Disclaimer: These first few chapters are set before Cid gets isekai'd. Since we don't have enough info about his life before isekai, a lot of the information in these first few chapters may be a bit vague and incomplete.

Also spoilers for Volumes 1 through 4 from the Light Novel.

I honestly can't remember what catalyzed this desire. All I know is I'veadmired shadowbrokers for as long as I can remember.

Was it a certain anime? Or was it a manga—or a movie? Eh, I guess itdoesn't matter. I was all in for anything that featured a mastermind, or aneminence in shadow as I like to call them.

These characters were never the

protagonists or final bosses but were relegated to a role behind the sceneswhere they flaunted their powers and meddled in the affairs of others.

I've always looked up to the men in the shadows. I wanted to be one of them.

Think of children who worship their favorite superheroes. That was me but with master puppeteers.

Well, there was one thing that set us apart: My reverence for them wasn't short-lived. In fact, it buried itself deeper in my heart, never dying out and always guiding me through life.

To become stronger, I learned everything from karate to boxing, from swordplay to mixed martial arts. I hammed it upduring all my practices, concealing my true power from the world and

preparing for the fated day.

At school, I played the part of being pleasantly mediocre, an unassumingface in the crowd. Like an NPC in a game or a part of the mob. I didn't do

any harm. But behind this facade of normalcy, I was training full throttle.

That's how I spent my entire youth. But as time passed, an uneasy feeling started to haunt me: I was due for areality check.

I mean, I didn't even get the mastermind part correctly, how can you honestly expect me to pull this thing off?

If I was ever surrounded by some soldiers armed with guns I'd stand no chance whatsoever.

Maybe if I become the world's top martial artist I'd have a fighting chance no matter how slim it may be.

But if they drop a nuclear bomb on me, I can't do anything about it. No matter how much I train, how much I condition my body, I can't do anything about such power.

That was my roadblock, but it wasn't the only one.

My dream was to become a mastermind in the shadows and trust me when I say this but I'm no mastermind.

I didn't intentionally lower my grades from a perfect score to an average one. No, I only did so from an above average score to one fitting for a mob character. So basically from around 80 to 60-ish.

That was the only other part that I was struggling with apart from breaking the limits of humanity.

Don't get me wrong I did try and train myself in that area as well. I researched several of history's greatest military techniques and strategies, played all sorts of strategy games and even read so many books on human psychology that I could probably get a degree on it.

I gained all that knowledge so easily that I was starting to question whether I was a genius or not, but that thought was quickly discarded.

I now had all this knowledge about being a mastermind, but I still had no idea how to apply it.

There was no way for actual intelligence to be applied to how I was going to become an eminence in shadow. I had resolved myself to just focusing on becoming as poweful as I can be.

I had a missing link to becoming someone worthy of being a mastermind in the shadow. But right now I didn't even know what that may be.

To be continued...