Shadow Garden

origins of Shadow Garden dates back to the boyhood of Cid Kagenou, a reincarnated boy determined to fulfill a dream of becoming a shadow broker. To accomplish this, Cid routinely snuck out of his home to fight bandits. During one such outing, he discovered a rotting but surprisingly alive body. It was heavily mutated by the effects of magic overlord—one of the possessed. He performed multiple experiments on the body and accidentally reversed the effects after a month's work. Under the rotting flesh was a young elf girl.[1]

Cid named the elf Alpha and officially made her a shadow broker subordinate. Her job was to prevent the resurrection of Diablos. Initially confused by the mission, Cid explained that Alpha was a descendant of the Three Heroes who defeated the demon Diabolos. After the demon’s death, a curse plagued all future descendants. He claimed that an organization called The Cult of Diablos was responsible for not only hiding the cure, but they made the possessed ostracized by society. Alpha’s acceptance of the mission signaled the founding of the organization Shadow Garden.[1] The two subsequently recruited six more possessed girls. He named them the Seven Shadows. Overtime, they became Cid's friends and trusted subordinates.[3][4][5]

The Seven Shadows initially spent their time training and learning under their leader. The studied subjects such as swordsmanship and martial arts. Furthermore, Cid's pontificating about the technological, economic, art, and literature advances in his previous life inspired them to explore those concepts. Utilizing this knowledge, some of the girls created personas that garnered acclaim and prestige.[6][7][8] It brought new connections and resources that secretly transformed Shadow Garden into an influential organization.[3]

Shadow Garden is an extremely formidable organization with power and influence equivalent to the Cult of Diablos. By integrating "Shadow Wisdom", Shadow Garden was able to expand the organization's influence provide the necessary resources and recruit many members into their ranks. From their hard work efforts which resulted in developing the organization for two years, Shadow Garden possesses a well-trained army with skilled abilities, claimed the long-lost ancient capital Alexandria as their permanent headquarters, and has an information network of sources using public connections everywhere. In addition, they also have a considerable number of resources and wealth thanks to their public front, the Mitsugoshi Company.

Moreover, Shadow Garden even seems to have a vast information network as the organization has operative agents who specialize in espionage, infiltration, and reconnaissance. The operative agents used their intelligence-gathering capabilities to infiltrate circles of influence and gather information, even Shadow Garden built a wide network of informants using many influential contacts through their public identities which gave them access to archives containing important information.

Shadow Garden was initially established with only seven members and their strength had been trained directly by Shadow who is the organization's founder managing to take down the strongest members of the Cult, along with several of their important facilities, and several of the oldest and strongest members, of the "Knights of Rounds", along with their candidates, in just 3 years.

After the Seven Shadows decide to leave their master in order to expand the organization, Shadow Garden has grown to power with their hidden headquarters Alexandria with the protection of the Mist Dragon making their base look like a natural fortress. The Mitsugoshi Company works as an important fundraising base that creates innovative products which are based on "Shadow Wisdom" to fund and administer their operations missions, also their organization membership has now grown to over 600 members in just 2 years and is still increasing.

Shadow Garden's members have shown far greater power and skill compared to the Cult of Diablos and other nation forces, despite being a relatively new organization. This is a combination of the fact that all of the Shadow Garden's members are young women who were cured of possession, which in turn increased their magical power by manifesting it to further augment their strength and being given far superior training by Shadow, and later the Seven Shadows for newer members. Shadow Garden is sovereignly led by Shadow himself as a founder and Alpha as a second-in-command who oversees all Shadow Garden operations and activities, she has direct authority over almost everyone within the organization, as well as leading the Seven Shadows who are Shadow's special personal bodyguards. The Seven Shadows hold the greatest authority to exert command over the organization with their invincible supernatural powers in charge of their respective field with Numbers as the Numbers's highest ranking members, served as their direct subordinates due to their exemplary fighting

Prowess and talent skills. Beneath these elite positions, there are the Numbers who are divided into members to running divisions that each specialize in a certain aspect of missions based on their most skilled capabilities.

