Ikki Kurogane

"Here, with my greatest weakness, I'll defeat your greatest strength!"

- Ikki Kurogane

Ikki Kurogane is the main protagonist of Chivalry of the Failed Knight. Despite hailing from a clan of well-respected Mage-Knights, Ikki is considered a failure amongst the members of the Kurogane clan as an F-rank and is known as the "Worst One". Ikki studies in Hagun Academy as a repeater, eventually winning the 62nd Seven Stars Sword Art Festival, making him the current Seven Stars Sword King. He also is participated in the tournament between Vermillion and Cradleland as a part of Team Vermillion.

Appearance
Ikki is a young man of average height with dark brown hair and brown eyes. Ikki is usually seen wearing the standard Hagun Academy male uniform. He's been noted to have a thin but well-built, toned body and a cute face that makes him popular with the girls. Sara Bloodlily described Ikki to have "beauty and kindness, yet with strength within his straight-backed, clean-cut figure and a robust musculature, honed and trained to unblemished perfection." These were the reasons why she wanted Ikki to be her nude model.

Personality
Ikki is a strong-willed and noble young man, with a caring personality; this is seen throughout the series as selflessly helps others. This holds true for those struggling to become better on their own, as he understands what a hard road it was. Ikki can also be very cold in battle and doesn't mind enjoying a heated battle with a strong opponent.

Ikki is shown to be quite calm in even the most arduous of the situation, as seen when he stayed calm the entire encounter with Kuraudo even brushing off the fact that he was hit with a bottle, trying to avoid the fight.

When it comes to dealing with women of his age and the whole academy in general Ikki is clumsy because he has no prior experience with them outside of respect towards a superior or as a knight. This is shown when he confronts Stella on that subject. Due to his years of being discriminated against for being an F-Rank, Ikki is not entirely used to his sudden rise in popularity and often doesn't know how to best deal with his many female fans.

Despite situations implying otherwise, he is not very perverted. He usually tries his hardest to show restraint and respect to the woman who act lecherously around him, such as Stella and Shizuku. He also chose not to have sex with Stella at the log cabin they were staying, even though she suggested it, knowing he needed her family's approval first.

Abilities
Desperado: Ikki is a Desperado, a being which has broken the chains of fate. As a Desperado, Ikki can increase his mana capacity which should be impossible for normal Blazers. Ikki has shown being capable of influencing fate as other Blazers, allowing him to freeze others completely in place with just intimidation.

Doubling Physical Powers: Ikki's ability as a Blazer. He can double his physical strength. Even without boosting his physical attributes, a regular Blazer could gain far more force or mobility by applying magic, even up to 5 or 6 times, this ability is considered useless and fitting of his name as the Worst Knight. However, when Ikki uses his superhuman body control to forcibly ignore his survival instincts and strengthens this ability, this becomes the Noble Art, Ittou Shura.

Immense Strength: Due to his extremely rigorous physical training regimen, Ikki is exceptionally strong in prime physical condition. The force he applies in his swordsmanship allows him to counter the most powerful attacks from the strongest Blazers with minimal effort. Because Ikki can ignore the survival instincts that prevent people from drawing out their actual full strength, he can draw out huge strength to where he could beat someone of huge stature in arm-wrestling.

Immense Speed: Due to his daily 20 kilometer runs, Ikki is remarkably fast and has sharper reflects than most people. He can avoid high speed attacks from powerful Blazers without any wasted movements. After copying Edelweiss's swordsmanship, Ikki became able to move so fast that most people can't even see him.

Immense Stamina: Due to his continuous training, Ikki has incredible amounts of stamina above that of most people. Even when heavily injured, Ikki is able to keep fighting efficiently enough to win. This also allowed him to survive several weeks of drugging, poisoned foods, and preliminary matches while being imprisoned.

