LeMay

"LeMay"

- waxing about his hatred of humans.

About
LeMay was a Great Monster General affiliated with the Kayblis Faction and a major antagonist in Rance X.

A Monster in possession of a pathological hatred of Humanity, LeMay was deeply angered by Demon King Gi's decision to divide the territory of The Continent in half in order to allow humans to live in relative freedom separate from monsters. This rage only grew more twisted over time, as he became increasingly more agitated over his inability to torture humans as he pleased.

In the year GI1015, Gi named Kurusu Miki, a human girl from an Alternate Dimension, as his successor as Demon King, kidnapping her from her home in order to pass on his blood to her. Before Miki was able to fully awaken to the power of the Demon King, however, she was rescued by her boyfriend Ogawa Kentarou, who was able to temporarily stop her transformation through the use of Hirami Lemons. With Gi having allowed himself to be killed by Kentarou, and Miki refusing to accept the position of Demon King, the Monster Realm was left without a leader and thrown into a state of civil war. The war was fought between the Supreme Dark Lord Hornet, Gi's daughter who desired to follow through with her father’s wishes and embrace Miki as the new leader of monsterkind, and the Elite Dark Lord Kayblis, who desired to become the Demon King himself and wage war against humanity. Eager to satiate his bloodlust, LeMay chose to serve under Kayblis without hesitation, and loyally fought for him throughout the war.

In the year LP0006, the Kayblis Faction succeeded in landing a decisive victory over the Hornet Faction, causing Kayblis to be recognized as the undisputed ruler of the Monster Realm. Shortly after consolidating his power, Kayblis ordered for a full-scale invasion of the Human Realm, beginning the 2nd Dark Lord War. LeMay was placed in charge of an army of 700,000 monsters and entrusted with the duty of invading the northern nation of Helman alongside the Dark Lords Kesselring and Babolat. By first having a portion of his army attack from the Kinani Desert to the south, LeMay succeeded in catching the Helman Army completely off guard, and was able to take advantage of the confusion to quickly move the rest of his soldiers into the country from its western border with the Monster Realm. In no time at all, LeMay's army managed to occupy a significant portion of Helman's territory, claiming the city of Laborie as its primary base of operation and placing the nation into a critical situation.

Overjoyed at the opportunity to kill as many humans as he pleased, LeMay devoted his full attention throughout the invasion to exterminating as much of the population of Helman as possible. Along with having his ordinary soldiers fight on the frontlines, LeMay organized several "Incineration Squads" composed entirely of monsters equipped with flame-based weaponry and ordered them to move through the country and burn down every human settlement they came across, regardless of whether doing so would be beneficial to the war effort or not. In addition, LeMay imported several powerful Magical explosives from the division of the Monster Army that had occupied the Magic Nation of Zeth, which he intended to have dropped all across Helman until no human life remained within it.

In spite of his initial excitement, LeMay quickly found himself frustrated by the actions of the Dark Lords sent to assist him with the invasion. The unintelligent Babolat required near-constant supervision to keep motivated toward trampling human territories, while the chivalrous Kesselring, despite otherwise rarely showing himself on the battlefield, repeatedly overruled LeMay's attempts at executing his plan of bombing Helman due to finding it to be "barbaric". Lacking the authority to speak out against the two Dark Lords, LeMay was forced to make several compromises to his invasion strategy in order to properly accommodate them, which prevented him from engaging in the full extent of his planned atrocities.

During the events of Rance X, the forces of the Human Realm were, through various circumstances, formally united under the warrior Rance to create the United Human Army. Due to possessing the Dark Sword Chaos, one of the only weapons capable of penetrating the Invincibility Field that protects Dark Lords from all forms of damage, Rance was able to form a specialized squad made up of humanity’s finest warriors designed to fight against and defeat each of the Dark Lords invading human territories. Titled the Dark Lord Extermination Squad, this group allowed humanity to begin to mount a more effective resistance against the Monster Army, providing hope in a seemingly hopeless situation.

