Hinata Sakaguchi

Hinata Sakaguchi (坂口日向) is the leader of the Western Holy Church's Ten Great Saints as well as a Japanese otherworlder. She is second only to the Holy Emperor in authority within the Church.

Personality
Hinata is a cold pragmatist who doesn't shy away from cooperating with anyone as long as it benefits mankind as a whole, even cooperating willingly with Demon Lords even though the Western Holy Church believes in killing all monsters. She is willing to give anyone who asks her advice, but if that advice is ignored then she won't bother repeating herself. She is also extremely stubborn and refuses to compromise with others unless ordered to by Luminous.

Within the Church, she is an extremely harsh but powerful and efficient leader, who singlehandedly built up the Holy Church's Ten Great Saints to the equivalent of the Ten Demon Lords, as well as reforming the Holy Knight Order into a much more efficient and streamlined version of itself within two years of her rise to power within it. She is the most physically/magically powerful person in all of the church save for the Demon Lord Luminous Valentine herself, whom Hinata was defeated by. She even manages to nearly kill a True Demon Lord-level Rimuru with her ultimate technique 'Meltlash'.

Hinata holds Shizue in high regards, due to her being the one who trained her and showed her what genuine kindness was for the first time. After learning of her death, Hinata set out to kill Rimuru because of his involvement in it, even going so far as to tell him that she would destroy Rimuru City personally.

In Light Novel Volume 7, she realizes her mistake upon seeing how friendly the Jura Tempest Federation is to humans whilst traveling to Rimuru City and thus makes up her mind to apologize and negotiate with Rimuru. However, this plan falls through due to the interference of the Clerics of the Seven Luminaries.

Appearance
Hinata has short black hair and violet eyes. She often sweeps her bangs over her right eye while tucking the left side behind her ear. Her eyes are described as cold and calculating, as though they are always looking for the solution to some kind of mathematical proof.

She usually wears the Holy Knights armor, which is an armor with a white coat draped over it, as well as a monocle. She carries a powerful magisteel rapier known as the Moonlight Rapier on her hip, gifted to her by Luminas personally.

Background
Hinata's father was a gambling addict. Eventually, her father racked up a massive debt from gambling on horse races when Hinata was a child, which made Hinata decide to her to murder her father for life insurance. Hinata's mother suffered an emotional breakdown upon witnessing this murder by her daughter's hand, causing Hinata to plan to kill her as well and thus orphan herself. Just before that could happen, she was whisked away by a "strong gale" to the Otherworld when she was just 15 years old. Upon arrival, she was attacked by three bandits. She ended up gaining two Unique Skills and managed to kill the three bandits.

Not long after her arrival in the new world, Shizue Izawa took her in as a disciple. Hinata claims that Shizue was the only person who had been kind to her during her early years in the new world. Within a month, Hinata had surpassed Shizue in strength after copying multiple of her skills using Usurper. Fearing her own attachment, Hinata went on her own way and eventually became the Chief Knight of the Holy Ruberios Empire's Knight Order, as well as the Leader of the "Ten Great Saints".

At one point she discovered that the Western Holy Church was under the control of the "Ruler of Night" Demon Lord Luminous Valentine. She beat the Demon Lord's servants and finally confronted the Demon Lord herself. However, Hinata lost the battle and nearly died. After some negotiations, Hinata agreed to become Luminous' subordinate as she deemed the Demon Lord's governing methods to be acceptable in the long run. Nonetheless she keeps honing her abilities in case she ever needs to fight the Vampire Princess again.

Plot
Hinata is first seen when a servant requests an audience to inform her that the slime Rimuru was building a nation of monsters in the middle of the Great Jura Forest. She quickly assesses the threat level and decides that Rimuru and his country needs to be destroyed. She ponders her past after which she decides to kill the monster who killed Shizue, the one person she respected. After defeating Rimuru in battle, she returns to Ruberios to await the destruction of the Tempest Federation.

However, upon discovering that the Falmuth army has been obliterated instead, Veldora's subsequent revival, and that Rimuru has been recognized as a Demon Lord by the other Lords in the Walpurgis Banquet, she calls a conference within the Church to decide what to do next. During the conference, she learns that Rimuru has sent an invitation to duel her one-on-one, and she decides to go despite the suspiciously short message. Whilst leaving the kingdom, the Clerics of the Seven Luminaries present her with a massive sword named the 'Dragon Buster' to aid her, which she takes despite her suspicions.

She takes two weeks to travel on foot from Ruberios to Tempest, and during that time sees the level of infrastructure developed by Tempest. Impressed by the focus on comfort to humans, she decides to negotiate with Rimuru as best she can.

However, upon arriving she finds that about a hundred elite soldiers on orders from the Seven Luminaries have arrived with her without her knowledge, alongside her own party which was utterly insistent on coming with her to a one-on-one duel. Rimuru believes that this attack was her plan and ironically refuses to listen to her, forcing the two to duel. The two fight to a complete standstill, but ultimately Hinata (as she, as a human, would lose all her stamina if the duel continued) suggests that if Rimuru can survive her final attack, then she will consider him the victor. Because neither truly wish to kill each other, Rimuru agrees, and Hinata uses her ultimate technique 'Melt Slash' on him. Raphael then secretly makes a copy of and then sacrifices his Ultimate Skill Beelzebuth in order to counter it, and Rimuru emerges as the victor, though with 70% of his magicules drained in the process.

Suddenly, the sword 'Dragon Buster' explodes and sends a heat ray through Hinata's chest, severely injuring her. While Rimuru is preoccupied with trying to save her life despite his low magicule count, two of the Seven Luminaries show up in order to kill them both. Suddenly, Valentine (aka Luminous, god of the Western Holy Church) appears, healing Hinata and killing the Luminaries for defying her.

After the battle, Hinata and Rimuru make up and part on good terms, with the Western Holy Church agreeing to spread the doctrine that the kingdom of Tempest is made of harmless monsters and Ruberios signing a non-aggression treaty with Tempest.

Etymology

 * The name Hinata means "sunny place" (日向).
 * Hinata's surname Sakaguchi means "slope, hill" (坂) (saka) and "mouth, entrance" (口) (kuchi/guchi).

Trivia

 * Hinata is one of the characters that had changed the most between the web novel version and light novel canon. For example, Hinata willingly cooperated with Luminous even before Rimuru's reincarnation and she also didn't get mind controlled in the canon version.
 * Despite being in the first season's first opening “Nameless story”, Hinata doesn’t appear in the first season. She’s mentioned by Shizu in Inherited Will, but she makes her first appearance/cameo near the end of the Saved Souls.