Eri Nakamura

Eri Nakamura is a character from the "Arifureta Shokugyō de Sekai Saikyō" series.

She was originally one of the summoned heroes but later betrayed her classmates for the demons. Using her original dark magic "Soul Bind" to manipulate countless numbers of dead puppet soldiers. After she obtain the power of an apostle, she became more powerful than before and able to manipulate Kouki Amanogawa using soul bind even without killing him. She self destructed herself as her. 'last loyalty' after knowing that Kouki no longer being manipulated by her. After she died, she has a face to face communication with her former best friend Suzu Taniguchi, telling her she would have been better if she met Suzu first instead of Kouki during her childhood time.

Before the war, she had became a sleeper agent of her associations with Garland in attempt to destroy the Heiligh Kingdom in her rebellion against her classmates. During the war, She and Daisuke Hiyama betrayed the "Hero Party" and were branded as traitors. When Hajime Nagumo arrived and foiled her plans, she betrayed Hiyama and letting him to die at the hands of Hajime. After Hiyama's death, she escaped and defected to Garland.

Appearance
Eri has short black hair that is kept in a tiny bob. She has brown eyes and is wearing glasses. After she discarded and broke her glasses, she shows a sinister expression.

Upon obtaining the power of an apostle, she grows wings.

Personality
In the beginning, Eri is portrayed as a calm and quiet girl that loves books. Later on, however, it is shown that she is very cunning and willing to take advantage of classmates for her own personal gain. She has a very deep obsession for Kouki to the point that she is willing to kill him in order to use 'soul bind' on him and make him her puppet and "boyfriend" forever.

While in her persona as the "Shy Girl", Eri is portrayed to be kind and compassionate to others, especially to her classmates of whom she considered to be her "friends", but due to her looks and tame personality is shown to be a tad bit shy, when dealing with them. However underneath this persona, Eri, in truth, despised pretending to being friends with her classmates and dislikes the fact that she needed to maintain this persona for long periods of time in order to stay in Kouki's good graces and truthfully wanted to slaughter them all in order to horde Kouki's attention all to herself. And upon being transported to Tortus, Eri was greatly delighted that her newfound powers now allowed her the chance of killing them all herself. however upon fully mastering her powers as a Necromancer however, Eri opinion on her former classmates had seemingly improved from seeing them as "Trash" to be thrown out, to "useful pawns (undead slaves)" to be used for her future plans. However even after her betrayal and eventual failure to kill them (except for Kondou, a classmate that she killed) due to Hajime's interference, Eri was none the less glad that she no longer had to "play house" with them any longer and was completely unrepentant in her choice of betraying them.

Due to her obsession, Eri has has shown to have little remorse or hesitation in doing whatever she can in order to achieve her objectives, as seen where she didn't regret killing King Eliheid and the nobles in order to help her new allies in their invasion and fulfill her goal of obtaining Kouki until her plan was foiled by the raged costumed Hajime.

From her past experiences of her suffering in pain, anguish and agony from losing her birth father in a car accident, then facing the irrational hatred from her birth mother and then being physically abused by her step-father and being beaten to near death by her mother in rage for "ruining" her marriage "again", resulting in Eri having a miserable childhood that later affected her psychological/emotional development. Resulting in Eri's overall psychological mindset became severely warped due to her own tumultuous upbringing and lack of stable role models. Causing her to become exceptionally evil, manipulative, cruel, sadistic, selfish, traitorous and emotionally insecure when dealing with others that eventually lead to the development of her very warped sense of "love" and her obsessive tendencies.

This is seen where she came to conclude that the only way for her to truly be with someone is if she was the only person in that person's life that mattered. This was likely brought out from her mother's own selfish ideal of "love" and her own past tragedies that rendered her insecure and selfish when wanting to also be "loved" by some else. As seen where she would viciously try to kill each and everyone one of Kouki's friends in order to insure that his "love" would only remain with her no matter what and would even go as far as using her Necromancy to forcibly bind her to him to insure that he would always be "hers".

Later when Eri began losing her control over him due to Shizuku successfully getting through to him, Eri immediately began suffering a nervous breakdown due to her "losing" him.

