Baharl Devault

Baharl Devault (バハール・デヴォルト) is a character in the spin-off "Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest Zero" series.

He was the head of the Devault family which ruled over Andika.

Appearance
Baharl is older man in his mid-fifties. Hs has amethyst-colored eyes and swept-back black hair, though a few stray strands dangle over his face. He has a large scar that runs diagonally across his face.

He wears an outfit that is fashionable with nobles and can ofter be seen with a cigar in his mouth.

Personality
Baharl is greedy and cruel, and believes that he is entitled to take what he wants from others due to his strength.

Deep down, however, Baharl is capable of caring for others, but is unable to express those emotions due to his harsh life.

After the destruction of Andika and the resettlement of its citizens, Baharl became more laid-back due to not having to worry about overseeing the city any longer.

Biography
Baharl grew up in a life of poverty. During his youth, he managed to assemble a crew and continued to become more powerful until he had become the ruler of the outlaw city of Andika. Among the many horrible acts he committed throughout his rule, Baharl abducted a beautiful dagon woman named Reej from Andika's slums, and forced her to bear his child Diene.

Baharl discovered an ancient ruin deep below Andika roughly a decade after his daughter's birth. It contained a damaged fresco of a large monster known as the "Divine Beast Leviathan". He had Diene use her special magic "Renewal" to restore part of it and discovered that it was actually a seal for that monster. Baharl planned to restore it and set the monster free in the future with the hope to he could control it and use its power to fight against any outside threat to Andika, including its secret backer and true ruler, the Holy Church. The more time was spent on restoring the fresco, however, the more the sea surrounding Andika became more unstable.

Two years later, Baharl became more motivated to learn more about the leviathan due to a band of pirates continuously raiding Andika. He had even hired other pirates and mercenaries to sop them, but to know avail. One night, after Diene had restored part of the fresco, Baharl and several of his henchmen arrived to check her progress, but she was unable to learn to obtain new information from what she had restored thus far. His top henchmen Ace and Kelvin advised against such a dangerous plan of attempting to revive such a dangerous monster, but Barharl was getting desperate and argued in favour learning more about the ancient monster in spite of the risks. Having noticed his daughter's apparent exhaustion from her work, Baharl asked her how many times she used her magic during the day, to which claimed three times, as per his orders. Kelvin then explained that she used some of her mana earlier that day to heal some injured miners in the tunnels above the ruins. Despite this selfless deed, Barharl slapped Diene and and berated her for using her magic without his permission out of fear of being discovered and captured by the Holy Church. He then gave her an object for her to view that contained a recording of an incident in the high-end casino at Andika's inner ring, then ordered her to go to her room among the underground tunnels.

A month later, Barharl and his subordinates were gathered at his office in order to celebrate Ace's birthday. During that time, he had ceased any attempts to restore the fresco further, which in turn returned the sea and the surrounding wildlife back to normal. While still working in his office, Baharl stated out loud that it was too dangerous to try to release the leviathan, but still wanted to learn more about it in order to control it someday. Hearing this caused Diene to glance a him for a moment, which had immediately gotten his attention and asked her if she a problem with what he said, but she desperately tried to deny it before going silent. Just before Ace's party could begin, they were suddenly approached by the Holy Church's templar knights commander Laus Barn (which was actually an astral projection of him). Baharl immediately panicked after learning who Laus was and was afraid the church and sent him to kill him, but Laus explained that his mission was to eliminate the pirates that were plaguing Andika. Before Baharl could breath a sigh of relief, Laus also gave him a message from the pope about reminding him of where his true loyalties should lie. Unware of its meaning, Laus asked Baharl if he had something that he should tell the church, but Baharl claimed he was hiding nothing. Laus gave Baharl one final warning about being loyal before disappearing right infant of everyone. Despite Laus not understanding the true nature of the message, Baharl knew full well that the pope was aware that he had kept his daughter and her powers a secret from the church. He then ordered Diene to go back to her room and had some of his guards escort her.

Several days after the encounter with Laus, the pirates launched an attack against Andika. Baharl broke into Diene's room and forcibly grabbed her arm and took her away. Baharl order several of his men, including Kelvin to escape Andika with Diene on his personal ship. Diene, however, refused to comply with her father's orders and threatened to stay if she did not explain the situation to her. At first Baharl was angered at his daughter's newly defying attitude, and even slapped her for it, but she still refused to obey him. He finally agreed to talk as they were preparing to evacuate and explained about the pirate attack, and that he was taking her away in order for the Holy Church not to get their hands on her. They eventually reached a chamber with the boat for her intended escape. Just then there was a tremor that caused some debris to fall. Baharl protected Diene by covering her with his body. As they were about to leave, Baharl gave his daughter some final words of encouragement while he was preparing to stay behind to buy her some time to escape.

As the ship was about to take off, Ace arrived after having disappeared for some time. Baharl ordered Ace to leave with Diene, but Ace instead suggested that they take Diene to the ancient ruins so that she could use her magic to help free the leviathan and drive off the invaders. Baharl immediately dismissed that idea do to how dangerous it was to release it. Realizing that something was different about Ace, Baharl and his men barricaded themselves in front of Diene. It was then that Ace stated that he was simply doing what his god commanded. Having realized that Ace had betrayed him by revealing Diene's existence to the church, Baharl was prepared to have Kelvin kill him, but Ace had somehow managed to get in a shot at Baharl by piercing his chest bare-handed. Ace then killed Kelvin, as well as the rest of Baharl's and was about to take off with Diene, but Baharl somehow managed to get back on his feet in order to protect his daughter. Ace then unleashed an attack by just gazing at Baharl that caused him to fall back down, but he miraculously managed to get back up and proceeded to attack Ace with his sword. Despite his best efforts, however, Ace easily managed to block the attack and countered by cutting through Baharl's sword and his chest before taking off with Diene.

