Nrvnqsr Chaos

Nrvnqsr Chaos (ネロ・カオス) is the tenth of The Twenty-seven Dead Apostle Ancestors. He is a living mass of chaotic matter analogous to a, created from the accumulation of the lives of 666 creatures.

Appearance
Nrvnqsr has a tall and strongly built body, and he wears a black trench coat that fully covers his body. While he looks like a regular human to Shiki from his initial appearance, only his head and hands still retain their original form. Under his trench coat is a pure darkness that doesn't have a visible outline. He only retains the basic shape of a man, while the rest of his body looks like it is constructed due to being made of chaos.

Background
Nrvnqsr was originally an alchemist named Fabro Rowan (フォアブロ・ロワイン) from the Sea of Estray, a cluster of smaller sorcerer organizations on northern Europe. He developed a method at the apex of his magical research allowing him to absorb and merge his existence with the lives of other creatures in order to obtain immortality and ascend to the level of a Dead Apostle. He has existed for over a millennium, and developed into the accumulation of lives he absorbed with a collective consciousness, aligned with his will yet not entirely under his control and of nature beyond his own understanding. The understanding and control over the disordered dendrogram that is his body became his eternal thesis. Even though he is conscious that his mind is slowly fading by being united to the beasts, his ultimate desire is to come to understand the chaos that formed him even if he should be completely swallowed by that very same chaos.

Like many other vampires, he has taken his name from those given by the Church. "Nrvnqsr", phonetically spelled "Nero", was given to him as a play on words in Gematria by which the letters that compose it add up to 666, the so-called Number of the Beast. His second name,"Chaos", was given to him due to his nature as literal, squelching chaos similar to a primordial earth.

Personality
During his lifetime, Fabro Rowan had a rather serious and experimentive personality. However, after merging his body with various other beasts, his mind slowly began to resemble that of the beasts that he was now made of, thus corrupting him and turning him into the bloodthirsty Nrvnqsr Chaos. As the current Nrvnqsr Chaos, he is rather arrogant and considers ordinary humans, such as Shiki before displaying the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, as creatures inferior to himself. While attempting to devour Shiki, he declares that he is a fastidious person, so he won't even leave a single cell behind. He begins to laugh while taunting Shiki to stop being so stubborn and just break down.

The beasts are not uncontrolled, so they display a sadistic pleasure in circling around Shiki and "feeding" on him one at a time even though they could devour him in an instant. After they all descend upon him, they still slowly take their time. While they cannot speak, Shiki is able to tell that their eyes are telling him to die.

During extra comedy scenes in Kagetsu Tohya and Melty Blood, he is known as the Professor (教授) due to being knowledgeable on various subjects. He displays adoration for animals, even keeping a scrap book of the beasts he has absorbed, and he is annoyed that he is unable to obtain the footprints of Neko-Arc, a "rare specimen", in Melty Blood. He enjoys competition, though he doesn't really understand the concept.

Abilities
"Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666---Haha, are you pleased with the chaos within my body, Arcueid Brunestud?"

- Nrvnqsr Chaos reciting from Revelation 13:18 to Arcueid

Nrvnqsr became a Dead Apostle through magical research rather than through the more common process of having his blood sucked by a True Ancestor or Dead Apostle. While he has conquered the weakness against sunlight to the point where he is able to utilize a boat or airplane to cross the sea, he is still weakened during the day. Even with Arcueid on the verge of death in front of him, he still quickly leaves the hotel before daybreak, and only plans on attacking during the night afterward. He differs from regular vampires who suck the blood of humans and turn them into minions. He only requires his beasts, so he devours the entirety of their preys’ bodies for nourishment. He has basic Mystic Eyes of Enchantment, but they are notably weak. While they freeze Shiki upon looking at him once, Arcueid states that his will was too weak and simply looking right into Nrvnqsr's eyes would be enough to deflect his gaze.

The nature of his current state is also vastly different from regular Dead Apostles. He identifies himself as something that is no longer a vampire, but instead a space which has become chaos, equipped with 666 beasts. His form is owed to his Reality Marble, the Lair of the Beast King (獣王の巣), which allows him to absorb and merge his existence with the lives of other creatures and manipulate them in the form of chaos. It is different from normal Reality Marbles that are superimposed upon the world, as he only deploys it within his own body. The corrective impulses of the world don't see this usage as a contradiction, so the cost of maintaining it is much lower than normal. It is always active, and he can sustain it indefinitely as long as he has a sufficient amount of energy. It still requires a large amount of energy to sustain his body and regenerate it after receiving damage. He needs to feed very regularly, and despite devouring over one hundred people the day before, he quickly devours Yamase Maiko for extra sustenance when given the chance during his battle with Arcueid and Shiki.