Cid holds absolute authority as the ruler and leader of the Shadow Garden. He has complete control over Shadow Garden and all the subsidiaries and affiliates under its umbrella. This grants him the power to make decisions that supersede those of any other member, rendering their commands ineffective. Despite believing that the Shadow Garden consists solely of the seven shadows pursuing their own dreams, Cid remains unaware of the true extent of the organization. It has evolved into a vast global entity, created by chance or circumstance.

While Alpha effectively leads the organization, Cid possesses the ability to make decisions that all members must blindly follow, overriding any other directives. A prime example is when Cid whimsically ordered Delta to hunt Juggernaut, rendering the current mission assigned by Alpha ineffective during the Major Corporate Alliance conflict. When Alpha discovers Cid's betrayal and his intent to destroy the Mitsugoshi Company and the Shadow Garden, she chooses to respect his wishes. Determined to bring about his desired outcome, she and the other members of the Shadow Garden are willing to do anything to ensure its downfall.

Seven Shadows The Seven Shadows (七陰しちかげ, Shichikage?) are the first seven original members recruited and granted power directly by Shadow himself, who having treated demonic possession symptoms in each girl which now will become Shadow's most loyal direct confidants also the seven

Highest chief executives within Shadow Garden's authority. They spent three years with Shadow studying and receiving all of his martial arts and magic training, so it can be said that they are each Shadow's childhood friends and disciples. The extensive combat training possessed by the Seven Shadows and the valuable knowledge imparted from Shadow's guidance have solidified their positional role in Shadow Garden's hierarchal structure as the organization's leading higher-ups become unshakable. As Shadow's earliest subordinates, Seven Shadows stand in a league of their own within Shadow Garden being the most powerful and/or skilled with exceptional abilities. Part of that blessing is due to Shadow, who bestowed upon them part of his own magical energy. The other part is his direct teachings in swordsmanship, martial arts, warfare, and other practices which contribute to the covert organization. Each of them mastered their respective fields be it in combat, espionage, science, or economics.

Seven Shadows are considered Shadow Garden's elite members who serve to protect Shadow or simply accompany him in battle each of their abilities is extremely powerful & formidable because they have been fervently trained hard thanks to Shadow's training under his tutelage. Due to their potential prowess, Seven Shadows' abnormal strength is unbelievably frightening as they are on a completely different level from the rest of the regular members which makes them the foundational pillars in the organization and Seven Shadows (except for Delta possibly due to her nature) have the highest authority in holding the leadership to govern Shadow Garden, overruled only by Shadow himself.

Interestingly, the Seven Shadows' capabilities are stupendous with their power far exceeding all

The other members possessed different talents and fighting styles to the point where they outperformed the strongest knights and warriors in all countries in the world, especially the Cult's most powerful members,s, including from Named Children. In fact, the overall strength and skills of the Seven Shadows have already surpassed those of the Knights of Rounds members that have been revealed thus far. Each of Seven Shadows' combat abilities cannot be measured and compared when dealing with members of the Rounds who have faced them before, such as Nelson and Mordred, especially in the special Cult facility called Sanctuary where they can still fight even though their magic has been absorbed.

With their immense and remarkable strength, Seven Shadows are a mighty force to be reckoned with, and even everyone in the world trembles in fear with their extraordinary abilities and greatly overshadows any opponents they faced. From Rose Oriana's estimation when she felt a truly overwhelming amount of magic from Alpha herself who is the leader of the Seven Shadows and Shadow's right-hand woman, as well as Shadow Garden's Second-in-Command alone could cause Rose's spine to shiver and noted that the Seven Shadows' enormous natural power could be detrimental, even incurring massive losses to a nation if they tried to do so, to the point where the nation itself will have to expend considerable amount of resources just to subdue one of them.[9]

Due to their significant prowess and tremendous magical energy capacity, the Seven Shadows' capabilities were impressively outstanding, and their astonishing reputation is widely feared by the whole world, even the Cult of Diablos itself became extremely fearful of their true caliber of monstrous power on sheer magnitude they possess. Alexia Midgar herself said that each of them has great power that is equal to or even greater than Iris Midgar, who is considered the strongest warrior in the world, and even Aurora who was known

as the strongest witch in her time could become very nervous after seeing Zeta in person for the first time which shocked her when she felt her dreaded presence, to the point that Aurora had to warn Claire Kagenou to be vigilant of her and careful to approach her cautiously.