In a matter of months, both Kesselring and Babolat were eliminated from the invading Monster Army by Rance. Rather than be troubled by this news, however, LeMay was ecstatic to be rid of his Dark Lord allies, who he perceived as being little more than burdens to his conquest. Converting the occupied city of Parnas into a station for outfitting flying Monster Soldiers with explosives, LeMay was able to finally begin carrying out his operation to bomb all of Helman. The plan was narrowly countered by the Helman Army, which was able to intercept the majority of the flying soldiers before they succeeded in reaching their targets, with President Sheila Helman herself personally sniping every one that approached the nation's capital city of Lang Bau.

If Rance chooses to assist in liberating Helman from the Monster Army, LeMay decides to covertly leave his heavily fortified base in Laborie to travel to Parnas and observe the destruction caused by the explosives more closely. By sheer coincidence, he is found by the Dark Lord Extermination Squad, which Rance had led to Parnas with the intention of fighting an ordinary Monster General in order to disguise its corpse as LeMay's and present it to Cream Ganoblade, the strategist representing Helman at the United Human Army's headquarters of Rance Castle, who had agreed to sleep with him under the condition that he first kill the enemy army's leader. LeMay initially attempts to flee to safety, only to find that the back exit of his fortress had been blocked by the Helman 5th Army, which had accompanied the Dark Lord Extermination Squad on its mission. With escape no longer an option, LeMay calmly returns to his personal quarters to await his approaching clash with the attackers.

Upon being confronted by the Dark Lord Extermination Squad, LeMay orders his soldiers to set fire to the fortress, giving Rance and has allies a limited window of time to defeat him before being consumed by flames. After an intense battle, Rance succeeds in critically injuring LeMay, bringing him helplessly to his knees in the process. Having noticed the Great Monster General's bizarre fixation on killing humans, Rance momentarily refrains from landing the finishing blow on LeMay in order to mockingly tell him that he will spare his life if he apologizes for his actions and agrees to never hurt a human again. This hubris is taken advantage of by LeMay, who lights himself on fire and lunges at Rance in a last ditch effort to defeat him. Rance is saved at the last moment by Rolex Gadras, the general of the Helman 5th Army, who manages to enter the room unnoticed and land a powerful blow on LeMay's back, killing him in an instant. With their primary commander defeated, the remaining forces of the Monster Army fall into disarray almost immediately, and are quickly wiped out by the Helman military, finally freeing the great nation from its oppressors.

If Rance does not assist in liberating Helman from the Monster Army, LeMay divides the main forces of his army into several small squads and orders them to attack several innocent cities along the outskirts of the country, intending to distract the Helman Army with protecting them for long enough to launch a decisive strike on Lang Bau with his remaining soldiers. His plan is anticipated by the JAPANese strategist Sanada Tourin, who had been cooperating with Helman throughout the war and advises the Helman Army's leader Hubert Lipton to ignore the raids on the cities in order to focus on attacking the Monster Army's headquarters in Laborie. Despite his initial reservations, Hubert agrees to trust Tourin and orders both the 1st and 5th armies to charge toward LeMay's location.

The combination of the Helman 1st Army's unshakeable defense and the Helman 5th Army's devastating offense quickly cuts through the monster soldiers surrounding Laborie, placing LeMay in a dire situation. In addition, through the combined efforts of Tourin, the Helman City Guard, the Dark Wings assassination group, and President Sheila herself, the residents of every city that LeMay had ordered his troops to attack are all safely evacuated to the northernmost edge of the country, minimizing civilian casualties. His strategy completely outmaneuvered and his life swiftly approaching its end, LeMay hastily hashes together a final plan to destroy Helman. Appointing a powerful flying monster soldier that he gives the name Enola Gay as his personal transporter, LeMay is flown out of Laborie carrying the m Bomb, an extraordinarily powerful explosive capable of vaporizing every human within several miles of its vicinity, intending to drop it above Lang Bau and destroy all humans in and around it.