Due to her intelligence, Eri is highly manipulative and traitorous, even more than Daisuke Hiyama when going after what she wants and accomplishing her goals. She manipulated her classmates to become friends with her including the emotionally intelligent, Shizuku just so she would kill them in order to claim Kouki for herself. She also blackmailed Hiyama into helping her after noticing his sloppy attempt to kill Hajime and his gradual losing of footing in his attempts to deny involvement in order to twist it to her own advantage by threatening him that she would tell everyone else of his part in the "accident" unless he helps her. Later despite being collaborators together for their own mutual gain, Eri reveals that she never really saw Hiyama as a comrade or even collaborator but instead only considered Hiyama as a pawn to her that he will eventually outlive his usefulness and later discarded him by leaving him to death at the hands of Hajime without a second thought after witnessing Hiyama being pathetically weak and made no efforts or attempts to go rescue him from his death. Eri herself has little remorse for these actions and was fine being a traitor.

Due to her immense cruelty and sense of superiority, Eri is also shown to be highly abusive and remorseless torturer when she enslaves her undead minions and torturing the souls of the dead to force them to do her bidding like she did to Nia, Meld and Kondou. Eri is very sadistic when she enjoyed seeing her classmates suffers in despair, weep, wail, anguish and agony.

Due to Kaori and Shizuku being Kouki's childhood friends (despite of them being Hajime's lovers), Eri shown to be very envious who held a murderously jealously towards them as she viewed them as her mortal enemies and wanted to kill them whom she referred them as "trashes" along with the rest of their classmates due to them being in her way of making Kouki as her boyfriend. When seeing Kaori was actually revived by Hajime, Eri's hatred towards her grew even worse. She never cared for Suzu when she doesn't considered the latter as her best friend but rather a nuisance. Though her fears for Hajime, she hates him for kept on ruining her plans.

Like Hiyama, Eri despite showing herself to be outwardly confident, is a coward when things start turning out of her advantage/favor. As seen where she showcased genuine fear and was terrified of her now mutated and murderous classmate, Hajime Nagumo after his murdering upon Cattleya. When Hajime arrives and ruined all of Eri's plans after the temporarily murder of Kaori, she begs him to spare her life so that she could revive Kaori as his undead slave in order to save herself as she betrayed Hiyama which only increased his anger further to the point of rage that consumed Hajime. She fears the worst when Hajime obliterates all of her undead slaves and kills Hiyama. After Hiyama's death, Eri thrown into greater fear when Hajime is willing to kill her for her failed attempts to turn Kaori into Hiyama's undead sex slave but got away with the help of Freid Bagwa.

After her transformation into a Apostle/Human Hybrid by Ehit, Eri was shown to have become completely fanatically loyal to the crazed false god, even more so upon him presenting Eri with Kouki as her "prize" for her continued faithful service to him and helping him complete his goals of obtaining a suitable physical vessel to contain his immense power.

Although unknown if this was the result of genuine loyalty or simply her mind being affected by Ehit's magic. Eri was noted to have become completely devoted to him and his goals and coupled with her original psychological instabilities, only made her all the more unhinged and murderous. While ignoring Suzu and Ryutarou when she focused on Kouki, she further descended to evil when she discarded her last shed of humanity inside of her heart. Eri was shown to prefer suicide over betraying Ehit, as seen during her final moments after being defeated by Suzu, where Eri instead committed suicide by detonating herself in a last ditch effort to kill her rather than go back with her to their classmates despite the latter's assurance that they would forgive her for her actions.

Much like Kouki, Eri is also clingy and deluded.

However despite her shamelessness and lack of guilt or regret in her actions on the surface, it was shown that Eri did at least on some level of her mind, did indeed possess some regret on how she lived her life and possessed a minuscule amount of guilt towards her actions. And during her final moments, she acknowledged that if she had meet and befriended Suzu first before becoming infatuated by Kouki upon meeting him, maybe she could have become a much better person than she was and things might have turned out much more differently for her.

