

Linguistics and Runology

Gallo specializes in magical writing systems and elven scholarship 168.

• Invents the Ous Alphabet Phonetic-Symbol Scheme and participates in compiling Orthodox runes 61 168.
• Develops Ouse Magical Script, combining Ugly Script with an alphabetic phonetic system 259.
• Constructs extensive linguistic rules spanning everyday and magical usage, but encounters unwieldy vocabulary and structural complexity 268.
• Becomes proficient in Seris running-cursive calligraphy 238.

Dream and Knowledge-Infusion Magic

His version of Yellow Millet Dream explores accelerated mental time and externally imparted knowledge 258 261.

• Produces evidence supporting knowledge-infusion scrolls and potential “knowledge volumes” 261.
• Uses Ancient Scroll magic where possible rather than relying on Seris methods 258.
• Early testing causes deaths, consciousness abnormalities, and premature aging 259 261.
• Publication precedes technical readiness for mass commercialization 261 264.

Soul-Stealing Art

Gallo reconstructs and extensively refines the Soul-Stealing Art 265 490.

• Seizes souls and investigates rewriting or controlling their wills 489.
• Copies his own mind and intellect into recipients, combining them with the victims’ experience and knowledge 478 492.
• Uses Intelligence Bestowal to give incarnations new personalities and intelligence 498.
• Repeated use supplies practical mastery while encouraging increasingly dangerous experimentation 490.

Mechanized Mind and Clustered Lifeform

Gallo turns himself into a network of genuine, self-aware soul entities rather than ordinary illusions or copies 478.

• Mechanized self-awareness lets him evade Rain’s attack on his psychic spirit 478.
• Incarnations communicate through an instantaneous, long-distance resonance network 496.
• Transfers life, souls, mental energy, and mana between hosts 494.
• Can empower a mundane host to use powerful spells, including Chain Lightning 494.
• Accumulated memories cause headaches, disrupted thought, and loss of emotional stability 496 497.
• Crude access controls and physical soul anchors permit infiltration by Roland’s custom puppets 495 498.

Lich Survival and Attempted Apotheosis

His incarnations function as substitute phylactery vessels, allowing his identity to survive the destruction of an individual body 492 498.

• Uses Sever the Self to abandon his original body 497.
• Prepares sacrificial rituals within avatars to gather soul power and ignite divine fire 498.
• Attempts to sustain ascension through continually replenished stolen souls 498.
• Does not achieve Demigod Lich status; multiplying his vessels also multiplies the anchors through which Roland can capture him 498 499.

Other Documented Spells

• Truth-Seeking Spell — examines the sequence of events surrounding McMillan’s fatal experiment 269.
• Greater Teleportation — attempted during the mausoleum raid, but blocked by Spatial Lock 497.
• Cloudkill — released against the raiding gendarmes before he destroys his body 497.

Equipment / Weapons / Items

• Ancient Time Stop scroll — supplied through the Scroll Association to support temporal research; its materials are later transferred to Roland 256 292.
• Soul Pearl — Rain’s black, walnut-sized gift containing hundreds of suffering souls and concealed manipulations 475.
• Research notebooks — preserve his exile experiments, attempted restoration of soul-stealing victims, and growing mastery of the spell 490.
• Rain’s prepared rebirth body — the corpse Gallo acquires for his Lich existence 479 486.

Relationships

• Roland — His principal scholarly and political rival. Roland preserves his linguistic research, later hunts his incarnations, and ultimately destroys him 168 292 495 499.
• Grand Mage Watson — His teacher and an important source of standing within the Orthodox School. Watson is implicated by the apprentice scandal and later attends the announcement of Gallo’s apparent death 168 292 479.
• Oksaya — His commentator and collaborator in attacks on Seris. Oksaya later seeks to join Roland’s school and eventually rises to a position of authority while Gallo remains sidelined 31 212 292 474.
• Piero — His talented apprentice, whom he teaches the Soul-Stealing Art. Piero’s murder and demonic collusion precipitate Gallo’s downfall 259 269 289 292.
• Rain — Attempts to exploit him through a tampered Soul Pearl. Gallo defeats him in the mental realm and acquires his prepared rebirth body 475 478 486.
• Antonia — Oversees the investigation and coordinated response to his distributed existence; confirms his final elimination 489 495 499.
• Grand Mage Shagengs — His published spirituality-centered research helps Gallo construct mechanized self-awareness and a collective consciousness. Gallo explicitly acknowledges this intellectual debt 478.

Notable Quotes

“Looking back over these past few years, I was practically possessed. I spent far too much time and energy competing with you.” 292

“I transformed myself into an aggregate of collective consciousness. While seizing a target's soul, I also inject my ‘self’ into it and grant it the same ‘intelligence’ as my own!” 478

“I am one, and I am myriad...” 497

Legacy

• Roland preserves Gallo’s Ous phonetic-symbol scheme and Ouse Magical Script, later improving the former’s phonetic notation 292 489.
• Antonia concludes that Gallo’s research could have supported a genuine Demigod Lich advancement, despite the evil methods used to develop it 499.
• Roland agrees to share the surviving method with Shagengs and the Mechanical Wizards for further study alongside his Apotheosis Art 499.