Ba'al is an incredibly powerful, child-like Vampire Lord, who serves as a major villain in the manga UQ Holder, sequel to Negima! Magister Negi Magi. He is one of the Vampire Nobles, the first and mightiest vampires in existence, and the archenemy of Evangeline McDowell, herself an extremely powerful vampire mage and the leader of the titular organization gathering the heroes of the story. Ba'al plagued Evangeline in the past, and is now the Mage of the Beginning's new second-in-command, hunting down the heroes without respite.
Appearance[]
Ba'al looks like a boy of around ten years old, rather tall, slender and androgynous, with long hair reaching his hips and masking roughly half his face. He has light-colored hair and eyes, likely yellow like another Vampire Noble.
He was first seen bare-footed in a tattered robe, disguised as a normal boy, but he normally wears elaborate black robes with trimming and belts, black slacks and shoes, and a black cape fitting for a Vampire Lord. He sometimes wears a dark, tattered cloak covering his body, floating around him as it does with other powerful beings.
Ba'al's vampiric face.
Like all vampires, he has slit pupils, fangs and pointed nails. When he unveils his vampiric nature, he becomes downright unsettling.
His eye sclerae turns black; small bat-like wings grow on his head; his face and even his hair get covered with eyes; and his nails become long, black claws.
He can change his clothing, either elongating his robes or splitting his cape, grow two angular horns, sprout black feathered wings in uneven number, or long, black tendrils. He can also appear with a large double halo glowing behind his head.
Ba'al's shadow is an integral part of his being, which reveals its true form when he unleashes his full might. It contains an untold numbers of demonic beings which are part of him, either spawned from his spirit or assimilated into himself, probably when he became a vampire. The more power he releases, the more it appears.
Ba'al's demonic shadows.
Ba'al can grow arms much bigger than he is, long claws, large tentacles, spikes, scythe-like appendages, fanged mouths and hideous snake-like wyrms from his shadow, all of it covered in demonic-looking eyes and oozing a creepy white liquid.
When fully unleashed, his shadow turns to a frightening conglomerate of monsters, gigantic limbs, spikes and tentacles all around him.
Ba'al and Tota battle with their demonic constructs.
Much worse, Ba'al can fuse all his shadows into an even mightier form, turning them into a tower-sized, eldritch construct of welded tentacles all around him. It has a writhing mass of bulbous eyes and fanged tentacles for a head, big, fanged tentacles sprouting from its back, a fanged mouth on its belly where Ba’al stands, and a cluster of tentacles instead of legs.
Personality[]
Ba'al is the most outright malevolent villain in a series running on grey morality. He is a cold, uncaring, ruthless, and violent sadist, craving for battles and bloodshed. He enjoys crushing foes in nasty ways as much as he enjoys breaking their spirit.
He is conceited and boastful, scorning "inferiors" and gleefully lording over them. But he revels in foes able to match him, so long as he retains the upper hand that is. Worse, he delights in wreaking havoc, without a care for consequences. He hates not being in total control, and viciously resents getting bested.
Much worse, he is a relentless and unforgiving hunter, who never, ever lets go of a prey. He would stalk them for centuries, putting them through all sort of torment just to see how they react.
Ba'al first appears as aloof, collected and focused. He involves himself in his plots directly, stepping in at the first mishap with no care for theatrics. He is very analytic, tactical, and knowledgeable, spending time to learn all about his targets and leaving no detail to chance.
Despite this, he shows a strong playful, mischievous and frankly immature streak, fitting the child he looks like. He constantly craves stimulation, breaking his stoic behaviour when having fun or livid. His sadism is no different from a misbehaved kid crushing ants, breaking toys, and bullying people just because he can. He considers that his power enables him to do whatever he wants. The more the heroes resist him, the more his stoicism crumbles, grinning and laughing maniacally when he has them on the ropes. As the final battle unfolds, Ba'al loses his last shreds of sanity, becoming exalted, unhinged, frantic and wrathful, making grandiose speeches and viciously ranting as the heroes "dare" resisting him.