Before he is able to reach Lang Bau, LeMay is knocked out of the sky by Patton Helman, the former emperor of Helman and the nation's sworn protector, who launches himself off of the back of the Dragon Cantel into the enemy general to send both plummeting to the ground. The impact of the attack causes LeMay to drop the m Bomb, which is safely caught by the legendary black-haired Kalar and Patton's life partner Hunty Kalar before it is able to detonate. After hitting the ground, LeMay's body is pinned under Patton's, locking the two into a struggle of pure strength and endurance. Sustaining each of his attacks, Patton steadily punches at LeMay's sphere-shaped body, the weak point of all Monster Generals, until it finally cracks, severely injuring him in the process. Unwilling to die at the hands of a human, LeMay ignites his entire body in order to burn Patton alive, but is temporarily stunned by a lightning laser spell cast by Hunty before he is able to do so. Heavily wounded himself, Patton uses the opening to strike at the crack in LeMay's body using Homura, the sword that Hubert had loaned to him, causing it to shatter open and end his life. With LeMay defeated and Laborie retaken, the Helman Army swiftly destroys the remaining monsters within the country, finally bringing an end to the long and arduous battle.

If the Monster Army succeeds in conquering Helman, LeMay orders his soldiers to sweep the country and systematically destroy all remnants of its civilization by killing every human and burning down every structure, completely ignoring Kayblis' order to keep 20 percent of its population alive. While completing their mission, LeMay's soldiers begin playing a game among themselves in which they force the captured President Sheila to perform various painful and degrading sexual acts before an audience of enslaved Helmanians, temporarily sparing them from death if she succeeds in accomplishing her tasks before a certain amount of time passes. Placing the safety of her people above her own, Sheila dutifully carries out the orders, allowing every city she is taken to to be momentarily saved from destruction at the cost of her health and sanity. While LeMay is somewhat bothered by his soldiers' actions after learning of this game, he allows them to continue doing it under the condition that they eventually destroy the areas that they spare, claiming that they deserve a reward for their hard work. As both Helman and Sheila are shown to have safely survived the events of the 2nd Dark Lord War 15 years later, this event is confirmed to have not occurred.

Personality and Appearance
LeMay shared a similar overall appearance with the other four Great Monster Generals, being a large blue-skinned monster in shining platinum armor with a translucent orange-tinted sphere containing a humanoid face for a body and four long tentacles across his back. The feature that differentiated LeMay most clearly from his colleagues was his face, which featured an elongated forehead that extended backwards with 4 sets of 12 dark orange eyes on either side and a duck-like bill rather than a mouth. The face within LeMay's body resembled an elderly man with a glowering expression, providing insight into his emotional state that was not conveyed by his bizarre and expressionless normal face.

The most defining aspect of LeMay's character was his unbridled hatred of all humans. While it is very common for a monster to have a predisposed hostility toward the Protagonist Race, LeMay's hatred far surpassed mere abhorrence and entered into the realm of sadistic obsession, with him going so far as to claim that the mere thought of humans existing at all was enough to make him shudder with rage. LeMay derived immense pleasure from killing humans as ruthlessly as possible, to the point of tying them up within his quarters and repeatedly punching them until their bodies became unrecognizable lumps of blood as a form of personal entertainment and declaring the sight of a bomb being dropped over a human city to be a thing of absolute beauty. While slaughtering humans, LeMay would often laugh hysterically while his eyes shone with an unnatural light, causing even his own soldiers to be made uncomfortable.

LeMay's hatred of humans naturally extended into his behavior as a military leader throughout the 2nd Dark Lord War, where he freely admitted to prioritizing killing over winning. Rather than simply conquer Helman, LeMay aimed to destroy all remnants of human life within it until the entire country was reduced to a barren wasteland, organizing several special units for the sole purpose of incinerating all human territories they encountered until no traces of them remained and ordering brutal attacks on innocent cities that had no connection to the war beyond their proximity to it. For these reasons, he was given the nickname of "Devil LeMay" from the Helman Army out of disgust for his tactics.

