Roland Wimbledon / Cheng Yan
Where am I?
The main character. A Chinese engineer who seemingly died from overwork only to wake up in the body of the recently deceased Roland Wimbledon, fourth prince of a Medieval European Fantasy land known as Graycastle.- Adaptational Badass: In the original source, Roland takes cover when the wall is breached. In the manhwa, he picks up a flintlock and shoots down a demon beast at the front lines, thus raising the troop's morale to the point that Van'er happily risked his life by planting an explosive in the hybrid's way.
- Adaptational Dumbass: In the original source, Roland has his archers and gunners target the Wolf-Turtle hybrid demon beast's heads before it rammed the wall. The beast responded to head-shots by tucking its heads within the shell, where the bullets could not reach. In the manhwa, Roland makes no such order and everybody simply wasted their ammunition by attacking its shell.
- All-Loving Hero: Discussed. Roland believes in giving equal rights to witches, commoners and serfs alike. Though he also notes these are for largely selfish purposes: Industrialization requires massive amounts of human capital, specialized skills and so forth. By bringing in more and more people and giving them the same incentives (improved quality of life, protection from foreign powers, etc.) to pursue industrialization, he's just doing what he has to to make sure his plans succeed.
- An Arm and a Leg: During a scouting mission, Roland and his group of witches get attacked by a demon riding a flying monster. It hurls a spear at Anna, but Roland quickly shoves her down only to get his right arm sheared completely off. He’s quickly flown back to the castle by Maggie to get Nana to reattach his arm.
- Asleep for Days: Roland realized he had been asleep for weeks after defeating Zero in the Soul Battle and absorbing her.
- Awesome by Analysis: While Zero made a point of telling all her opponents the rules of her Soul Battle ability, she utterly refused to share such information with him. He figured it out all on his own.
- Badass Normal: The usual transmigration novel will provide the protagonist a system or a cheat ability to thrive in a new environment. Here, except for transmigrating to a prince with low prestige, he had to rely on only his smarts and the ability of the witches.
- Big Good: As the leader of the alliance to fight the demons, as well as the source of virtually all the weaponry and equipment used to even fight them to begin with, Roland is effectively this for all of humanity.
- Blood Knight: Especially in the earlier chapters. He gets downright giddy when he thinks on unloading "hot weapons" on his enemies. Often, this "daydreaming" tends to get confused with something else. When Tilly tries to analyze his motivations, she similarly concludes that Roland continues to involve himself in wars against successively more dangerous foes simply because it's a challenge.
- Break Them by Talking: Roland enjoys doing this to people who attack him after he beats them, assuming they survive the battle.
- Chivalrous Pervert: One trait he especially shares with the original Roland. When he saw Wendy suffering neck and back pain, the first thing that came to mind was introducing modern bras to the kingdom, gifting his Witch Association with them first. Amazingly, he was entirely correct!
- The Chosen One: According to a special stone in possession of the old Witch Union, he will lead them against the demons.
- Cultural Translation: Contrary to what the English readers believe, the names Roland gives out doesn't sound bad in the context of Chinese compared to English, which is why nobody in the story ever calls him out for making terrible names. Due to the drastic difference between Chinese and English, the translated names may seem a bit off, thus giving the Western audience the impression that Roland has a horrible naming sense.
- Curtains Match the Windows: Silver hair and eyes.
- Defensive Feint Trap: His specialty. He approaches his enemies with a tiny army, makes his policy clear, and then his enemies, licking their lips while anticipating an easy victory, launch attacks on him, only to learn that this "tiny" army has very big guns, and they can't complain because they've just confessed their guilt with violence, and sealed their fate. Most don't live long enough to regret their error.
- Deity of Human Origin: By the end of the series, he has essentially become their world's god.
- The Engineer: He was a mechanical engineer in China, and similarly solves his way out of most problems in Graycastle through the design, prototyping and mass production of various technologies like steam engines, guns, steel plants and so on.
- Enlightened Self-Interest: Roland is benevolent to his subjects and does everything he can to improve their lives, but this is primarily because doing so is necessary in order for him to start the industrialization process that he needs to fulfill his goals.
- The Farmer and the Viper: Initially, he showed leniency and mercy to the Four Great Families in Longsong Stronghold because Duke Ryan was the only aggressor and they proved they followed him purely upon threats to their lives. These "noble" families thank him for it by immediately siding with Timothy the moment he promises them wealth and provides them "better" flintlocks. Roland not only utterly crushes them without mercy, but learned to never make that "mistake" again.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Before transmigration, Roland was considered the weakest of the Wimbledon heirs as he had no defining traits to speak of unlike his other siblings. After transmigration, Roland has become the strongest human ruler thanks to his kingdom management and development skills as well as his recruitment of witches.
- Good Is Not Soft: He is very benevolent and kind, without a prejudicial bone in his body, and as long as you work to help others, even if it's purely for your own self-interest, you have nothing to fear from him. You exploit, manipulate, abuse, and harm others, and do so happily? Actual demons will seem like harbingers of mercy by comparison.
- The Good King: The people of Border Town certainly think so, as do all others who come under his direct command. This is how he earns the loyalty of all his witches; most of them are surprised that he would actually care for them as people and not tools.
- Hope Bringer: Multiple characters in the series has expressed Roland as this, from the first residents of Border Town and its witches to even the Demons themselves who wants an end to the Battle of Divine Will.
