Hello everyone! Quick note, this entire story is purely experimental based on a thought I had on a whim, so depending on how it is received, it could either be continued, be left off as an unfinished one-shot idea or even get deleted. So I urge you to be vocal with how you feel about the story. Please and thank you 3

Morning. The time of the day both most beloved and loathed, for it is the beginning. It is then we are given sunlight and new, refreshed motivation to go about the day. It is then we are reminded of the tasks ahead and rack our minds with worry. A beautiful contradiction, yet one so often observed from only one angle which then goes to define how the day proceeds.

"Shit! shit! I am late!"

One individual serving as a prime example would be the subject of attention.

Short, spiky brown hair that had a backwards lean giving unrestricted sight of his visage. Bright blue eyes with but the weakest tinge of green, a slim face of pale skin complexion with a subtle jawline. If not for the blue eyes, a man as average as can be.

For the day, he wore a set of dark blue jeans with a white shirt under a dark blue jacket that was taylored as a uniform. A leather bag over his shoulder and a backpack atop his shoulderblades defining the young man as a student.

And his name was Hunter Fraser, a first-year college student straight out of nowhere on the countryside, late for his classes.

"This is bad!" Hunter moaned in complaint between huffs as he was running at full speed, cutting around a corner and arriving at a 4 way crossroad. In his sheer impatience and stress, he made a mistake as fatal as it is clichée:

Running across the street when pedestrians were at a red light.

And we all know that if you run a red light without looking both ways, a certain someone will show up and send you on an adventure...

BAMM!

Too quickly did it happen for anyone to properly react, shout, or do anything as a truck collided with Hunter at full speed, sending him flying like a projectile for over 50 feet, blood splattering in all directions. At the speed and with the force of the impact, Hunter never stood a chance. He was dead within seconds.

As he lay in his final moment, his body overloaded with injuries from broken bones, ruptured blood vessels, organ damage, bone fragments from his ribs puncturing his innards and a slew of other injuries, he could only think of one thing.

With the light fading, his last words came only to himself. "I still had so much to do..."

Then, darkness. A complete blackness that was-

"Wait..." suddenly sounded Hunters voice. "If I am dead... how am I still conscious of things?"

His vision was then blighted with a light so intense that he felt like his retinas would burn. And in the same manner of speed as it came, his vision adjusted.

An entire array of information bombarded his sight. Gloved hands holding him, strong lights shining the room and...

"Ah fuck, don't tell me..."

His head turned and he saw what he was dreading. Those gloved hands were MASSIVE compared to his form. He was so small he fit into just those hands. And said hands just laid him into the arms of a woman.

"Rebirth..." was all Hunter could think. "Literal rebirth..."

It was so overwhelming that his thoughts were just all focused on processing the reality itself, tuning out his ears, eyes, nose and mouth, shutting his 5 senses off.

"I died and I was reborn. No matter how I look at it, the reality is that I was reborn."

The woman that held him, eyes as blue as the sea itself and hair that was so black that it could have been a void, smiled gently at her baby before speaking.

But Hunter was completely besides all of that, only paying attention to his thoughts. "What insane revelation... Death and Rebirth are real. All that religious, mythologic and historic stuff about what comes after death, and I have the answer! But... something does not add up. If it is real, how come no one made a big fuss about it? If everyone is reborn like I am, wouldn't it have been easy to prove such?"

Indeed, his thoughts decided to make sense out of it first. "Could it be that not everyone reincarnates like I did? Am I an exception? Wait, I still have all my memories, is that it? Do others retain their past life's knowledge too? Argh I can't explain it!"

His frustration became visible on his newborn face, which confused his new mother and she attempted to soothe her baby with a weak kiss to the forehead.

That was what brought Hunter's attention back to the present and he finally began to properly pay attention to all his surroundings...

SCENE CUT

3 years later

Hunter had recently celebrated his 3rd birthday and was currently in the process of practicing his running.

Running helps him focus his thoughts, abd he needed the focus as he was going over all that he learned since the fated rebirth.

For one, he came to terms with the fact that this was not his world. Technological advancement was centuries back, architecture was not grey and focused on efficiency of space at the cost of aesthetics, and most importantly, there were sentient humanoid species other than humans. Elves, Dwarves, Anthropomorphic man-beast hybrids divided into a few factions based on their animal features, Pallums or Prums depending on dialect and translation, lesser spirits like gnomes and a whole array of others.

He himself was fully human, having been born with his mothers' blue eyes and his fathers' brown hair, retaining the looks he had in his previous life. And just as coincidentally, he was still named Hunter. Only his surname was different, Hunter Thraune was his new name, taken from his father, Zlathan Thraune, with his mothers name being Idra Jovasker.

