Sophia

Sophia Keren (ソフィア・ケレン), formerly Negishi Shouko (根岸彰子), is one of the reincarnated students from Japan. She was reborn as a vampire who ended up being taken in by Shiro and Ariel after losing her home. A major antagonist in the prolepsis, she later becomes one of the main characters in the main story.

Character File
The only daughter of the noble Keren family in Sariella. A reincarnation who retains her memories of being Shouko Negishi, a high school student in Japan. She is a vampire progenitor, a being who should no longer exist in this world. Displaying unbelievable power, she often stands in the way of Shun and the others. She serves a being she calls Master. Born to a human family, she initially lived without any contact with Demon and the like, but after encountering the Nightmare of the Labyrinth as a baby, her life quickly became very turbulent.

Appearance
In her previous life, Negishi Shouko was often described as having a creepy appearance. She was extremely thin, with a pale and permanently dour face, making her comparable to a ghost. She also had sunken eyes, crooked teeth, messy hair, and poor posture that further contributed to her poor appearance and reputation.

After reincarnation as Sophia, she is a peerless beauty, with extremely pale-white skin, silver color hair, blood-red eyes and an hourglass figure.

Personality
Sophia is pretty dense in certain situations but has no qualms about using her power to muscle through them if she can. Her nature as a Vampire causes her to lust for a battle that can challenge her, but she is denied that by intense training that has made her overwhelmingly more powerful than almost everything within the System. This causes her to lapse into depravity or depression when she focuses too much on it.

Her previous identity of Negishi Shouko was a target of ridicule; consequently, she has an intense dislike for anyone who insists on using her original name. This is also the root of her jealousy towards Shiraori, whom she believes is Wakaba Hiiro, the beauty queen of the class in their previous life. This jealousy makes it easy for her to obtain the title Ruler of Envy and the skill Envy.

Because of the poor treatment she was subjected to back in her previous life, she was firmly convinced that good looks meant everything, a belief she initially carried on in her next life. It was only after Ariel scolded her for being hostile to Shiraori despite owing her for saving her life numerous times did Sophia realize how ugly she was on the inside, and strived to become a better person.

After reincarnating, Sophia has shown to have developed a level of disgust and contempt for her former life and identity due to her previous appearance and the subsequent bullying she went through that lead her to become a social outcast and expressed a desire to put it behind her. Due to this, Sophia has repeatedly shown hostility, annoyance, and even anger to those who persistently refer to her using her old name and identity, this is seen where she showed active contempt for both Oka and Hugo, who repeatedly insisted on referring her by her old name and in the latter's case, her hated nickname. Sophia herself has shown not to be above killing or attacking them if they continue to ignore her insistence to stop using her old name and arising her temper.

After many years of continuous abuse that did not stop despite having separated from Shiro, Sophia developed a kind of masochism or dependency on this abuse which she mistakes for attention, going so far as to ask Shiro why she has not beaten her up so long.

Background
Shouko Negishi was a social outcast in her previous life due to her ugly appearance, constantly being bullied with nicknames like “Vampire” and “Rihoko” (short for “Real Horror Girl”). This treatment also distorted her view of life to where she believed that looks were all that mattered. Her appearance was inherited from her parents; a dead-end office worker father and a housewife mother who could only give her love. While she would regularly insult them for bringing her into the world with such a visage, they continued to love her regardless.

In high-school, Negishi was classmates with fellow social outcast Wakaba Hiiro. However, their reasons for being pariahs were entirely different: whereas Negishi was ugly and avoided because of it, Wakaba was beautiful but did not attempt to fit in. Because of this, Negishi became jealous of Wakaba.

One day, Negishi's entire class was killed in a mysterious explosion and reincarnated into a different world. She was reborn as Sophia, the only daughter of the lord of Keren County; John Keren. Now finding herself in a new body, in addition to all the benefits her social status would bring, Sophia looked positively at her new life.

The Fall of Analeit
Sophia made her debut in the prolepsis during Hugo's coup in the Analeit Kingdom, saving him when Shun was about to attack him with magic by canceling it. When Shun tried to appraise her, she blocked it as well, something that is supposed to be impossible. Ms. Oka then appeared, having come to stop Cylis and Hugo's plan, only to immediately take Shun and flee upon noticing Sophia is their enemy, adding that they cannot defeat her.

