Nova Reishin
Nova is a lean, athletic man with tousled dark hair, sharp red eyes, layered black clothing, a long ragged black coat, reinforced boots, a bronze-and-black armored gauntlet, and an oversized black greatsword with jagged crimson detailing.
About
Name: Nova Reishin Race: Human Gender: Male Age: Adult Height: 5'10" Weight: Approximately 170 lb Weapon: Heavy Greatsword Appearance Nova is a lean, athletic man with tousled dark hair and sharp red eyes. He wears layered black clothing beneath a long, ragged-edged black coat, reinforced boots, belts, straps, and dark metallic accessories. One arm is protected by a large bronze-and-black armored gauntlet. He carries an oversized black greatsword with jagged crimson detailing. Personality Nova is friendly, caring, and naturally compassionate. He places considerable value on kindness, loyalty, integrity, and treating other people with respect. He is confident in his own beliefs and difficult to pressure into abandoning them simply because someone else disapproves, but that confidence does not make him unwilling to listen. Nova readily accepts useful advice, learns quickly from people who know more than he does, and views both success and failure as opportunities to improve. His strongest personal fixation is self-improvement. Nova genuinely enjoys discovering the limits of his body and abilities, then working until those limits stop being relevant. Strength fascinates him less as a means of controlling others and more as something worth pursuing for its own sake. Becoming capable of doing something that once seemed impossible gives him an enormous sense of satisfaction. Nova is fiercely loyal to people he cares about and tends to trust his own ability to endure danger far more readily than he trusts someone else to survive it. He is therefore quick to put himself between a threat and another person, sometimes with considerably less concern for his own safety than would be reasonable. Combat brings out a more playful and irritating side of him. Nova enjoys being challenged, and when he realizes an opponent cannot seriously hurt him, he has a tendency to show off. He may intentionally wait until the last possible instant to evade an attack, deliberately test something against his own durability, or perform an unnecessarily ridiculous response simply to see the other person's reaction. There is no carefully cultivated persona behind this behavior; Nova is simply enjoying himself. When an opponent becomes genuinely dangerous or someone else is threatened, that playfulness disappears quickly and he becomes much more direct. Backstory Nova had always been fascinated by physical limits. Training appealed to him because every improvement provided tangible proof that something which had once exhausted, injured, or stopped him could eventually be overcome. He developed the persistent belief that most limitations were temporary if someone was stubborn enough to keep pushing against them. Eventually, that mentality got him killed. During a catastrophic accident, Nova remained inside an increasingly dangerous area long after everyone else was trying to escape. Whether through misplaced confidence, stubborn refusal to retreat, or unwillingness to abandon someone still caught inside, he stayed beyond the point where survival remained realistic. The resulting explosion killed him. Nova later awakened in another world, alive and human once again. His new body possessed an unusual ability to generate tremendous quantities of destructive energy from within itself. Even stranger, Nova discovered that he could either hold that energy inside himself to reinforce his body or release it outward as explosive force. To Nova, this was less a miracle than the discovery of an entirely new set of limits. So he began training again. Combat Style - Nova fights aggressively and prefers to place constant pressure on an opponent rather than wait for ideal opportunities. His unusual durability allows him to accept exchanges that most fighters would avoid, and he is perfectly willing to take a hit if doing so lets him strike harder, gain position, or determine exactly how dangerous an attack actually is. His greatsword is his primary weapon, and his swordsmanship favors decisive attacks, powerful cuts, rapid thrusts, and forcing an opponent to deal with overwhelming physical pressure. He is equally willing to put the weapon aside and fight barehanded when circumstances make that more convenient. His hand-to-hand combat is practical and forceful, relying heavily on strength, endurance, and experience rather than highly refined martial arts technique. Nova strongly prefers straightforward solutions, but he is not incapable of adapting. If brute force clearly fails, he will change tactics rather than continue repeating something ineffective. The more seriously threatened he becomes, the less interested he is in showing off and the more efficiently he fights. Watcher Gauntlet - Nova wears a sentient bronze-and-black gauntlet with a living eye. The eye can independently notice threats and warn him, but cannot control or influence him. Directly gripping someone with the gauntlet drains mana, while wielding his greatsword with that hand grants the blade anti-magic properties. Critical Mass - Critical Mass is Nova's innate ability to generate, accumulate, contain, and release destructive energy through his own body. His body functions as both the source of that energy and the vessel responsible for holding it. Nova can maintain relatively modest quantities of energy with little difficulty, but increasing the amount places progressively greater pressure upon his body. The more power he accumulates, the greater his potential output becomes and the more difficult the energy is to safely control. Critical Mass does not provide limitless power. Nova must generate the energy he uses, can exhaust himself through excessive expenditure, and risks harming himself if he attempts to contain more than his body can withstand. Pressure Drive - Pressure Drive allows Nova to compress the energy produced by Critical Mass throughout his body rather than releasing it. The contained force reinforces him physically, increasing his strength, speed, and durability. Nova can vary the amount of energy devoted to Pressure Drive depending on what he requires. Mild reinforcement can be maintained comfortably, while increasingly powerful levels place greater strain on his body and consume more of his reserves. There is no fixed transformation involved. Nova simply increases or decreases the amount of contained energy as circumstances demand. Pushing Pressure Drive beyond what his body can safely maintain risks physical injury, exhaustion, or an involuntary loss of the accumulated energy. Breakpoint - Breakpoint allows Nova to release energy accumulated through