Close-up on Ba'al.
Despite such thoroughly unflattering traits, Ba'al is more nuanced than it seems, without making him less disturbing. Having seen pretty much everything, he delights in anything and anyone who can perk his interest and praises his foes’ merits in earnest, yet he only expresses it through violence and he loves to gloat. His stalking of Evangeline and her disciple Karin stems as much from the challenge they present as a fascination for their nature.
Likewise, he praises UQ Holder's spirit and greatly admires the Mage of the Beginning, referring to her as "humanity's greatest genius". He also values his followers, avenging one of his wizards and saving his puppet king.
Surprisingly, Ba'al sincerely loves humanity, albeit in a twisted way, wanting to protect it and help it reach its potential. He backed the invasion of Earth by mages of Inverse Mars (a Magical World full of magic beings), reasoning that humanity needed their guidance, under his own of course. In the same way, he supports the Mage of the Beginning's goal to warp everyone into the Cosmo Entelecheia (Perfect Word), an alternate reality where everyone lives the best possible life. As such, he deems immortals as a threat to their vision, to be eliminated without batting an eyelid.
Like his fellow Vampire Nobles, Ba'al follows the "Noblesse Oblige" mindset, meaning that the powerful are duty-bound to take care of the powerless, but his vision is horribly warped. Instead of training humans to better their lives, he imposes his vision, believing to know what is good for them better than they do in a creepy Messiah Complex. He regards them as weak children unable to care for themselves, who need supervision whether they like it or not. As such, he wants immortals to rise as spiritual leaders, with everyone resting in their "care" in every sense of the word.
He spent his existence watching humanity, lamenting their constant social stagnation despite their progress. While he has a point in mentioning the calamities of the Twentieth Century and the worsening inequalities, he blatantly disregards the racism of the mages he backed, who only viewed normal people as slaves and energy sources. Besides, reasoning that even dead souls are sent to the Cosmo Entelecheia, he does not care about casualties. To cut a long story short, Ba’al’s bloodthirstiness and self-righteousness completely invalidate his good intentions.
Powers and Abilities[]
As a Vampire Noble, Ba'al is far and away one of the most powerful beings in a series full of monstrously overpowered characters. His presence alone radiates an intense aura of dread. Even Evangeline McDowell and Fate Averruncus themselves dread the prospect of confronting him.
Ba'al has supreme strength, speed, agility, reflexes, and fighting skills. He can effortlessly shatter stone and steel, wrecking the ground by applying little pressure, toppling huge buildings in a single blow, and dashing as fast as a teleport. He mostly fights with a thin longsword, wielding it in either hand, but he also wields spear-like crosses, or uses martial arts. Moreover, he is immortal and virtually indestructible, healing any wound in seconds, be it complete disintegration. However, like every immortal, damaging his heart is the only way to truly harm him.
His powers and mastery of magic are equally formidable. He can levitate; teleport; conjure all sorts of things; shape-shift; change his clothing's size, width and shape; travel through dimensions; instantly spawn clones of himself at different places; bewitch World Trees seeds to grow instantly to full size; summon demons; negate powers; and hurl magic spheres that banish targets into the normally inescapable Void Between Words.
Ba'al's parasite hijacking Juzō's body.
He is described as a genius in creating all sort of things, especially powerful sentient beings. For instance, magi-tech viruses spreading through technology, nanomachines able to negate regeneration even for the most potent forms of immortality, or mind-controlling parasites that cannot be removed without operating on the victim's spirit.
His parasites can telepathically speak to their host, influencing their mind to remove inhibitions or moral compass, and to increase their worst impulses. They can also completely remove the victim’s personality, or take over their bodies, sprouting tentacles and a huge tail to fight, while keeping access to their powers and skills.
He also created an extremely powerful light spirit, with a defined personality, whom he made his second-in-command, and granted vast powers and fighting skills, as well as immortality and agelessness.
