Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald

Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi is a nobleman and a renowned mage from the Mage's Association and a Euryphis lecturer with a magical lineage that goes back for nine generations. He is the Master of a Lancer class servant in the 4th Holy Grail War.

History
Lord El-Melloi is a cruel man who prefers to attack his opponents from a safe distance from the safety of his strong hold in the Fuyuki Hyatt Hotel. Emiya Kiritsugu initially regards Kayneth as one of the two most threatening magi involved in the war.

His magical abilities are attributed to wind and water and he is an expert who is proficient summoning, alchemy, and spiritual evocation. He is a teacher of Waver Velvet and, after reading Waver's radical thesis concerning increasing magical potential, tore up his student's manuscript. Waver, in retaliation, enters the fourth Holy Grail War with Kayneth's artifact and incites Kayneth's anger.

He is engaged to Sola-Ui Nuada-Re Sophia-Ri, the daughter of the head of the spiritual evocation division, through an arranged marriage. They apparently do not get along and Sola-Ui considers Kayneth a coward for not going and attacking the opposing Masters face to face. While he loves her, she does not appear to share the same sentiments.

Role
Kayneth is the Master of Lancer in the Fourth Holy Grail War. His participation in the war is merely to increase his own prominence with the Magus Association. His base of operations at the Fuyuki Hyatt Hotel is on the hotel's thirty-second floor and protected by twenty-four layers of bounded barriers, a countless amount of summoned monsters, various traps, and mystical spatial alterations in the lobby.

After Lancer's battle with Saber, Kayneth criticizes his Servant for not attacking Saber with all his strength. He winds up arguing with Sola-Ui, who calls him a coward for hiding himself from the other Masters and criticizes him for his poor strategy and not thinking of having Lancer work with Saber to finish off Berserker. Though Lancer convinces her to stop arguing with Kayneth, her immediate submission to the Servant leads Kayneth to suspect Sola-Ui is developing affections for Lancer.

Before he can address the issue, the lower levels of hotel are attacked by Emiya Kiritsugu and Hisau Maiya. Kayneth and Sola-Ui interpret the attack as one of the Masters driving people out of the hotel in order to attack Kayneth without any civilian casualties getting in the way and anticipated how to counter accordingly, Kiritsugu and Maiya had actually aimed to destroy the hotel's foundation. Kayneth, Sola-Ui, and Lancer all managed to survive the attack.

In the first battle with Caster, which was before his defeat, while Saber and Lancer held off Caster, Kayneth set out to defeat Kiritsugu. Using his Mystic Code "Volumen Hydragyrum", he sent out a search with his Mystic Code that manipulated Mercury. AS Kiritsugu observed the Mystic Code's abilities he sees a sliver of Mercury "look" through the keyhole of his room. Kayneth then sends his Mercury to attack Kiritsugu, the whips of Mercury slash through the roof and attack the Magus Killer. Using his Reality Marble of Time Manipulation, Kiritsugu escapes and after which proceeds to hunt Kayneth. In his ignorance, Kayneth mocks Kiritsugu for his usage of "useless" modern weaponry. Though after using a gun to set the Mercury's defense to a certain degree, he then used a more powerful gun that managed to pierce the Mercury's old defense, managing to hit Kayneth in the shoulder. Kayneth "corners" Kiritsugu and believes his is going to use the same strategy. Kiritsugu then shoots the Mystic Code bullet at Kayneth, causing his magic circuits to go berserk when he blocked it with "Volumen Hydragyrum". The bullet depends on how many magic circuits are currently active, and unfortunately for Kayneth, all of his were. As a result, all of his organs were critically injured and his nerves were damaged beyond hope. Kayneth was subsequently saved by Lancer right before he was about to be killed.

Kayneth wakes only to discover than Sola-Ui has gone nearly insane from her love of Lancer. She then proceeds break off one of Kayneth's fingers, slowly forcing him to give her his command spells.

After the battle to defeat Caster, Kayneth approaches Kotomine Risei to obtain the command spell promised to the Master who manages to defeat Caster. After forcing the reluctant Risei to comply based on Kayneth's assertion of Lancer's role in defeating Caster, Kayneth shoots Risei to prevent the regulator of the war from giving out any more command spells. He discovers later that Sola-Ui was captured during the battle against Caster.

Though furious at Lancer, who was also unaware of Sola-Ui's capture, they are forced to fight against Saber and Irisviel von Einzbern. Watching the duel from a hidden location, Kiritsugu appears before Kayneith with Sola-Ui at gunpoint and offers a mage's contract, an absolute agreement which will render a mage permanently unable to perform sorcery if broken. Kiritsugu offers that Kayneth and Sola-Ui will not be harmed should Kayneth force Lancer to kill himself. After examining the contract to determine its authenticity and considering leaving the country with Sola-Ui alive, Kayneth agrees and orders Lancer to kill himself.

However, soon afterwards, Kayneth and Sola-Ui are attacked by Maiya, armed with a machine gun. Kayneth survives the initial gunfire and begs that Kiritsugu end his pain; Kiritsugu refuses because of their contract. In the end, it is Saber, disgusted with her Master, who ends Kayneth's life by beheading him.

Servant
Kayneth originally intended to summon Iskander, but his artifact, the mantle of Alexander, had been stolen by his student Waver Velvet. Waver, who had gotten into a dispute with Kayneth, stole the artifact and later summoned Rider.

In order to participate in the fourth Holy Grail War, Kayneth summoned the Lancer-class servant Diarmuid Ua Duibhne. Through the modification of the Master-Servant system, Kayneth has devised a method to allow two simultaneous connections to Lancer; while he holds the command spells for Lancer, the energy to materialize the Servant is maintained by Sola-Ui.

Abilities
The Volumen Hydragyrum (月霊髄液) is the strongest of the Mystic Codes that Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi carries in the fourth War of the Holy Grail. It is the battle tool that Kayneth has the most proficiency in, as his forte is the manipulation of fluids. Its weight can go up to 140kg.

With 10l of mercury manipulated through magecraft, it has the ability to search, attack and defend. It can attack with the shape of a whip, a spear or a blade that rotate freely, sharper than a razor; like a current of hyper high pressure, it can even cut through titanium and diamond.

However, as the attack of the whip or the blade relies on centrifugal force, the power is at the base, and none on the extremity; thus, knowledge of close-combat allows an opponent to read through the orbit of the attack.

The defensive mode is automatic, reacting immediately to anything that can harm Kayneth, protecting him with a thin, hyper hard membrane stretching around him. A membrane of 1 mm thick as rigid as steel can defend him even from a claymore land mine, and of course, from the destruction of the Hyatt hotel. Even if the user is unaware of the threat, it will react by itself. However, it will only dispatch the optimum power to defend against the immediate threat, thus applying more power than expected allows an attack to break through it.

In hunting mode, tentacles with high sensitivity will stretch out from the main body, examining the vibrations and the pressure of the atmosphere, even searching for sound or heat sources.

Yet, as it has no sense of vision, taste or smell, it is possible to deceive it if it cannot recognize the heartbeat, breathing and body temperature as that of a human.