Later, when Shun, Ms. Oka, Leston, and Hyrince try to escape, Sophia once again appears before them and presents the decapitated head of Potimas, the Elven Patriarch and Oka's father. They proceeded to engage her and her associates, only to be completely outmatched, with Sophia canceling all of Ms. Oka's spells. Just as things seemed hopeless, though, Feirune sudden appeared in her new Light Wyrm form and everyone manages to escape on her back. However, as Shun and his party escape, Sophia converses with one of her associates, revealing they let them escape. The associate also warned Sophia that she will be reporting to their “Master” that she attacked Ms. Oka and Shun, which was not a part of the plan, but she shrugs it off.

Reincarnation
As a baby, she was being transported by carriage with her mother when they were attacked by bandits. Kumoko saves them and heals their escorts, including Merazophis. Lady Seras leaves the carriage to thank her, taking Sophia. Kumoko is shocked by the number of skill points that she has. Kumoko is also extremely flustered by Lady Seras's behavior and decides to flee into the forest.

Upon being saved by the spider monster, Sophia's mother preaches to the town that the Divine Beast of the Goddess saved her daughter and her, mistakenly confusing Kumoko for the real Divine Beast — Ariel. Since Kumoko has taken up residence in the nearby forest, the townspeople begin to bring her offerings of fruit and worship. They bring their sick and dying to be healed, and the town begins to earnestly worship the spider as the real Divine Beast. News of such a holy being from the Goddess Religion would not stay quiet for long, much to Lord Keren's chagrin. Eventually, the news reaches the ears of the neighboring country of Ohts, whose fort was destroyed by Kumoko. They send a diplomat to bring the spider back to Ohts; if this isn't possible, the diplomat is to kill it using the dispatched assassins. This fails splendidly, resulting in the death of not only the assassins, but also the insufferable diplomat.

Unfortunately for Keren County, this is the final straw that breaks the camel's back: Ohts declares war on Sariella, backed by the Renxandt Empire and the Holy Kingdom of Alleius. During the ensuing battle in which the Hero takes part, the supposed Divine Beast appears on the side of Sariella, unleashing a devastating spell that instantly obliterates 10% of the army of Ohts. The attack routs their army, and although they manage to regroup and turn the tides against Sariella when the Divine Beast is seemingly destroyed by a powerful spell, it came at a heavy price. The battle becomes known as Tragedy of Zatona.

Meanwhile, Potimas leads an attack with an elven unit and some Ohts armies on Keren County to capture the reincarnation known only as Sophia. Lord and Lady Keren urge Merazophis to take Sophia and flee with their dying breaths, charging Merazophis with her safety. They flee the mansion but are discovered by some Ohts soldiers. Merazophis is beaten to near-death, so Sophia has no other choice but to use her Progenitor skill to turn Merazophis into a vampire. With his newfound stat increases, Merazophis can fend off the attackers until Potimas shows up, quickly followed by Kumoko in her newly evolved Arachne form. A battle ensues between Kumoko and Potimas, with Potimas having the upper hand. Out of options, Kumoko is backed into a corner until Ariel finds them, leading to Potimas's robot clone getting destroyed. Things quickly calm down after Potimas is dealt with. Kumoko and Ariel call a cease-fire, and then their attention turns to Sophia and Merazophis.

With their home destroyed and nowhere to go, Sophia and Merazophis decide to join Ariel and Kumoko, now nicknamed White, on a journey to the capital of Sariella.

Relationships

 * Unnamed Parents
 * In her previous life, Shouko had a somewhat negative relationship with her parents due to her having inherited her appearance from them, causing her to regularly insult them in order to vent out her frustrations of the bullying she went through in school because of her appearance. Despite this, though, her parents never insulted her back and instead only ever gave her their unwavering love and support. After reincarnating, Sophia admitted that, despite her frustrations, she deeply cared for her former parents and was thankful to have been born to such good-hearted people who continued to love an ungrateful daughter like her. When thinking about her parents, she always remembers her original ones first.


 * John Keren & Seras Keren
 * Due to their short time together, Sophia admits to not having had deep connections to her new parents, and was thus not all that broken up by their deaths. To her, they mostly represented the prospects of her new life as they were both beautiful and wealthy, which she was likely to inherit. However, when thinking back about them, she describes them as “wonderful people”.


