Marishiten

About
Marishiten is the enigmatic leader of the Marishiten Assassination Brigade and a world renowned assassin.

Very little is known about Marishiten outside of his status as a professional killer, though his distinct armor implies that he may be of JAPANese origin. No records exist of who he is or where he comes from, and it is highly likely that the name "Marishiten" is simply an alias rather than his true identity.

Throughout his career, Marishiten has participated in countless high profile assassination missions, and is personally responsible for the deaths of various influential figures across The Continent. During one of these missions, he was hired by several paranoid Zeth nobles to assassinate Miracle Tou, the granddaughter of the legendary witch Mysteria Tou, whose remarkable power and desire for world domination made them perceive her as a threat to their safety. While Marishiten came close to successfully killing Miracle, the young witch was able to gain the upper hand against him with her incredible magical ability, forcing him to retreat and causing him to fail at killing his target for the first time in his life.

During the events of Rance 4.2, Marishiten and his subordinates were hired by the Angel Army to defeat the warrior Rance, who was opposing the organization's attempts at infiltrating Happiness Pharmaceutical. Marishiten only took action after the rest of his comrades had been defeated, where he battled Rance and his group in an effort to restore the damage done to the group from their repeated losses. While he was a powerful enemy, he ultimately lost and was mocked by Rance for being nothing more than a "midboss". While it is possible for him to die in this battle, Marishiten canonically survived his encounter with Rance and is still active at present.

Marishiten makes a brief appearance in Rance IX as a part of Miracle Tou's fantasized elite guard the Twelve Knights, which is composed of what Miracle believes to be the twelve strongest men on the Continent. Compared to the other members of the group, who were chosen largely due to having interesting appearances or personalities, Miracle selected Marishiten solely because of his great skill, and goes as far as to describe him as being "very scary". Rance does not remember him, but notes that "There are no good men with no eyebrows" and rejects his place in the group.

Personality and Appearance
Marishiten is a somewhat short man with long black hair swept behind his ears. His most distinct feature is his lack of eyebrows, causing his small eyes to appear to be in a perpetual glare. His clothing consists of red and silver JAPANese-style armor under a long brown coat, along with a flowing red scarf around his neck.

A man of few words, Marishiten rarely speaks, only doing so when it is absolutely necessary for him to, and even then favoring short and direct sentences to communicate with others. He takes great efforts to keep his presence hidden, only revealing himself when confronting one of his targets. Because of this, he very rarely meets with his employers directly when hired, instead sending one of his subordinates to handle business for him.

Despite his aloof and detached demeanor, Marishiten is extremely dedicated to his job, and works hard to ensure that he maintains his title as the world's greatest assassin, handling his work with an incomparable level of precision and focus. Threatening to tarnish the reputation of his group is one of the only things capable of eliciting an emotional reaction from him, and causes him to replace his usual detached calm with an uncontrollable rage. This rage proved to be his undoing during his encounter with Rance, as it led to him exposing his presence to the warrior in order to confront him directly.

Marishiten's stoic and mysterious attitude contrasts heavily with the boisterous and comical personalities of his subordinates. Nonetheless, he seems to get along very well with them, to the point of entrusting them with a large number of the group's missions.

Abilities
As the leader of a high profile assassination organization, Marishiten is incredibly skilled. Throughout his career, he has developed a reputation of being the greatest assassin on the Continent, and while the validity of this title is debatable, there is no doubt that he possesses an amazing level of ability. He possesses a high Level Cap of 46, giving him a greater amount of potential than the vast majority of the Continent's population. While his level cap is not as high as other elite fighters, Marishiten has made excellent use of it, and is one of the only people on the Continent to be at a level higher than 40, making him one of the strongest Humans currently alive.

Due to being an assassin, his main method of attack is hiding in the shadows and hitting his opponent by surprise. His ability to move through darkness silently and go unnoticed is comparable to an elite Ninja of JAPAN. Even without his stealth, he is a very powerful warrior that is skilled with a sword, capable of putting up a very difficult fight against Rance's party when on his own, up to the point of being a stronger enemy than the Angel Army's leader Archibald. Marishiten's excellent skill as an assassin allowed him to nearly succeed in killing Miracle Tou, one of the few individuals in possession of a Magic Lv3 Skill Level, entirely single-handedly and escape with his life, a feat few others could even dream of accomplishing.

Trivia

 * His name is very likely a reference to the Buddhist Deva Maricia, who is known as Marishi-ten in Japan. In Japan, Maricia is closely associated with the samurai, particularly the Yagyū Shinkage-ryū school of swordsmanship, and is said to grant a warrior invisibility upon completing a chant to them.