Ed

Biodata

Power Progression

Ed’s numerical levels and the world’s broad tiers describe different aspects of his strength. His innate abilities allow him to fight above what his attributes alone suggest 108 723.

Background / History

Experimental Subject Number Three

Ed’s original body belonged to a child raised under prolonged experimentation by the Tree Worship Church. After he awakened Vitality Touch Mark, the researchers intensified their work, prompting him to plan an escape 3 10.

During that escape, Number Three crushed many of his own bones and avoided involving the other subjects. He ultimately died in the man-eating forest; Ed later considers exhausted vitality, the limits of self-healing, and the sacrifice of an eye as possible causes 199.

Awakening and the Barony

Ed initially understands his survival as the complete merger of Number Three’s soul with an otherworldly soul whose death occurred at the same moment. Little Green mediates between the extraordinary body and the merged soul, maintaining a balance that could otherwise collapse into flesh, a tree, or a wandering spirit 2 10.

With Little Green’s help, he crosses the river to an abandoned castle and claims the barony’s Territory Secret Contract Vessel. Owning territory allows him to access his connection to the other world’s internet 3 5.

He begins constructing soulless living bodies and presenting the world to summoned players as a game. While Little Green improves the bodies’ appearance, Ed acts as their guide NPC and secretly manages their expectations, access, and updates 6 14 45.

White Wax Town and Gungnir

Ed manipulates Duolin into accepting a fabricated account of the Church’s internal crimes, gaining the cleric’s trust. During the subsequent White Wax Town operation, he treats rescued experimental subjects who recognize him as Number Three and enters the church as the players’ battlefield healer 102 209.

Afterward, he offers the survivors a choice between civilian lives and military service. Eight young recruits become Gungnir, with Duolin and Xilǐ'er assigned to train them. Searching beneath the church, Ed discovers discarded flesh that includes former body parts belonging to himself and the other subjects 229 230.

Fir City and Territorial Expansion

Ed delays the decisive phase of the Fir City operation until exploration, civilian evacuation, and intelligence gathering are sufficiently advanced. He also supports [Ginseng Rooster]’s covert plan after learning that it aims to undermine the enemy by fabricating history 585.

Following the conflict, the Root Network extends across Aduolin Province. Ed adapts Antiya Lisi’s half-treant techniques to reverse tree transformation, restoring Enzo’s human body and preparing to treat the remaining Treant Hunters 699 700 701.

High Tier and Recovered Identity

At Klaf City, Ed first achieves temporary High Tier strength through borrowed powers. He later absorbs Adelaide’s True Blood and undergoes a genuine breakthrough, during which his memories play backward and separate into three strands 960 986 994.

The recovered memories overturn his simple understanding of himself as a human transmigrator. He concludes that he has crossed worlds twice and returned to his original world; much of his supposed previous-life memory records observations made while attached to other people. His most recent such life shaped his dominant personality 995 998.

After awakening, his true body is the Root Network itself. He continues producing a recognizable youthful body because it matches how others understand his existence 999.

Later Operations

Ed authorizes [Clear Soup Master] to continue investigating children used as base bodies, granting permission to recruit Soul Returners into a mercenary organization affiliated with the Adventurers’ Guild. The organization receives its own operational account and responsibility for its profits and losses 1194.

During a later confrontation, Samuer’s authority proves equal and opposite to Ed’s. Both withdraw rather than endlessly exchange avatars. Ed subsequently identifies further Territory Secret Pacts—and the territorial expansion they enable—as the immediate route toward greater strength and eventual Transcendent Tier 1435 1456.

Appearance

• Usual body: A youthful, white-haired, green-eyed boy with one remaining eye 2.
• Verdant Crown: A sapling emerges from his left eye socket and spreads over his ear, temple, and sideburn into a half-crown 2.
• Clothing: His familiar later appearance includes clerical robes that are white outside and green inside 1070.
• Variable form: He can alter his body, face, and clothing through plant tissue, including reproducing Hall’s preferred appearance 1070.
• True body after High Tier: The Root Network; his humanoid appearance is a body woven to represent him 999.

Personality

Ed is observant, irreverent, and highly conscious of presentation. He identifies Little Green’s concealed involvement in his “system” through its styling and playful wording, then pretends to have understood more than he actually has. With players, he deliberately alternates between convincing characterization and apparently limited NPC responses 2 14.

He relies heavily on persuasion, selective disclosure, and contingency plans. His deception of Duolin turns an interrogation into recruitment, while his first negotiations with Seraphina take place over a hidden vine connection that could restore him outside the cave if she burns his body 63 102.

