Minoru, Average Guy's POV:
My name is Kageno Minoru, and despite the grandeur of what I am about to witness.
I am, by every conceivable measurement, the sort of painfully average background character whose existence blends into static noise when viewed from even a short distance.
The type of person who, if this were a game, would be programmed solely to offer basic weather commentary and then quietly disappear from the narrative forever
Forgotten by both the story and the player alike.
And yet, buried deep within this averageness, there lies a dream so absurdly grand that even I sometimes question whether my brain was assembled incorrectly at birth.
A desire not to be the hero who saves the day or the villain who threatens it, nor even the imposing final boss who waits at the end of a dungeon, but instead to become that elusive, infinitely cooler figure who manipulates the shadows themselves, orchestrating events from behind the scenes with such effortless grace and overwhelming mystique that their very silhouette would send shivers through empires.
An unseen puppeteer whose power is never flaunted openly, but instead revealed in carefully controlled flashes that reshape destinies and terrify the universe.
Why do I yearn for such a role with such unhealthy devotion?
The answer is embarrassingly simple: because such characters are unbelievably, impossibly, inarguably cool — and that coolness has been etched into my heart like a sacred scripture.
From the moment this delusion took root, everything I did became a ritual of preparation.
I trained obsessively, cycling through karate, boxing, swordsmanship, and mixed martial arts, all while experimenting with breath control methods stolen from sketchy forums that were either ancient techniques too esoteric for modern practitioners or the fever dreams of fitness lunatics who believed inhaling air backward would unlock secret power channels.
I trained until sweat poured from me like rain, until my muscles trembled, until my reflection in the mirror barely looked human anymore — and yet, I never once allowed the world to see that effort.
Because true masterminds wear mediocrity like a cloak.
So in public, during the day, I played the harmless NPC.
Smiling politely, lending notes, holding doors open, apologizing when bumped into, making myself indistinguishable from any other passing face.
While in the secrecy of night, I honed myself with single-minded purpose, believing, desperately, that someday destiny would tap my shoulder and whisper, "Now. This is your moment."
But time has a way of dragging reality behind it like a rusty chain, and eventually those hard, heavy links began clubbing me across the skull with the truth — no amount of physical training could overcome the fundamental weakness of a human body.
Yes, I could beat up a few punks.
No, I could not survive a gun.
Certainly not a squad of soldiers.
Absolutely not an explosion.
And unquestionably not a nuclear blast.
Every fictional shadow ruler I admired had powers that shrugged off such threats like raindrops, and so I realized I needed something beyond the physical, something mystical.
Magic, mana, chi, aura, divine energy, cursed energy, ANY supernatural force at all — but this world offered none of it.
Still, I refused to surrender my dream.
I meditated, practiced extreme breathing, attempted push-ups on my fingertips, on my knuckles, on nothing at all — anything that might unlock some hidden potential the world insisted did not exist.
And tonight, as I was mid–handless push-up, balancing my entire hopes and weight on the sheer power of delusion and core strength, I felt something shift around me.
A strange disturbance in the air, a tension so unnatural it felt as though the world itself had paused mid-breath, waiting for something monumental to unfold.
Before I could reason through this sensation, an unnervingly deep and resonant sound rolled through the darkness outside my house, like some colossal engine igniting somewhere in the sky, and curiosity.
That ancient enemy of self-preservation — compelled me to rise, wipe the sweat from my forehead, open my door, and step outside.
And that was the moment my entire existence split into a before and after.
Because floating everywhere — above rooftops, across the sky, against the sides of houses, in the middle of the air as though gravity had simply given up its job in awe — were enormous holographic projections, not a handful but dozens, even hundreds, each displaying the same impossibly vivid scene.
A man standing atop a colossal dragon-like creature, high above a sprawling fortress that looked like something torn straight from the climax of a high-budget dark fantasy film.
I blinked rapidly, rubbed my eyes, blinked again, wondered if I had finally hallucinated from overtraining, and muttered something halfway between disbelief and admiration.
"…Wow. This advertisement budget is actually insane."
Each hologram was so astoundingly lifelike.
The lighting, the shadows, the atmospheric motion, the fluidity of every animated detail.
It felt like someone had ripped open reality and replaced the sky with a cinematic masterpiece running on technology 30 years ahead of its time.
The dragon's wings beat with terrifying force, sending ripples through the projected air.
Storm clouds churned with believable chaos.
The fortress towers gleamed with a blend of metal and energy that looked so real I could practically feel the humidity and tension emanating from them.
And the soldiers — oh, the soldiers — swarmed through the sky with black wings, each movement captured with such intricate precision that I actually applauded lightly in awe.
"This CGI… is INSANE. Hollywood wishes it could do this!!"
Then the dragon descended like a god of destruction, smashing through a squadron of winged soldiers whose bodies flung through the air with disturbingly accurate ragdoll physics.
The scene was breathtaking.
Electrifying.
Everything I ever dreamed of becoming — and more.
The mysterious figure atop the dragon stepped lightly onto the tallest tower with such perfect posture, balance, and coolness that my jaw dropped.
He handed something glowing to the dragon — and the creature began to shine, brighter and brighter, until the hologram's light nearly blinded me.
Then it transformed into something even more colossal, more apocalyptic, more divine than before.
And then—
ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAARRR—!!!
The sound was so loud, so overwhelming, that every window on my street exploded outward in a cascade of glittering shards, car alarms shrieked to life, rooftops trembled, and the air itself twisted with shockwaves so real that I staggered backward.
My rational brain should have screamed:
"Holograms don't do that!CGI doesn't break windows!This is REAL!! RUN!!"
But my rational brain was not present.
Only awe remained.
Awe so deep it bordered on religious.
The dragon now towered behind the mysterious man, radiating such a crushing presence that even through a projection, my knees felt weak, my breath shallow, my pulse frantic.
The sheer pressure of its existence made my skin prickle, and my eyes widen until they threatened to pop from their sockets.
"This… this is— this is the coolest thing I've ever seen in my entire life…"
My voice trembled with childlike wonder and uncontainable admiration.
Because in that moment, as I stared up at the impossible titan, at the cloaked figure standing calmly before it, the sky seemed to bend around their presence.
I felt something inside me click into place with a clarity I had chased my whole life.
I was witnessing the birth of a real, genuine, undeniable eminence in shadow — not a character in fiction, not a concept in my imagination, but a living figure whose presence rewrote reality and forced the world to its knees.
And I had no idea…
None…
That the images swallowing the sky weren't holograms.
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Author's Note:
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