"Take this, you motherfucker!"
A pack of teenagers were pummeling a boy their own age.
They were shouting insults as if they were beating up their life long enemy.
"You red-haired freak! I told you not to mess around!"
Snarled a black-haired kid with icy blue eyes, throwing punches like the red haired kid took his girlfriend.
The red-haired boy didn't budge.
He took the blows in stoic silence.
looking less like a victim and more like someone waiting for the bus that never shows up.
Eventually they ran out of steam.
The black-haired one, panting and dramatic, leaned over him and said, "If I see you near her again, it won't end well for you."
He turned, barked, "Let's go, guys," and the posse dispersed like a badly organized flash mob.
They left the red-haired boy on the pavement, bruised, annoyed, and eerily calm, as if the whole episode had merely interrupted his nap.
After they left, the red-haired boy slowly got up, cracking his neck to the side with a grimace.
"Damn… those fuckers really beat the crap out of me today," he muttered, brushing the dust off his uniform like it had personally offended him.
This unfortunate kid was Dio Scarlett.
A high schooler, technically speaking, though his attendance record might suggest otherwise.
He was an orphan, abandoned at the doorstep of a monastery the day he was born.
Clearly, the universe had decided to speedrun the "tragic backstory" part of his life.
Ever since he was a kid, people made fun of him for his "exotic" looks, bright blood-red hair and eyes to match.
Even his surname was earned because of his features.
He looked less like a student and more like a final boss someone accidentally enrolled in math class.
Sure, he was handsome, but the red hair and eyes tended to attract the wrong kind of attention, mostly stares, whispers, and occasionally, punches.
Though his backstory could've easily earned him a slot in a tragic drama, complete with rain, violins, and a slow zoom-out, Dio's life was anything but tragic.
This guy, Dio, was actually one of the most talented bullies in school.
A true professional.
If bullying were an academic discipline, he'd already have a PhD, a few research papers, and maybe a teaching position.
In fact, the kid who'd just finished beating him up? Yeah, Dio used to bully him.
His most memorable masterpiece was the time he made that same kid run a lap around the entire school.
Sounds harmless enough, right?
Just a friendly jog to build character, until you learn Dio made him do it naked.
The teachers still referred to that day as "The black day."
Dio called it " Entertainment."
After that humiliation, the kid never came back to school, which, to Dio's great disappointment, meant his favorite playmate had retired early.
Bored and missing the thrill, he turned his attention to the upperclassmen.
He swaggered into their turf, picked a fight, and by some mix of luck and drama managed to win.
The victory was satisfying but sobering: those seniors were no pushovers.
Dio shelved the idea of making them his regular victims, for now.
With no one left to entertain him, he grew restless, then someone casually suggested,
"Why don't you bully the juniors?"
Dio's answer was pure arrogance, delivered with a grin: "They don't fight back."
"Besides, I'm saving the upperclassmen for later, after I get a bit of training."
He sounded disturbingly confident, like a villain in a training montage, and frankly, the school had little idea how much trouble it was walking into.
His routine stayed blissfully toxic, until the day the kid he used to bully showed up again after two months away.
Dio practically sprinted over, grinning like he'd found a lost puppy.
He was halfway through the opening line of a brand-new humiliation he'd been rehearsing in his head, complete with smug grin and dramatic flair, when—
Bang!
The kid clocked him.
One punch.
Harder than anything Dio had felt before.
It launched him like a ragdoll.
He stood there, stunned; he'd taken on whole squads of upperclassmen and lived to tell the tale, but this single hit had sent him flying.
He couldn't believe it.
No way that weakling, his personal punching bag, had just decked him.
Still dizzy but stubborn, Dio charged again, determined to reclaim his title as "local menace."
The result? Even worse.
One hit, and lights out.
He collapsed right there on the schoolyard like those young masters in cultivation novels.
When he finally woke up in the infirmary, bruised and confused, the gossip hit him harder than the punch ever did:
"That kid had awakened as a Hunter.
Apparently, he'd be enrolling in the Hunter Academy next year."
Dio just stared at the ceiling, realizing
the universe had a twisted sense of humor.
His old victim had leveled up… and he was still stuck at tutorial mode.
But Dio wasn't the type to give up just because reality smacked him in the face, twice.
After learning about his ex-victim's awakening, he decided he'd do the same.
Surely if that weakling could awaken, he could too. Right?
Statistically, the chances were about as good as a cat becoming a dog, it only depended on luck, but numbers had never scared Dio (mostly because he really sucked at maths).
He quit school entirely and threw himself into training.
Months passed.
The transformation was… impressive.
His body turned lean and sculpted, his abs looked like they'd been carved by divine spite, and his jawline could probably cut glass.
If he walked into class now, half the girls would faint from a nose bleed and the other half would start plotting to date him.
But despite the new muscles and movie-star looks, one thing still refused to show up, his awakening.
Dio had become the ultimate civilian-level powerhouse.
Handsome, strong, and utterly ordinary.
Though the failure stung worse than his bruises, Dio wasn't ready to give up.
Then, as if struck by divine stupidity, or perhaps divine inspiration, an idea hit him.
"If getting beaten once made him awaken… maybe if I get beaten too, I'll awaken!"
Proud of his scientific reasoning, Dio marched back to school with renewed excitement.
The moment he spotted his old victim, he began provoking him like a man on a mission.
But the kid was a really good child.
Calm, composed, practically glowing with self-control, he said, "Look, Dio… whatever happened in the past is over. Let's just forget it."
Unfortunately, Dio's brain was not wired for peace treaties.
To him, that sounded like a challenge.
And so, he hatched what he called " A genius plan", everyone else would've just called it "a terrible idea."
He found out the most beautiful girl in class was dating his former victim.
Naturally, Dio decided the best way to provoke the guy… was to seduce his girlfriend.
The result?
Predictably disastrous.
Thanks to his annoyingly good looks and silver tongue, the girl actually fell for him, and then did something she really, really shouldn't have.
That day, Dio discovered there was something even more fun than bullying.
What he didn't know was that he'd just upgraded from "idiot" to "dead man walking.
Because when that "good kid" found out what Dio did to his girlfriend… well, to be fair, Dio never meant for things to go that far.
He only planned to kiss her, snap a photo, and use it to piss the guy off.
But the girl, she was something else.
She took him on a ride he hadn't planned for.
Later, the good kid beat the hell out of him.
Dio lay sprawled on the floor, staring blankly out the classroom window, his face a modern art exhibit titled Consequences.
With a long, tragic sigh, he muttered, "I still didn't awaken… even after all that beating."
It was almost poetic, if you ignored the blood on his lip and the shoe prints on his shirt.
He'd risked life, dignity, and reputation in the name of power… and all he'd gained was pain, abs, and some extra fun.
And then, because Dio's brain operated on the dangerous edge between courage and idiocy, something sparked in his head.
He sat up, eyes gleaming with the light of a man who had learned absolutely nothing from his previous mistakes.
"What if… I went to a dungeon?"
He whispered, like he'd just uncovered the secret to immortality instead of, you know, a highly effective way to die.[ Great love? Is that you?]
The thought alone filled him with excitement.
Dungeons were dangerous, sure, people died there daily, but maybe, just maybe, that's what he needed to awaken.
After all, if getting punched half to death didn't work, maybe near-death would.
Somewhere, fate facepalmed.