KREUZNACHTEN "KREUZ" ASURAN:

One of the two No. 9 ranked Crossbones alongside Malie, given a single rank due to their complimenting Void Eyes, homeworlds, and history in the Calling and in their original stories. In the case of Kreuz, she has the role of a fighter and assassin. Hailing from the From A Depressing Ordinary Life to the Champion! War against the 8 Demon Princes isekai light novel, manga, anime, and multitude of ridiculous spinoffs for such an innately banal story, the same world as Akira, one of the protagonists. Kreuz is one of the 8 Demon Princes, the children of Demon King Tarz, the ruler of all demons (though the term is used basically for what most other stories would call "monsters" instead), and the main enemies of the story alongside her father. The third youngest of the Demon Princes and one of the only two female princes, Kreuz was born into the same luxury as the rest of her father's children, and was, like the rest, given a specific Demon Tribe to rule over - in her case, it was the Alraune Tribe, a tribe of Demons with plant-based natures and appearances, ranging from vicious, man-eating plants, walking trees, rose-like maidens, and strange cacti men - a whole weird array. However, unlike the majority of her siblings, Kreuz had ambition beyond simply serving her father's will as one of the Demon Princes and hoping to one day succeed him in the distant future - indeed, she was rather power hungry, and instead desired to arrange a secret coup where her agents would gather the means that would allow her to kill her father and any resisting siblings, then take the throne by force - however, this would be quite troublesome, as she was actually the single lowest-ranking of the Princes, and thus had the least territories, least minions, and comparatively to the others, least power. Nonetheless, she still had a deep desire to achieve her goal, and regularly attempted to find the means to do so, often coming into conflict with Akira and his party - being easily their most reoccuring enemy among the Demon Princes, and most likely the first Akira would defeated - had a strange invitation not fallen from the heavens, intent to change fate - inviting her to some festival where she'd finally find the power necessary to take what she truly wants...

Kreuz's personality could only be described as "classically villainous," that being, you can look at her in almost any of her scenes and say "yep, that's a villain." She is extremely egotistical and proud of herself, believing herself to be the most beautiful of her siblings and even the Crossbones (Akane excepted), which isn't helped any by how Malie clearly believes that to be the case herself, and in particular is extremely proud of her style of fighting using her rose-themed magic and transforming weapon, claiming it's by far the most beautiful and elegant of all the Crossbones' weapons, which, to be fair, she might have a point regarding. As well, her ego extends to her own capabilities and personality traits, believing herself to have the most refined tastes of any of the Crossbones and thinking herself to be the most cunning of the non-Akane crossbones, and thus is quite jealous of Cross due to her status as Akane's second in command and the usual battlefield commander - and thus Kreuz's direct superior, something which annoys her greatly. She believes she is a masterful planner and attack commander, but this is not normally the case at all, and indeed - back in her homeworld she often failed miserably to command her troops to do anything serious at all, and at one point her forces lost to, of all things, a single village trained and armed up by Akira. It is for this reason that Akane limits her role to assassin and fighter - as she is genuinely quite skilled at both, despite her loud personality (this mostly owes to how in her very first appearance in the source, she was shown to skillfully assassinate a nobleman in dead silence, despite how much that conflicts with her later loud attitude). Nonetheless, despite all these flaws, Malie's hero worship means Kreuz continues to believe her own hype at almost all times, making an overall quite odd character. All this is of course not aided by how much she enjoys monologuing, and she is by far the single most monologue-prone Crossbone, surpassing even her master Akane in this way, and her monologues can range from more vain and somewhat humorous ones about how great she is, to more grave and actually somewhat frightening traditionally villainous threats and taunts towards her enemies. Either way, it certainly helps that she has a personal hype woman in Malie whenever she does start monologuing.

