Chapter 1: Prologue

HA!

*Pam*

Everyday…

Every day since I was 8. I have been going to dojo to train.

For what?

I have never had to use my martial arts for self-defense…

I never had to protect someone.

Every day, I have been training, and for what?

Maybe just for fitness?

No!

I have been training to do something meaningful

I have been thinking to myself did I born into the wrong era?

Maybe if I was born a few hundred years ago, it would be more useful.

But in this era of peace.

It’s useless.

In the end… In pursuit of true challenge, I went and killed many people…

I became mindless monster who killed and killed and killed…

But I never killed an innocent, that was as far as my killing went…

I thought by killing the evil, I would protect my country… but I was nothing but a government’s weapon to exterminate their enemies.

I became stronger… I became more ruthless…

Until I saw what I became… and I decided to escape from my previous life…

I was already 35 years old and I decided to enter a fighting tournaments.

But there were so many rules!

Of course, I won with rules and all, but I wanted to fight with all I got

My own created martial arts wasn’t for rules, it was to fight with all I got.

My martial arts is called Iron Style.

It has combined martial arts of assassination, pure strength, and soft style.

Sounds confusing I know.

But in my opinion, my martial arts is unrivaled!

Assassination part of iron style attacks with decoys, faints and hit from blind spots or just hit to the vital organs.

The pure Strength part of the iron style is more focused in hand to hand combat or close combat part. It focuses also on fists and kicks.

The soft style is completely the opposite of pure strength. It doesn’t use any strength, but with it, you can block any and all attacks. It can also be combined with Pure Strength to make confusing, but powerful attacks.

But what use it has!

It took me 18 years to make my own style.

All for nothing..

…

My name is Kurogami Ichiro. I am 43 years old with black hair and black eyes with a height of 181cm. I might sound ordinary, but in my opinion, I am not. I am perhaps the strongest man or at least one of the strongest in the entire world if you look at combat ability.

35 years I have spent on martial arts and 18 from those 35 was focused on my own martial arts.

Of course, it’s hard to make your own martial arts that aren’t completely copied from other styles.

My style has some copies, but it also has my own uniqueness.

But, as much as I have wanted to test my style on powerful opponents, I wasn’t that lucky.

I live in Japan in an era of peace.

I am pretty famous too, after all, I have won multiple tournaments and I even went to try Judo in Olympics which I won.

I didn’t even train Judo.

I only knew the basics, but it was enough.

I just combined a little bit of my own style.

After that, I started thinking.. was I too strong for this era?

Was everything I have done so far meaningless?

I did a lot of questionable things in my life, in pursuit of some kind of meaning.

But I realized the things I did, was only helping the government get more power.

I have been called by many names like once in a lifetime genius, the strongest man in the world, and the Reincarnation of Martial God, etc.

I never thought of myself as a genius.

I only trained more than anyone.

After all, in this era of peace, who would want to spend their entire life on training some martial arts, except some Olympic sport like Judo.

Only a few and I was one of them.

I was born in the wrong era, that’s what I thought…

But, everything changed in the weirdest way possible…

…

Getting off the dojo after training for another 8 hours.

I started walking towards my home which was located on the eastern side of Tokyo.

While I was walking everyone around me took few glimpses towards me, which I am already used to.

After all, I am a middle-aged man with a bulky body with muscles the size of basketballs and a handsome face to crown it.

I don’t use a car, because, in my opinion, it would make me lazy, so I walk everywhere.

It is an 8 km distance between my home and the dojo. I live alone since I have never had a wife or kids. Few girlfriends while I was at high school, but nothing serious. And after I went to college, I just started focusing more and more on martial arts.

My parents are still alive and I still love them dearly even though they keep pestering me about getting family, which I want as well.

It has been getting lonely after all I have lived alone for 23 years with only my martial arts to accompany me…

While I was walking towards stoplights, I heard loud scream to the left of me.

I saw a young girl running towards the road while a truck was speeding towards her.

”YUMI!”

I hear some middle-aged woman yelling, but without further ado, I rushed towards a young girl who was about 30 meters from my position, but those 30 meters are nothing to me and I grabbed from her jacket and threw her out of the truck’s way.

But I wasn’t as lucky.

No matter how strong I have become. Nothing can defeat impact from the truck with a speed of 120 km/h.

At least not with the human body.

I was even wondering why someone even went this fast in the middle of a city!

But taking few glimpses towards the driving seat before the truck hit me.

And of course, it was a drunk driver!

Just my luck…

But at least I managed to protect someone…

Even if it wasn’t with my martial arts…

Those Were my last thoughts before everything went dark…