As Baharl laid dying, he heard the sound of approaching footsteps. He initially mistook to be Diene's mother Reej, but soon realized that it was Reej's other daughter that she kept secret from him: Meiru Melusine. With the last of his strength, Baharl apologized for taking her mother from her and offered to have her kill him for revenge. Meiru, full of anger at Baharl, was prepared to kill him, but saw his final moments before meeting him thanks to her Restoration Magic replaying events of the past that she used to track down him and Diene. Seeing how Baharl had risked his life to save his daughter (and by extension her sister), Meriu expressed her anger that he had decided to risk his life for someone else after having ruined her life and the lives of others. Baharl replied that he simply didn't know how else to live, while coming to terms with his folly. Meiru was prepared to let Baharl die, but began to have second thoughts when her companion Naiz Gruen Caliente asked if his death was what she really wanted. Overcome with a flurry of emotions, Meiru decided to save Baharl at the last second and used her magic to restore him. Surprised by her actions, Meiru claimed that she only did it for Diene, and that he should find a live for her sake of she meant a lot to him. Baharl replied be claiming that Meiru was just like her mother, to which she threatened to kill him if he ever said that again. The newly healed Baharl then walked towards Kelvin's body and commended him for his service.

Just then, another massive tremor occurred in Andika. Baharl realized that it was a due to the leviathan being released from its seal. He lead Meiru and Naiz to the room the contained its seal, as well as where Diene was after being abducted by Ace. When they arrived, they saw that Diene had fainted after using her magic to restore the fresco, and thereby having released the leviathan. Meiru rushed over to her and used her magic to restore her. Diene had awoken afterwords and the two sisters tearfully embraced each other. Surprised that Baharl was still alive, Ace realized that Meiru was the one that healed him, but Baharl was more concerned with stopping the leviathan from awakening and ordered Meiru and Naiz to destroy the ruins in an attempt to reseal it. As Naiz was about to unleash his magic per Baharl's order, Ace intervened before he could act and jabbed Naiz in the gut with such force that it sent him crashing into the wall. He then had gotten behind Meiru and kicked her in the back that sent her flying while she was holding on to Diene to protect her. Baharl caught the two of them before they crashed into the wall, minimizing the damage. Unfortunately, he ended up absorbing most the impact, and had ended up with several cracked ribs. As Ace was suddenly gathering mana around his right hand, Meiru and Naiz attacked him with their magic, but they had been blocked by a barrier that had been erected around him. Naiz soon realized Ace was actually Ehit's apostle in disguise due to the color of the mana-fuelled barrier reminding him of Hearst during a previous battle. Ahat then unleashed a blinding flash of light that drilled into the wall, leaving a human-shaped hole in the fresco. The hole blew all the way to the sea, and water started rushing in, despite the fact that Andika’s unique properties should have prevented that. The speed of the water caused a flash flood through the tunnels. Ahat, however, was unaffected by the water pressure, and started walking against the current. Baharl and the others were then teleported by Naiz immediately afterwords.

When the leviathan had finally awoken after its long imprisonment, Andika began to sink. Baharl help organize an evacuation of all of Andika's citizens. The leviathan was eventually defeated due to the combined efforts of Meiru and the anti-organization, the Liberators, but Andika was lost as a result.

In the following month since the battle against the Leviathan, Baharl and the rest of Andika's people relocated to a new settlement made of ships. As the Liberators were about to leave after having helped the people of Andika make a new home for themselves, Baharl said his goodbyes to them and offered them his thanks for all that they did (while constantly being threatened by Meiru for his apparent lack of manners in his speech, but was saved thanks to Diene's intervention). He promised to take care of those in his new settlement that needed help, and finished by asking them to punch the apostle who killed Ace for him before walking away.

Relationships

 * Reej - Baharl was infatuated with Reej after seeing her for the first time. Despite having kidnapped her, he went to great lengths to earn her love, but she never reciprocated
 * Diene Devault - Baharl treated his daughter cruelly throughout her childhood. Part of the reason that he kept her around was do to her being in possession of renewal magic that he could use if ever he was in a deadly situation due to many people wanting him dead. Despite his harsh treatment of his daughter, Baharl genuinely loved her and wanted to protect her from the church. He was angered by her meek and cowardly attitude and wanted her to be able to stand up for herself. After the battle of Andika, Diene and Baharl's relationship improved, with Diene learning to stand up for herself against her father whenever he acts out, and Baharl becoming more openly compassionate towards his daughter.
 * Meiru Melusine - Baharl was never aware of Meiru's existence due to Reej keeping her a secret from him. Meiru hated him for a long period of time for taking her mother from her, as well as his treatment of Diene. She later makes peace with him after Andika's destruction for the sole purpose of not wanting to rob Diene of her father, but would still not hesitate to threaten him whenever he does anything that would upset her even the tiniest bit.
 * Ace - Baharl and Ace have known each other since childhood, and had become one of the former's top subordinates while ruling Andika.
 * Kelvin - Another of Baharl's top enforcers. Kelvin had known Baharl since he was a kid when the latter saved him from the Holy Church. After Kelvin's death, Baharl made sure to pay his last respects to him.

Quotes

 * (To Diene Devault) - "Listen up, you better prepare yourself too. Run like your life depends on it. Don’t give up, not even at the very end. Never let yourself become a pawn of the church. No matter how bad things get, even if you have to eat dirt to survive, don’t let them steal your free will. You’re Reej’s daughter. The proud daughter of Andika’s strongest woman. Don’t lose that spirit you showed when you stood up to me! Understood?"