William Hanson

William is very academically gifted, but completely lacks emotional understanding of people or life in general. He is a very logical thinker and is often surprised by people lashing out emotionally as a result of his actions. He often demonstrates a lack of understanding as to how the world works or how emotions influence the behaviors of others.

William can also be narcissistic and arrogant to the point of being delusional. During the tutorial, William's internal monologue often includes him deriding his fellow participants as idiots who are clueless about his true nature and what he might be up to. However, when William is seen from the perspective of other characters, they often view him as the clueless one who only thinks he's pulling the wool over their eyes. For example:

• William seems to have no idea that Identify tells anyone that bothers to look that his level is far too high for him to be as innocent as he pretends to be. Initially, identify was not effective on humans but that changes with a profession evolution. This is common knowledge around camp, but William is clueless.^[1] He continues to pretend to be a naive but harmless kid, not knowing that Richard only allows him to live because he can be manipulated into culling any dissenters in camp.
• Later, he encounters Jake who, despite knowing almost nothing about the ongoing conflicts of the tutorial, nearly immediately clocks William as a manipulator who is attempting an ambush. William is genuinely surprised when Jake readily counterattacks.
• Caroline tells William to avoid the area where Casper will be alone, laying traps. William assures her he'll avoid the area while mentally delighting over the opportunity to sneak in a kill with camp leadership none the wiser. Caroline then reports to Richard that she has succeeded in setting Casper up to be killed by William.

Overall, William is a pragmatic thinker. He viewed the Tutorial as a fun game in which he was the main character rather than a grim reality that could lead to his own death. He never thought of those around him as fellow humans, but rather walking opportunities for additional Tutorial Points. William grew frustrated whenever anyone pointed out that the inability to understand the emotions of others is a weakness, as it leaves him vulnerable when they don't react as he expected.

Pre-system integration, William was a very bright child with grand plans for the future. These plans were derailed when his younger brother was born. The child was born with severe defect and would always need significant medical intervention to sustain life. William viewed this solely in terms of expenses. Any finances spent on his brother were funds that would have otherwise went towards William, his interests, and his dreams of attending a prestigious university.

Lacking empathy, William could not understand why his parents were so insistent on helping what William believed to be a defective child who should have been left to die. With this belief, William aimed to "help" his parents by turning off his 5-year-old younger brother's life support. William carefully triggered an equipment failure, killing his brother indirectly. He believed this would free the family of its financial burdens, allow them to resume their previous lifestyle, and permit them to focus finances on William's dream.

Unable to accurately anticipate the emotional impact of his actions, William expected his parents to return to normal and wave off their younger son's death as an unfortunate accident. But his distraught parents instead channeled their grief into avenging their son's death, suing his brother's caretaker and the company of the medical equipment. Even preparing for legal proceedings which would put their family to further debt. Not wanting his family to spend additional years and money in court that could better be used on William's desires, William confessed his role in the death to his parents. Rather than granting his parents relief, it made them even more worried. They brought him to mental health facility for treatment, while keeping William's crime a secret.

In the facility, William again attempted to manipulate the adults around him to get what he wanted. However, one of the psychologists, Kim Eunseo, was able to see the manipulations for what they were. She was attempting to work with William to understand his psychopathy and how to interact properly with others when the system integration initiated.

Once the Tutorial started, William along with his care team spawned together, he pretended to work with the group but quickly started picking them off, one by one, and eventually wiped out his entire starting group. When he joined Richard's camp, he continued the same tactics, but Richard was wise to his behavior and used William to kill members Richard deemed undesirable.

William's predatory behavior exacerbated tensions with the opposing camp, Hayden's faction, but he framed the deaths as Hayden's doing, igniting a war between the two camps. Eager for more opportunities for bloodshed, William escalated by also killing Hayden's son then sending his severed head to Hayden. However, this provocation stoked the conflict in ways William hadn't anticipated, causing members of the two camps to attack on-sight, thwarting William's ability to ambush kill by pretending to be an innocent, lost teenager.

With kills getting harder to come by, he turned his attention to a smithing profession under the lead of Herrmann Schmidt, biding his time.

William eventually attempted to kill Casper, but Casper knew the truth about William's schemes. During their encounter, Casper confronted William about Lyra's death and berated William for being so emotionally stunted. Casper then used a ritual of the Risen to exit the tutorial. A confused William then encountered Jake who'd just returned from the challenge Dungeon. Unable to see Jake's levels, he tried to ambush the hunter but instead got poisoned and forced to flee.

When Caroline healed him, he told Richard about Jake. This inspired the idea to frame Jake as the instigator of the war between the camps. William missed the failed ambush of Jake where Richard killed Hayden. Richard returned and prepared his teams to wipe out the remainder of Hayden's camp. During this the smith Herrmann Schmidt called William aside and told the tragedy of his family before giving his life to make armor for William, making the teen swear to kill Richard to avenge the deaths of the smith's family who Richard had slaughtered. At the death of the smith, William was stunned to realize he actual felt sadness and anger at the loss of his friend. This motivated him to fulfill his promise.

William accompanied the camp to attack on Hayden's camp party. After Richard killed Desmond, William revealed his truly colors, killing first Caroline, the healer, and then massacred every camp fighter present, killing Richard last, but not before being severely wounded himself.

