Epona Rhiannon

Epona Rhiannon is a character who holds great importance in the series. According to Venus, she is the hero who will destroy the world in the future. She is considered a man in the family register, but genetically, she is really a woman.

Appearance
Epona has short yellow blond hair and Gradient Blue-Red eyes. As noted by Lugh, her gender is difficult to be discerned by observers as she is easily mistaken to be a male.

Personality
The Hero is said to be a powerful being who holds great wisdom and immense power with no perceivable limit. That being said, Epona, in reality, is a shy girl who can't communicate with others and is easily socially awkward when advancing conversations. Being raised in a poor peasant family, she has a high inferiority complex, not wanting to involve in unnecessary troubles. She is shown to have a weak heart when it comes to facing the deaths of her beloved comrades. She is a pacifist at heart and doesn’t like engaging in violence. She also has a fear of letting loose as she can’t control her powers and emotions, which traumatized her as she had caused harm to many of her friends.

Although she is labeled as a 'supremacy being' by the people, she doesn't act narcissistic or arrogant due to her title and privileges. Indubitably, she is a kind person who doesn't want to hurt people with her power. She also has a keen curiosity about learning magic, making friends, and doing all other things that a normal student would normally do. Upon meeting Lugh, she admits that he was more deserving of the title Hero which he rejects as he was an assassin through and through.

Ultimately, she just wants to be normal and be accepted for herself; hence why she is sad and lonely.



Background
Epona was not born with the skills granted to her as the Hero. She grew up as a daughter of a low-ranking baron on the outskirts of the Empire. Being born without mana, she was branded a "failure" by her parents. However, they had trouble producing another child; thus, her family falsely claimed she was a man on her birth register so she could serve as the family heir. Still, only being a lowly baron's child meant that she was not given proper education and had to spend every day of her life working the fields alongside the peasants.

One day, Epona suddenly awakened as the Hero and was subsequently taken into custody by the Kingdom. Whilst under royal protection, the knights would attempt to teach her how to fight, only for her to easily beat them all, leaving her annoyed at how easily all her opponents would "break". This made her desire for a sparring partner that could keep up with her, a wish that was granted after she entered the Royal Knights Academy and met Lugh.

Abilities
Being the Hero, Epona is arguably the strongest character in the entire series, capable of destroying the whole world singlehandedly according to Venus. As noted by Lugh, despite being a total amateur at fighting, her overwhelming power more than makes up for it, with him only being able to beat her in practice matches through technicalities and, even then, only while she is holding back. What is perhaps most terrifying about Epona, however, is that she is, in fact, still getting stronger, learning from every fight.

Skills
Whereas normal people only have five skills at most, Epona boasts a total of thirty. Moreover, five of these skills are S-Rank while the remaining are all A-Rank. For comparison, normally, the chance of having an S-Rank skill is one in a hundred million, and just having one is enough to make the owner one of the strongest people in the world. Similarly, the chance of having an A-Rank skill is one in one million.

Perfect Memory
Lugh theorized that Epona has a skill that grants her photographic memory. This allows her to not only instantly remember everything that enters her field-of-vision, but also to memorize the enemy’s movements, calculate and analyze them, and devise countermeasures.

Spell Strengthening
Lugh theorized that Epona has a skill that automatically strengthens her spells without any additional mana cost.

Berserk
S-Rank: 【Berserk】 Boosts all of her physical abilities but also turns her into a battle-crazed "berserker", attacking her enemies with no regard for her allies being caught in the crossfire.

My Loyal Knight
S-Rank: 【My Loyal Knights】 Allows her to give some of her skills to exactly three people. However, it will be revoked if the recipient ever loses a battle or defies her orders and cannot be regranted. Epona used this skill on Lugh.

Beastification
S-Rank : 【Beastification】 Granted to Lugh and Tarte through the 【My Loyal Knights】 skill, it transforms the user into a half-beast, granting them the idiosyncratic abilities of their respective animal whilst also enhancing their physical senses and abilities.

Multi-Chant
S-Rank: 【Multi-Chant】 Granted to Lugh through the 【My Loyal Knights Skill】 skill, it allows the user to perform multiple magic spell incantations at once.

Possibility Egg
A-Rank: 【Possibility Egg】 Granted to Lugh and Tarte through the 【My Loyal Knights】 skill, it is a skill that changes into another skill depending on the nature of the user, ranging from S-Rank to B-Rank.

Strength
In terms of raw strength, Epona is unmatched, being able to defeat any opponent with just a single punch using her non-dominant left arm. Even Lugh admitted that she would instantly beat him if even a single one of her hits connected and he needed to use up all of his mana just to block her swiping him away, and even then he could not fully negate the damage. However, her overwhelming power also means that Epona cannot use weapons, as they would break if she swung them with too much force, forcing her to fight with her bare hands.

