Akuma is a level 100 War Mage and the leader of the War Mage Rebellion during the Ninth Floor's Faction Wars. He is a dungeon-born magical being whose body developed through repeated resleeving rather than a member of one of the elf races he resembles. Akuma first confronts Carl after breaking with the Skull Empire, taking the Gate of the Feral Gods from Elle McGib, and helping kill King Stalwart. His rebellion subsequently gains standing as an independent participant in Faction Wars, occupies the throne room of Team Retribution, and temporarily controls the defenses of Larracos.
Akuma's campaign is not an attempt to win Faction Wars in the conventional sense. He later says that the War Mages entered the castle to test acquired potions and recover a figure he calls the Scavenger's daughter. Once they find her, they abandon the castle and leave the Ninth Floor realm. His short-lived partnership with Agatha gives his rebellion access to the warlord system, but he denies supporting her most destructive rule changes and ultimately asks Carl to kill her. Akuma is still alive when the system declares his faction defeated; the declaration follows his departure from the realm rather than his death.
Nature and appearance
Akuma appears to Carl as an old, long-haired elf with a wizened face and an angry expression. The resemblance is the result of his body's history, not a complete description of his species. The dungeon's examination interface identifies his earliest components as a high-elf cobbler and the skin of a human crawler from the distant past. He underwent twelve resleevings before ambient magic produced his final form. By the time Carl meets him, his body is the union of reanimated bone, repeatedly replaced flesh, and a sapient concentration of magic.
War Mages arise from a process involving creatures called fleshers and the spell You're Not Done Yet. A flesher begins with the skin removed from a corpse, consumes another living being, and replaces the victim's outer body with the stolen skin. It then uses the spell Boned to animate the skeleton. The resulting flesher-and-skeleton symbiote is vulnerable to being consumed and resleeved by another flesher. Each repetition makes the composite creature stronger. After enough iterations—usually at least twelve, although the number varies—the accumulated magic can become self-aware and fuse the skeleton, flesh, and magical intelligence into one being.
This origin makes Akuma one of the dungeon's naturally emergent entities. War Mages were not deliberately designed by a show writer or System AI; they appeared as an unintended consequence of existing spells and creatures interacting over many seasons. The showrunners nevertheless reuse them, particularly in Faction Wars, and commonly wipe their memories before placing them in quests or mercenary guilds. Because individual War Mages form naturally and may survive from earlier seasons, their repeated use creates the possibility that beings with independent histories will recognize and resist their assigned roles. Akuma's rebellion demonstrates that danger directly.
The examination description calls Akuma arguably the Ninth Floor's strongest non-divine spellcaster. War Mages know hundreds of spells, and Akuma commands others of his kind, but the novels do not provide a complete personal spell list. His magical nature is also a vulnerability shared by his species. A War Mage's head produces a destructive magical event roughly ten minutes after death. Carl therefore stores the corpses of fallen War Mages rather than leaving them on the battlefield. Akuma does not undergo this effect in the Ninth Floor account because he survives and departs.
Break with the Skull Empire
Akuma enters Carl's view during the volcanic upheaval near the Bone Clan's forces. King Stalwart attempts to escape a battle by teleporting to the location of Elle and the Gate of the Feral Gods. Several War Mages arrive with him. Donut's enhanced Magic Missile has already killed four of them, and Elle manages to cover the clearing in ice before another spell throws her into a tree and renders her unconscious. Stalwart remains alive but injured in the middle of the surviving group.
At first, Akuma still carries a colonel's designation, placing him within Stalwart's military structure. The title fades while Carl watches. The War Mages' map markers cease to be hostile and acquire a brown-orange faction glow that does not belong to any established sponsor army. Akuma is then identified as leader of the War Mage Rebellion. The abrupt interface changes show the rebellion becoming a distinct political entity at the same moment its members turn on their former commander.
Three War Mages chant together and tear Stalwart apart. The system assigns the kill to three members of the newly named rebellion, but it does not initially recognize the group as an active Faction Wars team. Consequently, Team Retribution receives the Bone Clan's assets because its forces occupy the Bone Clan throne room. The mismatch separates battlefield power from formal standing: Akuma can kill a war chief and create a named faction, yet the game's current rules do not know how to process his faction's victory.
Akuma also seizes the Gate of the Feral Gods from Elle. He is holding it when Stalwart dies, and he leaves with it after briefly taunting Carl. He and the three other surviving War Mages teleport away without attacking Carl. Their restraint is important because Akuma is presented as an exceptionally dangerous caster and has just watched several of his companions die to the crawler coalition. His choice to disengage preserves his force and its captured asset instead of turning the encounter into a retaliatory fight.
In the aftermath, Baroness Victory receives notice of a new "non-team entity" called the War Mage Rebellion. She regards the classification as unprecedented and cannot initially explain its legal consequences. She also reports that the surviving War Mages teleport to the NPC army led by Juice Box and Ferdinand, producing an accusation of illegal interference from the Skull Empire's sponsor. The system calls a full quorum to decide whether Akuma's unaffiliated force has improperly intervened in the sponsor war.