Of course, Ba'al masters deadly magic attacks. He can fire invisible force blasts that vaporize people; conjure huge stone blocks to crush his targets; conjure long black tendrils to bind or squeeze his targets; conjure black, cross-shaped spears that bypass defences and immunities; fire a gigantic explosive fireball that can level a giant palace; or fire countless cutting beams of light from all sides at once, to cut anyone to pieces in a split-second.
When he unleashes his shadow, he can send his tentacles, claws, fangs and blades to attack from several sides at once, if not all of them to cover a wide range. The giant arms and wyrms attack as if they were alive and track down foes.
The full might of a Vampire Noble.
When he fuses all his shadows into a demonic titan, Ba’al can attacks with its fanged tentacles and giant fists with ludicrous physical strength and deceptively high speed. He changes its shape and size at will, growing titanic fists as large as it is from itself, elongate its tentacles for miles.
Worse, he can spawn countless, titanic, horned, draconic fanged tentacles, all over the sky for hundreds of miles, and make them fire enormous energy blasts from their mouths.
Background[]
Rise to Power[]
More than twelve thousand years before the start of the series, there was a human civilisation on Venus, enormously advanced in both science and magic. They ultimately doomed themselves in apocalyptic wars in search of immortality. Most became demons who were banished into Inverse Venus, another dimension anchored on the planet, just like Inverse Mars, the Magical Word, which is anchored on the planet Mars. Inverse Venus became the Demon World, a chaotic wasteland where might is the only rule. (Though demons are neutrals in this setting.)
Meanwhile, a few scholars gained true immortality and god-like power, becoming the Vampire Nobles, also known as the Pure-Blood Vampires or High Daylight Walkers. They are repeatedly described as god-like, tying with the Demon Royalty and the Divine Dragons as the most powerful beings in existence.
Aside from Ba'al, the only known Vampire Nobles are Dana Ananga Jagannatha and Nikitis Laps. The others are stated to have succumbed to the boredom of eternal life, withering away in total apathy. Dana is a large and extravagant woman known as the Witch of the Rift, the quirky, and playful, but benevolent, and neutral Keeper of Reality. She controls Time, Space, Dimensions and Gravity, making even her Peers afraid of her. Nikitis is a child-like vampire exceedingly, albeit comically, overproud and boastful, who hides his love for literature, rock singers and glam under a facade of cynicism.
What Ba'al did after they parted ways remains unknown. He has a gigantic palace and city on Pluto's satellite Charon, and built himself at least one gigantic citadel on Inverse Mars after its creation by the Mage of the Beginning. He has thousands of soldiers, equipped with the best weapons and supplies that the Venusian magic and technology could bring. They are known as the Zero Dawn faction, in open rebellion against the nations of Inverse Mars.
Sept Shichijuro Nanao.
Around six centuries before the story, Ba’al created his primary general and bodyguard Sept Shichijuro Nanao: An extremely powerful, androgynous light spirit and wish-granting genie, based on the Lucky Seven concept, whose name means seven in French and Japanese.
Sept has enormous control over the Light Element and skill with weapons. He is poised but very courteous, respectful and smiling, even to foes to whom he bears no ill-will.
Invasion From Inverse Mars[]
At the same time, Ba'al began backing the ambitions of power-hungry mages from Inverse Mars to colonize Earth. They took advantage of their superiority over the Earth mages to dictate their law, building castles, using captives as slaves and power sources, and spreading strife all over.
However, these slimy mages were all crushed by Evangeline McDowell: an incredibly powerful vampire mage created by the Mage of the Beginning from the Nobles' model, and her disciple Ist Karin Haute: in fact Judas Iscariot, who is female in this setting and was cursed into invulnerability after selling Jesus Christ, but was granted extraordinary Holy Powers, and could only alleviate her crippling guilt by serving Evangeline.
Evangeline attacked one of the mages, who had kidnapped many children to drain their life-force, but he set a trap draining the magic of anyone but him in his castle, ensnaring the now powerless vampire in vines. Karin barged in and destroyed him with a Holy Blast. As all seemed won, a strange child appeared, mistaken for a surviving captive.