He also learned that this world had monsters. Phantasmal creatures spawned by a massive, literal sentient hole in the earth simply refered to as The Dungeon. These Monsters were as numerous and different as mortal identities, many being similar if not outright the same as some mythological beasts Hunter knew, the easiest example being the Minotaur, while others were just deadly mutations of already dangerous predators and animals like wolves and bears.

Oh yeah and Gods were a thing, too, he reminded himself. Because of his thoroughness in his many studies, he recognized a lot of names from various mythologies, such as greek, norse, celtic, eastern, hindu, egyptian, african and balkan amongst others.

And these gods were... assholes, for the most part. As Hunter learned, they descended from Heaven, also known as either the Upper World or Tenkai, to the earth, also called Lower World or Gekai, out of boredom. Not to save the world, not to usher a new age, just for shits and giggles. The first descend, he learned, came roughly a thousand years ago, shortly after the most legendary confrontation occured between the One-Eyed Black Dragon and Albert Waldstein, the historically greatest swordsman to exist and widely recognized King of Mercenaries.

Since then, Adventurers, Familias and the Falna became parts of history too.

Just trying to add all that to the summary was a migraine to the reincarnated Hunter. An RPG-esque power system with stats, level ups and different powers in the form of Skills, Developmental Abilities or, for the lucky few of the population, Magic.

The 3 year old stopped running as he arrived at the outskirt of his village and gazed up at the sky. "Kinda wish I was a geek, this would be way more exciting if I could not think about the damn dangers all the time" Hunter thought to himself. At first, he had been excited. Lets be real, who would not? But then he was told by his parents about how rare level ups are, how long it takes for dedicated adventurers to max out stats and how there were multiple limitations based on ones pre-determined factors like species, genetics and talent for magic, and he was way more stumped than excited.

"Whats the point of there being magic if not being an Elf reduces the chance of ever getting any into the single digit percentage?" He bemoaned, finding the system of power and how it is structured more and more flawed.

"Out so early again?" A deep, smooth voice suddenly spoke and the 3 year old turned around to see who it was. "You truly are a little genius. I don't think I ever heard of a 3 year old who consistently gets up at first sunlight and sprints as a means of focus."

Hunter remained silent while listening to the person speaking. "Person, yeah..." Hunter thought. This individual had been one of the neighbours of his parents, a very good friend and was also the godfather who named Hunter. He was also the one who taught Hunter most of what he knows, with his parents having added only the more cautionary parts to temper what they thought to be a toddlers excitement. But, most importantly, Hunter figured out over the years that this person was also a God. Their aura hidden well so the divine presence didn't give it away, but Hunter had the mind of a talented college freshman so deductions were on his strong end, and since the god believes Hunter to be 3 years old mentally, they were not nearly as careful with secrecy if alone with him.

"I had a lot to think of, uncle Savitr" Hunter truthfully spoke, since Savitr, the god in qiestion, taught him that the divine all possess an ability to sense the soul's intent behind words and thus could discern truth from lie, so he made it his mission to never outright lie, only be vague, technical or respond with a question of his own to the deity.

Savitr was furthermore a name Hunter knew. A rarely mentioned hindu god in his world, the god who reigns over motion and movement. Often also refered to as Savitar.

"You know you tend to think too much, Hunter. You are just 3, what do you have to think about anyway?"

Hunter voiced a small sigh and turned to the god of motion. "The future. I don't know what to make of it."

Savitr had a small smile on his face and gave the boy a pat on his head. "Those do not sound like the thoughts of a 3 year old, nor should they be. Why do you have such deep fixiations?"

Hunter decided to be honest, staring the tall deity in the eyes. "There is so much I want to do with this world. But I need to know where to start. Uncle Savitr, where do I begin?"

Savitr placed a hand on his chin and hummed in thought. He was silent for several seconds before he pat Hunters' head again. "Well, we can start by makimg sure you enjoy being a child first. Your concerns for now are just growth, study and joy."

Hunter sighed again, in defeat this time, before turning to walk back into the village, deity in tow.

SCENE CUT

5 Days Later

Hunter awoke rather suddenly from being shaken roughly by his mother, his eyes shooting open in surprise.

"Wake up, sweetie, we gotta go!" She spoke in a hurried whisper, panic clear on her face while picking up the reincarnated boy.

Hunter was obviously confused, but he received an answer in the form of a home-shaking explosion that caused him to instantly grow fully alert.