Biography
Eri had a very tragic past where her father died saving her from a car accident, leading to her receiving her mother's hatred afterwards due to her blaming Eri for her father's death. Eri's miserable childhood was also due to her mother having only loved her because she was her husband's daughter and nothing more, and upon his death and her subsequent irrational hatred for her daughter by holding her accountable, possibly began the development of her warped perception of "Love". After her father's death, her mother remarried another man, but Eri's stepfather was later imprisoned by the police due to him physically abusing her and him being reported by Eri's neighbors who witnessed his abuse. This led to her mother once again blaming her daughter for again "ruining" her marriage and further amplified her already abundant hatred for her daughter to the point she beat Eri to near death in rage, which led to her own imprisonment for abuse and battery due the the commotion once again drawing the notice of their neighbors and who then reported her. This incident, along with the other tragedies of her life, eventually left Eri with a very unstable psychological and emotional mindset that eventually became the root cause of her later issues in life.

However despite her initial bleak life that eventually lead her to develop a nihilistic/suicidal outlook of herself and the tragedies and irrational abuse she faced that eventually lead her to seriously consider suicide as a escape, Eri would eventually find a reason to continue living. While she was in middle school, Eri would meet and soon became infatuated by Kouki Amanogawa due to his idealism, kindness and heroic sense of justice that moved her so, eventually leading to Eri gaining the will to continue on living for the sole reason of obtaining Kouki. Eventually leading her to soon become utterly obsessed and fixated with him and desire him to become "hers" and "hers" alone that even lead her to soon develop a deep sense of jealousy and hatred for Kouki's other friends due to her believing that they were getting in the way of making Kouki "hers". Eri in particular despised both Kaori Shirasaki and Shizuku Yaegashi due to them being incredibly popular and beautiful and them being Kouki's closest female friends.

During this time, Eri even implied that she was secretly planning to get rid of the "trash" surrounding Kouki as well kill all of her classmates, but due to her at the time being powerless and not possessing the means to do it without getting caught, Eri instead decided to bid her time and wait for her chance to get rid of them all in the future. But upon being summoned by Ehit to Tortus and being given immense powers as a "hero", her plans for assassinating them was accelerated faster than she would expected thanks to her newfound power and the relative innocence of her classmates of not even suspecting her.

