Hajime was the stereotypical otaku—always half-asleep in class, obsessed with anime and games, and completely friendless. His classmates despised him, mainly because he hung around Kaori, their beautiful and talented classmate everyone idolized. After he bitterly wished for all these annoying people to disappear, he got his wish: he and his entire class were transported to another world and dumped on top of a massive pillar, tasked with becoming heroes.
Things only got worse from there. Hajime was assigned the "Synergist" job—essentially a support role with almost no combat power. The bullying continued relentlessly in this new world. During a confrontation, a classmate's stray fireball sent him plummeting into a bottomless abyss. Against all odds, he survived, and the hellish ordeal down there forged him into someone completely different.
His transformation was both physical and psychological. The abyss forced him to eat monstrous creatures to survive. His body began breaking down in horrifying ways until he drank sacred water, which healed him through repeated cycles of destruction and regeneration—his muscles and bones repeatedly shattering and reforming until he developed an unnaturally powerful physique. The constant stress turned his black hair pure white and his eyes blood-red, a condition similar to Marie Antoinette syndrome. Red tattoo-like markings spread across his body, a telltale sign he was becoming something inhuman—a trait shared by the monsters he'd consumed.
Mentally, Hajime became someone else entirely. The kind, awkward kid vanished. He turned ruthless, willing to kill anyone who threatened him. He'd smile in the face of danger, a disturbing habit that prompted Shia to call him a new species of predator. Yet underneath the cruelty and monstrosity, he never lost his loyalty to the few people who mattered to him.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