Speed
Epona boasts incredible speed and agility, with Lugh barely able to keep up with her even whilst pushing his body to the limit using a combination of【Rapid Recovery】, 【Martials Arts】, and his Mystic Eyes.

Endurance
Epona's body has a level of endurance that borders on invulnerability, with Lugh being unable to put even a single scratch on her during their practice match. For example, when Lugh threw a knife at her, it broke upon making contact with her skin. Similarly, when he managed to land the hit on her that won him the match, he was the one being blown back instead of her.

Magic
Epona possesses arguably the most amount of mana in the series. However, she does not know how to cast spells, needing to read incantations off a piece of parchment. As a result, she usually does not even use it.

Attributes

 * Fire

Fire Ball
A low-level spell. While it normally fires off a fist-sized ball of fire that can melt skin, Lugh compared Epona's version to a miniature sun, capable of flying at past the speed of sound and greatly damaging the Royal Knights Academy's fortifications. However, due to her poor mana conversion, casting it uses up around half of Epona's mana supply, though Lugh noted that this could be corrected with proper training and potentially make the spell even more powerful.

Mana Beam
Epona can condense her mana into a sphere in one of her hands and fire it off as a beam. As noted by Lugh, it is not technically a spell but just a huge lump of mana, causing it to be much faster to generate due to it not requiring an incantation. He also believes Epona, with her enormous mana pool, to be the only person in the world capable of using this technique.

Lugh Tuatha Dé
Lugh is the first friend Epona made in the academy. He was tasked by the Headmaster with the mission of getting along with the so-called "Hero", easily earning her trust and building a friendship with her. Lugh had been given a mission of killing the hero by the Goddess, but being an assassin he decides to determine what kind of person she is, before deciding whether to kill or save her. After meeting and talking with Epona, he concluded that she is an inexperienced child and has a weak-willed heart, so he decides to protect her instead of killing her since she doesn’t possess any ulterior motives. He then taught her academically and acted as her sparring partner which developed their relationship further. He empathizes with the pressure put on her by society and that after she accomplished her mission, she would most likely be exterminated by the Capital much like himself if they ever find out about him. Thus, he sets out to surreptitiously find a way to rid her of her powers after they destroyed all the demons so that she can live the normal life she deserves.

During their first demon fight, Epona indirectly injured him during the battle. Since then, she has actively avoided him in school. During the raid of demons in the city, Epona was injured in a battle with a demon. She couldn’t use her full power as Lugh was present and she shouted that she can’t trust him as he failed to uphold his promise to stop her during their last battle. Lugh then asked for her forgiveness and for another chance to show his true power. After being saved by Lugh and witnessing his true power, Epona made him promise that if she ever went berserk, he must kill her. Although he promises her on the outside which she smiled at, Lugh vows to himself that he'll save her instead, if it ever comes down to it.

It is worth noting that she has developed romantic feelings for him ever since their first battle. This is mainly because he was the first person to ever treat her without any reserves and had defeated her in combat. Furthermore, she forced the school to make him her sparring partner, which improves the skills of both people immensely. When the nobles only credited her for defeating the demon and completely disregarded and even lambasted Lugh, Epona was angered and stood up for him. She then sincerely apologized to Lugh as she told the truth to the nobles even though she promised that she won’t reveal Lugh's powers and feats to them. Lugh already forgave her and as an act of reconciliation, she shared her powers with him using the 'My Loyal Knights' skill. This is significant as only 3 people are allowed to have this power. After sharing her power, she made the biggest vow to him that if he ever meets a predicament, she would drop everything and run towards him, even if it meant disobeying the King.

Naoise Gephis
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Classmates
Unfortunately for Epona, aside from Lugh, all her classmates are terrified of her overwhelming strength, causing them to avoid her whenever possible. Though Epona doesn’t mind since Lugh is usually there for her such as when he was the only one capable of training and keeping up with her daily. Her classmates have an image of her filled with a mixture of awe, inspiration, or fear depending on the situation and her personality at hand. They treat her with a large amount of respect due to her accomplishments though it does lead her to feel ostracised as she has a hard time forming connections.

Mirei
Mirei is heavily implied to be the World's Finest Teacher [episode 11 of anime] whom the goddess chose to guide the hero into protecting the world and to properly control her powers.

Gallery
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Trivia

 * In the foretold future, Epona likely snapped from all the pressure and loneliness being the hero caused her. Though Lugh thinks it was the Berserker skill going out of control; it activates against Epona's will.
 * She may very well end up being Lugh's fourth wife; it's unknown when Lugh would feel love for her, but per his pragmatic mindset, he would see the benefit of keeping the Hero close and having the potential of another Hero coming from his bloodline.
 * Before her true gender was revealed, her family name served as a hint; Rhiannon is typically a female first name in Western countries.