Kreuz is characterized not only by her immense vanity, but also her near-limitless ambition, which, while she's now become loyal to Akane for the most part (mostly due to recognizing the sheer divide in strength, as well as how loyal the other Crossbones are to her), is still a vital part of her personality, and she regularly uses small amounts of the Crossbone resources in search of various useful artifacts, secrets, and power sources which could improve her lot just like these searches did back in her original world, albeit now she's forced to share, which she's not completely enthused about due to her own vanity. Despite this ugly assortment of vain and selfish personality traits however, she does value the other Crossbones - seeing Akane as a strong and willful leader, and especially caring for Malie ever since their fateful encounter with Ermes that lead to them teaming up and eventually both joining the Crossbones. She cares for Malie deeply and wants to protect her from harm, and believes that Malie has truly found her calling by abandoning the side of good to join her and the Crossbones, and is happily acting as Malie's combat magic instructor, and often fumes with envy whenever Cross is assigned to help teach Malie more conceptual, non-combat magic types from other worlds. She believes Malie and her make the best team, and her personality becomes even more enthusiastic and confident whenever she and Malie are fighting enemies together. Despite all this, she is not interested in reciprocating Malie's crush due to their age difference. Her opinions on her family from her home world are far more sordid, and she sees them merely as obstacles, especially now that she's part of the Crossbones and doesn't feel the need to play nice with them anymore, and has a particular distaste for her father, whom she believes was intentionally holding her back from her true greatness most of her life, and often complains about it to the other Crossbones when she can. Other than that, she has a dislike for her little sister Nalma and her older brother Ostistan, disliking the former for how much more adored by her father she was, and disliking the latter due to his completely loyal attitude and suspicion towards Kreuz back in their homeworld. She has a deep hatred for Akira due to how often he ruined her plans back in their homeworld, and hopes that Akane or Harvest or whoever inflict some horrible fate on him - or, even better, she kills him herself. She takes a sort of sick delight in the fact she lead Malie away from his side and into the darkness, even if arguably Akane and Ermes had more of an impact on that course of events.

Kreuz's nature is that of a powerful Demon Prince, and thus she is far more swift, agile, strong, and durable compared to most humans, even enhanced humans from less realistic worlds, and is generally the third strongest of all the Crossbones physically - after Akane at the top and Absynth at the middle, with additional boons such as resistance to evil magic and a passive healing factor. Her magic is surprisingly graceful and elegant for such a cruel and vain figure, and has a prominent focus on rose petals flowing as she attacks, waves of light and strong wind, complimenting her already deadly abilities. In addition, she has the power to summon feminine, rose-like creatures to aid her in combat, though she only does this whenever she feels it's absolutely necessary. Her weapon takes the form of a strange, rose-like growth that coils around her left arm, and can transform into either a Scythe, a rapier, or a lance as she pleases, which she rapidly cycles between with exceptional grace. These weapons are quite dangerous in form and the rapier in particular carries a deadly poison that unless purged using magic, will slowly paralyze and kill the one struck with it. Her Void Eye is imbued with the power of Esteem and allows her to draw power from adoration directed towards her by Malie, the wielder of the Void Eye of Dualism. Her and Malie's named rank among the Crossbones are the Thorns and their shared symbol takes the form of a rose with a curling, thorn covered stem and petals that, when together, look reminiscent of a drooping, creepy skull.

Kreuz's body is of average height and has extremely pale skin, bordering on pure white in coloration, although there is a slight, pinkish complexion in certain places here and there. Her hair is a rosy pink in coloration, and a set of 9 bright red horns vaguely reminiscent of a rose's thorn in a 'crown" arrangement around her head can be seen. Her remaining non-void eye is a rich red color and both her eyes have dark reddish pink eyeliner and extremely prominent, pointy eyelashes, as well as triangular red markings underneath her eyes, while her lips are covered in red-pink lipstick, and her teeth are sharp and white. Her fingernails are red and claw-like. Her outfit primarily consists of hooded robe which covers her torso, but opens around the legs into a long tail, making it somewhat of a mixture of a robe and a coat. The robe is primarily black in coloration and has a leathery texture, and has a prominent, bright burgundy cross below the neck leading to the waist, as well as similar crosses on her shoulders, while there are six very dark burgundy crosses on the tail of the robe, with bright burgundy thorny rose designs running up the center of these crosses. The sleeves of the robe open at the middle, exposing burgundy lower sleeves which are made of several layers, which unwrap around the hands creating cuffs with a similar appearance to a rose's bloom and petals. On her hands she wears black fingerless gloves, and her weapon is wrapped around her left arm, giving it an extra ominous look. She doesn't wear a belt at her waist, but there is a burgundy thorn pattern around the waist underneath the robe that carries a similar vibe, and she wears black with similar thorn patterns along the sides, and simple black boots with skull-like tops. Her weapon in its normal state appears as a nettle of black rose vines covered in red thorns and burgundy rose blooms, and can transform into various similar-looking weapons with rich burgundy-pink blades.

Her invitation read: "Hail, Prince Kreuznachten Asuran, wisest of the Demon King's Children! We hereby invite you to the Calling, the festival which crosses all worlds. Should you partake of our offer, you shall find fools a plenty to crush under your bootheel, ample opportunities for revenge on those who have slighted you, new minions to command, and most importantly, powers and secrets which may finally deliver you to your deepest desire... Sign your name below, and the door shall open for you."

