⸝⸝ lucio (

Lucio is a tall young man, with violet eyes and light gray hair split neatly to reveal his face, tied into a long ponytail that reaches his waist. He wears a Thumb uniform consisting of a rose-red vest, trousers, and a neatly buttoned ivory shirt fastened with a dark red tie, with his sleeves rolled up past his forearms. His hands are covered by rose-red gloves of the same color as his vest and trousers. His vest is fastened by two suspenders which connect to a belt, with a golden pin with one arrow pointing rightwards on his left breast. He carries two golden swords contained in wine-red scabbards, with gilded hilts and tips on the scabbards - one longsword with a striped pattern on his back, the other smaller with a spiral pattern at his left hip.

Quiet and steadfast, Lucio carries an air of professionalism unlike his mentor. Even in the face of immense adversity and scolding, he remains calm and collected, ready to continue his efforts even while confronted by the possibility of loss. Given his role as a possible tutor, he is expected to be prim, proper, and dutiful. Though he frequently criticizes his opponents' forms in combat, his words are not as harsh as his master's, as he attempts to use them as a point of growth rather than disappointment. Despite Valencina's abuse of Lucio, he feels permanently indebted to her for feeding and sheltering him, and is not willing to admit to her cruelness when asked. However, his combat passives demonstrate that he actually burns with resentment towards her, and has long been aware of her depravity, considering it his responsibility to eventually take her life.

PRIOR At one point in his life, Valencina rescued Lucio from the Backstreets, giving him food and a home while he was a nobody with little future.[1][2] He became Valencina's Apprentice, and the woman trained him in the Palermitan Style, intending to use him as a "textbook" to use for Yoshihide, to refresh her training upon her return to the House of Spiders. Like nearly all the Apprentices, Lucio was not formally a member of the Thumb, although he was expected by Valencina to conform to the Finger's rules of propriety and respect towards one's betters.[3] Similarly to her treatment of Yoshihide, Valencina was extremely abusive towards Lucio, routinely beating and berating him, as well as expecting complete and full obedience from him. As Lucio felt indebted to her for having rescued him from his fate, he bore the abuse silently, although in time he grew to resent his master, and repeatedly considered ending her life in her sleep. In one event, Kira recognized his hostility and asked if he was going to kill Valencina, although Lucio outright denied this and rejected Kira's advice. In preparation for Yoshihide's return to the House of Spiders, Lucio was instructed by Valencina to obtain information regarding Limbus Company and the people Yoshihide had been associating with, with him conducting research both on the company and on notable members such as Vergilius.[4][5] Lucio would eventually make up his mind to kill Valencina after the House of Spiders completed this mission.

"My master was generous enough to take me, a vagrant with nothing to my name, under her wing. She fed me warm food and put a roof over my head. I would've ended up in a corpse pile somewhere in the Backstreets without her help."

VALENCINA Valencina is a tall, older woman with sea green eyes and long, bushy dirty-blonde hair that covers her right eye. She wears a Thumb uniform consisting of a rose-red jacket, trousers, wide brimmed hat and untied ribbon over an ivory shirt with the top buttons undone. The right lapel of her jacket has a golden pin with one arrow pointing rightwards. She is seen smoking a cigar, and has black gloves with light palms.

While not visible in her sprites, she is said to have the Relic "the Eye of Odin" in place of her right eye, a mechanical eye with a sea green iris and a segmented sclera.[2] As Ryōshū damaged the Relic using Arayashiki, the wound reopens when Valencina is in its presence, at one point causing a cascade of blood to cover her face. Her death sprite suggests she wears a black eyepatch over it, which has a golden cross printed on the front.

She carries two swords, one being a rapier with a revolver barrel at its guard kept in a red sheath, and the other, a curved sword with yellow ribbons on its grip kept in an orange sheath. Both have golden, ribbed blades.

Valencina is an arrogant, booze-loving woman with a violent, foul-mouthed personality. She has an excessively short temper, taking to physical abuse whenever she feels frustrated regardless of if she lacks excuses to justify the behavior. While she aims to benefit greatly off the cultivation of Ryōshū's abilities, Valencina regards the woman with no shortage of disrespect and contempt, and has no qualms about treating the others around her with the same discourtesy. Despite her untimely discharge, Valencina continues to carry traits typical of the Thumb, demanding respect from those she views as her inferiors and taking to injury as the first response to failure. By striking down, Valencina affirms her perceived status as someone deserving of more than the stagnation of the House of Spiders.

