Ashlock

[Code Name] Ashlock

[Gender] Female

[Combat Experience] 4 Years

[Place of Birth] Kazimierz

[Date of Birth] Mar 20

[Race] Zalak

[Height] 164cm

[Infection Status]

Originium crystals distributed across surface of body, confirmed Infected by medical examination.

[Physical Strength] Excellent

[Mobility] Standard

[Physical Resilience] Excellent

[Tactical Acumen] Standard

[Combat Skill] Standard

[Originium Arts Assimilation] Standard

Member of Pinus Sylvestris Knightclub, Ashlock Knight Greynuty, joined Rhodes Island following the Kazimierz Major.

Fights with a handheld cannonlance and sturdy shield. Able to inflict casualties on faraway enemies, and can also hold the front, protecting other Operators.

Imaging tests show the indistinct outlines of internal organs, obscured by abnormal shadows. Originium granules detected in the circulatory system. The subject is confirmed to be infected with Oripathy.

[Cell-Originium Assimilation] 7%

Clear Originium crystallization is visible on the face.

[Blood Originium-Crystal Density] 0.19u/L

The state of Operator Greynuty's infection has tended towards stability.

After the conclusion of the Kazimierz Major, Greynuty joined Rhodes Island, together with her fellow Pinus Sylvestris members. After witnessing first-hand Kazimierz's treatment of the Infected, and as Infected themselves, they were pleasantly surprised that an organization like Rhodes Island still existed in this world. Here, they could live a new life, and fight for the Infected.

Nevertheless, Greynuty still felt at a loss.

She needed a goal.

She once strove to sharpen herself for the sake of her family; after becoming Infected, her goal was to ascend the Major and the Champion's throne like the Radiant Knight and the Blood Knight had done; now, she followed Sona, followed the others of Pinus Sylvestris, and came aboard Rhodes Island as an employee of a pharmaceutical company. She would range far from Kazimierz, fighting unlike a knight, or even a Kazimierzian.

The rules she was familiar with would no more be applicable.

And so, at present, she is still bewildered, and still vexed.

But please don't worry. If you need her, she will step forth.

Just as the ancient knight nobles of Kazimierz would have.

Pinus Sylvestris Knightclub's founding members were Flametail Knight Sona and Ashlock Knight Greynuty. Though both were Zalaks, and were born in similar places, their first time meeting came entirely by accident. Not long after the Infected Knights Act was passed, Greynuty was expelled from her family, arriving at the Grand Knight Territory to participate in brutal underground knight competitions. Right before a group melee, she first met Flametail Sona, who wanted a temporary alliance with her for the group match; Greynuty agreed. Just like that, the cannoneer and the swiftblade covered each other's weaknesses, standing out in the tumult of the melee. Once they were left alone on the field, Sona made a thrust at Greynuty, taking the points she had.

As a knight, Greynuty ought to have been angered, but in Sona, she found a long-lost trust and peace of mind, as well as Greynuty's own guilt towards her—Sona was once one of the subjects of the Kaliska family, but when a Catastrophe assaulted her home, the Kaliskas never fulfilled their duty as knight nobles. Ultimately, Sona's hometown fell into ruin, and she was Infected.

After that, Greynuty, together with Sona, founded Pinus Sylvestris Knightclub, competing in matches for prize money on one hand, and aiding the Infected of the Grand Knight Territory on the other. They've tried working by themselves, they've tried making deals with the Adeptus Sprawiedliwi, and now, they've found an even better collaborator than before.

Greynuty is not at all a textbook competition knight; she keeps silent on the field, lets the audience's cheers and jeers bounce off her, steadily confronting her opponents. She rarely participates in commercial activities, and she reads every letter from her supporters one by one in detail, writing a reply for each. When she's spotted out and about; fans gather around excitedly asking for signatures, which seems to put Greynuty at a complete, flustered loss, looking to quiet them down as quickly as she can. She then pulls the fans away from the crowd, asks in a stammer what they're looking for, and signs her name on the objects the fans hand her. Her antics have inadvertently garnered her a good number of fanatics; Sona even suggests on occasion that she ought to pursue the path of the idol knight, teasing that her prospects might be greater than as a competition knight. Of course, each time Sona says it, Greynuty sternly declines.

