Shu Starling

—Shu Starling to his brother Ray in Volume 2

* Anime
* Light Novel

* Costume
* Godcloth

**Shu Starling**, real name **Mukudori Shuichi** (椋鳥修一), is the older brother of Ray Starling. He is a Master of the Kingdom of Altar, the current holder of the position of 1st rank in the kingdom's kill rankings and one of the Superiors known as the Kingdom of Altar's Big Three. He is also a member of the clan Death Period.

## Appearance

Shu is a young man with long black hair, a toned body and handsome features at around 180 cm in height. Due to an unfortunate mishap during the creation of his avatar, he accidentally set it to look exactly like his real life self. As such, he habitually wears animal costumes as a disguise.

## Personality

Shu has an easygoing and whimsical personality. He frequently makes puns corresponding with the type of animal suit he's wearing at the time. He possesses an extremely strong fighting spirit that lets him persevere no matter the circumstances, just like his brother Ray.

## History

When he was younger, Shu was a part of the entertainment industry, working as a child actor and singer in various roles, including as part of a hero group. He was also part of an international group of child singers, which is where he first met Rachel Raymuse.

After leaving the entertainment industry for unspecified reasons, Shu began studying martial arts and participating in competitions during his high school years, culminating in becoming the Under 16 World Champion of the Unlimited Pankration competition.

During his university years, Shu frequently accompanied some of his professors on trips outside of Japan, where he got into the habit of buying lottery tickets. He eventually won, and used the money to buy several apartment buildings in Tokyo.

At around this time, the game *Infinite Dendrogram* was released, and Shu was one of the first players. During his avatar creation, he accidentally set it to look like his real self, and the Control A.I in charge of his avatar, Humpty, refused to allow him to change it, so he was forced to wear costumes in order to disguise himself.

As a Master, Shu quickly rose to the top, becoming renowned as a first-rate player, and involving himself in various incidents.

## Abilities

**Talent**: Shu was born with overwhelming talent, enough so for Humpty Dumpty to compare Shu to a **High End** (才を持つ者ハイエンド). Shu possesses a natural aptitude for any type of activity, with art being the only exception. Though, rather than simply being incapable of creating any form of art, any type of art that Shu made are "too advanced" for anyone to understand its beauty in the current era. Because Shu is not a tian, the Archetype System would never convey the truth of the world to him.

### Jobs

**King of Destroy** (破壊王キング・オブ・デストロイ, *J-Novel Club: King of Destruction*): The Superior Job from the crasher grouping. The stat growth of this job focuses solely on STR, which leads it to have highly unbalanced stats. It also grants the user powerful resistances, enough to slow down even debuffs like Extreme Poison. The condition for achieving the job are to deal over 100,000,000 points of damage to inanimate objects, defeat a certain number of boss monsters in solo combat and complete a certain quest.

* **Destroy Order** (破壊権限デストロイオーダー, *J-Novel Club: "Right of Destruction"*): The ultimate skill of the King of Destroy. It allows the destruction of indestructible targets whose endurance is lower than the user's attack power. This allows for the destruction of liquids or gases, which would normally be impossible to destroy. Skills, items, laws, or concepts which can negate destruction (e.g. like a ghost and slime's physical attack negation and The Evil's foreign entity protection) can also be negated by this skill. Even Type:Territory Embryos which are normally difficult to interfere with can be destroyed by this skill. It also has the effect of negating the damage the user receives whenever they strike something whose END is lower than their attack power.
* **World Breaker** (破界の鉄槌ワールド・ブレイカー): The final blow of the King of Destruction. It is only available to users whose STR stat exceeds 70,000. By increasing the user's physical strength to the limit, they can release a blow that can "destroy the world." When combined with the Right of Destruction, the user can destroy space itself. When the destroyed space is restored, the resulting distortions will cause huge damage to anything within range, including the user. All of the tians who used this skill in the past died as a result of this.

**Destroyer** (破壊者デストロイヤー): The high rank job from the Crasher grouping.

**Crasher** (壊屋クラッシャー): A low rank job specializing in STR for destroying obstacles such as castle gates.

* **Battering Ram** (破城槌): The characteristic skill of the Crasher job. It multiplies the blunt damage of the user's attack by 6 times. It requires some time to be charged before use.
* **Crag Scraper** (削岩穿): An active skill that increases the damage and penetrating power of an attack. It requires some time to be charged before use.

### Other Skills

**Martial Arts**: Having studied the **Jukai-ryu** (樹廻流), an ancient martial arts style and winning the Under 16 Unlimited Pankration tournament during his high school years, Shu is an extremely skilled martial artist, capable of predicting his opponents moves up to 10 steps ahead. This allows him to fight as a vanguard, despite possessing low speed and endurance.

* **Kodachi** (木断コダチ): A spinning high kick aimed at the neck. Shu is noted to be particularly good at this technique.
* **Shinen** (枝捻シネンッ): A thrust like low kick released by spinning the entire body.
* **Nejirebana** (捻花ネジレバナ): A palm strike delivered by using the rotation of the palm to twist the user's strength into the opponent.

## Trivia

* Aside from the reward he received from defeating the Tri-Zenith Dragon, Gloria, all of Shu's UBM special rewards have been animal suits.
* Shu also has another nickname, Kid Mountain, because he often plays and climbed by kid.