Cid Kagenou

Cid Kagenō (シド・カゲノー) is the main character of The Eminence in Shadow series.

He is the founder and leader of the secret organization Shadow Garden under the moniker  Shadow to help realize his fantasy of becoming an "Eminence in Shadow". However, unbeknownst to him, his fabrications are often revealed to be quite genuine in reality. He is also the reincarnation of Minoru Kagenō.

Appearance
Cid is a slim young man with short dark hair, with facial features often described as generic and frail. Attending the Midgar Academy, he is required to wear a uniform consisting of a dress shirt, trousers, a blazer jacket, a tie, and a pair of loafers.

Under his Shadow guise, Cid adorns a full-body slime suit, gloves, and boots along with a hooded trenchcoat, and a domino mask. This attire is dyed jet black with golden patterns.

Under his Mundane Mann guise, Cid adorns a plain man's face etched atop his, a hunched back, drop shoulders and misaligned pelvis.

Under his John Smith guise, Cid adorns a suit, fingerless gloves, and another domino mask to conceal his identity.

Minoru Kagenou
In his previous life as Minoru Kagenō, due to his constant training, Cid possessed a rather tall and muscular physique, towering over his classmates. Despite this, however, his face remained rather plain, with short black hair and black eyes. Overall, his appearance could be described as being a bulkier version of his post-reincarnation self.

Personality
"Even side characters have their battles to fight."

- Cid Kagenou

Inspired by TV shows, video games and other stories, Cid is obsessed with becoming the Power Within Shadows, a person who exerts enormous power from the shadows. He spares no effort dedicating himself to that goal and takes great pride in his achievements. He appreciates other people's hard work and disdains those who rob power.

His followers believe him to be a brilliant mastermind when in reality his success comes from dumb luck, improvisation, and his superior combat prowess. In his civilian persona, Cid hates drawing attention, portraying himself as a below-average student. In his Shadow persona, he is obsessed with appearing cool and mysterious in front of his followers, muttering ominous lines and performing silly antics. More than a few of Cid's decisions are aimed at acting out various fantasies and story clichés he thinks are cool. For instance, his participation in the God of War Festival Tournament (under the false identity "Jimina") was solely to fulfill his specific fantasy of being a mysterious fighter who is at first laughed at for being supposedly weak, but ultimately shocks everyone with his true strength.

Shadow Garden is extremely loyal to Cid, and quite a few of its members are secretly in love with him, although Cid is oblivious to that. It annoys Cid whenever some of his subordinates take credit for the otherworldly knowledge they learned from him, Cid often mistakenly thinks they're using it for themselves. He likes money and prefers to earn it himself rather than rely on the funds gathered by his subordinates. Despite being distant from his loved ones, he does care for them.

When it comes to his public persona, he is often obsessed with making himself a "mob character" and seeming as mediocre as possible, among things he allowed himself to be tortured by investigators for nearly a week because he feels it adds to his image as a mob character, even though he could have easily killed his torturers or simply used his knowledge of healing magic to recover from all the damage they did to him instantly. As long as he believes it makes him more "mob-like", Cid will happily allow himself to be beaten black and blue, and stabbed; on one occasion he stopped his own heart for 10 minutes for the sake of what he called a "mob saves the main character event".

Powers & Abilities
Cid is an extremely powerful warrior, due to a lifetime of training in martial arts combined with his expertise in magic. Such is his knowledge in how his body works, Cid is able to dodge attacks with minimal movement, and on taking physical attacks such as stabbing attacks, redirect them to non-vital areas to avoid hitting organs. He has superhuman speed and reflexes, which goes into sleight of hand; being able to pickpocket his money back right after being pickpocketed, and taking the thief's money at the same time.
 * Physical Prowess:

His skill at using swords has been honed by training to the pinnacle of human limit. His main natural style is perfect in the basic fundamentals, based not on talent, power, speed, or usage of mana, but on endless amounts of effort in training. Cid can switch to a more flashy style if the situation calls for it however. Even without enhancing himself with mana, he can outfight any magic-using opponent. He is skilled enough to simultaneously fight and effortlessly defeat Beatrix and Iris Midgar, two of the most accomplished Spellswords in the world. Iris regards Shadow as the strongest man in the world.
 * Swordsmanship:

In his previous life, as Minoru Kagenō, he practiced various disciplines such as Karate, Boxing, Kendo, Mixed Martial Arts, Zazen, Buddhism, and Yoga. Around his teenage years, he reached peak levels of the human body and was capable of overpowering opponents who underwent military training.
 * Acquiring skills:

After being reborn into the Kagenō family, Minoru retained all of his past abilities while studying magic. This immensely augmented his abilities, turning him into one of the most powerful people in the world.
 *  Previous world knowledge:

Cid has refined control of his magic due to years of performing experiments. Unlike normal magic users whose magic are wild and colored red, Cid's magic are refined in a circuit like pattern and colored purple. He can cure cursed children and vampires, as well as create slime suits and swords. Presumably, his body releases his mana at full power that explodes into a whirlpool of splendid violet light, petrifying normal people and affecting the weather.
 * Magic:

Other uses of his magic involve using wide-area detection magic, boosting an army's combat power and mind control. He can also strengthen the defense of his slime suit to the point that he remains unscathed after receiving an all-out barrage from Maximilian, someone who has similar quantities of mana.


