Kurt von Benno Baumeister

Kurt Baumeister was the eldest brother of Wendelin von Benno Baumeister. As the eldest son of the ruling noble, he was, until his death, the presumed heir to the elder Baumeister family estate and its hereditary knighthood.

Personality
Early on, Kurt was considered a kind and caring person. However, he held a deep jealousy toward his other siblings due to them being far more skilled, educated, and capable than him, and a fear that they would one day supplant him as the heir to the knighthood. After four of his brothers left the territory to start their own lives, and a fifth married into the branch family of the Junior Commander, his jealousy died down considerably, but with the consolidation of his eventual power he became arrogant and abusive.

When his youngest brother Wendelin gained a noble title higher than his own family's, his jealousy returned. When Wendelin (on order from the family's patron Margrave Breithilde) then returned to the territory to start development of monster-infested lands, he became convinced of a conspiracy by Wendelin and his other brother Hermann (the second brother, who married into the branch family) to usurp him and deny him his right to rule the territory.

Synopsis
Kurt has no real skills or personality to speak of. He also is almost completely illiterate and lacks any proper education. After he formally becomes the presumptive heir of the family estate, he starts to abuse his power to pressure the locals working in his territory to submit to him.

At some point, prior to Wendelin's marriages, the major nobles and the king started to maneuver Wend into taking over the elder Baumeister estate. Kurt was furious and attempted to assassinate Wend in order to inherit his assets and title, as Wend was the only member of his separate family line, at that point in time. The judicial law of the Helmut Kingdom, would have appointed Kurt as the proprietor of all assets left behind by Wend, if he were to suffer an untimely death (in the anime, this is changed to his children potentially inheriting the assets/title, and Kurt only being proprietor until a time when his children are old enough to take ownership). However, Kurt was so jealous and greedy, he was ignorant to the fact that attempting murder of Wend would also place a bounty on his head, as a result.

Due to his lack of intelligence, and the inability to see beyond himself, he had no power and ability to actually complete the task himself. This left Kurt to become vulnerable to manipulation from the Head Auditor of the Ministry of Finance, Baron Rückner. Baron Rückner, who was left out of the development of the Savage Land Projects, and saw Kurt as his means to dig into the royal purse. Subsequently, he supplies Kurt with a magical ocarina (a type of vessel flute) called the Flute of the Dragon Tamer. The ocarina, when played, would summon a clan of dragons to the player.

Kurt uses the ocarina, but it doesn't summon dragons. Instead, it turns out that what Kurt believed to be the Flute of the Dragon Tamer, is actually the cursed Flute of Grudges. This flute amplifies the negative energy in the area, in order to turn its player into a monster that can then defeat the person who they have hatred for -- but it also kills them in the process of enacting their vengeance.

The Flute of Grudges summoned all the negative energy in the area, which flew in like a cloud of black smoke. Wendelin's group defended against it, but Kurt's co-conspirators were swarmed by it and turned into zombies, who then attacked Kurt and began to eat him alive. As Kurt died, he, the black cloud, and the zombified comrades merged to become a large monster. Though it was powerful, Wendelin's group was eventually able to succeed in destroying it. At the last moment however, as the flute itself crumbled away, a small amount of the black smoke hiding within flew away, quickly racing in the direction of the capital.

Having failed to kill Wendelin, this remaining miasma, still containing the hatred of Kurt, redirected that anger toward the scheming Baron Rückner who had provided him the cursed item. Baron Rückner, who was hosting a party with his family and the families of his co-conspirators in the capital, had his party interrupted by the smoke's attack, with party-guests and guards alike turned into zombies who subsequently attacked and killed the Baron. Cardinal Hoenheim, who had received an advanced notice of the possible smoke attack from Wendelin, had arranged for a series of magicians to be on standby, in the event the smoke caused an emergency. The magicians were able to ensure the party-guest zombies were completely annihilated before any more damage could done to the capital.

In the aftermath, Artur formally retired and, with Kurt dead, Hermann became the new Knight Baumeister. The kingdom decided to raise the rank for Hermann to baronet, with the possibility of it rising further to Baron in the future. Paul was given territory adjacent to Hermann's, and for his work in helping defeat the monster was also elevated to baronet. Erich and Helmut, despite not participating in the actions, were also raised to baronet after being told to just accept it by the King (in other words, it's worthwhile to the King to elevate the entire family, as they will all be important). Finally, Wendelin was awarded the title of earl and granted an appropriately significant amount of Savage Lands territory adjacent to Hermann's and Paul's (Wend's ascension to earl and receipt of most of the Savage Lands as his territory had in fact been decided by the King beforehand, a fact disclosed to him by Klimt von Armstrong, due to the value of his existing development efforts and the fact that with the new territory those development efforts would naturally grow as well, which is why he jumped a full two ranks above his previous rank of baron).