Greynuty's combat ability is by no means lacking. Preeminent even in Pinus Sylvestris, many an opponent has fallen under her baptism by shellfire. However, she has her weaknesses too—heavy artillery and thick armor consume her endurance, and she moves relatively slowly when fighting the enemy in close quarters, plus the fatal gap that switching spent magazines produces. So long as these problems remain undealt with, and she doesn't temper herself as all-around as a Champion of the Major would, then there will always be a knight who seizes on her weaknesses, and she'll be unable to take the final steps to arrive at her goals.

Those familiar with Greynuty know she brims with hatred for the knight nobles. However, Greynuty once was one herself.

Greynuty's family used to be quite well-known, but after her grandmother passed away, the elders in charge of running the family enterprise made a strategic blunder, and the whole business was left with a deep deficit, and set the family's decline in stone. It was at this time, too, that Greynuty caught Oripathy.

After the fact, there was a change in the way her relatives treated her.

Her siblings who she'd played with since childhood broke off contact, her few friendly uncles gradually fell out of touch, and her family's elders seemed to forget about her entirely.

One common voice held in the Kaliskas' hearts: 'The Kaliskas shouldn't have Infected. So long as Greynuty remains, our prestige will suffer.'

In the wake of the family's continued destitution, the way its members regarded her turned slowly from silence to anger. She'd seen how her elders shamed the estate's Infected, but never imagined that as a part of the family, Oripathy would subject her to such treatment.

Even more unbelievable to her was that the Knight Primus seemed to want her, an Infected, gone from the family.

It was like she was no Kaliska, only some homeless commoner blighted by Oripathy, of a village razed in a disaster.

This doubt was quickly dispelled, but reality was more ruthless than her mind—she might have even lost the freedom to stay in her home.

One day, the Knight Primus summoned her to discuss how to resolve a certain matter. The one who passed it on was highly tactful, but she was well aware, she was that so-called 'matter'.

After a knock on the Primus' parlor door, Greynuty found the Knight Primus of the Kaliskas—along with another noble Knight Primus.

They were presumably in talks; the atmosphere was utterly fractured, both sides menacing, trying to wrest more benefit from the other, and here in his parlor, it seemed Greynuty's Knight Primus had readily surrendered every last bargaining chip he'd held.

The other noble Primus flew into sudden fury on seeing Greynuty, denouncing the Kaliskas for harboring an Infected, and even bringing her before him. He tore up the treaty, and swore he would no longer work with the Kaliskas.

Greynuty knew the other side had only used her appearance to wash himself of any blame for the ruined contract, but her Knight Primus, and her family's elders, lacked total awareness of it, going so far as to cast all their rage directly on her.

In the end, on a moonless night, the Primus convened a full meeting, deciding by vote whether Greynuty, the Infected, was to go.

——It was unanimous.

No one present dissented; no one so much as abstained. Even Greynuty's mother and father raised their hands.

Greynuty knew they had sorrows of their own, but in that moment, she felt her own teardrops as they ran down her face.

Those who sympathized with her said nothing, those who detested her cheered, and the Primus sat at the head of the table feigning impartiality.

These were the Kaliskas, a microcosm of Kazimierz's knight nobility.

Since then, Greynuty has left her home and come alone to the Grand Knight Territory, fighting upward from the underground arenas step by step. Through the knight competitions, she wants to recover her reputation, and thus return to that decrepit and hollowed-out family, give them a good long look at her accomplishments, make them admit they were wrong about her, make them wash off the stigma forced onto her.

But what comes afterward?

Sona has given it thought, but she still hasn't.

The cannon is a traditional and mighty siege weapon. With modern industrial refinement have come cannonlances wieldable by a single person, their might weakened by a degree, but still retaining fine destructive power against humanoid targets. Greynuty's ancestors relied on such armaments to make their family's future, but the present Kaliska progeny are, by and large, now strangers to this skill.

As part of her childhood training, from a young age, Greynuty's grandmother instructed her in cannonlance handling and maintenance, on one hand wanting her to steel herself through such a course, and on the other, hoping she may also come to pass this skill down through her family. Regrettably, before Greynuty finished this course, her grandmother laid on her sickbed never to wake again, and while her elders once solemnly vowed to finance Greynuty's studies, they never made good on their commitment. In the end, Greynuty could only teach herself, diligently rounding off the remainder of the course.