The makeup of his body can be described as something like the Primordial Sea that uses factors called "animals" as his body by mixing them like mud. The chaos is like a small world of his own in its primal stages as things swirl inside him without knowing what form they will take. It is a chaotic space where what will be born is unpredictable, and the darkness of the chaos is just like the planet's dendrogram while still having the possibility of dramatic change. The chaos that makes up his body described as a completely black, tar-like substance. It no longer has the feeling of human skin, and it gives off more of an elastic feeling like soft rubber. His trench coat appears to be a construct created by him, as it squirms like a living being when his is hungry and it is later reformed when Yamase Maiko is in control of the chaos. It stays with her the entire time she is active, even while unconsciously taking Shiki's form.

While Arcueid initially believed the creatures to be simple familiars, their true nature is vastly different. Dead Apostles may use living creatures to repair their own flesh and later return them to their original forms to use as familiars when necessary, but the beasts of Nrvnqsr are a part of his very existence. He has taken in 666 beasts into himself, and they currently make up the chaos that is his body rather than simply being additions to it. His nature greatly amazes Arcueid, as she states a human body even having more than three hundred factors compressed into something as small as closed-in as a human shape is an act of insanity. The limit for a human body should be around thirty beasts at one time, and while having thirty of the same animal is an amazing feat, having thirty different familiars would show that the strength of user's willpower is apart from others. It would also normally be limited to real animals because having more than one member of the Phantasmal Species would overload one's capacity. Nrvnqsr not only has over twenty times that number, but also displays a large number of illusionary beasts.

The beasts within him aren’t merely controlled by him, but are in fact an extension of his own self. His alter selves have no concrete existence, and only when released from the territory that is his body will they take form as some kind of "species" for the first time. They have no form on their own from the beginning, and while they can be killed outside of him, they regenerate as part of his chaos the moment they return. As long as he lives, they will return to the chaos and be reborn, so he can effectively be called immortal. The entire collective is only one being which is capable of manifesting into the form of any of the 666 beasts if necessary and act separately from the collective, though always mentally and spiritually united as one. His nature is noted as a bunch of things mixed together in a primordial earth with no one knowing what will emerge from the black sea, and even if he forces the mass to take the form of beasts, even he is unable to predict exactly what they will become once they emerge.

Battle
Nrvnqsr is able to manipulate the Beasts in a variety of different ways. He is able to have beasts emerge directly from his own body to strike at close opponents, such as having a crocodile large enough to swallow a man whole emerge from his stomach. He is able to let a large amount of chaos spill onto the ground in order to either allow numerous beasts to rise and charge at once, or he can stealthily move the pool under a target to slowly have them sink into it before being devoured from below. He can have his beasts spread out over a large area in order to devour victims, and in under a half hour, they are able to kill one hundred and three people without a trace. He can manipulate two halves of his body independently from each other, such as having one half turn into snakes to bind a target from behind. He can send out beasts one by one, or he can easily deploy close to a hundred at once to swarm around a target. He is able to shrink his body into the form of chaos to move behind his opponent.

When prey is brought into the chaos in order to be devoured, the beasts still manage to physically devour them without having an actual shape. They slowly tear their prey apart as they would in their actual forms, and the sound of flesh being chewed, devoured, and dissolved and bones being crushed and shattered can be heard from inside Nrvnqsr's body. The prey isn't truly killed in the normal sense, but more accurately can be described as having been melted and absorbed as part of the chaos in flesh, spirit, and soul. Maiko's memories and form are stored within, and while chaotic upon first emerging, she eventually remembers everything about herself. They eat chaotically and leave behind various body parts as they feast in their physical forms, but still manage to devour all traces besides bloodstains before Nrvnqsr leaves the area.

He is never completely capable of controlling the chaos, and his body may even act without his prompt. While he is completely distracted talking to Arcueid, Shiki attempts to strike his defenseless back from behind. Due to his nature as a collective, those who enter his domain will be recognized and attacked by one of the beasts even if he doesn't notice, so there can be no surprise attacks against him. While in a city like Misaki, he is able to allow the more common animals to roam the city for long periods of time during the day and night, so that they can be set on patrol routes. They can still signify important targets like Arcueid even without being part of the active collective, and he shows the ability to communicate through a crow to announce that he has found her.

