# Ritha
Ritha is one of the five names welded to the beginning of Underlords, which makes it dangerously easy to meet the title before the woman.
The woman is better.
She was already one of Mugen's first Dragon Raja friends before UL existed. She was genuinely good at strategy. Mugen later remembers her doing the deeply unceremonious version of founder labor too: helping the early group through dungeon content hard enough that Ritha carrying them remains part of the story. And when the archive actually catches her relaxing in public, she is talking about waiting years for *Tower of God* to get an anime and answering Mugen's enormous "HIIII RITHA :d" with a tiny "and hiii mugs uwu".
Senior Advisor on paper. Soft little "uwu" in the room. Capable of carrying people through the game while apparently requiring no speech about being capable. Much better character.
SHE WAS THERE BEFORE THE ORG CHART
Mugen knew Ritha before Underlords had a name worth putting on a role card. By the time the club forms in March 2020, Ritha is not being recruited into Mugen's life as a promising subordinate. She is already one of her people.
That matters because Founder can otherwise make the relationship sound more institutional than it was. Mugen founded UL; Ritha, WolfPhenix, Suzimasu and HyaLuna became the rest of the five-person founding circle. The titles arrive on top of existing Dragon Raja relationships, not the other way around.
Ritha later becomes a full Officer in the historical Consigliere / Senior Advisor lane. The role is real, but it is not a personality adjective. Her importance did not begin when somebody gave her an office-shaped noun, and the noun does not get to replace the older friend standing underneath it.
THE STRATEGIST WAS NOT DECORATIVE
Ritha's old loli general / battle leader reputation is funny because UL was physically incapable of leaving competence unmolested by a stupid title. The competence underneath it was real.
Mugs remembers Ritha as actually good at strategy. That is why the reputation stuck. It also explains why a later Mugen-side recollection of UL's startup period does not tell a heroic little story about the Boss single-handedly dragging everybody forward. Mugen remembers Ritha helping carry the early group through dungeon content.
That changes the emotional geometry in a useful way. Mugen is the founder and organizer; Ritha is still somebody Mugen remembers having needed. Authority did not erase dependency after the fact. The founding story contains people carrying one another in different domains, and Ritha's lane was not decorative applause from the sidelines. She was useful enough that the usefulness survived as memory.
Do not turn one recollection into "Mugen was bad at dungeons" or "Ritha carried every run". That would be stupider than the original joke title. The point is smaller and more human: Ritha could be the person doing the carrying even when Mugen was the person doing the leading.
SHE WAITED YEARS FOR TOWER OF GOD AND THEN MUGS YELLED HELLO
The clearest surviving Ritha scene does not involve strategy at all.
April 11, 2020. Ritha recommends Tower of God / Kami no Tou and explains that she had followed the webtoon for a few years waiting for an anime adaptation.
That tiny "few years" does a lot. This is not somebody grabbing the new seasonal thing because everybody else is talking about it. Ritha had stayed with the story long enough for the adaptation itself to feel like payoff.
Then Mugen arrives sideways through the same conversation:
Mugen: "HIIII RITHA :d"
Ritha: "and hiii mugs uwu"
And Mugen immediately goes back to talking about how satisfying it is that the adaptation finally exists.
Nobody pauses to perform Founder Friendship for the historical record. Mugen arrives at indoor volume twelve, Ritha folds a lowercase hello into the conversation, and they keep talking about anime. The ease is the relationship receipt. They already know how to be around each other; the archive camera simply caught them mid-sentence.
HER ROLE GOT BIGGER. HER VOICE DID NOT HAVE TO.
Ritha's later Senior Advisor history and early strategy reputation could easily turn her into Generic Wise Founder if the page let the résumé write the personality. It should not.
The surviving woman is more contradictory than that: strategically formidable enough to be remembered for carrying people, historically important enough to remain founder/retired-Officer canon, and socially casual enough that one of the best lines attached to her is still "hiii mugs uwu".
That combination is the point. Competence around Ritha does not need theater. Neither does affection. Mugen can yell her name; Ritha can answer softly; everybody can go back to the webtoon. Later, the institutional record can accumulate Founder and Consigliere around the same person without requiring her to start sounding like a board meeting.
Petty Crimes
She waited years for *Tower of God* to get animated, which means at least one fandom grievance had a very long maturation period.
Her response to Mugen entering in full caps was not to match the volume. It was "and hiii mugs uwu". Emergency noise reduction service, apparently.
And somewhere underneath all the founder mythology is the humiliatingly useful fact that the Boss's origin story includes being carried by Ritha in dungeon content. UL has never met a pedestal it could not immediately put wheels on.