However, despite all that, their ranking as the Seven Shadows is based on their sequential position which had already become a permanent title at the time they orderly joined Shadow Garden even though each of them has a different level of capability in terms of physical strength and amazing skill they possessed. Apparently, at this time, there are only two members other than the Seven Shadows who received the privilege of being granted power directly from Shadow himself, considered to be the highest honor for the organization: Victoria and Rose Oriana.

According to Epsilon, they planned to make a second "Seven Shadows" with powers on par with the original first Seven and so far, Victoria is the only known candidate. While Rose qualified by having received her power from Shadow himself, she publicly became the new Queen of the Oriana Kingdom and wouldn't be considered due to a conflict of responsibilities.

Founder Shadow (Cid Kagenou) (No.00): Leader; "figurehead". Shadow is the founder, main leader, figurehead with absolute authority, and ideological 'inspiration' of Shadow Garden. Here, the seven shadows and all the members under them revere and hail him as the ultimate ruler and mastermind.

Seven Shadows The Seven Shadows are the original seven members of Shadow Garden, recruited and trained directly by Shadow himself after being named with the Greek letters from Alpha (Α/α) to Eta (Η/η). They are highly regarded within Shadow Garden by having their own magnificent capabilities and are a collegial body which makes them the general overseers who manage different facets of the organization.

[Α] Alpha (No. 01): Director of Shadow Garden; Second-in-Command. [Β] Beta (No. 02): Head of mission logistics; Operations Coordinator. [Γ] Gamma (No. 03): Head of Finance and Administration; Mitsugoshi Company Founding President. [Δ] Delta (Sara) (No. 04): Head of Main fighting force; Leading the One-Woman Army. [Ε] Epsilon (No. 05): Head of Espionage and Infiltration; Special Intelligence Spymaster. [Ζ] Zeta (Lilim) (No. 06): Head of Exploration and Reconnaissance; Secret sub-branch Division Leader. [Η] Eta (No. 07): Head of Research and Development; Chief Engineer.

Numbers The Numbers are those whose abilities were recognized by the Seven Shadows and who have been granted a Greek letter like them. Corresponding to the Greek alphabet, their ranks start at [Θ] theta and end at [Ω] omega.

[Ⲓ] Iota (No. 9): Mentioned by Gamma to Eta after they rescued Chi (Master of Garden). [Λ] Lambda (Zinaida) (No. 11): Shadow Garden's drill instructor. [Μ] Mu (No. 12): [Ν] Nu (Nicoletta Marquez) (No. 13): Gamma's personal aid and bodyguard. [Π] Pi (No. 16): [Σ] Sigma (No. 18): Mentioned by Beta to Alpha when Cid had already registered at the Academy (Master of Garden) [Χ] Chi (Karen von Herzog) (No. 22): A Cult of Diablos' defector as Named First Children and former member of the Velgalta's Seven Blades. [Ω] Omega (Olga) (No. 24):

Members Nameless infantry who has above average capabilities with fierce training to become the best warriors. However, they do have earn the right to challenge the "Numbers" to obtain their position by defeating a gatekeeper. Their enumeration starts from 25 and continues onward, with the latest mentioned number recently being 712.

89: High-ranking two-digit number; Gatekeeper. 559 (Victoria): High-ranking three-digit number; member of Zeta's secret branch. 664 (Nami): Queen Rose's bodyguard. 665: Queen Rose's bodyguard. 666 (Rose Oriana): Queen of Oriana Kingdom. 711 (Millia): 712 (Akane Nishino):