The chaos can be used to pin someone to the ground either manually, or by having the remains of a destroyed beast spread over them directly after its death. Even in the case of the beast being destroyed with its "point of death", the chaos becomes solid and gains its own lines of death. After having the lines cut, its consistency becomes that of water. The weight and power behind it increase as he uses more lives. The chaotic matter from one single dog is enough to hold down Shiki, while he uses pressure hundreds of times worse on Arcueid. The ability used on Arcueid is identified as a type of Reality Marble made of a union of five hundred of his parts that starts out as a smaller mass pinning her to the ground while slowly growing into larger mass of formless mud that begins to completely swallow her form. Soil of Genesis (創世の土) is a "cage" formed through an ancient technique from the Age of Gods recovered by Roa and taught to Nrvnqsr during Roa's attempts to help him fully control the chaos. He believes not even Arcueid could hope to destroy it at full strength because destroying the five hundred lives of chaotic matter would be the equivalent to obliterating an entire continent.

Nrvnqsr can condense all his beasts to the limit into one ultimate form, the 999th Beast (武装999), the ultimate expression of the chaos’ strength. It stands several feet about Nrvnqsr's six foot normal form, and it is referred to as the "best Beast." Its speed is compared to Arcueid, but he seems unable to fully control it while he charges at his opponent without stopping. It can function without all 666 lives at once, and he only makes use of 560 during his final assault that is described as a beautiful, simple, and efficient motion to kill Shiki with speed so fast that one couldn't ask for more. He also displays the Last Arc The Number of the Beast in Melty Blood that involves unleashing a torrent of beasts from his chest in a whirlwind-like fashion.

Beasts
The beasts are made up of the same chaos as Nrvnqsr when they are unleashed, and they no longer retain their original colors. Most of the beasts have the same black color as Nrvnqsr, but the crows are notably blue. While they return to chaos when destroyed and they leave no direct traces when killed, the mammals still shed hair that stays behind even after they have been reabsorbed into Nrvnqsr. He has a great variety of creatures that range from normal animals like crows, dogs, wolves, and deer, more exotic animals like eagles, leopards, and elephants, and his "killing beasts" that include Phantasmal Species like a unicorn and a large, winged lizard. Even while part of the chaos, the sounds and smells of the beasts can be sensed emanating from his body.

Even the normal animals greatly exceed the capabilities of their regular counterparts. They still have blood and organs that can be targeted to deal mortal wounds to them, but they are much more durable than normal animals. His dogs can continue to function after being stabbed through the head and even while losing massive amounts of blood and brain matter. After being destroyed, they either remain corpses before Nrvnqsr retrieves them by simply lifting his coat to liquifying their corpses and bring them back into the chaos, or return to the form of chaos, dissipate into the surroundings, and work their way back to him. Even when slayed by the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, the normally permanent "death" cannot fully destroy them. While it does cause their current form to cease, returning into the chaos brings them back into existence without any trouble. The members of the Phantasmal Species are noted as being harder to kill because they have very few "parts vulnerable to death."

They can take their individual forms as animals, but still retain the liquidity of chaos at the same time without taking an actual solid shape. The only defining trait they display is their eyes, and Shiki can only describe it as hundreds of cockroaches buzzing about while devouring human corpses. The nature of the animals does not matter in this state, so Shiki observes that not one pair of eyes is the same and even notes that one is a shark. They are able to easily cling to the walls and ceiling as they go about devouring their prey in their liquid state, and it is able to move collectively a "wave" that instantly engulfs and devours Shiki.

The dogs are beasts made for hunting the size of a German Shepherd or a Doberman. They are fast enough to jump for a human's throat before they can react, and they are agile enough to rebound off of a wall to resume their attacks. The leopards are described as larger than Nrvnqsr himself, and they crack bricks simply from running. His lions and tigers can easily each tear a car into scraps, his grizzly bear could easily tear apart a tank during its uncontrollable violence, and his elephant is noted as extremely large. Any aquatic animals, such as his shark, move by "swimming" through the ground. He brings out three large, crab-like spiders slightly greater in size than the giant elephant when he is serious. It requires him to tear into his own chest with his arms, and as if ripping apart darkness, he opens a hole from which they emerge. He names several legendary animals he has taken in which include Courtaud (クルートー), a wolf king that led a pack of three hundred in the Paris environs during the Hundred Years' War, Bete (ベート), and Lobo (ロボ) from Seaton's famous animal stories.

He can take in humans and other similar beings if he wishes. He states that making Arcueid part of him would make him the highest rank of vampire. Absorbing a being of her status would require great effort and pain, but it would be worth it to take her power. He believes the power would allow him to easily eradicate all members of the Church, and even the members of the Burial Agency would be nothing to fear. He calls the lineage of Kouma Kishima "moldy", and claims he has no desire to make Kouma part of him. He mentions that Aozaki Aoko is something that destroys order, so taking her into his chaos would not gain him anything. While Yamase Maiko was only taken in for sustenance, she later manages to revive in control of the chaos after Nrvnqsr's death.