He suddenly cut Evangeline to pieces by surprise and subdued Karin under a stone block, revealing himself as a Vampire Noble. Karin and Evangeline only owed their lives to the intervention of another immortal attracted by their amount of power, the swordsman Jinbei Shishido.
The vile Senator Gorgonzola.
Evangeline, Karin and Jinbei went to Inverse Mars, where they investigated for a year, finding out that the invaders were led by the smarmy and xenophobic Senator Gorgonzola, from the superpower nation of Megalomesembria.
Learning that his plans are widely unpopular, Evangeline sneaks in his palace to kill him, but Ba'al appears to save him. She holds her own in a physical brawl, so he forces her to rely on puppet soldiers by unleashing his shadow. Karin bombards Ba’al with spears of holy energy, and Jinbei engages a swordfight with Sept Shichijuro Nanao. Ba'al prepares to banish Karin to the Void Between Worlds, but Evangeline deflects his spells, banishing him instead.
Gorgonzola launched the entire Megalomesembrian army after them, but Evangeline crushed all his forces by herself, forcing him into peace talks. This was in fact a trap, which she saw coming from miles away and avoided using dolls in her and her friends' likeness. Evangeline reminded the capital of the Covenant of non-aggression of the Old World decreed by the Mage of the Beginning, destroying all who went against it. This spurned the anti-aggression majority into decisive action, ruining Ba'al's and Gorgonzola's plans.
Furious, the wretched senator put a bounty on her head and slandered her as an evil witch, forcing her to fend off bounty-hunters for decades, until she became the most dreaded mage in existence. After a hundred and twenty years, Ba'al returned and sealed Karin in a World Tree, condemning Evangeline to solitude and breaking her spirit.
Imprisonment[]
Nikitis Laps, the third Vampire Noble.
Sometime later, Evangeline teamed-up with the Vampire Noble Nikitis Laps to seal Ba'al away and recruited Sept Shichijuro Nanao.
She would later be separated from everyone and succumb to despair, constantly running from bounty-hunters, and would eventually settle in Japan, only being able to free Karin ten years before the story.
She later met the legendary archmage Nagi Springfield, who had saved Inverse Mars from the Mage of the Beginning. He sealed her in the immense magic campus of Mahora Academy, where she later met his son Negi Springfield, the hero of Negima! Who would become her student and form the Ala Alba team to defeat Cosmo Entelecheia.
Role in the Story[]
Story Settings[]
The story unfolds eighty-five years after Negima! in the second timeline, in which the primary heroine Asuna Kagurazaka was sealed for over a century to power the process to save Inverse Mars from its upcoming collapse, by terraforming Mars to sustain it.
Negima! ended when Asuna travelled back to her era after awakening, then helped Negi defeat the Mage of the Beginning for good. In the UQ Holder timeline, without Asuna's power, Negi was forced to sacrifice himself to defeat the Mage of the Beginning, preventing him to avoid troubles rising after magic was revealed.
Space towers are now linking Earth, Mars and Reverse Mars. But instead of pacified worlds cooperating for peace, fast spreading magic to benefit everyone as in the ending of Negima!, magic was hoarded by superpowers and elite, leading to a dramatic worsening of inequality, wars, plagues and strife, reducing many cities to conflict-ridden slums.
Evangeline Mc Dowell has become the founding leader of UQ Holder (Eternity Holder): a group of immortals created upon Negi's impulse to protect the worlds from supernatural threats, and she took care of the main hero, Tōta Konoe, a clone of Negi whom she turned into a vampire to save his life. Magic was revealed ten years before the story and started to spread, but only wealthy people could afford the applications enabling non-magic people to spell-cast.
Foreshadowing[]
Ba'al's terrorist faction, the Zero Dawn, is involved in a terrorist bombing thwarted by UQ Holder. Cutlas, one of the Life-Maker's Apostles who was captured, tells them about a terrorist attack targeting the spatial station atop the tower, which would kill thousands, forcing UQ Holder to rush there despite it being impossible in such short time, with Tōta insisting that no-one is to die, despite his comrades' insistence that casualties are unavoidable.