MALIE NOIR:

One of the two No. 9 ranked Crossbones alongside Kreuz, with her specific roles being support, rapid offense, scouting, and some level of spying. A girl from the same world as Kreuz and Akira - the Isekai one with the long title, she was born to a simple commoner family in a simple commoner village, and grew up with a mostly uneventful life until she one day decided to take up research of the arcane arts of magic, becoming a witch girl, which she used to protect her town from danger regularly - though this was at times difficult, as she always had a somewhat morbid personality and a slightly selfish streak to her, but the adoration she got from her village was enough to counterbalance her hesitation and make her an overall pure defender of the common people in her world. In time she was a teenager and peace had returned to her town enough for her to justify leaving to strike out as an adventurer, which she promptly did, joining a party with a few other adventurers to explore the world and destroy demons throughout the world. However, as they were exploring one day they eventually discovered a boy who spoke an alien language and dressed in clothes unlike anything they had ever seen, and they of course though "what the hell, who is this dude" and decided to knock him out and take him to a nearby village. There she and the others learned - after he was given an enchantment that let him speak their language - that he had come from an entire other world, and it became evident he was the prophesied Hero from Beyond that would destroy the Demon King - or at least they hoped he was, and so let him join their party. They fought Kreuz, went on adventures, and all sorts of similar things, and Malie came to see him as a friend even if she enjoyed teasing him - but the more time she spent with him - as he was rapidly growing stronger, the less confident she felt in herself, and she felt a deep lack of direction. Thus, when something evidently heard her prayers and sent her an invitation offering her the direction she sought, she felt it couldn't hurt to try, and accepted. Once in the Calling, she was nearly doomed without her party, and almost died to the alchemist Ermes who had decided to take her as 'raw material' for her experiments, only for Kreuz - the enemy she had fought with so regularly - to come in and help her fight off Ermes in return for Malie journeying with her for the time being. Thus, the morbid and macabre side of Malie's personality soon took root and began growing, now that she was in the company of Kreuz, and while she eventually returned to her party, she felt the emptiness return, having felt more alive during her time with Kreuz - and thus decided to return, and alongside Kreuz, joined a positively hellish troupe together...

Malie's personality was likely intended inside the original work to be cute, quirky, and fun in how macabre and dark it is, but unfortunately, everything has consequences in the Calling, and these mostly harmless personality traits ended up furthering the rate at which Malie was stained black and joined the darkness. In particular, one of the root causes was not even related to her morbid traits, but also a feeling of directionlessness and apathy as a result of how powerful Akira was getting - which Akira was originally supposed to rectify by showing that he cares about her (rather than affirming her own self worth), which would eventually lead to them falling in love. However, in the Calling, this instead lead her to find direction and purpose via Kreuz and the Crossbones, which was not helped by how quickly she came to fall in love with Kreuz. In the original story, she showed regular interest in women on almost every occasion she would, being essentially a lesbian, but was of course intended to one day fall in love with Akira, and only because he showed her decent respect like a human being, so of course this would end up happening again when Kreuz did essentially the exact same things, while also being of a gender she had a greater preference for logically and also being a Demon, who she believed were cool even back in her homeworld life, despite how her job was to eliminate them both before and after becoming an adventurer. She had a love for monsters, demons, and the undead even back in her homeworld, and often bemoaned the fact they were so against humanity, wishing they could be allies instead, and whenever she read stories she usually rooted for the bad guy - harmless traits in the source where her fate was written in stone, but disastrous in the Calling where it lead her to empathize with and get suckered into the Crossbones due to their assortment of gnarly natures and unique, sinister designs and appearances. Even among the Crossbones - or perhaps especially among the Crossbones, she shows a love of things like insects, spiders, pumpkins, and other such generic halloweeny things - especially Skulls, which, lucky for her, are one of the central motifs and themes of the entire organization she was now a part of. She still is very much a hopeless romantic when it comes to cute girls, and she has a crush on pretty much every other Crossbone except for Roa (for obvious reasons) and Zero (who she is terrified of), though she has most pronounced crushes on Akane, Cross, and especially Kreuz, who she wants to marry, despite Kreuz herself not being very into it.

