Prologue: A Glimpse of the Future

Prologue:
A Glimpse of the Future

 

“THIS IS THE END for you! Roaring Thunder!!!”

The demon raised his arms to the heavens and then brought them crashing back down. Rays of brilliant, dazzling light burst forth from a giant magic circle lined with complex runes, and the man could feel the impact of the attack coursing through his outstretched arm as he braced against the onslaught. A blinding, white light flashed through the entire area before eventually abating. The man coughed in the resulting cloud of dust and then let out a sigh, almost sounding disappointed.

When the dust settled, the man heard a distinct gulp coming from one of his demon adversaries. The sound didn’t surprise him—after all, not many humans could survive the force of a spell that was usually enough to wipe out an entire horde of monsters unscathed all without a single scratch. He could tell that the demons were finally starting to realize what they were up against.

As the demons’ eyes fell upon the man’s youthful face, they quickly paled with despair. His eyes were the deepest of blacks—as if all the world’s darkness had pooled within

his irises. The man let out another sigh before lowering his right arm, still tingling a bit from blocking the previous attack.

“Are you trying to insult me or is that really the best you can do?” he asked.

“Insult you? God, no. That attack would have wiped any normal human off the face of the planet!” replied the demon.

Spread out across the horizon lay no vast plains or great ocean, but an unending horde of monsters. These were monsters usually seen in only the deepest depths of a labyrinth, most of them several times larger than the man they were united against. The only people to be found were the group of demons standing in a line in front of them—and the lone human man opposing them. It was a state of affairs that would leave most men begging for their lives, and one in which no one would have laughed at the man for discarding his pride and fleeing with his tail between his legs. Yet this man simply stood there, unable to resist the urge to snicker. Many of the demons had taken a few steps back, horrified at what they’d just witnessed.

“You’re mad, you know that? You’re no human. You’re a monster—an abomination!” said the demon, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead as he watched the young human grin from ear to ear.

The man did not seem offended, and simply nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I bet it probably seems that way from your perspective. But let the record show that it wasn’t me who decided you were going to die here by my hand today. You were the one who dared to mess around with our fates… Isn’t that right, Abe Mahiro?” asked the man, deliberately calling out the demon’s name in an order customarily used only in another world.

At this, the demon couldn’t help but flinch. He knew his back was up against the wall. Then, the human man raised his arm to chest level once more and recited a magical incantation of his own.

“Shadow Magic, activate!”

A deeper darkness than the world had ever known fell over the land. Cries of fear and confusion rang out as the man’s enemies were trapped beneath a veil of darkness that left them unable to see who was standing next to them.

“I guess I should probably thank you, though,” said the man. “After all, it was you who turned me into the abomination I am today. You, who gave me the strength I’d need to do what needed to be done. But unfortunately for you, that doesn’t mean I’ll let you off the hook for what you’ve done.”

With that, the man raised both hands toward the heavens as if to beckon them down. “O Lord, let me embody all the multitude of evils that dwell within this world! Divine Retribution!”

As soon as the words left the man’s lips, the darkness warped and morphed into figures of various shapes and sizes. A moment later, cries of agony and despair rang out from all around.

“Now, may you all be consumed by that which you fear most.”

In what seemed like only the blink of an eye, the enemy forces were reduced to a single demonic man. All the rest had been devoured without a trace, not even leaving a speck of flesh behind.

And so it was that a battle that should have been a war stacked heavily in the demons’ favor was reduced to a one-on-one match between a single demon and an abomination.