Against all odds, they manage to defeat the terrorist and de-activate his missile, but it was but a trap and a second bomb is set to blow up. In the end, the bombing is thwarted and Cutlass is killed by Evangeline herself.
Tōta fist learns about Ba'al when asking Karin about her past. Sometime after, he goes to Mahora's Library Island and meets Nikitis Laps, now the Head Librarian and a UQ Number, who helps him devise a new technique, Maten Taisō (Heaven Magic Demon Armament): which channels the cosmic force fuelling his immortality in power-boosting transformations, and enables him to clone himself and respawn from the blood he loses, wherever it spreads.
Ba'al's Uprising[]
Tōta uses this technique to defeat Fate Averruncus, who now opposes UQ Holder about the means to rescue Negi. As they mend the bridges, Nikitis appears and beheads Fate by surprise. But Tōta realises that he was the real target and that Fate shielded him. Indeed Ba'al has been freed and observed Tōta and UQ Holder, before making his move.
Ba'al uses a parasite to control one of the mightiest UQ Number, Juzō Shishimi: a former student of Jinbei able to cut anything with his sword, from gods, to concepts and ideas, removing his morality and leaving only his desire to fight. Ba'al sends Juzō and Sept, who cannot disobey him, attack UQ Holder's headquarters, and also diverts a satellite to crash on it. Karin blocks it with angel summons, while Jinbei uses his Space-warping power to send non-fighters to safety, but the satellite was filled with summoned demons that must be taken down.
With Evangeline away for business and Tōta fighting Nikitis, Jinbei engages Juzō, but he can only win by feigning death and revealing the full extent of his power, driving the parasite to take over before subduing it. Meanwhile, Tōta's friends use perfect teamwork and combination of their powers to seal Sept in a mirror. But things turn for the worst when Dana appears, controlled with a parasite as well, and beats Jinbei senseless.
As Ba'al himself enters the fray flanked by Dana, Tōta joins his friends after subduing Nikitis, furious at Ba’al for what he did to his mentor and his teacher. The Vampire Noble proclaims his love for humans, but Tōta attacks him by surprise with a clone, while Dana uses her Space powers against UQ Holder, along with a newly freed Sept.
Tōta reveals his Maten Taiso's second stage: a gigantic and extremely powerful demonic construct, but Ba'al, amused, retaliates by fusing his shadows into a titanic construct and drives him into a corner. As Tōta warps close to strike his foe, Nikitis returns and resumes their fight, driving him away from Ba'al.
Ba'al orders Dana to destroy them UQ Numbers with a spherical black hole that can obliterate immortals, but Juzō, freed from the parasite and fully healed, cuts it to pieces along with her, while Jinbei subdues Sept, and Evangeline who just returned, freezes Ba'al's construct with a tremendous icicle wave.
Ba'al laughs at the defeated UQ Numbers.
Evangeline confirms Tōta's suspicion that Nikitis wanted more to settle the score with Fate than to side with Ba'al. Tōta faces Nikitis again, taunting him for having trained someone whom he claims to despise, and for playing high and mighty to avoid admitting that he likes humans.
Every UQ Number attacks Ba'al, but not to avail, and he spawns clones to impales them all with black cross-shaped spears that can harm even immortals. He them seizes Tōta’s friend Kirie Sakurame with tendrils. Laughing maniacally, Ba'al reaffirms that eternal bliss in the Cosmo Entelecheia is the best possible outcome for his human "siblings". He spreads many titanic, draconic tentacles over the sky, threatening the nearby town.
Ba'al gloats that his foes stand no chance against him… only to be proven wrong as Juzō, who had escaped his attacks, cuts him down. Livid, Ba'al attacks him, but only to have his heart torn out and crushed from behind by Nikitis, who had always planned to turn on him.
Dana is free. And angry...
Grievously weakened and enraged tenfold, Ba'al orders Dana to banish them all to a dimension from which they could never escape. However, this is only the beginning of the end for him, as his wounds weaken the parasite controlling Dana, who warps through Time and Space to destroy it.