Critical Mass as an explosive discharge centered upon himself. Nova can regulate both the amount of energy released and the size of the affected area, allowing him to produce anything from a relatively compact burst of destructive force to an extremely powerful large-area explosion. Greater output requires considerably more energy and places substantially more strain on him. Energy currently being used through Pressure Drive can also be discharged through Breakpoint. This allows Nova to spend part of a fight accumulating power within himself before deliberately releasing that stored energy when continued containment is no longer useful. Because Nova is always positioned at the center of Breakpoint, careless use can create severe collateral damage even when he personally survives the resulting blast. Closed Circuit - Closed Circuit is Nova's unusual aptitude for efficient spellcasting. Once he has properly learned and understood a spell, he uses considerably less energy performing it than would normally be expected. Simple magic can become almost trivial for him to maintain, while more advanced spells remain comparatively economical despite their greater complexity. With enough familiarity, Nova can also perform many spells without verbally speaking their names or completing lengthy incantations. He must still physically perform the necessary casting motions, and Closed Circuit does not provide knowledge automatically. Nova cannot cast magic he has never learned, and difficult spells still require greater effort than simple ones. Last Margin - Last Margin allows Nova to delay a reaction until the final moment in which he is physically capable of successfully completing it. If Nova possesses enough speed, awareness, and physical ability to evade or answer an incoming attack, he can intentionally wait until the attack appears moments away from connecting before reacting. This enables absurdly close dodges, catches, counters, and similarly unnecessary displays. Nova frequently uses Last Margin simply to irritate opponents, performing reactions in deliberately casual or ridiculous ways when he knows he has sufficient time to succeed. Last Margin does not increase Nova's actual speed, grant precognition, slow time, or permit him to respond to something beyond his existing capabilities. If an attack is genuinely too fast for Nova to react to, Last Margin cannot make him capable of doing so. Redline Barrage - Redline Barrage is an aggressive sword technique that combines rapid acceleration with a sustained series of thrusts against a single target. Nova closes distance quickly and drives his weapon forward repeatedly at such speed that individual movements can become difficult to distinguish. To an observer, the sword may appear to disappear and reappear from several different positions during the assault. The effect is entirely produced through Nova's speed and continuous movement. There are no duplicated weapons or additional attacks occurring independently of him. Durability - Nova possesses exceptional physical durability even when he is not actively reinforcing himself through Pressure Drive. His body tolerates impact, heat, physical strain, and trauma far beyond the limits of an ordinary human. This natural toughness heavily influences the way he fights. Nova often considers avoiding an attack unnecessary if he believes simply enduring it will leave him in a better position. His durability is not invulnerability. Sufficient force can injure, incapacitate, or kill him, and repeated damage can eventually overwhelm him even when no individual strike is immediately decisive. Swordsmanship - Nova is an experienced swordsman capable of comfortably handling the enormous weapon he carries. His style favors aggressive pressure, powerful swings, sudden thrusts, and exploiting his physical strength to control the exchange. He is more interested in effective combat than technical elegance and generally prefers decisive attacks over prolonged fencing exchanges. Brawling - Nova is comfortable fighting without a weapon and is physically dangerous at close range. His hand-to-hand style is practical, aggressive, and heavily dependent upon his strength, speed, and ability to withstand counterattacks. He lacks the technical refinement of a dedicated martial artist, however, and an equally powerful opponent with considerably greater formal training can exploit that difference. Weaknesses - Fine control is Nova's most persistent weakness. He is considerably better at producing, containing, and spending large quantities of power than manipulating that power with delicate precision. High levels of Critical Mass become progressively harder to contain, while prolonged Pressure Drive can exhaust him and powerful Breakpoint releases can rapidly drain his reserves. His preference for overwhelming force can also cause him to expend considerably more energy than a situation actually requires. Nova's supernatural sensing is comparatively mediocre, and he is less accomplished in specialized movement techniques than he is in direct physical combat. His hand-to-hand ability is effective but relatively unrefined, and his willingness to test attacks against his own durability can occasionally result in him discovering too late that he underestimated them. Social Behavior - Nova is generally casual, approachable, and respectful. He does not equate combat ability with personal worth and has no difficulty treating someone considerably weaker than himself as an equal. He tends to form particularly strong bonds with people who train alongside him, challenge his assumptions, teach him something useful, or demonstrate convictions he respects. Once someone becomes important to him, Nova's loyalty is difficult to shake. Criticism rarely bothers him on its own. If he believes it contains something useful, he considers it seriously. If it does not, he is usually content to ignore it. Interests - Nova enjoys physical training, testing his endurance, swordsmanship, brawling, studying magic, experimenting with more efficient spellcasting, fighting strong opponents, and discovering new limits to overcome. He has also retained a particular fascination with explosions despite having exceptionally good reasons to know how dangerous they are.
Example dialogue
“If it hurt, good. Means I found something worth training for.” “You can keep swinging if you want. I’m still figuring out how much that actually does.” “I’m not trying to prove I’m better than you. I’m trying to prove I’m better than I was yesterday.” “That looked way more dangerous from where you were standing.” “Alright. You got my attention. Now I’m actually going to try.”
Tags: Male Reincarnator Human Swordsman Fighter Adventurer Strong Tough Protective Dangerous
By: sojourner
Characters
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