Arifa

Arifa is a Faun (a horned race) with braided red hair, orange eyes, and black horns half-hidden in her hair, described as a tall, spirited, buxom beauty in her late twenties or thirties who habitually wears bare-shouldered, low-cut tops and worn, torn trousers. She owns and runs an antique shop in the back alleys of Hydrangea, which is really more of a recycle/pawn shop than a genuine antiquarian's. The shop is her declared main trade but barely scrapes by, so her side job as an explorer is far more prominent, to the point most people assume the antique shop is the hobby. She refers to herself with the rough masculine pronouns 'atai'/'Oi', matching her bold, tomboyish, teasing manner.

She is a veteran Class III (第Ⅲ級) explorer, famous around the district as a 'joketsu' — a female powerhouse. Her Relic is Appraisal (【鑑定】), which lets her read the condition and approximate rarity of objects (though not living things), and she also wields Fire (【火】) and Flurry/Combo Strike (【乱撃】) affinities for combat. In the story she serves as the recurring merchant and mentor figure to the protagonist Wof: he brings her the salvage he pulls from the Junkyard, and despite her brash exterior her appraisals are careful and honest. It is Arifa who identifies one of Wof's rings as a dangerous 'Oreparts,' a discovery that sets much of the early plot in motion.

Her most important relationship is with her younger brother Agaro, the 'Annihilation Sword' (【滅剣】) explorer who eventually reaches Class I; she is the one person in the world he fears and cannot defy, and being the sister of such a famous, foolish-but-great hero embarrasses her a little. She gave Wof a red knife that had been sleeping in the back of her shop — the blade Agaro favored back in his Class IV days. Toward Wof she is protective and maternal, praising him as a hardworking, kind boy while brushing off the notion of him as anything more, and she quietly worries about his safety and finances. Warm, worldly, and slightly bawdy, Arifa functions as one of Wof's earliest allies and a fixed anchor in the town's explorer community.