 * Special techniques:


 * I Am Atomic
 * His signature technique is the result of all of his hard work to finally defeat his last challenge (of surviving a nuclear weapon by becoming a nuclear weapon) in where he pours much of his power into his blade into a devastating strike that once struck against its target, he or she will disintegrate followed by an nuclear explosion that can shake the land to pieces and even affect space. The attack can also project a barrier ensuring anyone outside it would not be affected by the attack. It is notable that it does not leave any radiation behind like a real nuclear explosion.


 * I Am Recovery Atomic
 * Used in the same way as I Am Atomic, he can heal people within a large radius.


 * Serious Dash
 * By boosting himself with mana, Cid is capable of traveling at superhuman speeds of 1200kph. Cid will generally avoid using this in his civilian persona as it would not make sense for a mob to be at another town within a short time.


 * Mob-Fu
 * In his civilian persona, Cid never displays his true power, practicing what he calls Mob Fu, or the art of losing battles with style. He has created 48 Ultimate Forms, which are used according to the situation in which he is in. Known forms include:
 * Tailspin Parry Bloody Tornado
 * On being struck by a sword, Cid will leap back at the same time and use the one second window to arch his body, aiming for the sky, whilst using blood bags and the momentum to make a spinning stream of blood around himself as he flies into a wall.


 * Blood Spittermerlion
 * Cid will follow up the above technique by using another blood bag to simulate vomiting blood at a ridiculous volume.


 * 10 Minutes Of Being Near Death: Heart Break Mob
 * Starting with using magic to circulate blood to his brain, Cid can stop his heart to fake dying. Within ten minutes, Cid must forcefully restart his heart correctly or risk dying for real if he does it wrong.  This technique can be combined with taking an attack which looks lethal enough to allow Cid to pretend to be dead.


 * Graceful Exit Stage Right
 * Cid will attempt to leave a conversation by stating an excuse, talking fast and leaving at the same time. This may fail if the conversation partner knows who Cid is, has a reason to talk to him, or is of a high enough social class that Cid cannot reasonably leave unless he is allowed to.


 * Longevity

It is implied that he can magically extend his lifespan to at least 300 years. He is more concerned about getting funds to live for 300 years (as he does not consider the money earned by Mitsugoshi Company as his own) and talks as if it is already set in stone that he will live for 300 years.

Outside of his combat abilities, Cid is a master actor who successfully portrays himself as a mundane individual.
 * Acting:

While debatable as an actual ability, and more or less entirely serving comedic purposes, Cid displays a humorously implausible amount of luck, with both random guesses and random information he invented on the spot often inexplicably being correct. For instance, despite being oblivious to the Order of Diabolos' existence, he informed Alpha about the cult during their first meeting, believing he made it all up, despite getting every detail correct. Following his sister's kidnapping, he randomly threw a knife at a map Beta was analyzing and claimed that it was the location where Claire was being held, unaware that he was right. The members of Shadow Garden naturally mistake this for his brilliance and insight.
 * Luck:


 * Other Talents:

He is a skilled pianist who can play Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and is knowledgeable in various sciences, to educate his closest subordinates.

Trivia

 * His name on Earth was 影野実 (Kagenou Minoru). 野 could be just ateji to substitute の, so his name is the beginning of the series title "陰の実力者になりたくて" (Kage no Jitsuryokusha ni naritakute) with 実 being read as "Minoru"; alternatively, 影野 read together means "shadow field", as in Shadow Garden.
 * His family name is カゲノー (Kagenō). When read in Japanese name order, his name becomes "Kage no Cid", as in "Cid of the Shadow".
 * Throughout his training, Cid collected various rare and expensive items such as art and antiques from the loots of various bandits he defeated.
 * Cid owes a meal to Alpha after eating her share of food she provided during the abduction incident involving Princess Alexia but has yet to receive an opportunity to return the favor.
 * Initially "I am Atomic!" was written as "I am Taepodong!" (a North Korean-ICBM), but the author soon changed it to "Atomic" for political reasons.
 * In the anime, when the night comes, he went out to fight bikers and thugs with his self-taught fighting style using crowbars As weapons. Also while doing this he used the name Stylish Thug Slayer.
 * In the Web Novel His name is Sid Kagenō.