Ceruleo Mondlicht

"Fighting can only remind me of that fateful day. So if I can resolve it without violence, I will... even if I know how to defend myself."

- Willard's trademark quote.

Willard Mondlicht is a former student of Beacon Academy, former student of Atlas Academy, and the eldest son of the Mondlicht family. However, he never took his Huntsman's License. His weapon of choice is a Dust Action Dual Guns (DADG) named Alexandrite.

Willard enrolled in Beacon against the wishes of his mother to become a Huntsman, considering it to be the only way for him to actually get stronger. However, due to the passing of his father, he was transferred back to Atlas where he finished his studies in Atlas Academy. While having a Huntsman license, Willard is rarely seen fighting.

Appearance
Willard isn't really tall, hence why he was called as "Shorty" by many of Beacon's students. He has a classy, yet shy posture which does let his kindness goes as transparent, but also shows his reluctancy towards violence. He has a pale white complexion, white hair, blue eyes and is rather known for having a baby skin. Outside of the Beacon and Atlas uniform, he wears an outfit designed by his mother, composed of a black overall tailed shirt and jeans, a blue vest and a white coat with his symbol imprinted right on its back. has a decorative belt and he wears black boots with blue jewels on them. He also wears a jeweled pendant on his neck and an earring on his left ear. Willard admits he isn't fond of his extravagant outfil, but he uses it because it was something his mother made to him.

Personality
''A kindhearted individual known for being very altruistic. People enjoy having Willard around, as he is very earnest, honest and proactive. However, he has an immense inferiority complex and detests violence, which makes him seem like a weakling to others.''

Willard is known to be a kind young man that always helps people whenever possible. While this leads to have people abusing of his kindhearted nature, he doesn't complain about it because they (mostly) assume their actions and apologize to him, which led to a cycle of friendly relations in his life. This also gave Willard a close relationship to his teachers, as he soon became friends to even some of them.

However, Willard doesn't consider himself excellent at anything. In fact, he grew with an inferiority complex which leads himself to believe that he is insufficient or weak. Due to being son of one of Atlas' greatest Huntsmen, he works hard to achieve the levels of excellence his father had throughout his life, not recognizing that he might have different passions or limits compared to someone like Walter.

Willard also isn't fond of fighting and detests violence. If he can resolve the situation with talking and diplomacy, he shall do it instead of using brute force. He'll only use fighting first if he's against a Grimm or in a situation where conversation is basically impossible.

Another thing that is pretty defining about Willard is his love for experiments, especially when it involves Dust. Fellow students and teachers from both schools always comment about how skillful he is about Dust in general and with alchemy was well. This could be an influence of his Semblance, but it's highly more associated with the fact that he's intelligent.

History
Willard is the eldest son of Tier Mondlicht, a retired Huntsman known as "The Black Bullet", and Lavannda Mondlicht, a famous fashonista and clothing designer. He was born and lived few years in Mantle, but the growing success of both his parents, they departed to Atlas and became another of its noble families. Although they had moved to the upper land, the Mondlicht were still very present in Mantle, considering the three of them were from the poverty before rising to noblehood. Willard had friends in Mantle, ones that he met in the hunting schools not soon after. His childhood was rather calm and he played around with no problems.

However, this soon changed when Willard became 10 years old. At a party that was organized to commemorate the birth of his sister, Rosalina Mondlicht, he heard a conversation between his father and other Huntsmen of Atlas. They talked about how each of the sons would follow a route and how they expected Willard to become an excellent successor of Tier's legacy, as the eldest son. That did remember him how there was no interest of his part on becoming a Huntsmen, as he felt that there existed no obligation for him to become one. Willard, however, got worried of sullying what his parents took years to build. He talked to his father in the same night about becoming a Huntsman, but did admit he wanted to follow a different path for himself. Tier guided him to be whoever he wanted to be, as becoming a Huntsman would mean direct contact with violence and fighting, something Lavennda taught Willard to stay away from. Feeling reassured, he decided to not become a Huntsman and to be a Dust alchemist. He dwelled on Dust self-study while keeping his old life intact.

One day, as the Mondlicht visited Mantle once more, Willard reunited with his friends as they started to share they dreams. While everyone shared the ambition to become a Huntsman, he said his dream was to become a Dust alchemist, where he didn't need to use violence and brute force. While most of the group didn't find his dream strange, some of them began to say that he's wasting away the talent he inherited from his father, calling him weak-willed and a coward. They all ended into an argument and it bothered some of the homeless people right next to them. As they looked at Willard, they immediately recognized him as a noble of Atlas and ran towards him at a fit of natural anger between both lands. Some of the kids tried to fight back, but they all ended up injured. Tier appeared and contained the fight, but his son and his friends were already injured, considering he was their target and they tried to protect him.