His concern for experimental subjects is concrete: he restores their bodies, protects them, and offers them choices about their futures. That compassion coexists with a calculating leadership style—he recognizes the rescued recruits’ loyalty and anger as valuable military assets, and he authorizes repeated lightning shocks during Bennett’s interrogation 209 229 394.

Ed willingly pays for useful knowledge, especially in exchanges with Seraphina. He is less comfortable delivering speeches or inventing names, often relying on Little Green’s assistance and worrying that players will ridicule his naming choices 12 107 108 229.

Abilities & Skills

Vitality Touch Mark

An innate ability awakened by Number Three during captivity, forming the basis of Ed’s repair work and biological construction 3 6.

• Reassembles severed body parts and sustains patients during treatment 209.
• Creates living, soulless vessels suitable for summoned players 6.
• Supports gene-based reconstruction, including growing Gray’s missing human organs 352.
• Allows him to restore human form to transformed Treant Hunters through adapted techniques 700 701.
• Early battlefield repairs depend on available spare parts; during the White Wax Town battle, he runs short of left hands 215.

Verdant Crown

Ed’s symbiosis with Little Green provides plant manipulation, bodily adaptation, and an interface for understanding his abilities 2 19.

• Transforms fingers and limbs into roots, vines, staffs, and blades 2 8 48.
• Draws water through rooted hands; Little Green’s photosynthesis helps him function without ordinary meals or sleep during his early travels 2 8.
• Grows stronger through collected plant samples and absorbed Territory Secret Pacts 19 365.
• Can produce small fruits by consuming Ed’s vitality 52.
• Requires a stable relationship between Ed’s body, soul, and symbiote; Little Green describes their balance as exceptionally fragile and unusual 10.

Hybrid Creation

A derived application of Vitality Touch Mark that combines genes to create new organisms 231.

• Initially restricted to plants, then expands to animals as Ed advances 231 448 871.
• By level 51, supports middle-tier plants and animals and forced combinations of their traits 871.
• Later creations reproduce stably for their first three generations but can develop uncontrolled mutations after further reproductive cycles 699 871.
• By level 51, created organisms can stabilize their condition through feeding 871.

Form Transformation

Selectively expresses genes from Ed’s collected gene pool, allowing him to change physical traits and imitate abilities 231 448.

Otherworldly Half and Soul Webway

Otherworldly Half preserves Ed’s connection to another world. Its derived Soul Webway summons otherworldly souls through the internet into soulless bodies 2 5 231.

• Each individual’s first summoning must occur within his territory 231.
• Enables the Soul Returners’ repeated resurrection in replacement bodies 710.
• Cannot directly strengthen players’ souls; Ed instead synchronizes bodily growth with their developing soul strength 710.
• Cannot make every summoned soul a respawning player. A soul without somewhere to return may disappear permanently when its new body dies 486.

Root Network and Avatars

A combined development of Vitality Touch Mark and Verdant Crown that transmits information and matter through roots 271 699.

• Shares vision through player bodies and designated leaf-bearing NPCs; Little Green compiles the resulting exploration map 137.
• Connects locations including the old castle and White Wax Town Church before expanding throughout Aduolin Province 271 699.
• Produces plant-based clones for scouting and remote action 506 673 867.
• Permits interaction with connected consciousnesses, including Bennett and the World Tree model aboard the Antasia 395 836.
• Early clones are vulnerable to the Hive’s pheromones, which sever Ed’s connection and seize bodies lacking independent consciousness 506.
• After High Tier, becomes Ed’s actual body: he can manifest wherever its roots extend 999 1003.

Gravity and Territorial Rules

Little Green’s absorption of the barony’s Territory Secret Pact integrates its gravity-altering rule into Ed’s abilities 172 217 271.

• Manipulates gravity within the territory and supports floating and antigravity movement 172 448 661.
• Territorial ownership strengthens his ability to modify rules 172.
• Gravity Reversal is an exception to the usual advancement requirements for acquired flight 505.
• Further Territory Secret Pacts expand the Root Network, the rules he can establish, and the domain he controls 1456.

Blessings and Bloodline Control

Ed can modify bodies he created and distribute limited portions of his power 220 549.