 * Merazophis
 * Her servant. Merazophis was originally the head butler of the Keren family, but was turned into a vampire by Sophia when she was a toddler to save his life. He was extremely loyal to Sophia's parents, and in turn to Sophia. He has remained her father-figure, guide, and servant her entire life. Because of this, Sophia remains very protective and attached to him, even during her teenage years. As seen during her preteen years, Sophia originally harbored strong romantic affections for Merazophis, however due to him seeing her more as a daughter, Sophia never really managed to get him to see her as a potential romantic partner. However, despite this, Sophia herself still retains deep attachment and care for him as one of her parental figures.


 * Ariel
 * As one of her saviors during the conflict in her hometown when she was still a toddler, Sophia is extremely grateful for Ariel, without her intervention during the conflict, she might not have even survived. Sophia views Ariel as both a friend and a mentor, getting advice on survival, understanding the harsh reality of the new world. Ariel's mentorship is one of the main reasons how Sophia was able to repair the one-sided anger she felt towards Kumoko. Ariel was also her benefactor during their long journey together, providing her with well-cooked meals and lodging in human territories.


 * Shiro
 * In their previous lives, Negishi was jealous of Wakaba's looks and lamented how they were treated so differently despite both being social outcasts.
 * After meeting following their reincarnations, Sophia initially had complicated feelings for Shiro, whom she saw of her as a reminder of her past. While grateful to her for saving her life, she also occasionally felt happy at how the “Queen of the Class” had been reincarnated as a monster and would naturally be ostracized by other humans. However, after being lectured by Ariel for her behavior, Sophia started to realize just how much she had done for her and began opening up and letting go of her old grudges against her.
 * By the time of Shiro's evolution into Shiraori, Sophia had more-or-less lost her original petty jealousy and, as stated by Ariel, was deeply worried about her when she nearly died after swallowing the bomb that inadvertently triggered her evolution, much to her embarrassment. Though somewhat elated at seeing her initial weakened state, she was also delighted that she could be the one to protect her for once, showing how much she had come to care for her.
 * After Ariel and Merazophis became occupied with their jobs, however, Sophia got increasingly possessive of Shiro. Furthermore, when even Shiro became busy with work, the neglect caused her to suffer a slow mental decline that culminated in her causing an incident at the demon academy. Unfortunately, this only angered Shiro and prompted her to become stricter with her, starting with placing a curse on her that forces her to refer to her as “master” and severely punishing her whenever she disobeys her.


 * Wrath
 * Negishi and Kyouya did not interact much in their previous lives.
 * The first time Sophia crossed paths with Wrath, he attacked her due to being under the influence of his namesake skill and handily overpowered her. She actually did not notice that he was a reincarnation until Shiraori did — and even then she found she did not even remember him. Nonetheless, this defeat caused Sophia to develop a one-sided rivalry with Wrath and have no reservation about killing him. Unfortunately, their rematch was ruined by Shiraori beating him accidentally. While helping to restore him to normal by sealing his skill, Sophia initially continued to hold a grudge, all the while being disappointed at the loss of her rival due to him being weakened. However, over the years, she mellowed out, and the two now have a working relationship.


 * Wald
 * Former classmate from the Demon Academy; during their time in school, Sophia took notice of how Wald constantly tried to best her and show off in front of her. However, she always beat him in everything and generally saw him as a nuisance. She was aware that he was developing a crush on her as time went on but turned a blind eye to it as she already had (one-sided) feelings for Merazophis. After the incident Sophia caused at the academy, Wald was the only one who remained loyal to her and even asked her to make him a vampire as well, to which she obliged. However, she continues to shun his feelings for her.


 * Schlain “Shun” Zagan Analeit
 * Negishi and Shun did not interact much in their previous lives.
 * Due to her constant desire to fight strong opponents, Sophia sees Shun as an opponent she can release her strength against, as well as a source of amusement. During their battles, Sophia primarily just toyed with him while flaunting her superior power and never took him as a serious threat to her at all. Sophia also taunted Shun for his naivety and made a point to ridicule him for his lack of killing intend when it is absolutely necessary to survive in a fight against a powerful adversary.


 * Felmina
 * Mutual dislike and allies. Sophia teases her by pointing out that she would lose to Shun in a fight. Sophia has a somewhat passive-aggressive relationship due to their complicated past. During the days when Sophia entered into the Demon Academy, Sophia made a point of completely dominating the entire school due to her immense academic abilities and martial prowess that easily surpassed all the other students and due to her blunt personality, Sophia herself actively demeaned and looked down on her classmates due to her technically being older than them. Furthermore, due to her beauty, all the male students of the academy soon began becoming infatuated with her. These factors caused Felmina to dislike and even hate Sophia. However, due to Sophia having unknowingly began using her [Charm] skill on many of the students of the academy, Felmina eventually began seeing her as a threat and began to scheme to get rid of her and if possible, kill her. This in turn lead to Wald, who had genuinely fallen in love with Sophia, to plot against Felmina and successfully have her expelled from the Demon Academy and disowned by her family to protect Sophia. Sophia herself has stated that she feels a small amount of guilt for causing Felmina so much trouble, but nonetheless hates her due to her snickering whenever she is forced to kneel on her hands and knees to the ground by Shiraori's curse.