High Intelligence: Ikki is highly knowledgeable and quick to pick on details even in the heat of battle. He has often proven to know a lot about the workings and strong points of the human body and brain. With this knowledge, he was able to fix Ayase Ayatsuji's stance so she could use the Ayatsuji swordsmanship better with her female body. Ikki has shown to be able to understand and explain the details behind most people's fighting styles, abilities, and strengths after just seeing them once. For example, that Kurashiki reflexive sensitivity was lower than 0.05 seconds and giving a detailed answer about how Trackless Step work. He can figure out even the most mysterious Blazer abilities after just seeing them once using whatever hints he has, even rare causation manipulation abilities. In battles, Ikki usually tries to outsmart his opponents because he understands he always at a natural disadvantage. A prime example of Ikkis' cunning was how he was able to defeat the world 4th rank knight Iris Ascarid without being in any danger.

Master Swordsmanship: Ikki is extremely masterful in swordsmanship due to his continuous training in that field to make up for his lack of magic powers. His skills were self-taught through sheer observation by analyzing the techniques of other swordmasters such as Kaito Ayatsuji. Ikki could fight on an equal level with the most powerful Blazer relying solely on his sword skills. His swordsmanship has been praised by legendary Mage-Knights such as Torajirou Nangou, the God of War, and Edelweiss, the strongest swordsman in the world. The former admitted that Ikkis' swordsmanship was greater than his old rival Ryoma Kurogane. Edelweiss even acknowledge that Ikki has the potential to become a worthy rival for her after he not only survived fighting against her while she was serious but even manages to land a hit on her despite his young age. The gap in their skills has lessened enough for Edelweiss to acknowledge it and say she can't teach Ikki much in swordplay.
 * Seven Secret Swords: The seven original sword techniques that Ikki created himself.
 * Ten'i Muhou (天衣無縫, Heaven-Clad Null Shroud): The ultimate move of the Ayatsuji Itto-ryu style of swordsmanship, the user counters the opponent's attack with minimal movement. Ikki used an imperfect version of this move on Kuraudo.
 * Trackless Step (抜き足, Nukiashi): This technique combines the user's breath control and footwork at the same time to decrease the distance from the user and the target in an instant. This technique actually does not accelerate the user's movements, but by making one's movement difficult to perceive as dangerous and seeping into the opponent's rhythm, the opponent becomes unable to react until too late. After witnessing it multiple times, Ikki is able to apply the same concept on a crowd of civilians looking for him and reproduce this technique to walk directly through them completely undetected.
 * Edelweiss' Swordplay: After his initial encounter with Edelweiss through the use of his Blade Steal, he was able to utilize her swordsmanship at the last moment before he passed out. Due to the nature of Edelweiss' swordplay, it boosted his speed to where the former Seven Star Sword King, Yudai Moroboshi couldn't even react though he heard the attacks and sense Ikki. Ikki can also use Edelweiss' technique, for other purposes then swordsmanship, such as restarting his heart after it stopped. It was said by Edelweiss herself, that Ikki has begun to make her swordplay his own, adapting it to fit him.
 * Tsunoou/Harmonic Bullet: A unison attack by Ikki and Stella, where Ikki attacks with his first secret sword, Saigeki, while Stella attacks using a powerful slash. It was named Tsunoou by Ikki and Harmonic Bullet by Stella.
 * Amatsu Raikou: This is an evolved form of Amatsukaze, a secret technique among the Kyokujitsu Isshin-ryu of the Kurogane Family that delivers a continuous 108 slashes that is almost like lightning striking.

Master Hand-to-hand combat: Ikki is very adept in various styles of martial arts. He has proven he can easily deal with 5 unskilled Blazers wielding their Devices without using his own Device while holding back enough to not hurt them. Ikki is also very skilled in ukemi, the art of receiving blows and strikes, dispersing the force of powerful attacks through his body, and surviving deadly blows.
 * Yagyuu no Mutoudori (柳生の無刀取り, Yagyuu's Weaponless Catch): Ikki uses the power of his fingers and wrist movement to catch the opponents weapon and snatch it away. Though Ikki used this technique while also using Ittou Shura, making it unclear how well he can use the technique without it.

