Willem Kmetsch

Willem Kmetsch (ヴィレム・クメシュ, Viremu Kumeshu) is a 2nd Grade Technical Officer who works for the Guardian Wings Military. He is the main male protagonist of the Suka Suka series and a supporting character in the Suka Moka series.

Background
Willem is a soldier who works for the Guardian Wings Corps as the Caretaker for the Fairy Warehouse. Willem is the last human, or Emnetwiht, known to be alive after the fall of the surface. The petrification curses that he suffered from were lifted 2 years before the events in the LN/anime took place.

Past
500 years ago, Willem was born into the human race which later came to be known as "Emnetwihts." For an unknown reason, he came to be raised by an orphanage which was founded by his legal caretaker, Nils Didek Foreigner.

As Willem grew up, Willem eventually took over as the main caretaker of the facility and came to be called "Pops" by the rest of the kids, including Almaria Duffner as he was viewed as the unofficial father figure for the rest of the kids.

Becoming a Quasi Brave
Growing up, Willem's dream was to become a Regal Brave warrior. During his training, Willem met and trained alongside Lillia Asplay and Suowong Kandel under the same master and mastered many skills. However, because Lillia didn't want him to become a Regal Brave out of concern for his safety, and also due to Willem’s lack of battle talent, he was only able to become a Quasi Brave.

As a former Quasi Brave, one of a group of elite warriors that served the Church of Holy Light along with the Regal Brave, Willem was known as the strongest of the Quasi Braves. Even though this is later revealed to be a joke made by his comrades, it is heavily implied that he was in fact the strongest of the Quasi Braves. He was also given the title Black Agate Swordsmaster due to his talent in tuning Carillons.

Becoming Petrified
During the final battle against the Visitors, Willem fought Ebon Candle and was eventually able to beat him by himself. However due to the backlash effect of the curses that he used. Willem was petrified for approximately 526 years.

This petrification process occurred before the seventeen beasts appeared and less than a year before humanity went extinct.

Life After Petrification
Willem is discovered by Nygglatho and her excavation group in a surface expedition and nursed back to the point he could move around. He is later released into a city where he meets Chtholly. Afterward, Grick offers him a job at a secret weapon storage facility, to which he reluctantly accepts as he gave up fighting and did not want to be associated to the military.

Life as a Caretaker
Due to his role as a fatherly figure at an orphanage in his past, he had experience dealing with children, allowing him to adapt well to the job. Initially, the children were scared of him as they rarely saw male featureless, but grew to accept him after he baked them desserts. Willem spends the next 2 months at the facility, raising the children and training the older fairies. He becomes very close to Chtholly and Nephren.

Excavation
In pursuit of a certain Dug Weapon, Willem joins an excavation team along with Chtholly and Nephren. They meet Rhantolk and Nopht at the site and helps to adjust their bodies and weapons. He later reveals the excavation site is his hometown and reminisces on his past. Not long after, an earthquake causes him to fall into an underground True World facility, along with Chtholly and Grick. They come across the corpse of Elq Hrqstn and Carmine Lake, but further tremors force them to evacuate the site and return to the airship. The ship is attacked by timere, forcing Willem to defend despite his heavily damaged body. He leaves Chtholly in her room, then saves Rhantolk and dives off the airship to save Nephren. Chtholly later awakens and dives down to save Willem, then kills about 800 timere in exchange for her own life. Prior to dying, she was able to thank Willem for all he has done for her.

Dream World
Instead of dying, Willem and Nephren are absorbed into Chanteur's dream world. Despite the belief that they will die upon breaking out of the dream world, Willem decides to try and escape the illusion. He discovers he's able to use his abilities from the past in the dream world, and unravel the truth of what happened to the world after he was petrified. Eventually the humans start becoming timere and he flees to the orphanage. He meets unknowingly meets Elq, but she does not reveal her identity and Willem rushes off to the place he found Elq's corpse.

Once again in the True World facility with Nephron, he discovers research documents detailing the truth behind the visitors. He also finds Navrutri in his last stand against the Aurora. After Navrutri passes away, Willem takes his weapon and uses it to kill Almaria and escape from the dream world. Because of this, Elq was able to take control of her body, which was absorbed into the dream world.

After killing Almaria, who was possessed by the first beast, Chanteur, the beast splits and possesses Willem and Nephren. The two are separated after escaping the dream world, and Willem starts becoming a beast. His master, Nils, arrives and places a curse on Willem which seals his memory in exchange for trapping the beast. Willem is later brought with a half-dead Elq to a hotel, and left there by Nils. Willem starts living with Elq and works at the hotel.

Meeting Nephren and Carmine
One night, Willem encounters Nephren at the hotel but due to his sealed memory, he fails to recognize her. Nephren doesn't want to hurt Willem by forcing him to remember, so she leaves with Carmine and says they will retrieve Elq on a later date.

End
When there is a beast attack on the island, Willem awakens his memory and destroys Elpis's weapons as they misused the power of the fairies. However, he loses control of his body and engages in battle against Rhantolk, Ithea, Tiat, and Lakesh. He is eventually killed and activates Seniorus's hex to kill himself. Nephren notices his death as they are connected through Chanteur. Willem's body is sent to the 2nd island.

After dying, he meets his master, Nils, who offers to turn him into a visitor and leave the the planet together as Nils had used his remaining powers to seal Willem's memory. Willem refuses and stays behind with his beast.