Death
His nature as chaos makes him extremely hard to kill, and not even Arcueid can slay him under normal conditions. He cannot be slain by simply physically assaulting his body because it is only chaos in a human shape. Unlike normal vampires that use a Curse of Restoration, any damage done to his body is simply reformed. Ripped limbs and a crushed head are casually replaced, and he can still easily function with only half of his body intact. He does display trouble regenerating his arm after Shiki cuts it off. The number of beasts he has absorbed gives him an equal number of lives, so he can be called both "one and 666." All 666 of his lives must be ended at a single time or before any of them can be allowed to return to him in order to fully destroy him. While he becomes weakened as lives are used up, his ability to revive them simply by taking them back into his body makes the task of slaying him in such a way difficult. If he uses a number of lives in two separate areas, such as by deploying Soil of Genesis and fighting Shiki at the same time, he will have to recall the lives used elsewhere as he is worn down.

Arcueid describes Chaos as something impossible to destroy because it is a world of its own, fusing heaven and earth. Fully destroying the Chaos that makes up his flesh would require enough power to destroy the world, and nothing has had that much power since the Earth was created. The only exception is something like the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception that can kill not the concept of Chaos, but the concept of Nrvnqsr himself. He has made it his goal to fully gain control of the chaos, but it is constantly eroding the existence known as Nrvnqsr. Encapsulating uncolored conceptualized existences by taking in souls will cause the central being to disappear, which is why there is no longer a single person. The personality of "Nrvnqsr" already does not exist, and it is not a single body, but more of something closer to a limitless collective.

He believes that the body will eventually lose its intelligence and become a mere "specimen" just like the life forms in the deep ocean which can be termed eternal systems. There is no meaning of existence in such a life, but he finds the idea exciting either way. Even in the case that the individual named Nrvnqsr himself is absorbed and disappears, Chaos will continue to exist until the end of the world. He states it will continue to live within the system until it eventually falls to the Sixth. Even after his death in Tsukihime, the Chaos itself continues to exist and part of the Chaos used to heal Shiki's body in Ciel's route eventually gains a will of its own and reforms around Yamase Maiko.

The beasts display a constant hunger that needs to be satiated, but its true nature is actually part of Nrvnqsr's method to describe the structure his flesh is to maintain. In order to prevent his collapsing existence and a reversion to perfect chaos, his techniques involve preserving his human-like body from falling into chaos by supplying it with something similar, human bodies, in order to satiate the beasts and prolong his existence. He had sought the help of Roa in trying to completely control his form, and one such product of their collaboration was Soil of Genesis. He displays regret that Arcueid killed him before he had been able to find a method to completely control the chaos.

While Shiki has no trouble destroying the single animals, he has a hard time perceiving the nature of Nrvnqsr's death. When first viewing him with Death Perception, he cannot see a single line or point of death. He has to greatly struggle to see a point of death, but it soon turns into over four hundred points along his body that give off a sense of heterogeneous aggregation rather than something to signify his "death." He realizes that to defeat Nrvnqsr that he would need to kill every beast that has that same "point." During Nrvnqsr's final rush, Shiki finds that deep in his center below the other points lies Nrvnqsr's "Ultimate Point." He declares that the number of lives do not matter because he will kill the "existence" of Nrvnqsr Chaos. It is not the same as killing Nrvnqsr, but instead the chaos which is him, and thus he is effectively killing "one world." Even after his death during Ciel's route, one crow is left behind to make a final strike on Shiki.

If the beasts are killed, but not returned to him, they can be used to reinforce and strengthen the body of another person. They no longer belong to him as long as he doesn't take them back in, so they can just be called scraps of flesh. The crocodile during Ciel's route that devours over half of Shiki's torso is able to be used by Arcueid to repair the damage and close the wound. He is immediately fine with the exception of total exhaustion. They retain their rubber-like appearance and texture due to being a bit unstable in form, but eventually begin to imitate the properties of your body. While it takes on the body's normal attributes, it remains stronger than normal, and it would be possible to manipulate them with knowledge of magecraft to make use of their forms once again like with normal familiars.

Arcuied believes Shiki has enough aptitude to do so by studying magecraft, but he isn't too keen on the idea. Once Nrvnqsr is killed, the pieces connected to a human will still function, but Arcueid would be impossible to use any of the remains from his body to heal someone in Ciel's route. She does manange to use the remains to simply help heal his wounds her route rather than actually mixing them into Shiki's body. The beasts still retain their regenerative ability after the destruction of their source, so she lets one briefly live on her body to return its form to normal, and places it on Shiki to help him heal. She mentions that a non-polar life can adapt itself to his body easily to mend his various wounds.