Expert Weapon Specialist: Ikki is skilled in using kodachi techniques, spear work, and even archery. Enough that he been able to teach these skills to others. Stella said the reason why Ikki learned so many different fighting styles was to help him better make up for lack of magic abilities.

Expert Marksmanship: Ikki has incredible skills in throwing projectiles with great accuracy. During his fight with Manabe, he quickly flicked an eraser which bounced off the ceiling and got wedged in between his gun's hammer and its percussion cap, disabling the large caliber revolver Device efficiently.

Insight: As a result of being neglected over the years, Ikki has mastered the skills to see through his opponent's techniques simply by observing. Ikki can also read his opponent's next move simply through the opponent's muscle movement. Ikki's insight has even allowed him to properly sense how dangerous someone really is on the first meeting. A good example is when he felt that Amane Shinomiya was more dangerous than he appeared, something few others notice.

Perfect Vision : Ikki is able to see through his opponent moves by fully grasping their fighting style using his incredible insight to fully understand their personality and tendencies. Through this, he is able to figure out their thought processes and as a result, he can predict their movements and attacks in advance. It's as though he can see everything about the person in question.
 * Blade Steal : Derived from his Perfect Vision, he uses his great insight to analyze and steal his opponent's techniques and further improve it through his swordsmanship. According to Ikki, he can grasp most sword styles with only a minute of exchanges. Additionally, his Imitation Sword Technique is not limited to the techniques his opponent can immediately use. Once he understands a sword style enough to grasp its deepest secrets, he can reproduce its most advanced techniques even if he never saw it before, as shown when he learns Kaito Ayatsuji's technique by observing Ayase Ayatsuji's training.

Mana Control: After his training with Edelweiss, Ikki was able to greatly improve the control of his mana. Ikki was able to use the basic mana defense used by Blazers to such a degree as to be capable of even blocking a strike from Edelweiss. Having better control of his mana can improve his Ittou Shura and the backlash from using Ittou Rasetsu is now less severe than before.

Complete Body Control: Ikki can control his body at will as a result of his training. He can perform superhuman feats due to his rigorous body control, such as dashing forward while his entire body nearly touching the ground and can turn off his senses such as sight and hearing to focus on his other senses. Ikki has shown that he can transfer the acuity of his color sense in his vision to his motion perception to better read the movements of his opponents. After learning Edelweiss's technique, he hones his control even further, to the point of manually moving muscles inside his heart to make it beat after it's been stopped by Amane. In the final match of the Seven Star festival, Ikki is able to even see every strand of Stella's hair and hear the sound of his own bloodstream. Not only that, he is able to understand every muscle inside his body and even able to count the dust on his skin.

Device
Intetsu (陰鉄, Shadow Iron): Ikki's Device takes the form of a black Katana. In the anime, it is called forth by Ikki by using the command phrase "Come to me" and striking his left palm with his right fist and pulling out the sword as if it came out of his left hand.
 * Ittou Shura (一刀修羅, Single-Bladed Shura): Ikki's noble art and strongest technique. By forcibly ignoring his survival instincts with his superhuman body control, Ikki is able to magnify his blazer ability "Doubling Physical Powers" from double to several dozen times, allowing him to gain tremendous power but can only maintain it for a minute.
 * Ittou Rasetsu (一刀羅刹, Single-Bladed Rakshasa): An improved version of the Ittou Shura. It increases the abilities of the user by hundreds-fold but it can only be used for one swing only. Also, the burden to the body is immense as Ikki had to stay in bed for a week when he first used it. But after improving his mana control, he can still fight for few minutes after using this.

Trivia

 * "Ikki" (一輝) is combined with the kanji for "one" and "twinkle".
 * Ikki does not like sweet foods.
 * Ikki is not good with technology, and, as a result, did not realize how popular he became after his mock battle with Stella, which was shared all over the Internet.