In the ambiguous ending of SukaSuka Volume 5, Willem is believed to be brought back to life and reunited with Ryehl, who is possible the reincarnation of Chtholly.

Appearance
Willem Kmetsch is a physically 18 (544) year old male. He is roughly 6 feet tall and has black hair and brown eyes.

At work, he normally wears either his Guardian Wings Military Uniform which consists of a black jacket, a grey shirt, black pants and knee-high black boots.

Due to his past war experiences, Willem's body is riddled with scars, broken bones and damaged organs which he calls his "Battle Scars." As such, he is unable to use the full extent of his abilities and can only use spells and Venenum abilities for an extremely limited amount of time.

Personality
Willem is a kind person who likes to joke around with his friends. Having grown up in an orphanage, Willem enjoys playing with kids and likes to play games with the children. However, thanks to Ithea, it is often misinterpreted as "being into little girls."

Willem also cares about people and is thus tolerant and patient towards others, even those who despise him for being an "Emnetwhit" or a "Disfeatured." Due to his experiences in war, Willem hates war and the reasons behind them, and as such, is sympathetic towards the Leprechauns' plight and is willing to do whatever it takes to prolong their lives.

Initially, at the start of series, Willem was a much more jaded person. Due to being the only survivor of his race and struggling to find his place in this new world, Willem was plagued by guilt by what happened and sought to merely wait out for his death, rather than trying to find happiness.

However, after encountering Chtholly and becoming the caretaker for the Leprechaun Warehouse, Willem regains his joy, peace and love for life, even to the point that he falls in love with Chtholly and is willing to sacrifice his life to save the Fairy Warehouse.

Weapons
During his time as a Quasi Brave, Willem used a multitude of weapons. His weapons extended from using spells, curses and charms to mass production Carillons/Dug Weapons like the Percival.

Venenum Enhanced Strength
By channeling his Venenum output to his limbs, Willem can enhance strength to superhuman levels. In the past, he could use this ability to enhance his strength for much longer period of times, with his current damaged body, he can only handle short bursts. However, even with his body, Willem is still powerful enough to best most foes in hand to hand combat. He was also shown to be able to take on Timeres empty handed.

Venenum Enhanced Speed
Called the Nightingale Sweep in the novel, it is achieved by channeling his Venenum output to his legs, Willem can moves at speeds faster than human eyes can perceive. In the past, he was able to move like so for much longer periods of time and cross larger distances, however with his current damaged body, he can only handle short bursts of such speed.

Swordsmanship
Willem is a skilled swordsman. In his prime, he would double wield Carillons to take down his opponents. With his weakened body, he is still skilled enough to hold off a Leprechaun like Chtholly, however, just using a Carillon for more than a few minutes is enough to cause severe internal damage to his body. He now prefers to teach swordsmanship to Chtholly, Ithea, and Nephren’s at the warehouse rather than fight instead.

Tuning of Carillons
One of the many abilities that Willem had obtained on his quest to become a Regal Brave was the tuning of Carillons. He learnt it from skilled technicians due to him preferring to tune and adjust resistances and buffs on his Carillons in the heat of battle. Other braves usually don’t tune their own swords. He is very familiar with most Carillons/Dug Weapons and knows each of their personal quirks and unique abilities. He can instantly tell what a Dug Weapon's type is such as "Kin-slayer," as well as what charms make up an individual Dug Weapon.

Just like how Lillia was talented in fighting and Suowong (later Great Sage) was talented in spell fabrication, Willem is extremely talented in tuning. A technician once remarked that "no other human could do what Willem can in terms of tuning", because Willem’s tuning is so fast, he can complete in minutes when normal technicians require days to do it. Due to this, Willem became known as the "Black Agate Swordsmaster."

At present, Willem is the only person alive who can tune Carillons and Chtholly herself likens his tuning skill to a "performance."

Beast Abilities - Chanteur
As a half-beast, Willem does have access to Chanteur's abilities. During the Battle of Corna di Luce, Willem effectively uses Chanteur's "Sand Disintegration" ability to wipe out the Aurora and the Elpis Mercantile Federation's new weapon. His physical power was also enhanced and he can easily maneuver due to his body being healed by Chanteur's regeneration capabilities. However, he can only use these powers for roughly 5 minutes before the Beast half fully takes over his consciousness.

Trivia

 * Some might say he is over 500 years old, but as per definition of ageing (the process of getting older) and from the LN, he is recognized to be 18. However in the anime, Willem is drawn as a man in his late 20s, while Ryōhei Arai, Willem's voice actor, was asked to portray the character as a 28-year-old per director's request.
 * In episode 5 of the anime, Willem was shown to defeat multiple members of the Annihilation Knights hired by the nobility in Corna di Luce by utilizing coins as bullets. The same event in the light novel happened, however the outcome of it was very different. In the Light Novel, Willem did not actually engage in combat, but instead sat down on a wooden crate and negotiated with the members by demonstrating that there were Venenum users amongst them (namely Ithea), only disarming one particular member who attempted to shoot him with a pebble. After successful negotiations Willem and the group proceeded to the port as usual. Chtholly then remarks angrily that Willem was "in a battle stance ever since he sat down on that wooden crate" and that he would have taken care of all fifteen beastmen in a mere 3 seconds if the situation became unfavorable. This clearly demonstrates that even with his heavy injuries, Willem’s strength is not to be underestimated.
 * Willem Kmetsch and Suowong Kandel's (as Swon in Japanese) names may be a reference to the German footballer Sven Kmetsch.