Dana playfully congratulates Ba'al for controlling her, but berates him from attacking his fellow Nobles, stating that he deserves punishment.
Ba'al immediately tries to flee, but Dana submits him to the mother of all beatdowns, trashing him around like a ragdoll and shattering his gigantic shadow construct, before smacking him into the ocean so hard it makes the water reflux around the impact.
Ba'al's humiliating and well-deserved smackdown.
Everyone starts searching for Ba'al everywhere, but he managed to escape. Still, he will not recover before long, enabling Evangeline and Dana to fully free Sept from his control, and he agrees to instead be bound to Evangeline.
As UQ Holder celebrates, Tōta gets to know the Numbers he had not met yet, and somehow befriends Nikitis, who retains Evangeline's trust. Evangeline reveals that Fate is alive and that they tracked down Ba'al's escape route, gaining a clue on the Mage of the Beginning's whereabouts.
UQ Holder later attacks the Zero Down citadel in Inverse Mars, crushing their army in seconds despite their firepower: mixing military heavy artillery, magic weapons, giant demon summons and a near-impenetrable magic shield, and Evangeline seals it in everlasting ice. They find the Magic Circle that Ba'al used to flee, but suspect a trap.
Dark Future[]
Ba'al and four Demon Barons: Agali Arept, Fleurety, Nergal and Zarich
With the Mage of the Beginning being located on Pluto, her life-erasing spell imminent, and Tōta’s training complete, the three worlds prepare a huge fleet to the Dwarf Planet. UQ Holder reaches the space station, which gets blown up and Kirie is poisoned, her power to rewind time sealed by a similar ability.
It was the doing of Ba'al, more unhinged than ever, backed-up by Demon Barons of the Demonic Gōma Continent, determined to keep them away from the Mage of the Beginning.
UQ Holder won the ensuing all-out battle, but even with his head severed, Ba'al gloated that he used the discoveries of the extremely powerful wraith necromancer girl Sayoko Minase to create a Net Bug Virus. It spreads through the internet, to kill its victims and send their bodies and souls to Pluto, where they would fuel the Cosmo Entelecheia spell, no longer willing to wait for the Mage of the Beginning to awake.
Ba'al infected the entire artificial Orbital Ring providing internet connection with his virus to decimate the population. However, it appears that Nikitis Laps planted a World Tree seed within Tōta's soul, and that turning to a World Tree would support the Orbital Ring and prevent the virus to spread all around.
Tōta separates from the Tree after forty-two years and falls on Earth, drifting unconscious in the ocean. With the space station the space station and the orbital elevator in ruins, with science set back to the end of the 20th century by the Net Bug virus, the world has just started to recover from Zero Dawn's attacks, much to Tōta's grief.
Three years later, the UQ Numbers reunite with Tōta, who has fully recovered, and take it to the Rift outside of Time and Space, in the Akashic Skywheel aircraft created by the ancient Venusian civilisation, who became the demons and vampires, holding a city and three hundreds millions of books about every subject.
Alas, they are attacked by the female Demon Baron Fleurety and the cyborg boy Ikku Ameya, one of the UQ Numbers brainwashed by the Net Bug virus. Ikku takes total control of the ship and uses all the upgrades he got to take down even the Vampire Lord Nikitis Laps, but Tōta unseals the ghost boy Santa Sasaki, whose control over the internet surpasses that of Ikku. Santa takes back control of the ship and blasts the demon army with all its cannon, forcing them to flee.
The Final Showdown[]
After Tōta brings back his missing comrades, and as Fate is monitoring the abnormally fast gathering of energy needed to rewrite the entire Solar System, UQ Holder rushes toward Pluto for the decisive confrontation, while some remain to investigate on a clue left by Negi. Alas this is a trap, and Pluto's moon Charon suddenly appears in Earth's atmosphere to collide with the Orbital Elevator, sending giant meteors towards the major capitals, while the Cosmo Entelecheia society and the Mage of the Beginning’s Apostles ambush the heroes.