- Invincible Hero: To date, there have only been two times he had a real struggle, against Zero in the Soul Battle, and Timothy, where Timothy had the full home-field advantage locked up in the official castle of Graycastle, with a rather large army of cannon fodder, doped up on berserker pills, and knowing they were going to die anyway.
- This is no longer the case in the war against the demons, who do have their own wins against the First Army and the Witch Union.
- Kangaroo Court: On occasion. There have been times where he's acted as judge, jury, and executioner, but only when Nightingale is around so he is far more certain that those he "convicts" are actually guilty, or they're stupid enough to come at him with weapons, thus "confessing their guilt" that way.
- Long-Haired Pretty Boy: In the manhwa.
- Make an Example of Them: Originally, he was somewhat lenient to those who wronged him, only killing in self-defense. When the surviving friends and family of the dead spit on his mercy in a fit of Revenge Myopia, he responds by executing those who directly antagonize him, and putting the rest through a "fair trial" before sentencing them to some cruel and unusual punishment, working in the mines being the most benevolent.
- Media Transmigration: After three straight days working non-stop to meet a work deadline, Cheng Yan, a mechanical engineer and long-time bookworm, collapses. However, when he awakes, Cheng Yan finds he's no longer himself, but stuck in the body of Roland Wimbledon, the 4th prince of a Kingdom called Graycastle.
- Mistaken for Pedophile: Many people jump to this conclusion with how Nana comes to his castle everyday, as he can't announce that she is a witch coming to train her powers. Interestingly enough, due to the fact that he is a prince people think it's only natural for him to have a concubine. Still, Roland does not like people thinking he would put his hands on a little girl.
- Non-Action Guy: Due to his status and later being the king, his people won't let him outside the battle field to prevent him got getting harmed. This changes in the Dream World, where he has access to the Power of Nature which gives him Super-Strength.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: At first, he pretended to be the same kind of oafish dandy that the previous Roland was, until finding out that his subordinates were afraid to question him because of his social status. He quickly reverted to his original personality.
- One-Man Industrial Revolution: Although he does wisely and efficiently leverage several witches' powers, he's directly responsible for bringing the local technology forward 500+ years, and that's while having to fight off Demon Beasts, Demons, and evil nobles who greatly outnumber his entire population, let alone his actual army.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: While he has no problems working with pragmatic villains, as he can at least trust them to work in their inherent best interests, he absolutely loathes those who are Stupid Evil, and will very happily bring upon them a world of hurt.
- Pragmatic Hero: While he does work in terms of the greater good, he doesn't let himself get bogged down in complicated issues of morality. He takes the quickest and most efficient approach to his goals, always. He'd prefer trade, commerce, and negotiation, but if he requires force, deception, subterfuge, and skulduggery, so be it.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: When he's got his enemies at his mercy, he loves to hand these out like candy until he breaks them.
- Rousing Speech: He's got quite the gift for giving these out. The first time he did this was telling the people of Border Town to not rely on Duke Ryan of Longsong Stronghold and to take on the Demonic Beasts themselves during his first "Months of Demons." The population made it through with two casualties, rather than the loss of 20% the last time they went to Longsong for help...
- The Smart Guy: His knowledge he brings tilts the balance of this world.
- Spanner in the Works: Cheng Yan's transmigration and possession of Prince Roland's body leads to him disrupting several events that were already in motion.
- He ended up foiling Timothy's attempt to seize the throne and rule the Kingdom of Graycastle unopposed.
- He also helps disrupt Tilly's plan to make a new homeland for witches. This is a good thing, as the two working together can bring more prosperity than if they worked against each other.
- He is a major contributor to the fall of The Church and The Reveal of their true mission to fight the Demons.
- It culminates in Roland's innovations giving humanity the edge it needs to stand up to the might of the Demons.
- Technology Marches On: In universe. On several occasions, adversaries think they've found a way to overcome the technological advantage Roland has only to find themselves on the receiving end of his newest toy. Timothy thinks he's developed a better flintlock, only for his noble pawns to find themselves facing revolvers. By the time somebody figures out how to make cannons, and defend against them, Roland's developed mortars.
- Universally Beloved Leader: All of his subjects are much happier when he is in charge and believe that, if he was made king, the kingdom, possibly all of humanity, mortals and witches alike, would have better lives.
- War for Fun and Profit: A rare heroic variant. Though he only fights in self-defense, he is an expert at profiting from armed conflict. As a Blood Knight, he also enjoys the challenge. As Edith would put it:Edith: When you can't procure or trade for what you need, rob.
- Weaker in the Real World: A rare protagonist example. He is basically a God in the Dream World while being a mortal king in the mortal realm.
- Workaholic: Despite being fond of having naps and sleeping in, Roland is normally seen hard at work, usually trying to create a new technological marvel or trying to properly care for his territory. When he was still Cheng Yan he actually died of overworking. He becomes even more of a workaholic when he becomes able to essentially work in his sleep by continuing his projects in the Dream World.
- Would Hit a Girl: Roland angrily slaps Iffy after she tried to crush Maggie to death in what was supposed to be a practice match before coldly asking what the hell she thinks she was doing.
- You Kill It, You Bought It: After defeating Zero and subsequently absorbing her, he eventually develops a lesser version of her ability, only manifested as a Mental World in his sleep.
