Gourry is first seen when he finds Lina (with Naga the Serpent in Kadokawa Shoten Tsubasa's paperback edition) confronting the surviving members of the Dragon's Fangs gang (she had previously decimated most of their band, killing their leader, and took a fair chunk of their treasure for herself). Believing Lina to be "a luscious damsel in distress," Gourry steps in and defeats the bandits. When Gourry discovers that Lina is not the beautiful maiden he had thought but merely an underdeveloped teenager he is in disappointment, much to the embarrassment and humiliation of Lina (who was not even in any danger given her powers as a sorceress). Assuming that Lina is a lost little girl, he offers to escort her "home", but she plays along with his misconception and he vows to escort her there at any cost. Along the way Gourry shifts gears into the more familiar nice guy persona that would define him for the remainder of the series.