"Oh no..." the mother mumbled when she felt the shaking and immediately picked up her son before storming out of their home.

"I see..." Hunter thought to himself. "The village is under attack" he concluded and glanced around as much as he could while in his mother's arms. "But by what?"

Then, just as she raced behind another building at the far edge of the village, an arrow struck her shoulder from behind, causing her to fall, dropping Hunter in the process.

"Umpf!" came from the reincarnated boy as he hit the ground. Just as he looked up to get a glance at her, an explosion hit her back and the heat combined with the shockwave threw Hunter back while scorching a portion of his face, both eyes being destroyed which caused him to scream in pain.

"There! I heard another voice!" suddenly came a foreign tone. The voice sounded like such a stereotypical bad guy that Hunter, even when distracted by the pain, recognized how bad it is if he is caught, but he was in agony and couldn't move. Having seen his mother die before him in such a brutal manner did not help at all, as it awakened traumatic memories from his previous life.

"BOY!" Savitr exclaimed as he found the wounded Hunter, but the god was in no better shape himself. He was bleeding profusedly and it was clear that his vessel could not remain for much longer. Any moment now, the god of motion would return to Tenkai.

"Sa..." Hunter started, but was silenced by the feeling of the gods large hand upon his forehead.

"Your eyes..." Savitr commented before suddenly going silent. Then, the next thing Hunter hears is two splash-like sounds that had this shudder-inducing effect. "I won't be needing those anymore..." Savitr suddenly exclaimed. "Since I will return to Heaven anyway, let me use my Arcanum to heal you up a bit..."

Hunter suddenly felt a sharp stinging pain where his eyes were and then... he could see. But immediately he saw Savitr and...

The gods Eye-sockets were empty.

"Savitr..." Hunter weakly exclaimed before all the strain, pain and wear-off of adrenaline caused the boy to fall unconscious.

"Good... it worked... since my Arcanum is not about medicine, all I could do is use 'Motion' meta-physically to accelerate your natural healing factor..." Savitr explained, to himself before shining cracks formed all over his body and his vessel self-destructed due to the use of Arcanum, causing the god to be sent back to Tenkai.

"FOUND HIM!" The stereotypical bad guy voice exclaimed and a massive, muscular barbarian of a man clad in leather armor appeared. "Bag him along with the other children! The Boss will be very happy with the new slaves!"

SCENE CUT

1 Day Later

Hunter awoke to the painful sensation of his body burning up from within and he felt like he was melting on a level that made him unable to scream from just how much it hurt.

His body convulsed uncontrollably and, unbeknownst to him, it was seizing so strongly and fastly that it appeared like he was vibrating.

And just as fast as he awoke, he was unconscious again. Outwards, that is.

On the inside, however, he watched his memories from an outside perspective, like his own life was projected as a movie and he was a viewer.

There, he saw the first memory that was branded into his mind in his previous life.

His child self, barely 5 years old, heard a commotion and exited his bedroom, only to find the living room downstairs absolutely showered in blood. The corpses of both his biological parents on the ground, his mother's corpse being stabbed over and over again even though she was already dead, and the perpetrator, a man in his early 20s, face masked in the darkness of the night, laughing like a maniac. Then, the intruding killer screamed "I FINALLY DID IT!" before laughing again and slit his own throat in the process.

The next scene was the aftermath, when police and ambulances showed up. The now shocked, completely mute Hunter, staring into nothing with empty, soulless eyes while being checked for injuries by a first responder. His ears picked up the chatter between two officers. "Shit, what a mess..." "You're telling me, Sargeant. That is the 4th case this month... these fanatics are getting bolder." "Fucking sick the whole thing. And an instruction note was found in the culprits belongings too... what the fuck is going on in this city?" "Wish I knew, Sergeant, but top brass is shaking. Apparently CIA, FBI and NSA are all getting involved. There are murmurs about it being some terrorist attack instead of it being a crazy cult."

The next scene Hunter saw was many years later, the day he enrolled into high school. On that day, after the annual ceremony of welcoming the new first years, Hunter committed his first kill. The scene shifted to an underground basement with his victim having all four limbs chained to a corner of the room, keeping the body stretched apart, mouth shut with a cloth stuffing it which was then sealed with thick industrial tape. Hunter entered the room and had an expression of cold fury on his face. His victim was a person who was a big fan of serial killers. A harmless passion aimed exclusively at fictional characters, but Hunter's blood boiled at the thought. "The kind of people you like killed everything I ever loved with a satisfied smile..." he whispered before plunging a knife straight into the victims Aorta, barely centimeters past the heart, before yanking it out, causing blood to shoot out in massive spurts due to the biggest arterie in the body being pierced, and the massive pressure in it only worsened the wound. It was a death as fast as it was precise.