Relationships

 * Noint - Noint was aware of Eri's plot to betray the Heiligh Kingdom but decided to cooperate with her due to Noint's master Ehit finding Eri's plans amusing. Eri was first scared of her and though that she would have to kill her but was grateful to her for her help as it speed up Eri's plans by months.
 * Ehit - Ehit finds Eri's plans amusing and considers her an interesting piece in his game. He decided to aid her plans by sending Noint to assist her. Eri is extremely grateful for his help and proudly declare that she has God's blessing on her side. Eri suggests kidnapping Myu and Remia to Ehit, as she knows that they will serve as good hostages for Hajime. Eri later assists Ehit in seizing Yue's body. After Ehit departs for the Holy Precincts after she seized Yue's body, he allowed Eri to accompany him to the Holy Precincts, stating that due to her help, he would grant her wish of claiming Kouki as her rightful "prize". After her defeated by Suzu, Eri refused to betray Ehit and attempted to commit suicide for her last loyalty for the false god.
 * Freid Bagwa - Freid was Eri's partner-in-crime. Despite it, Freid doesn't have a complete trust on Eri due to her insanity. However, when Ehit holds an interest on her, Freid nonetheless worked with her. When their invasion was foiled due to Hajime's interference, Eri and Freid was forced to retreated not before swearing their revenge on Nagumo. In the final battle however, their vengeance was empty as they've both died.
 * Kouki Amanogawa - Eri see's him as her savior and will do anything for him to be her's. After Aiko exposed the truth of Ehit as the evil god, Eri confirmed to Kouki as the reason why she betrayed him and her classmates. She tries to escape by dragging Kouki until she was surrounded by Hajime's harems. After her transformation, Eri's lust for Kouki has extended when she was granted by Ehit of have Kouki for herself as "prize" and boyfriend. Upon successfully "obtaining" him, Eri was shown to have become immensely clingy and delusional with Kouki and has shown to have little to no remorse in psychologically manipulating his fragile psyche in order to "keep" him.
 * Suzu Taniguchi - Even it's a lie, at some point she considers her a true friend. Though she mostly only sees her as a tool to get close to Kouki. Her betrayal has impacted Suzu when she revealed she never considered the latter as her best friend from the start due to her attempted to kill Suzu and the rest of their classmates for being in her way to make Kouki hers. Though she admitted if she meet Suzu before she meet Kouki, then things might have been different. After her defeat by Suzu, Eri committed suicide in a last ditch attempt to kill her rather than find resolves to rejoin their classmates despite of Suzu's assurance of she and the rest of their classmates would forgive her.
 * Kaori Shirasaki - Kaori is one of Eri's mortal enemies (along with Shizuku). Eri hates her due to Kaori acting like it she takes being Kouki's friend granted and that it feels like a burden. After Hiyama temporarily killed Kaori, Eri was about to use "Blind Soul" to make Kaori as Hiyama's undead sex slave. But failed due to Hajime's arrival. While the raged consumed Hajime marched toward Eri, she cowardly begged to spare her life to revive Kaori as his slave which only angered him further. After revived by Hajime, Kaori has no grudge on Eri for her actions. When seeing Kaori was revived by Hajime, Eri's resentment for Kaori is continually increased even worse.
 * Shizuku Yaegashi - Shizuku is one of Eri's mortal enemies (along with Kaori). Eri hates her due to Shizuku acting like it she takes being Kouki's friend for granted and that it feels like a burden. She was about to kill her with her undead slave who was Shizuku's personal maid, Nia but failed due to Hajime's arrival.
 * Hajime Nagumo - It is unknown of how she feels for him before his mutations, but Eri was willing to kill Hajime with her other classmates due to him and the other classmates are being in her way for her desires to make Kouki her boyfriend. In "believing" of Kaori's determination that he is alive, Eri attended to search of Hajime but would reanimated him as Kaori's slave if he's "dead". After witnessing he is still alive and gained inhuman strength and ruining her plans, she views him a monster who shows no hesitation killing even his own classmates, which makes her scared of him and both his demonic strength and murdering intent after killing Cattleya. Prior to forming an alliance with Daisuke before she deserted him, Eri initially considers to work alongside Hajime before he falls into the abyss. When he arrived and got unstably consumed with rage from Kaori's temporarily death, Eri begged Hajime to spare her life so that she would revive Kaori as his slave which Hajime only shown his fury toward her for the worse. Hajime doesn't need Eri of any of her uses to him when he already have the spirit magic as he is willing to kill her for her treachery. When she send her slaves to attack him, Hajime easily destroyed her entire slaves. When Eri tried to kill Hajime with daggers, Hajime easily overpowered her. Before he is preparing to kill her, Hajime has tormented her to make her suffer to death slowly which is worse than the time Eri was suffered by her mother and stepfather. Hajime is willing to kill her for her betrayals disregarded of whatever motivations or reason has made her a traitor. She manage to put some distances from herself and Hajime when the latter killed former collaborator, Daisuke Hiyama (whom she'd betrayed) in coldblooded. After Daisuke's and the undead army's deaths and Eri's defeat, Hajime was willing to kill her for her betrayal of her failed attempted to turn Kaori Shirasaki into an undead sex slave for Daisuke, she got away with Freid Bagwa to Garland. Following her defection, Eri believe using Remia and Myu will be good hostages against Hajime but her plan was compromised and yet was ruined by Hajime again. After Eri captured Yue to presented her body to Ehit, she has angered Hajime for the last time as he will kill Eri for taking Yue from him, knowing that she has no resolves left within her at all. Before the final battle she wanted to runaway with Kouki instead of fighting Hajime showing immense fear of facing him, Unfortunately, Eri died by committing suicide.
 * Daisuke Hiyama - One of her classmates and fellow traitor that she blackmails of his betrayal of letting Hajime to fall only for him returned as an indestructible monster, into working with her to get what they both want (Eri wants Kouki and Hiyama wants Kaori). However, like the rest of her classmates who are pawns to her, Eri viewed Hiyama as a mere pawn to her schemes when she never considered Hiyama as a collaborator or comrade. After Hajime arrived and foiled all of her plans, Eri betrayed Hiyama upon witnessing how weak and worthless he is when he outlived his usefulness to her. When Eri was about to be killed by Hajime, Hiyama unintentionally saved her by firing at Hajime with a fireball (though it was weak and does nothing on Hajime). Despite this however, Eri still refused to help the weak Hiyama when she used his distraction to put a distance between herself and Nagumo. After Hiyama got beaten up and was abandoned to his death by Hajime in coldblooded, Eri didn't even bother to go back to help Hiyama and she simply chose to abandoned him to his death due to him no longer having any form of strategic uses or values in Eri's future plans of killing her classmates to obtain Kouki for herself.
 * Yue - Yue hates Eri a lot due to her wanting to kill Hajime. Because of Yue's hatred towards Eri, Eri wishes to kill Yue for wanting to defend Hajime. Each time Eri's desire to kill Hajime increases throughout the series, the more Yue's hatred towards Eri increases.