When Jacob traveled to the battle site to find out what happened, he found an unconscious William and Caroline's metal statue corpse. Clearly she was killed by William. But instead of killing William, Jacob heals him and leaves the battlefield to return to the camp survivors.

When William healed enough to get back on his feet, he heads towards Richard's camp to kill off rest of the survivors in his continued quest to be the sole survivor. Instead, he found Jacob and Betram surrounded by the bodies of the remaining survivors. Jacob spoke of fate and faith and not bothering to try to convince William to abandon his quest. William is confused but kills the pair any way. When Jacob's body dissolved into a pillar of light and floats away, William had no idea what to think. He decided to focus on finding Jake, the only other survivor.

Led to the hunter by an odd dream, William takes the opportunity to properly monologue and gloat. However, he unknowingly triggered Jake and was killed without even having the opportunity to muster any ability to counterattack.

After his death, Eversmile revived William using a Golden Leaf of Yggdrasil.

The revived William became disciple and trained under Eversmile. However, he continually has night terrors about dying at Jake's hands. Wanting to get rid of the nightmares, he sought out Ms. Kim, one of the doctors who treated him pre-integration for his antisocial behaviors. He saved Kim and her daughter from a violent assault. She agreed to help him in return to protect her and her daughter.

They later find Ms. Kim's friends Mary and Milas in a settlement. William helped them solve a monster problem. Later, when William claimed a Pylon, he appointed Milas as the City Lord.

Eventually, Ms. Kim attended the World Congress to learn more about Jake and his opinion of William. She spoke with Jake and asked him to not kill William on sight, which Jake hesitantly agrees to, provided William doesn't provoke him.

After Jake killed William in the Tutorial, The Malefic Viper explained the fate that had been divined for the tutorial. The divination was for Jake, Lina and Dennis to die at their first night on the Tutorial. William would go on to be the standout talent and eventually the sole survivor after he massacres everyone in the Tutorial, gaining Eversmile's blessing and earning the Primordial significant rewards with his blessing holder being the sole survivor of the tutorial.

All of this was derailed by Jake and his fate-defying Bloodline.

Following Eversmile's advice, William didn't attend any system events during E-, D-, or nearly the entirety of C-grade, which the Primordial claimed were a waste of time for someone like William. He instead spent time in Nevermore and doing various quests at his patron's behest. One such quest was learning more about Jake Thayne and what makes the Chosen tick.

Having gained levels higher than any human on the planet, William sneaked into Skyggen while Jake and Caleb are at the System Event. He used the opportunity to interview Jake's parents and Maja about Jake. Once Caleb returned from Treasure Hunts, he was informed of the intrusion and pursued William who didn't attempt to avoid capture, wanting to talk to Caleb as well. However, Caleb has heard of William from Jake and was wary. He could feel William's use of mental magic. He carefully answered William's questions and eventually the metal savant left. Caleb informed Jake of the intrusion on Jake's next visit.

Eventually, William found himself on the cusp of evolving to C-grade but was unable to complete his evolution quest which urged him to "Find [his] path]. William remained convinced that his traumatic death at Jake's hand remained the psychological thorn snarling his progress. Scared but determined, he sought out Jake and attempted to explain his problem.

Jake, having just fought off a planetary invasion, had little patience for his former antagonist. However, through a series of sharp questions, Jake realized that William was being massively hamstrung by Eversmile and points out as much to the karmic mage. William was initially hesitant to believe that Eversmile would intentionally harm him, but with the corroboration of the Fallen King and the irrefutable evidence of a counterfeit bloodline which had to be falsified by the Primordial, he began to listen. Eventually, William is convinced that Eversmile has been intentionally misleading him. As such William denounces his blessing, becoming a Heretic.

Taking Jake's advice about attending System Events, William attended the very next World Congress and quickly realized that all of his fearful thinking about Jake was gone now that he was in an environment that wholly prevented Divine interference. This cemented his belief that Eversmile had intentionally been manipulating William's emotions. But having renounced his blessing, William was free to focus on his Path and what he wanted out of life. As soon as he had that thought, he received a system notification that he had fulfilled his evolution quest and was ready to evolve to C-grade.

From there, William begins to participate in system events as much as he can. He goes to Nevermore for the years that are available at C-grade, returns to help with the Prima Guardian Event, helps Jake with recon information for his fight against Ell'Hakan, and helps protect Miranda and Haven during the attempted assassination by King Iludar. Having shown a measure of sincerity and trustworthiness, he is even picked as a member of Miranda's team for the Administrator Candidate rounds of the Seat of the Exalted Prima Event.

• It is heavily implied that William is struggling with mental health post-tutorial. Based on comments made by the Viper, whatever caused William's brained to be wired as anti-social literally would not have been possible had he born in the System. This is why Eversmile is so drawn to him. As a result, when William evolved, his brain chemistry was corrected. However, this means William is now inundated with emotions he has never had to deal with while trying to survive in a world wildly different from the one he was accustomed to. This may be demonstrated by his cold-blooded murder of his disable brother pre-system, his delight at having free reign to kill during the tutorial, and his later stance adopted from Ms. Kim that killing should be a carefully considered action and not the first response.