Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald

Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi is a character in the light novel Fate/Zero, and a minor villain or antagonist in the beginning and middle of the story. He is a very wealthy and successful nobleman and a renowned mage from the Mage's Association and a Euryphis lecturer with a magical lineage that goes back for over nine generations. He is the Master of a Lancer class Servant in the 4th Holy Grail War.

Background
He's a magus with ancient heritage and great status. He was born with immense talent and rarely if ever encountered any hurdles in life. He's a cruel man with a selfish personality. He is a teacher of Waver Velvet but has very little care or respect for the poor boy. after reading Waver's radical thesis concerning increasing magical potential, tore up his student's manuscript after humiliating Velvet during a lecture. Waver, in retaliation, enters the fourth Holy Grail War with Kayneth's artifact and incites Kayneth's anger. Kayneth originally intended to summon Iskander, but with his artifact, a piece of the torn mantle of Alexander, stolen by Waver, he instead summons the Lancer-class Servant Diarmuid Ua Duibhne.

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.

Personality
Kayneth is a cruel man with a selfish and arrogant personality. He is more cautious compared to Waver Velvet and Irisviel von Einzbern, who both openly stand on the battlefield of the Servants. He prefers to hide himself during the fighting, which earns the scorn of both Rider and Sola-Ui. He holds that all participants of the War will wish to fight honorably as magi, so he feels perfectly safe while inside his strong hold in the Fuyuki Hyatt Hotel. The existence of Kiritsugu Emiya, which goes against such principals to the point where he completely destroys the building rather than facing him in a battle of their magical prowess, greatly angers him. He is also very vengeful towards his former pupil for stealing his artifact and comming into the Grail War with the servent he was intending on summoning. He swore that he would get his revenge on Waver by exploiting the excuse of him being a fellow Grail War contestant to allow Kayneth to find, torture and killing Waver. An act, to Velvet's luck, Kayneth does not get the chance to commit. Strangely, despite all of his malicious and villain like qualities, Kayneth does seem to care and have genuine feelings for his fiance and wife Sola-Ui, even despite her loathing dislike towards him. He still loves her even after she blackmails and betrays him for his Servant Lancer.

Appearance
Kayneth is a handsome older adult in his mid to late 30's with swift back light blond hair and bright green eyes. He wears navy scholar teacher uniform with white gloves, black pants, and black shoes.

Role
Kayneth is the Master of Lancer in the Fourth Holy Grail War and the most active master at the beginning of the 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.While Lancer and Saber fought he hid behind his invisibility spell and observed the battle. Thanks to Lancer's clever tactic, the battle was turning out to be in his favor until Rider's interruption. When he found out that Waver's participate in the War as well, he revealed his identity to his former pupil and made a deadly threat. Soon after the three-way battle transformed into four then five-way with the sudden introduction of Archer and Beserker. In the middle of chaos when Berserker attacked Saber, Kayneth ordered Lancer to attack her as well. He initially refused but Kayneth forced him with the Command Spell. Thanks to Rider's interruption again and Kiritsugu finding Kayneth via infrared binoculars, he had to retreat.

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. Their argument ended with Lancer standing up to his master. 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 and would became a source of strife as Sola-Ui developed feelings for the Irish hero. Before he can address the issue, the lower levels of hotel are attacked by Kiritsugu Emiya and Maiya Hisau. 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. Kayneth made his base at Hyatt Hotel. He booked the top 24 floors and transformed it into a magical fortress with various magic barriers, traps, summoned demons. But he didn't expect that someone would just choose to blow up the basement. Kiritsugu did exactly that with a bunch of C4 charges. With the protection of Volumen Hydragyrium Kayneth and his wife just barely managed to survive the building's collapse. In one night he lost all the special equipment he prepared for the War alongside his base.

He moved to an abandoned warehouse and made it his new base. His relation to his wife worsened with every failure. In revenge Kayneth assaulted the Einzberns. 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" that manipulates mercury, he sent it out to search for Kiritsugu. 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 hit him with his Origin Bullet, nearly killing the mage. 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. The genius mage was helpless and Sola-Ui abused the situation to blackmail him. In exchange for healing him, Sola-Ui got the ownership of Lancer. She then proceeds break off one of Kayneth's fingers, slowly forcing him to give her his command spells. He was a cripple that couldn't even use magic anymore. The loneliness, frustration and jealousy almost made Kayneth mad. He called the famous puppet-maker in secret. With first-class magical protesis, Kayneth could finally move once again.

After the battle to defeat Caster, Kayneth approaches Risei Kotomine 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 Kayneth 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. Lancer couldn't do anything but curse as he pierced his own heart. But the contract had a loophole. Kiritsugu only swore to not kill them personally. It said nothing about his assistant, Maiya. From distance Maiya shot down both Kayneth and Sola-Ui, gravely injuring the mage and instantly killing his wife. The dying Kayneth asked for quick death, but Kiritsugu refused it due to the contract. Seeing that Saber finally put Kayneth out of his misery out of disgust for her Master.

Abilities
Kayneth is renowned for his prowess as a magi, and Kiritsugu initially regards him as one of the three most threatening magi involved in the war in terms of magical power and control, where he ranks second, ahead of Tokiomi Tohsaka who is the third while Kirei Kotomine is the first. He is one of the few magi Kiritsugu calls a "formidable enemy", whose strength is a great enough threat to utilize his Thompson Contender. His magical abilities are attributed to wind and water and he is an expert who is proficient summoning, alchemy, and spiritual evocation. Kayneth was arguably the best magus in the 4th Grail War in terms of controlling magic and being more magically talented then all the other Magi in the war like Tokiomi Tohsaka and Kirei Kotomine. His prodigal talent was only matched with his overconfidence and pride in his superiority. While normally limited to the founding families of the Grail War, he has managed to modify the Master-Servant system. He 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.

He made his base at top 24 floors at Hyatt Hotel and transformed it into an impenetrable fortress, with various Boundary Fields, traps and even summoned monsters. He also made a spatial alteration at the main lobby to confuse the intruders. Unfortunately though by a miscalculation he lost his base and much of his equipment. Despite his loss he still remained a formidable foe until the end.

Healing: Kayneth can heal moderate wounds in seconds. The magic can repair the damaged clothes as well and essentially looks like he turned back time.

Invisibility: Kayneth initially used this to masks his presence while he controlled Lancer. Through an illusion he became invisible to the naked eye. His voice became untraceable as well. In the end Kiritsugu used infrared binoculars to find him.

Volumen Hydragyrum
The Volumen Hydragyrum (月霊髄液) is the strongest and unfortunately only remaining of the Mystic Codes that Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi carries in the fourth War of the Holy Grail following the distruction of the Hyatt Hotel. 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 extremely 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.