Baran

A hulking demon with gray skin, Baran had eyes that glowed white and hair that flared like pale fire. Behind him swept a long tail, and four horns crowned his head, the two longest curling outward. Pale yellow armor covered his shoulders and groin, and an ornate gray helmet topped the figure. Centuries afterward, when Kandiaru rebuilt him to anchor the Demon Castle as its last boss, the copy bore red eyes instead of white and wore no helmet.

While alive, Baran was savage and pugnacious, a creature who never backed off from a fight even against impossible odds, as his strike at Ashborn proved despite the gulf in their power. Dying held no terror for him either. Beaten down and dying, he still refused to lay out his reasons to Ashborn, picking defiance over confession even while certain that no mercy awaited him.

Long ago Baran fought the Rulers next to the other Monarchs, the Shadow Monarch Ashborn among them, every one of them carrying out the will of their maker, the Absolute Being. Being the Demon King and one of the nine, he held tremendous power, joining raw might with blistering speed and thick durability; through Hell's Army he opened portals for his demon legions, and his Lightning Breath spat stunning torrents he could concentrate on one target or scatter across many. White Flames let him become a charging bolt of devastating force, Doppelganger let him consume a target's blood and flesh to mimic their form, and Blood Crystal drank the souls of fellow demons to balloon his size and strength. As the war wore on, the strongest Monarch, Antares, grew afraid of Ashborn and set Baran and Rakan to kill him. Ignoring everything Ashborn had given their cause, Baran turned traitor right after Ashborn had slaughtered hundreds of Ruler troops. The bid collapsed. Ashborn crushed both attackers, and Rakan ran, leaving the broken Baran behind. Pressed afterward for the reason behind the betrayal, Baran would not name Antares's command and instead taunted Ashborn with mocking gibberish; in answer, one hand closed around his skull and crushed it. Once the Rulers reached the field, Ashborn laid his cape across the body and pulled it into his shadow.

Ten years on, after the Rulers had begun preparing the human world for a rematch, Kandiaru built a Baran clone to stand as the Demon Castle's last guardian, a copy almost certainly far weaker than the original given how powerful the other Monarchs were. Arriving on the hundredth floor, Jinwoo, the living host of Ashborn, came under Baran's assault and was quickly overpowered by sheer force. A well-timed distraction from Esil Radiru shifted the fight, and Jinwoo wrenched off the demon's left arm before sending a punch through his jaw that took his head off and ended him. Jinwoo would later watch the original betrayal and its aftermath directly through Ashborn's memories, granted after he cleared Kandiaru's trials in the Double Dungeon.