After that, Hunter saw flashes of the kills that came afterwards. His preparations, the motivation for his learning and successful education, all means he aquired to become a killer who could not be caught, driven by the rage he felt from losing his parents. Every person he killed either loved serial killers or had committed murders themselves. In his eyes, it made no difference, and he held no delusions about being a vigilante. No, he never cared for justice or revenge, this was simply hatred in its purest form. Cold, ruthless, efficient, unstoppable and unpredictable.

And he knew exactly why he saw these memories. He was not repenting, he was not regretting. No, he was reminding himself of what he does to those who kill or love killers. He reminded himself of what it means to take from him his loved ones. Short as it was, his parents in this new life had been only good to him, they genuinely loved him as their son. So he vowed this upon himself:

"Everyone associated with their death will die by my hands..."

And with these words etched into his blackened heart, his consciousness returned once more...

SCENE CUT

15 Years Later

Hunter spent many years in captivity since the attack on his village. 15 years he was a slave to what he found out was a group known as Evilus. A zealous faction that preaches about how mortals are not supposed to dominate the dungeon for various beliefs, the most prevailent one being that mortals are not supposed to live in peace, that their fate is struggle and loss and a life at the edge of death start to finish for it is only in the face of overwhelming odds that mortal lives are at their peak. A belief that was based on the evolution of strength through overcoming adversity and how it changes a person. What made it worse is that most who followed this belief are genuinely convinced that the world is at a loss if it is not faced with a constant threat. While there were those who abused the notion for sadism and their own twisted urges, they were actually a minority, and to Hunter, that made the whole ordeal that much worse. These were not simply evil villains but akin to fanatic cultists who surrender their sense of self to their faith.

And how he had grown to hate those as much as murderers.

The reason behind the death of his village and the abduction of children was to abuse how impressionate pre-pubescent children are and brainwash them to join this cult of, for lack of better words, pro-chaos and pro-anarchy terrorists. And over the years, Hunter watched numerous children slowly succumb to the various methods ranging from gaslighting, emotional manipulation, brainrot via drug addictions or torture and obedience through fear. Bit by bit, he lost kin until he was the only youth from his village who had not succumbed. And he never would.

Evilus spent all 15 years forcing Hunter to commit to slave labor while torturing him daily, keeping his body at the most minimal it can function with. He was fed as little as possible and was given barely enough sleep to maintain what sanity he had left since his first life. And he powered through it all by sheer force of anger alone.

However, on this day, he would no longer let them do as they please.

Years back, when Savitr used his arcanum to accelerate Hunter's natural recovery after transplanting his eyes to the boys, an anomaly occured. A glitch in the laws of the divine, a one in a trillion chance.

The eyes are considered a foreign object to the body itself, or parts of it such as its immune system. If one's own immune system became aware of the existence of the eyes, the body would actively attack it like it was an invading pathogen and destroy them. For gods, it goes a step further, for their eyes are also severed from the majority of their Arcanum, possessing a tiny fraction of it within themselves like a separate vessel. And when Savitr transplanted his eyes to Hunter, the eyes did not lose their portion of Arcanum, which caused it to acclimate to the new body. As a result, the Arcanum mutated, losing its divinity, but spread itself actoss the mortal body and imbued it with Savitr's powers as a god of motion. Hunter first found out when he was 6, or in other words 12 years ago.

In short, Savitr's eyes gave Hunter super speed.

He was not a geek in his previous life, but he had enough awareness of fiction to know what a SPEEDSTER is.

Thus, the 12 years he spent in captivity since were not because he could not escape, but because he did not want to just yet. His college educated brain wanted to make use of its vast knowledge of physics, biology and chemistry to practice different applications of his speed. So he endured unspeakable levels of mistreatment for the sake of using the secrecy of his cell to train. And only now, when he was confident in his array of abilities, would he finally kill everyone in this place before escaping.

He went over his abilities one more time in his mind.

He could vibrate himself at the natural frequency of air to phase through solid objects.

He could create a vacuum by rotating both his arms inwards at superspeed, causing two windfunnels which suck all air out of the converging center between them.

By moving at high enough speeds he could run on all manner of surfaces.

By vibrating the hairs on his bodyparts he could use the friction to create enough static electricity to shoot bolds of lightning.

Mentally prepared, Hunter grinned to himself.