• Ignite: Shares aspects of Seraphina’s power with players, adding flame attacks and one point to every basic attribute. Costs include continuous HP loss, subsequent weakness, and reduced bodily lifespan 220.
• Ability Blessing Card: Temporarily matches one selected attribute to Ed’s for one minute, or two attributes for thirty seconds 549.
• Rosalind bloodline control: Can command fewer than ten thousand Blood Corpses of that lineage, but initially lacks range to reach its distant population. Dukes or Rosalind herself can suppress this authority 873.
• Absolute Punishment: After absorbing its blood-derived power, places a pressure-bearing gaze on those who touch a designated staff. Low-tier targets must devote most of their reasoning to resistance, making spontaneous lies difficult 1028.
• Tree God invocations: Passively hears references to “Tree God,” more clearly from stronger speakers; explicit invocations can also convey images. He cannot freely activate this perception 1414.

Combat and Field Medicine

• Learns seminary sword fundamentals from Duolin, then modifies them with flexible vines, thrown blades, and retrieval techniques 459.
• Uses an alchemical golem and antigravity movement to evade multiple Middle Tier grand knight commanders 661.
• Usually remains behind the first wave as the players’ mobile healer, committing to offensive transformations only when necessary 853.
• His numerical strength in the forties understates his combat effectiveness: his innate abilities make him capable of overwhelming Middle Tier opponents 723.

Equipment / Weapons / Items

• Territory Secret Contract Vessel — Claimed from the abandoned barony; initially enables territorial control and gravity alteration, then is absorbed by Little Green 5 172 217.
• Body-grown weapons — Hardwood staffs, wooden knight’s swords, and iron-birch blades formed directly from his body 8 48 459.
• Medical supply chests — Spare human limbs and other parts used for emergency reconstruction during the White Wax Town operation 209 215.
• Weightlessness-spell gem — Used to help the queen bee move her enormous body 512.
• Knight’s sword containing Noya — Received from Gray; houses the blue dragon’s soul 885.
• Externally mounted prosthetic eye — Purchased and installed while Ed gathers information about the Grand Foundry Master election in Great Labyrinth City 1102.

Relationships

• Little Green — Symbiote, adviser, interface designer, and partner in Ed’s bodily and territorial development. Their teasing exchanges accompany a shared dependence on maintaining their internal balance 2 10 365.
• Seraphina — Red-dragon ally, creditor, knowledge-trading partner, and bodyguard. Their early pact guarantees at least a century of nonaggression; Ed later urges her to obtain an Authority before challenging rival dragons 70 82 1365.
• Duolin — Cleric recruited through Ed’s fabricated explanation of the Church’s crimes. Assists with surgery, protects rescued subjects, and trains Gungnir 102 209 230.
• Xilǐ'er — Knight associated with the Eternal Domain. Ed offers him temporary service without requiring surrender or abandonment of his original allegiance, then assigns him to train recruits 170 230.
• Gray — Friend and reconstructive patient. Ed restores his hand, supplies a mobility tool, and later undertakes extensive work to replace machinery and regrow human organs 298 352.
• Willow — Lich ally whose abilities Ed studies and imitates. Assists with Gray’s treatment, intelligence gathering, and Bennett’s interrogation 352 394 419 657.
• Duma — Demon ally who escorts Ed’s clone through the Depths of the World and explains his bloodline abilities 673.
• Hive Will / Queen Bee — Cooperative partner rather than a subordinate. Ed opens a corridor to the Sea of Flowers and later promises permanent ownership of Klaf City’s new sea of flowers 510 512 1001.
• Noya — Blue-dragon soul who pledges to follow Ed. He assigns her work and drafts an employment contract; her later resurrection-fee discount attracts players but drains his funds 885 1001.
• Muller — Former Rosalind-lineage Blood Corpse who insists on calling Ed “Father” and declares himself part of the Adrian Lineage, much to Ed’s embarrassment 873.
• Gungnir — Unit founded from eight rescued experimental subjects. Ed offers them military training while recognizing their personal loyalty and shared anger at their captors 229 230.
• Soul Returners — Otherworldly players whose bodies Ed creates and maintains. Their exploration, labor, and combat underpin his faction’s growth; individual access to him is represented through Trust 585 710 1034.
• Samuer — Enemy and former part of Ed himself. Their opposing authorities can destroy one another’s avatars without settling the conflict, and Samuer’s desire to merge with him makes cooperation unacceptable to Ed 1434 1435.

Notable Quotes

“They experimented on me, and then I ran away. That’s all.” 10

“I’ll lead the warriors to rescue every test subject from the Fallen Ones’ clutches and make every evildoer pay.” 229

“I ask, you answer. No lies.” 873