In sharp contrast to his monstrous treatment of humans, LeMay was a surprisingly reasonable and even-tempered leader to his troops. While his colleagues would often lash out violently at their own subordinates when they were frustrated, LeMay concentrated all of his fury toward humans and never so much as considered raising a hand against another monster. He was also not at all opposed to rewarding his soldiers when he believed they were deserving of it, appointing his most powerful flying monster soldier the name Enola Gay in recognition of his talents and allowing his entire army to take a momentary break from killing after successfully destroying the Helman Army as a show of thanks for their hard work. This geniality only served to further highlight LeMay's dementedness, however, as it showcased just how far-removed and irrational his desire to kill all humans was from the rest of his personality.

Unlike many other prominent members of the Kayblis Faction, LeMay possessed a genuine sense of loyalty towards Kayblis as a leader. Kayblis' advocacy of allowing monsters to rampage freely across the Continent naturally accommodated LeMay's urge to obliterate all humans, causing him to feel grateful to the Elite Dark Lord for granting him the responsibility of leading the attack on Helman. Despite this, the ease at which LeMay was willing to go against Kayblis' order to leave 20 percent of the human population of Helman alive after conquering it suggests that his loyalty was rooted primarily in convenience rather than any real kind of respect.

Abilities
As a Great Monster General, LeMay possessed a level of commanding ability that far surpassed most other beings on the Continent, allowing him to expertly lead large armies of monsters without a problem. This talent was put to great use throughout the 2nd Dark Lord War, where he commanded a massive force of 700,000 monsters with little difficulty. LeMay's abilities as a commander were crucial to the Monster Army's campaign in Helman, as its forces quickly fell apart in panic after losing his leadership.

Outside of his commanding ability, LeMay was recognized as one of the most powerful monsters in existence at the time of his death, and was considered to be comparable to a Dark Lord in overall power. During the 2nd Dark Lord War he had succeeded in reaching the extremely high Level of 90, which is presumed, but not confirmed, to have also been his Level Cap, granting him a much greater amount of power than the vast majority of the Continent's population. Additionally, LeMay's strength was further buffered by his large and durable body, which provided him with superior offensive and defensive capabilities compared to others of a similar level.

In battle, LeMay utilized a combination of his powerful arms and sharp tentacles to attack his enemies. Among the four Great Monster Generals that invaded the Human Realm during the 2nd Dark Lord War, LeMay possessed the unique ability to breath fire from his mouth, which allowed him to burn foes from a distance. When critically injured, LeMay was able to light his entire body on fire to increase his attacks at a close range. This technique was extremely dangerous, and nearly succeeded in killing both Rance and Patton, two of humanity's strongest warriors, when used against them in one-on-one combat.

Trivia

 * LeMay's name and personality are derived from Curtis LeMay, a major general in the United States Air Force who served during World War II and is most famous for organizing a widespread firebombing campaign in Japan that focused on destroying civilian morale in order to halt enemy weapon production. The historical LeMay's actions during the Second World War have often come under scrutiny for being excessive and needlessly cruel. The face inside of LeMay's stomach also strongly resembles that of his historical counterpart.
 * LeMay's face is modeled after the B-29 Superfortress, a heavy bomber plane flown by the United States Air Force throughout World War II, including during the air raids that were overseen by his namesake. Additionally, the flying monster soldier which LeMay entrusts with carrying the m Bomb is given the name Enola Gay, in reference to the B-29 plane of the same name, which was the first ever aircraft in history to drop an atomic bomb.
 * LeMay is the only Great Monster General to have features that are avian rather than mammalian, likely due to them being based on an airborne vehicle.