With a violent vibrating of his entire body, he forcibly shattered the chains by exposing them to too much tensile stress, then did the same to all the cuffs on his body. He phased himself through his cell door and executed all nearby guards by phasing his hand through their chest, the vibrations causing mass cell death to their hearts and lungs via shredding them on a molecular level.

Next, he freed the slaves that had yet to break and mercilessly executed those who had, for one reason or another, pledged allegiance to the death of world order.

"W-what the-!"

"THE SLAVES ARE BREAKING OUT!"

Spotted by some nameless foot soldiers, the freed slaves ran for their lives while Hunter executed one Evilus henchman after the other with a sinister laugh, keeping the freed slaves safe until they were all safe. He did not know where they were, but he would find the escape later.

Just as he was about to turn around and leave the area to hunt more Evilus goons, the person in charge came out. A person who was very, very notorious amongst Evilus, hailed as one of the masterminds behind the Nightmare of Floor 27.

"To think you had such power!" The Evilus Executive Valletta Grede exclaimed with a sadistic smile. "I should have used my worst on you, slave!"

Unimpressed, Hunter just glared at the pinkette before lifting his left hand and started vibrating it to create a static charge.

Valletta, ignorant to Hunters prowess, used her impressive Level 5 speed to dash at the escapee from the side. But Hunter almost lazily shoots forth his left arm towards her and unleashes a bolt of lightning which sends her flying to the nearest wall. Before Valletta could even recover, Hunter was upon her, tens of punches per second striking her torso and head all over. Hunter may be unblessed, but physics taught him that any mass can pack proper power with the right acceleration and minimal velocity, so his super-speed-punches still hurt the Evilus Executive.

Coughing up blood, Valletta tried to distance herself by kicking her feet off the ground towards her right, but the speedster caught up to her instantly and kicked her face on the right side to send her right back to the starting spot before he resumed his barrage of punches, eventually earning audible cracking sounds from breaking her ribs.

"You are not gonna die fast, bitch" Hunter cursed before he used his speed-enhanced strikes to hit her joints. He struck her elbows, shoulders, knees, hips and ankles restlessly until they gave in and dislocated, causing the woman to scream in agonizing pain, but right as that happened, he used his super-speed-punches to dislocate her jaw entirely. This served to prevent her from committing suicide by biting off her tongue and to stop her from making any coherent words.

Satisfied, he picked her up and ran while tuning out her constant screams of either pain or defiance.

SCENE CUT

A few moments later

Loki Familia, one of the two strongest familias in Orario ontop of being the current top dog in exploration, was currently having a celebration at the Hostess of Fertility. They returned from their latest expedition, and just a day later their lower ranked members coupled with Tiona and Lefiya helped fight an irregular Goliath. It was good cause to celebrate, for their expedition, while not the success they aimed for, bore fruits they could not say no to.

"Aaahh!" Loki exclaimed after downing a mug of alcohol in one go. "I ain't had a drink in days! I sure needed that!" She joyfully exclaimed while having her usual sly, closed eyes expression.

"Do not overdo it, I do not want to have to drag you back to the Manor like last time" Riveria Ljos Alf, the Level 6 executive known as Nine Hells Riveria, commented. Every time Loki gets drunk, it is a headache for the High Elf princess as she often ends up having to chastize her goddess and offer apologies in the familia's name, primarily because drunk Loki tends to get gropey with non-familia members.

"Yes yes, Mama" Loki lazily answered while getting a refill from one of the waitresses, a brown-haired catgirl named Anya Fromel, which the goddess proceeded to down in one go immediately once more.

Riveria was about to comment but the entrance to the Hostess was all but kicked open.

"HEY! IF THAT BREAKS YOU PAY!" Mia Grande, the owner of the Pub, yelled from behind the counter.

The person who barged in turned out to be a member of Loki Familia, more precisely it was Raul Nord, a Level 4 who had no skills or spells and barely any developmental abilities, but was still regarded as a prodigy and often served as the tactical second in command whenever Finn operates on another front.

Panting, he approached the table with all Level 5s and 6s as well as his goddess. "Miss Loki, everyone! You have to hear this! An outpost belonging to the Evilus Remnant deep within Daedalus just got busted by captives having broken out! The executive Valletta Grede was captured alive but in a completely crippled state!"

Immediately the whole table shot up and all manner of cheer and good mood was gone, replaced with seriosity. Valletta had been one of Loki Familia's most bitter and stubborn archenemies, responsible for many deaths within the familia and many more forced retirements from disabilities or severe trauma.

Finn immediately went full Tactical Mode. "Raul, take us to the location right away."