The Nursefather remains extremely bitter about her expulsion from her home Syndicate and subsequent fall from grace, convinced that she can get herself reinstated with an impressive enough accomplishment despite repeated failures. This trait—alongside her unwillingness to properly question the House of Spider's true intentions—characterize Valencina as somewhat naive, comfortable with living foolishly so long as she has subordinates to take her anger out on. Valencina is also excessively smug and self-assured in her combat abilities, though she has a long list of war successes that substantiate this confidence. She also demonstrates a large amount of dedication to what she puts her mind to and enough maturity to complete important tasks with little complaint.

In rare moments of lucidity, Valencina is capable of demonstrating fairness and passivity. Although her disagreeable attitude remains, she will at times admit to facts that damage her pride or hold herself back from extreme cruelty, particularly when she's in a good mood. Ryōshū notes seeing the most of this from the woman during her era as a Smoke War soldier, where Valencina was putting so much of herself into the battle that she temporarily dropped her reliance on alcohol and abuse. However, Valencina fell back into all of her unfavorable habits the moment she was denied the right to reenter the Thumb, proving herself unwilling to commit to her betterment. While her later decision to house Lucio was commendable, Lucio's resulting struggle to let his hate outweigh his gratitude may have been intentional manipulation on Valencina's part. Though Valencina seems to have been an accomplished woman who suffered greatly from the Thumb's rejection and her inability to live a satisfying life in the House of Spiders, the daughter she spent decades with ultimately remembers the Thumb Nursefather as her abuser first and foremost

In her younger years, Valencina was a devout member of the Thumb's Famiglia Bognatelli. This Famiglia was where the Palermitan style of swordplay originated, which Valencina mastered and triumphed with in battle.[4] During her time with them, Valencina's Famiglia promoted her to Sottocapo and gifted her their "family heirloom", which was either her rapier or the Eye of Odin Relic.[5] However, only three days after Valencina's promotion, she was demoted and disowned from the Syndicate for an unknown offense.[5] She was permitted to keep her sword and Relic only because the Thumb considered them to have been tainted by her ownership.[5]

Later, Valencina was instated as the Thumb's Nursefather of the House of Spiders, tasked with raising Ryōshū into a "perfect blade" using the Palermitan style.[6] Despite her duty as a mentor and parental figure, Valencina frequently abused her daughter, saddling the young girl with no shortage of injuries and belittling as a cheap outlet for the older woman's frustration.[7] Along the way, the Nursefather realized that her "Ticket" had great potential as a swordswoman. Valencina came to believe that once Ryōshū became the "Blade that Cuts Through All", a vague goal she did not fully understand yet gave up on investigating further,[8] the Thumb would take her back as a Sottocapo.[9] She thus raised Ryōshū with abusive fervor, deeply invested in her progress as the House of Spider's blade. On the side, Valencina tracked the local goings of the Thumb's members as another piece of her fixation on being re-accepted into the Syndicate.[10]

Despite her excommunication and disgrace, the Thumb would go on to recruit Valencina to fight on their behalf in the Smoke War,[11] where she made a name for herself as the "War Hero of Famiglia Bognatelli" and vicious killer capable of bayoneting any foe. She fought on what was ultimately the winning side, which most notably pitted her against the old G Corp.'s bug-augmented soldiers. It's suggested that she took down two out of four of G Corp.'s decisive weapons in collaboration with Salvador during this period.[12]

Throughout her time as a war hero, Valencina spent her days proud and exhausted, fully immersed in the bloodbath she hoped might help her regain her glory. Both her physical abuse and alcoholism subsided with the distraction,[13] to the point of calmly accepting a teenage Ryōshū's care when it was offered. Yet soon after the war ended, the Central's Consigliere of the Thumb―the higher-up Valencina was trying to impress―[14] visited the House of Spiders and dragged Valencina back into her stupor, heavily implied to have delivered the news that Valencina was not going to be reinstated into the Syndicate.[15]

Valencina resumed her usual abrasive attitude and expectation that Ryōshū would be the ticket out of her situation. At one point, she allowed Ryōshū to take Araya into the House, stating simply that she didn't want to have to hear the child whine and that she wouldn't care about what sorry fate she might meet there. When it eventually came time for Ryōshū to make her escape from the House of Spiders, she wielded Arayashiki unsheathed against the Nursefathers and slashed Valencina's prosthetic eye in the process.

Sometime after Ryōshū's departure, Valencina encountered Lucio in the Backstreets, making the uncharacteristic choice of taking the unfortunate boy under her wing. She decided to train him in the Palermitan style like she had Ryōshū so that her "Textbook" could refresh her "Ticket" on the skills she would forget during their separation. Valencina never learned from Ryōshū's hatred towards her, and the routine she trained Lucio under was one of constant suffering and abuse. Though the situation was graciously accepted by Lucio on a surface level, he came to despise the woman, considering the odds of one day killing his tutor when her guard was down.