 * Hugo Baint von Renxandt
 * Negishi did not interact much with Natsume in their previous lives.
 * Sophia was assigned to aid Hugo by Shiro. To this end, she lent her assistance whenever he was being cornered and pretty much carried him to victory during his overthrow of the Analeit Kingdom. While Sophia appeared unbothered by his demeaning attitude, during the Elf Village Battle she revealed that, despite being fellow Reincarnates, she never cared about him and discarded him once his usefulness had run out. Furthermore, much like with Filimøs, Sophia was annoyed by him constantly referring to her by her "old name" and was about to kill him when he called her mocking old nickname, “Rihoko”, had Shiro not interfered.


 * Filimøs "Oka" Harrifenas
 * Ms. Oka was Negishi's teacher in their previous lives. Once, when she refused to go to school out of fear of being bullied, she tried to help her. However, while she ultimately returned to class, it did not seem to have been due to her.
 * Sophia first crossed paths with Filimøs when she tried to “save” her from Ariel, only for her to attack her as she did not know her identity. They met again years later, while Sophia was exterminating some elven spies. Since Filimøs had a piece of Potimas' inside her, which would allow the latter to spy on them should her side take her in, she made sure to cut her former teacher off, claiming she was acting of her own accord and that she was working for "an administrator". Overall, Sophia has grown to greatly dislike Filimøs for her calling her by her “old name” and her hypocrisy in criticizing her even though she has blood on her hands herself.
 * Despite the animocity between them, following the conclusion of the main story, Sophia would end up growing closer to Filimøs, reguarlarly visiting her, due to both being reincarnated as longer-lived races.


 * Feirune "Fei"
 * Negishi never really interacted much with Shinohara in their previous lives.
 * Fei would end up thwarting Sophia several times by helping Shun and his party escape from her by riding on her back. During the Elf Village Battle, however, it was revealed that the reason why Fei helped Shun's party escape from was because she was already aware that they were no match for her and even begged her to spare them once all other options had been exhausted, which Sophia accepted since she had actually been ordered not to harm them in the first place.
 * Despite the animocity between them, following the conclusion of the main story, Sophia would end up growing closer to Fei, regularly visiting Filimøs with her, due to both being reincarnated as longer-lived races.


 * Anna
 * Sophia would battle Anna during her fight against Shun and his party during the battle of the Elf Village, where Anna herself was largely helpless against her due to Sophia's ability to negate magic, Anna's main and only method of fighting. During this battle, Sophia was shown to find her attempts to hurt her with her magic attacks to be mildly amusing, and her status as a Half-elf caused her to internally question if she should kill her or not due to her orders to kill all pure-blooded elves. Sophia herself would use Anna as a way to psychologically intimidate her other opponents in Shun's party by constantly threatening her by wondering out loud if she should dispose of her or not.


 * Potimas Harrifenas
 * Due to his role in the tragedies in her early life after reincarnating and him trying to directly kill her after learning of her nature as a vampire that ended up destroying her home country, Sophia has an extremely negative and murderous hatred for Potimas. This is seen where in at least several occasions in his attempt to meddle in Ariel's affairs, Sophia herself made a point of personally confronting him and killing his clone bodies brutally to vent out her hatred for him. Like her comrades, Sophia also considers him as nothing more than a cancerous threat to the world at large and is actively seeking to permanently kill him and slaughter his elves to end his threat for good.

Powers & Abilities
Unlike most reincarnates, Sophia does not possess a unique skill. Instead, her reincarnation bonus is being a Progenitor Vampire, one of the strongest types of monsters. On top of this, she underwent years of hellish training under Shiro and Ariel, which molded her into one of the most powerful beings within the System. By the time of the prolepsis, she is capable of defeating S-Rank Monsters in a single hit, causing Shun to outright call her “overpowered”.