When Willard recovered from the wounds, he asked his father and his mother about the situation with his friends. All of them were actuallyfine, but one of them did not resist and died. That gave Willard a big shock and he kept blaming himself for being weak and unable to defend his friends from danger, even though he was son of a famed Huntsman. No matter how much Tier and Lavanda tried to convince him otherwise, he would keep putting himself as the responsible for their wounds. He lost contact with all of them and never managed to apologize for the events, through calls or meeting. After the incident, Willard's inferiority complex rose to light and he began to charge himself of improving in everything. He desperately tried everything to become stronger and smarter, but wasn't able to improving, growing himself lonelier as time began to pass.

As a way to keep his son in contact with the outside world, once he completed the required age, Tier sent Willard to Beacon in order to recover his sanity by having him interact with other people. He went along, reluctant, but tried his best to be friends with everyone else. As time passed, Willard managed to recover his sanity, although his complex never came to pass. Teachers and fellow students all noticed his skillfullness, especially at theorical classes, but he never thought that was sufficient.

Willard's time at Beacon wasn't durable, though. Just as he was getting used to it, teachers gave him the news of Tier's passing. He fell in battle, trying to contain an invasion of Grimms in Mantle, as he sacrificed himself to save soldiers of Atlas' army. Considering he had to mourn the death of his father, he communicated Lavanda of his decision to transfer himself from Beacon to Atlas Academy. With no problems on all sides, the transfer was a success and Willard finished his Huntsman studies in Atlas. However, by his own decision, he didn't take the License exam, as he had promised his father that we could walk his own way.

Powers and Abilities
In the few moments Willard could give effort to train his combat skills, he didn't exactly was superb at it. His physical combat lacks strength, but he's able to defend himself well if necessary. Considering the weaponry he chose, his style of fighting involves gun kata, a sophisticated close-quarters combination of martial arts and firearms. However, he'll opt to be a ranged fighter more than ever, rarely heading to the front lines unreasonably.

His knowledge of Dust allows him to create secondary weaponry using the materials he has and even to infuse weapons with it for a short period of time, giving them additional effects depending on the likability between the selected Dust and weaponry.

However, Willard's Aura is different. It has a strong effect on healing his wounds and even to defend him against some attacks, it's stronger against Dust-related attacks, but it has one of the weakest durability when he suffers physical damage and it can be easily depleted if he's not careful. Strong fighters can easily deplete his Aura and even damage him directly depending on the hit's power.

Semblance
The most notable ability from Willard is his Semblance, Alchemist Code. With it, he can quickly identify the presence, location and quantity of Dust in area, as well as being able to quickly identify it. He can also use Dust to effects that are notably unknown to people, such as directly infusing weapons with it. He can also fuse Dust directly and combine them in the act, creating varied combinations in and out of battle.

Willard can also use Dust to slightly increase his' or someone's natural human abilites, making him a good buffer. The buff equalizes to a 5%~20% and a time limit of 5~20 seconds, depending on the amount of Dust used. However, each time that he uses this particular ability, it'll have a debuff in another ability (e.g., using fire Dust to increase strength, but it will decrease defense greatly). It's always a risky gamble, which Willard always considers before using as he has the knowledge to know the effects of using this ability.

Weapon
Willard's weapon of choice is a Dust Action Dual Guns (DADG) called Alexandrite. Each of the guns can use one Dust type barrel at a time and any mix between then is only possible if Willard uses his Semblance while attacking. He can also opt to use normal bullet barrels in Alexandrite.

The Dust carried in his barrels can also be used outside of Alexandrite, either in rawform or in conjunction with his Semblance. If not with this option of usage, he's mostly using them as a movement booster.

Trivia

 * WIllard's name derives from a Germanic personal name composed of the elements wil ‘will’, ‘desire’ + hard ‘hardy’, ‘brave’, ‘strong’. It is a direct referrence to the American art critic S. S. Van Dine, whose real name is Willard Huntington Wright.
 * CNR: while his name has no direction to colors, his surname means "moonlight" in French, which directly points to white, Willard's main color.
 * Willard makes a partial allusion to Henry Jekyll from the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as he is kindhearted and needs to create potions (Dust infusion) to become a sort of "monster" (in his case, growing stronger).
 * Willard's design is a recolor from Ain (Elsword) in his Erbluhen Emotion Transcendence class, All credits are given to Hwansang, the original artist of the image.
 * Alexandrite's design is a recolor from Granblue Fantasy's Albedo Blaster weapon. All credits are given to Hideo Minaba, original artist of the image.