Awakening

Meeting the same fate as the young boy he tried to save, Roy drifted completely into the abyss.

"Huh?" The large man mumbled.

Raising Roy by his forehead into the air, he realized he was already dead after the first three slams. Being an average commoner, his head and body couldn't take the repetitive force exerted on him and in the process his head was cracked open.

"All talk and no bite, I don't think I even want to feast on you anymore. It would have been more worth it if you at least put up a decent fight."

Driven by disappointment, the large man threw the dead body of Roy into the surrounding flames and departed slowly from the scene.

[Purgatory]

"...."

Opening his eyes slowly, Roy found himself floating within an empty void, no form of light could penetrate this void and from his perspective, it was bottomless.

"W-where am I.." With a weak voice, he proclaimed.

Purgatory, a realm suspended between the tangible and the ephemeral. It's a place where souls linger, reconciling their earthly deeds and their journey towards ultimate transcendence.

Here, time bends and stretches, allowing introspection to unfold. It's not a realm of punishment but rather a state of purification, where the essence of the soul refines itself through reflection and transformative experiences.

"Is this where humans go? When they die?"

A smile donned upon his face in realization.

"It doesn't matter, at least I get to be reunited with my family."

"Are you sure that's what you really want?" A dark and loud ominous voice echoed throughout the empty space.

"Huh?" Roy muttered, taken aback by the loud voice that reached out to him.

"Do you really want everything to end like this Roy? Where there's no justice for the weak? Where the innocent perishes for no good reason? Where countless lives are lost all because of silly disputes?" The dark voice added.

"W-who are you? And how do you know my name?" An undoubtedly confused Roy questioned, attempting to identify the source of the voice.

A pair of huge white glowing eyes appeared before Roy, it's size was large enough to dominate majority of the empty space he floated in.

Just like any other human, fear pumped throughout his body as his eyes met with what he can only consider to be a supernatural entity. After all he floated in a space existing between the world of the living and the world of the dead.

"It matters not who I am, what matters right now is your fate. Do you want everything to end like this? Even after you pass away evil will still triumph in the physical world, no matter how hard humans try they can never change that so they embrace it. That is the cruel fate, the accursed cycle that mankind has been placed with. But I can grant you, Roy Hiroto, the power and a second chance to break this cycle."

"A second...chance?" He stammered.

"Yes...a second chance to right all of humanity's wrongs, it all depends on your resolve, and out of everyone I've come across so far, you are the exception."

Thinking back to the year it all began, he realized that the voice was right. At a very young age he realized that there was no end to this repeated cycle because instead of trying to change their fates, mankind accepted it and that led to the inevitable end of his parents and of him.

"Tch." He grunted, recalling the death of the innocent young boy.

"Do you accept?" The dark voice demanded for an answer.

With eyes filled with determination and a heart filled completely with anger and hate for what mankind had become, he responded.

"Yes."

With his response, the soul of Roy was instantly sucked into what appeared to be a spiraling vortex and for a moment, everything in his line of vision glowed white.

Till....

[The Physical World]

WHOOSH!

"What?"

The large man's movement was halted as his sense of hearing picked up the noises generated by the flames he threw the body of Roy into crackle greatly, almost as if something was burning the flames itself from within.

"I hate them all...Villains... Heroes... I hate them all!" A dark and distorted voice exclaimed from within the flames as a figure cloaked with darkness emerged from it.

The dark figure was then revealed to be Roy Hiroto, the same man he had just killed. A pitch black purple aura emanated intensively from Roy's body.

As Roy opened his eyes, they were no longer the same.

The color of his cornea changed from black to purple, his pupil assumed the shape of an "X" with a vertical line cutting through the middle of it.

All the flames in the surrounding area dissipated due to the sheer intensity of his aura. At this decisive moment, he awakened his Soul-Core.

The huge man's eyes wavered in complete fear, this was unlike anything he had ever seen.

"What is this!?" His body shivered unable to explain the change in the boy, his eyes fixated on this inhuman.

"I can't sense his Soul-Energy! So why? How can he use such power!? Is this the man I just killed!?" Exclaiming with disbelief, he stumbled backwards.

SWOOSH!

Like a gust of wind, Roy vanished from where he stood. The speed of his movements unprecedented and completely beyond anything the huge man had ever seen, he was unable to read them so within his line of vision, Roy vanished.

Before he could even realize what was going on, Roy appeared right in front of him, grabbed him by his forehead and slammed him forcefully into the ground.

The ground shattered from the impact and a crater five meters deep was created through the body of the large man, giving rise to a swirling cloud of dust.

The large man's mouth vibrated from the shock that flowed through his nerves, and his eyes turned white as he could barely maintain his consciousness.

With his hand still on his forehead, Roy stared down at his enemy with his unique eyes, sparks of purple electricity gathered in that hand and flowed directly into Roy's palm and towards the man's face.

"Electric-Burst." With a distorted voice, he uttered softly.

He concentrated the flow of electricity that went into his palm and built up a ball of purple electricity which completely overwhelmed and engulfed the large man.

BOOM!

A frightening explosion resulted from the dispersing of the purple ball of electricity, it significantly expanded the size of the crater they were in greatly and it disintegrated everything that was caught in it's range, including the huge man.

The explosion was unavoidable, it could be seen everywhere in the city of Azarock which alerted majority of the heroes close by.

As the dust and sparks of electricity that circulated the vicinity of the explosion settled down, Roy stood straight in the middle of the now massive crater, the body of the huge man had been converted to dust.

The dark aura that surrounded his body as well as the electricity that coursed through his hand slowly dissipated and he fell to his knees due to fatigue after expending that much Soul-Energy. His eyes returned to normal, collapsing totally in the middle of the crater.