Equipment

 * Broadsword: Made from the claw of a legendary-class monster, Fenrir, it is a single edged broadsword around 1.5 m long with a jagged backside. After subduing Wrath, Guliedistodiez infuses a scale from Nia, the strongest ice dragon, into the weapon as a gift. Now, the sword is infused with powerful ice properties that compliment Sophia's own skills really well.

Titles & Skills

 * Vampire: Her bonus skill as a reincarnation; it changes her race to vampire, granting her enhanced stats along with the following skills:
 * Progenitor: As a pure-blood she has none of the weaknesses of being a vampire, being able to go out into the sun and not needing to regularly drink blood.
 * Blood Sucking: Allows her to suck another's blood to regain MP and SP, as well as temporarily gain some of the target's skills.
 * Shape-Shifting Allows her to transform into any of her familiars; like a bat.
 * Kin Control: Grants her control over her familiars and anyone she turned into a vampire.
 * HP Auto-Recovery: Restores HP naturally over time.
 * Undying Body: (不死体): Allows her to survive any attack with 1 HP remaining once per day.
 * Undying King: (不死王): Raises nearby corpses as zombies under her command. Said zombies won't stop moving unless their bodies are destroyed, and also don't give any experience.
 * n%I=W: A unique skill shared by all reincarnations; it restores her HP, MP, and SP upon leveling up. However, once the user's level reaches a certain point, it will no longer be able fully recover her stats., though the exact limit is unknown.
 * Magic Power Perception & Magic Power Operation: Allows her to perceive and control magic power to cast spells.
 * Water Magic: Allows her to summon and manipulate water freely.
 * Acid Control: A combination of Water Magic, Acid Attack, and Blood Control; it allows her to produce and telepathically control a red fluid that melts everything it touches.
 * Ice Magic: Allows her to summon and manipulate Ice freely.
 * Magic Resistance: Due to her vampire heritage, along with her specialized training, Sophia can cancel any low to mid-level magic the moment she contacts it.
 * Wind Resistance: Cancels any wind magic directed at her.
 * Light Resistance: Cancels any light magic directed at her.
 * Foul Feeder: Acquired when Shiro had her eat poisoned food; grants poison resistance.
 * Divine Dragon Barrier: Weakens magic in her surroundings, nullifying any low to mid-level magic.
 * Envy: Allows her to turn off any skill and System magic that she can perceive. However, repeated usage will cause her to be overcome with overwhelming envy.
 * Divine Scales: Gained along with Envy; allows her to harden any part of the body with a silver scales.

Other Abilities

 * Stats: Sophia's stats have been pushed to the limit of what is possible using proficiency through years of exercise. According to Ariel, she could kill Wrath in a single hit while his namesake skill is inactive.
 * Enhanced Smell: As a vampire, she has an enhanced sense of smell, particularly towards blood.
 * Intelligence: Despite her childish personality, Sophia is actually smart, capable of coming up with new strategies and finding what abilities synergize best with her build. Furthermore, she also possesses a large amount of combat experience, being able to repeatedly outwit Shun's entire party with ease.

Trivia

 * Sophia's name in Greek means wisdom or skill. While her last name Keren is a name that is derived from Katherine which is associated with the Greek adjective Katharos meaning pure, Katherine is also theorized to come from Hecate the goddess of magic including necromancy.
 * Most of Sophia's starting skills come from the effects of her Vampire and Progenitor titles.
 * Sophia's synergistic attributes are ice, water and dark. Her conflicting ones are light, fire, and lightning.
 * According to D, Sophia has the largest bust among the Reincarnations, with Karnatia and Shiraori being second and third respectively.
 * Shiraori is bothered by Sophia being bigger than her and even considered cutting them off.
 * D believes the reason for this is that all her nutrients went straight into her chest.
 * The reason Sophia refers to Shiraori as "master" is because of a curse she placed on her as punishment after she caused an incident at the demon academy.
 * In the web novel, the curse was accidentally placed on her by a drunk Shiraori when they were playing with a set of cards from D that make it, so the loser has to follow the winner's commands.
 * She has little-to-no alcohol tolerance, which she seemingly inherited from her mother, losing consciousness at the slightest sip and becoming dizzy just from smelling it.
 * Her father in her previous life was a fan of the ALIEN franchise and she would often watch it with him when younger, which ended up slightly traumatizing her as those movies are not suited for children.
 * D said each reincantor was born as the race that most matches their soul, it is unkown if that applies to Sophia as her reincanration bonus was a racial skill
 * In the Anime, Sophia's mocking nickname, "Rihoko", is roughly translated to "Spooky".