Weapons & Equipment

 * Long Staff - As a necromancer, Eri's main weapon is a long staff.


 * Daggers - Eri wield daggers as she attempted to kill Hajime only for the latter disarmed her.
 * Twin Great Swords: From her mutation as hybrid Apostle, Eri wield two broadswords.

Physical Abilities

 * Immense Physical Abilities - After undergoing the Apostle transformation process, Eri possesses all the physical abilities of the apostle. Her strength is more powerful than strength blessed humans. However her abilities are a bit inferior to true Apostle's or Kaori who possesses Noint's body and more inferior to Hajime Nagumo.
 * Genius Intellect - Eri has shown incredible, genius intelligence for her age, being superior to most of her classmates including her teacher Aiko. Her intelligence is shown when she invented an original Necromancy magic spell through personal research as well as choosing to betray her classmates and Heligh Kingdom to support the Demons as their spy for self-preservation as she already realized it is almost impossible to opposed the Demons who were supported by Ehit and his armies of five hundred Apostles. She was also the only person who realized the fireball that caused Hajime to fall into the abyss was intentionally aimed at him and quickly figured out it was fired by Daisuke Hiyama, even correctly guessing his reason for it. But rather than sell him out right away, she chose to blackmail him to help her with her future plans. But when her plan to turn Kaori into Hiyama's sex slave failed due to Hajime's arrival, Eri has betrayed Hiyama in her attempt to make Kaori into Hajime's slave for her safety. Her intelligence holds inferiority to Hajime's own intelligence as her plans were always too predictable and being foiled by him such as her attempt to kill her classmates, making Kaori as Hiyama's sex slave and later trying to capture Remia and Myu as hostage.
 * Master Tactician - Eri has shown to be an extremely crafty and excellent manipulator having managed to conceal her true personality and obsession with Kouki to her classmates, and acts as gentle and quiet girl. Fooling all of her classmates including the extremely sharp Shizuku. She orchestrated a series of master plans to claimed Kouki for herself by killing most of her classmates, by secretly contacting the Demons to assist them in invading and destroying Heiligh Kingdom in exchange for killing her classmates who were the chosen heroes of Ehit and sparing her and Kouki. Through clever manipulation, Eri recruited Daisuke Hiyama a fellow summoned Hero to assist her to kill most of the Knights of Heiligh Kingdom in order to reanimate them into her pawns which she planned to use in ambushing her classmates in a deadly trap. She also managed to tricked Shizuku into letting her guard down by using her friend and personal maid Nia who she has reanimated into her puppet to stabbed Shizuku in the back. Anticipating that Kouki could possibly escape, she used the reanimated Meld Loggins as a means to immobilize Kouki due to Kouki's attachment to Meld and Meld's superior sword skill in addition to applying a non-lethal poison to Kouki when she kissed him. Her plans would have succeed if not for Hajime's unexpected intervention. In her attempted to convince Hajime into sparing her life to revive Kaori as his slave, she betrayed Hiyama and concluded that he outlived his usefulness for this attempt. However, her tactics of trying to capture both Remia and Myu to take them as hostages against Hajime was one step behind as her plan was compromised and foiled by Hajime when he captured and killed Alva.
 * Master Swordswoman - By using her necromancy powers, Eri was able to possess the knowledge of Meld Loggins, the best swordsman in the Heiligh Kingdom thus obtaining his knowledge in swordsmanship, thus becoming proficient in using a single sword in battle.

