Magician

The Magician (Type-0) is a recurring boss in the House of the Dead video games. It is a cybernetic creature developed by Dr. Curien during the 1998 Curien Case. Though seemingly destroyed at the conclusion of the incident, it would return on multiple occasions to do battle against the agents of the AMS.

House of the Dead
The Magician was engineered by Dr. Curien using his BioReactor, a machine designed to edit gene sequences. Curien's work had already seen the creation of creatures such as the Hangedman, Hermit and Chariot, but the Magician was to be the doctor's "masterpiece."

When AMS agents Thomas Rogan and G finally confronted Curien in his laboratory, the doctor activated the Magician. However, Curien was not aware that someone had secretly infiltrated the lab and tampered with the Magician's programming. As a result, the creature was unbound by Curien's commands and was set on destroying everything. After killing its creator, the creature attacked Rogan and G. After a long, tense battle, the two agents finally succeeded in defeating the monstrosity. The Magician warned the agents that another catastrophe awaited them before exploding.

House of the Dead 2
Two years after its destruction, the Magician was rebuilt by Caleb Goldman. Its reconstruction was incomplete by the time James Taylor and Gary Stewart arrived at Goldman Tower, but it retained its original intelligence and fighting abilities. When the AMS agents arrived in the tower's courtyard, the Magician crashed out through a window to confront them. It stated that they had no future and that they would either die by its hands or fall to the Emperor.

While the Magician possessed the same abilities as before, its restoration was unfinished and parts of its armour were missing, exposing parts of its organic tissue. James and Gary targeted these areas in order to defeat the creature, which once again exploded upon death.

House of the Dead 4 Special
In 2003, Goldman staged a posthumous incident worldwide, wiping out most of civilization. After her partner James sacrificed himself to defeat Goldman's ultimate creation, the World, rookie AMS agent Kate Green collaborated with G to fight the incident back to its source. In an unidentified building, they found Magician, who emerged from a large glass chamber and vowed revenge for the pain it had endured.

Upon defeat, Magician summoned Pandora's Box, attempting to activate clones of itself; it was fatally wounded after a thrown grenade, declaring "Nothing can erase my pain" before exploding.

Appearance
Throughout the series, Magician is depicted as an armoured, levitating humanoid with horns and talons. His lower right leg, upper left leg, lower right arm, and upper left arm have exposed muscles and (in the first two games) pulsating nerve-like appendages. In The House of the Dead 2, Magician is heavily scarred and rotten, with worms wriggling in his eye and other parts of his body. He returns in The House of the Dead 4 Special with a less-rotten appearance and electricity coursing through his muscles.

Abilities
The Magician is more intelligent than other creatures in the series, possessing human-like intellect, though lacking emotion. Its armoured body is highly resistant to gunfire, though the exposed muscles on parts of its limbs serve as weak points. It can levitate/fly at high speed, casting after-images as it moves. It attacks by throwing fireballs that it generates through some method of pyrokinesis.