Malie has an overall very positive attitude, probably the most genuinely positive among the Crossbones, and is almost always having a good time, ardently enjoying spending time with the rest of them - with Zero as an exception, as she's deathly afraid of her. Malie can be somewhat of a scaredy-cat in general at times, but usually only against genuinely disturbing or horrible characters or environments - as such she's not fond of visiting the Deathlands in Avalon and even faints when she first hears of the Abysum "high-level" continent to the north. She sees herself as being friends with every single Crossbone, even Zero despite the fear, and often boasts about it - especially to her former allies. Yes, she has become quite vindictive and rude towards her former friends and allies, and this only worsens with time as she "settles into" her role as a villain more and more, becoming increasingly comfortable with attempting to either kill them or worse - and she even cruelly mocks Akira over Aluna's fate later on... Her attitude towards Akira in particular has become particularly vicious and cruel, seeming to outright have it in for him and considering him scum - part of this is because Kreuz has convinced her he's just a complete rat bastard, part of this is because she resents him for how little he seemed to care about her growing depression back in their homeworld, and part of this is because she responded extremely negatively to Akira deciding to stay with the Protagonists rather than returning to the party like she and her friends had hoped - she had be far the worst reaction to this, and it worsened even further when she later saw him again in the village, content to just spend his time playing colony manager while Bai and friends deal with actual threats, seeing it as proof he was simply bullshitting when he said he'd always be around to help others and protecting the weak is his greatest passion. As such, she enjoys fighting Akira a little too much, especially with Kreuz at her side, and had a frankly disturbing level of glee in response to his horror that she'd end up betraying her friends to join the person they had been regularly fighting back in their homeworld. Her opinion on the rest of the Protagonists is more mixed, though she considers Amber to be a boring idiot who the others are fools for following so blindly, and often comments that if they follow her because she's so smart, then the rest of them must be outright brain dead in her view. Despite this, she doesn't hate them all, and in particular is actually quite fond of Noroi, believing she'd make an awesome Crossbone and she should just ditch the Protags already. her opinions on the House of Glass are far more varied, even seeing them as "wicked" in her own words, and has a particular fondness of Swarm and Piety, believing they have a sort of gothic edge that'd be welcome among the Crossbones. In general, as time passes it seems her morals decay more and more, and she takes greater active enjoyment of things like killing and worse.

Malie has slightly above-average statistics compared to broad humans in the Calling, but not as high as some others like Bai. She compensates for this by being extremely fast on her magic broom, and having an ample amount of magical spells to use in combat against her enemies as she pleases. She is overall specialized towards being a Black Mage, and has spells which compliment that such as fireballs, pumpkin bombs, chain lightning, poison spells, magic missiles, and more, and in addition she also has access to some support spells such as healing and minor buffs as well. She is also being taught various magical abilities by the other magic-enabled Crossbones such as Kreuz and Cross, and has learned unique abilities such as summoning small black holes, massive thorny rose vines, summoning whirlwinds of razor sharp leaves, and similar abilities, and has even been entrusted with using the Warp Gate spell - which creates a portal around her that the other Crossbones can use to travel to her location in a flash - due to how her extremely high mobility with her broom makes her generally the ideal user of the spell. Her Void Eye is imbued with the power of Dualism and makes it so that whenever she is fighting nearby Kreuz, she gains a high boost to her abilities. Her and Kreuz's name ranks among the crossbones are called the Thorns, and their their shared symbol takes the form of a rose with a curling, thorn covered stem and petals that, when together, look reminiscent of a drooping, creepy skull.

Malie is very short in height, being the second shortest Crossbone after Roa, who is, of course, a child, and she has a pale but not unrealistic complexion. Her hair is droopy and black and almost looks like slime in a way - though it is of course not actually slimy, while her eyes are red and her teeth are somewhat pointy and shark-like at times, but are overall mostly normal looking. She's very thin and has a mostly flat chest. Her outfit primarily consists of a unique dress whose top is black in coloration, but has a bright pink "V" opening which exposes a set of three black buttons, each styled off a pointy cross, and a bright red bow with a black skull design at the center, while the shoulders somewhat pointed to the side. Her sleeves are of average length, but are quite wide, drooping below her hands normally, and have bright pink inner lining. On her waist she wears a silver holster holding up her black, simple-looking spellbook with a red pentacle on the front, while her skirt is divided into five pointed sections to evoke a pentacle itself, and underneath is is a second, shorter pink skirt with thorny rose patterns in a darker pink throughout it. On her legs she wears stylish pink stockings and black boots with large, skull-like buckles on the front. On her head she wears a black witch's hat with pink inner lining, and its "tail" (upper portion) twists and curls in gothic fashion. It has a prominent dark pink bow on the front of it with a silver skull at the center, with two glowing pink crosses in each eye. Her broom is mostly made of old, dried wood, but at the top it has a prominent silver cross design, with small chains ending in smaller crosses hanging of the two horizontal points of the cross, and the broom ends with a dark, metallic, jagged "cage" that houses a bright purple flame that gives or bursts like a jet as she flies with it. Finally, last but not least, her wand is made of a black, thorny material and ends in a silver cross similar to the one at the end of her broom.