The meteors are in fact vessels for dozens of immensely powerful Demon Titans protected by defensive shields and space-time distortion from everything Fate Averruncus' forces can throw at them. A gloating Ba'al then appears on his communication screens, revealing that he wants to level the entire Earth surface and send everyone in his own version of Cosmo Entelecheia.
Fortunately, Fate is able to teleport back UQ Holder to Earth, and launch the space fleet assault meant for Pluto on Ba'al's huge palace at the heart of a city located on Charon’s North Pole where he is directing his forces, to settle their score once and for all. Ba'al was waiting for them, unleashing countless energy cannons and Demon Titans, but UQ Holder make short work of them.
As Tōta breaks down his magic barrier, Ba'al summons the Demon Barons and opens a portal to Pluto to draw from the Mage of the Beginning's power, but she counted on this and uses it to appear on Charon with her followers, who subdue the heroes, sealing Ba'al in a World Tree. She then takes the keys to Evangeline's soul, which she needs to finally cast Cosmo Entelecheia. Fortunately, Tōta can use Negi's Artefact to free him from the Life-Maker.
Using Negi's magic, the UQ Numbers free all the Life-Maker’s Apostles from her possession, before Tōta destroys her once and for all, dividing her soul into twelve billions fragments, one for every living being in the Solar System, that had been linked to her by the Cosmo Entelecheia spell, ensuring that she could never ever be revived.
After Evangeline vanishes, Fate, UQ Holder, the Ala Alba, the Ala Rubra solve many conflicts, eventually making peace with the Cosmo Entelecheia society and the Demon Barons. Whether Ba'al was freed and made peace with his bitter enemies as well is never stated, albeit unlikely, nor even whether he got a fragment of his liege's soul.
Over the centuries, they pacify the Solar System, helping civilisations of all worlds thrive and expand all over the galaxy. By the time Evangeline returns after over twelve thousand years, Negi and his friends, Fate included are long gone, having led peaceful, fulfilling lives, and UQ Holder can enjoy the rest of eternity.
Trivia[]
- The name "Ba'al" means "lord", "master", or "supreme", in Hebrew, fitting for a Vampire Noble.
- Ba'al is named after the King of Gods of the Canaanite mythology, the God of Masculinity, Fertility, Seasons, Storms and Weather.
- This name was used for many Supreme Gods in ancient Mesopotamian religions: Hadad the Assyrian God of Storms and Rain, known in Sumer as Iskur, Baal Shamaim the Phoenician Sky God, or Ba'al Hammon the Carthaginian God of Weather and Vegetation. This fits his goal to "care for" humanity, although unlike him, those gods were fearsome but benevolent.
- The aforementioned deities were likened to false idols in the rise of monotheism, and later assimilated to a Prince of Hell in demonology, fitting his villainous role.
- Ba'al is a dark reflection of Evangeline, both being mighty vampire children. He is the monster she is only rumoured to be, and harms people he finds interesting while she trains them. Ba'al himself notes that she is as close to a Vampire Noble as can be, but she retains human spirit while they are monstrous in nature.
- Ba'al is another dark reflection of Dana Ananga Jagannatha, his fellow Vampire Noble, also named after Supreme Deities (the Irish Mother Goddess and the Lord of the Universe in Buddhism). Both Nobles shaped Evangeline’s past, Dana making her a powerful mage and Ba'al making her a dreaded and bitter loner. Both believe in "Noblesse Oblige", but she pushes humans to perfect themselves while he imposes his vision.
- Being an unaging child only looking human, whose shadow can turn into a monstrous conglomerate, and a fervent supporter of the main villain, Ba'al is similar to, and probably inspired by, Pride from Fullmetal Alchemist.
- Being an obscenely powerful Vampire Lord with a twisted love for humanity, able to spawn countless nightmarish monsters, fanged mouths and eyes from his shadow, Ba'al calls to mind Alucard from Hellsing, another possible inspiration. However, his demons are part of his being instead of familiars, and he is a straight-out villain.