Magical Abilities

 * Immense Mana - Being one of Ehit's summoned heroes, Eri has more mana when compared to other people of Tortus. By continuously training in secret, she was able to increase her mana capacity. After undergoing the Apostle transformation process, Eri gains the immense mana of one of God's Apostles, allowing her to perform her spells on larger scales and at higher levels than before.


 * Magic Master - Eri is one with the highest magic aptitudes among her classmates, particularly in Dark attribute Magic due her Job Class as a Necromancer. Her already high aptitude was increased by her secret training after which she was able to control up to 500 reanimated corpses as puppets by tormenting the souls of the dead to do her bidding. Her skill in necromancy magic allowed her to develop a spell that was a degraded version of Age of Gods magic. After obtaining her Apostle powers, her magical abilities improved dramatically.

Skills

 * Dark Magic Affinity - It allows the user to use dark magic at a capable rate.
 * Decreased Magic Consumption - It decrease in magic consumption for using dark magic.
 * Increased Efficiency - Effects raised when using dark magic.
 * Increased Duration - Duration in using dark magic raised.
 * Necromancy - The highest form of dark magic, Eri is capable of reanimating and controlling dead corpses. Her mastery is great enough that she invented an inferior form of "Age of God's" spirit magic that allows her to directly control the souls of the dead and reanimate them as her undead puppets allowing her to perfectly reanimate and control an entire army of corpses with their memories, personalities and skills intact.
 * Language Comprehension - A base skill granted to all those who got summoned. It gives the user the ability to understand any language and be proficient in it.
 * Apostle Abilities - After receiving the power of an apostle from Ehit she gained a massive increase to her powers as well as the subsequent ability to grow wing wings and fire their feathers like projectiles. She also gained the apostles power of Disintegration. However, Suzu noticed that she cannot perfectly utilize the power of the Apostle's or trace back their experience as Suzu noted that while she can block Eri's Disintegration bombardment, she cannot block Kaori's Disintegration bombardment.

Spells/Attacks

 * Spirit Binding - Eri's original Necromancy spell which allows her to tear out a soul fragment containing memories, thoughts and personality of a dead person from their spirit and bind it to their corpse to reanimate it. This magic is only usable for a short time after a person has died. Due to it being a crude form of spirit magic, Eri can only rip out fragments of her victims's souls instead of controlling it entirely, leaving her victims in a mental state of Hollowness. After being enhanced with Apostle powers, she can even do Spirit Binding on living being. However, she can only guide the targets consciousness into believing a what the caster says. Spirit Bind loses it's effect on living beings if they are able to see past the illusion planted by the caster.
 * Wicked Wrap - A dark attribute spell that obstructs the commands of the brain that is sent to the body thus making it impossible to move or react temporarily.
 * Mind Slip - A dark attribute spell that temporarily seals the target's memory for a few seconds until the current time.
 * Flame Tide - An intermediate-rank fire spell that summons a wave of fire that the caster can freely control. "Swallow them whole, O crimson mother— Flame Tide!"
 * Crazed Moon - One of the strongest dark magic spells. It creates a black moon and separates the target’s consciousness from their body for a few seconds.

Quotes

 * (To her classmates): "Fufu, I’m so glad we all came to this world. Getting rid of all of you would have been difficult back in Japan. Which is why, of course, I can’t let you guys win this war and go back home. Because Kouki-kun’s going to spend the rest of his days here, with me. Forever."

Etymology

 * The name "Eri" means "favor, benefit" (恵) and "village" (里).
 * The kanji that is used for her name in the manga "絵" (e) means "drawing, picture, painting, sketch".
 * Eri's surname "Nakamura" means "middle" (中) and "town, village" (村).

Trivia

 * Eri was the class librarian before being summoned to Tortus.
 * Eri is currently the only character who has appeared on a main series Light Novel cover page that never became part of Hajime's harem.
 * Eri's glasses are not for prescription. She merely wears them as part of her facade.
 * Eri is the first Apostle-Hybrid to appear in-series (it is later shown in the prequel series Arifureta Zero that many of Ehit's followers within the Holy Church had been turned into Apostle-Hybrids in order to fight the Liberators).