Recognition as a Faction Wars power
The quorum rules that the rebellion cannot enter Larracos before the Peeling Phase. By the time the system announces the decision, however, the Peeling Phase has already begun, making the restriction ineffective. More consequentially, the ruling gives the War Mage Rebellion legal standing. A force that began as an unrecognized breakaway group can now receive resources, use warlord functions, conscript unaffiliated players, occupy throne rooms, and potentially win the season.
Akuma cannot initially exercise those powers through the warlord interface. The system resolves the access problem by naming Agatha co-warlord, much as Ferdinand had been added to provide system access for Juice Box. Baroness Victory reports that the War Mages did not anticipate the appointment and that Akuma dislikes Agatha. The arrangement is therefore administrative rather than evidence that the two leaders share a political program. It gives Akuma's rebellion the functions it needs while granting Agatha authority over decisions with battlefield-wide consequences.
Agatha immediately submits three emergency action items. Her opening request secures formal recognition of the rebellion's resources, interface privileges, and ability to occupy a throne. She next broadens Conscription so that it can recruit players without a faction. Her final proposal reinstates the original rule that kills a defeated army's affiliated soldiers and warlords if they remain on the battlefield. The system approves all three, subject to a technical caveat on the death provision. Akuma later tells Carl that his War Mages endorsed the Conscription change alone and did not participate in the other measures.
The rebellion exploits its new standing by entering the submerged Larracos castle and occupying Team Retribution's throne room. Its War Mages can breathe underwater, allowing them to operate in a location their assigned grixist adjutant, Deng Bao, cannot easily reach. They generate soldiers around the castle, attack its structure, and begin the six-hour occupation required for victory. Control of the throne room also gives them the city defense system after a half-hour grace period, forcing Carl's coalition to respond before Larracos's towers can make the position prohibitively costly to retake.
Akuma's force does not remain to complete that countdown. The remaining War Mages eventually open a portal, disappear, and leave the throne room. The city defenses go inert as soon as they abandon it. Their withdrawal confirms that the occupation was a means rather than their ultimate objective, despite the system presenting them as a team on the verge of winning Faction Wars.
Sole warlord and break with Agatha
The partnership with Agatha ends before the War Mages leave the realm. The system determines that she has abandoned her post, removes her as co-warlord, gives Akuma full system access, and names him the rebellion's sole warlord. This change solves the access limitation that had justified Agatha's appointment while separating the faction from her later movements.
Akuma contacts Carl through warlord chat after the fighting around Larracos. He offers to overlook the deaths of numerous War Mages if Carl kills Agatha. He says the system forced the rebellion to accept her so it could use the warlord interface, that she escaped before he could kill her, and that her emergency actions endanger the War Mages as well as Carl's side. His account agrees with Victory's earlier observation that he resented the co-warlord appointment, although his statements about Agatha's abilities and intentions remain those of an interested adversary.
Akuma claims Agatha can enter a Waiting Room and later reappear outside an open stairwell. He therefore does not expect Carl to find her again on the Ninth Floor and predicts that the next opportunity will be on the Tenth. This is a warning about her likely route, not an account of a later meeting. By the end of the Ninth Floor narrative, Carl has not verified the mechanism directly and has not carried out Akuma's request.
The same exchange shows that Akuma distinguishes between members of Carl's coalition. He is hostile toward Carl and Donut, but he advises them to keep Elle alive because she follows the Four Seasons path. In his view, that path will matter when they confront Scolopendra. His wording includes the War Mages among those who may need to survive that confrontation, suggesting that he considers the rebellion's interests to extend beyond the immediate sponsor war.
Objectives and departure
Akuma denies that the rebellion wanted to retain the damaged Larracos castle. He identifies two concrete purposes for the operation: testing potions the War Mages had collected and finding the Scavenger's daughter, who was hidden inside the castle. He tells Carl that they succeeded and took her with them. The identity and condition of this figure are not resolved in the Ninth Floor account, and Akuma does not explain why she is important to his faction.
After delivering that information and asking Carl to eliminate Agatha, Akuma leaves the realm. The system immediately declares the War Mage Rebellion defeated under the current season's rules and notes that it has no assets to distribute. Victory cannot say where Akuma went and observes that his defeated faction is no longer under the authority exercised over Faction Wars participants. The defeat is thus procedural: Akuma forfeits his place in the game by exiting its realm after obtaining what he sought.
Akuma's final status in This Inevitable Ruin is unresolved. He has survived the confrontation that killed several of his War Mages, obtained the Gate of the Feral Gods, recovered the Scavenger's daughter, and escaped the Ninth Floor with at least part of his force. He has also lost his formal faction status and broken with the co-warlord who enabled his access to it. The novel does not confirm his destination, his next action, or whether Carl will accept any part of his proposed alliance.