Cid Kagenou

Cid Kagenō (シド・カゲノー), formerly Minoru Kagenō, is the main protagonist of The Eminence in Shadow series. He is the leader of the secret organization Shadow Garden under the moniker Shadow, which he founded to live his chūnibyō fantasies, unaware that his imaginary enemies exist.

Cid Kagenō
Cid is a slim young man with short dark hair and 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.

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

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

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

Minoru Kagenō
In his previous life as Minoru Kagenō, due to his constant training, he possessed a rather tall and muscular physique. Despite this, however, his face remained rather plain, with short black hair and black eyes.

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 'Eminence in the Shadows', a person who exerts enormous power and influence in the darkness of society. He spares no effort in dedicating himself to that goal and takes great pride in his achievements. He appreciates other people's hard work and disdains those whose strength is borrowed.

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. While in his Shadow persona, he is obsessed with appearing cool and mysterious, muttering ominous lines and performing silly antics. More than a few of his 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 'Mundane Mann') 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 hold a secret adoration towards 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 and often mistakenly think that they are using it for themselves. He likes money and prefers to earn it himself rather than rely on the funds gathered by his subordinates.

Even though he relies heavily on luck, improvisation, and physical dexterity, Cid has shown that he is intelligent and cunning, and has the ingenuity to be able to achieve some of his initial goals before and after creating Shadow Garden. For example, before the creation of his organization, he was able to create the slime suit and develop a cure for Demon Possession which was previously unknown. His intelligence and knowledge are only surpassed by 2 of the Seven Shades Gamma and Eta.

When it comes to his public persona, he is often obsessed with making himself a "mob character", seeming as mediocre as possible. An example of this behavior is shown when he allowed himself to be tortured by investigators for a week and even disregarded his injuries because he felt that it supported his image as a mob character, even though he could have easily escaped or simply recovered his injuries using his powers. Furthermore, Cid will happily allow himself to be beaten and stabbed if he believes that it will make him more "mob-like". 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".

Physical Prowess
Cid is an extremely powerful warrior with physical strength strong enough to shatter wood, concrete, and the body of strong monsters without using much magic due to a lifetime of martial arts training combined. Such is his knowledge of how his body works, that he can dodge attacks with minimal movement, and when taking physical attacks such as stabs, can redirect them to non-vital areas to avoid damage to vital organs. He also has superhuman speed and reflexes, which goes into sleight of hand; being able to pickpocket his money back right after being pickpocketed, and taking their money at the same time.

Swordsmanship
Before reincarnating, Minoru displayed a desire to become an 'Eminence in the Shadows' and began to practice a variety of fencing starting from his childhood and spanning his teenage years until he reincarnated. After his reincarnation, Minoru, now named Cid, repeated his training assimilating his newfound magic into it. At the age of six, he had already mastered fencing, adapting his previous style of swordsmanship with the style of his current world. His skill at using swords has been honed by training to the pinnacle of human limits. His main natural style is perfect in the fundamentals, based not on talent, power, speed, or usage of magic, but on endless amounts of effort in training. Cid can switch to a more flashy style if the situation calls for it.

Even without enhancing himself with magic, 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. After the fight, Iris believes that Shadow was the strongest Spellsword in the world. He has also shown that he can masterfully dual-wield swords in an effective and manageable way. This skill is shown in his battle against Ragnarok, the 'grand ruler of the Fourth Realm', in which he uses two swords against the demon and manages to defeat him without so many problems.

Hand-to-Hand Combat
In his previous life, as Minoru Kagenō, he practiced and mastered various disciplines such as karate, boxing, mixed martial arts, Buddhism, yoga from an early age. Around his adolescence, he reached the pinnacle of the strength of the human body, both in skill and in other respects. He was capable of dominating and defeating average thugs to people who had undergone military training. When he reincarnated as Cid, he repeated his training and grew stronger in hand-to-hand combat allowing him to effortlessly subdue power opponents with his bare hands. With his skills he defeated Gettan, delivering several blows only using his body, even though Gettan had been heavily strengthened by the Tears of Diablos.

Previous world Knowledge
After being reborn into the Kagenō family, Minoru retained all of his past abilities and knowledge while studying magic. This immensely augmented his abilities, turning him into one of the most powerful people in the world. His knowledge of his previous and more advanced world, allowed his organization to develop their technology exponentially.

Knowledge of Languages
Cid has mastered several languages including the language of his per-reincarnation homeland, Japanese, and other languages he learns in his pursuit of magic on Earth. He enjoys using English while speaking. He also has basic knowledge about the Runes of Norse mythology and about the Greek alphabet.

Tuned Perception
Cid has a keen perception and can distinguish the identity of other people even if they attempt to hide their identities. For instance, he was able to see through Lutheran Barnett's disguise and uncover his identity as a member of the cult and the person who organized the attack on the academy.

Magic
Cid has refined the control of his magic throughout his life. Unlike the red color of normal magic users, Cid's magic is purple and resembles the pattern of a circuit. He can cure children who are Demon Possessed as well as create slime suits and swords. Other uses of his magic involve 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 magic.

Magic Missile
Cid can launch small magical or slime projectiles that he developed at speeds as fast as bullets from pistols with the point of the fingers of his hands, with enough force to pierce a person's heart or skull.

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 a 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. Notably, 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

Magic threads
Cid has achieved the ability to create and wield steel wires and magic strings that he can wield with his fingers as if he were a puppeteer. By wielding these threads he can use them as lethal weapons creating webs of threads that can slice through the members of his adversaries and even control them without the need to move from his position at all. Cid uses these threads for the first time when he assumes the secret identity of John Smith against his members of Shadow Garden subduing them without much problem, (specifically against 664, 665, and 666, in the end Against Alpha), and against Gettan during the Great conflict of commercial alliances. He also uses magic threads but as Shadow against Ragnarok during the civil war of Orianna's kingdom.

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 in another town within a short time.

Quick Flash
Cid can move almost instantly to any place within his radius of reach in less than 1 second, to the point as if he were teleporting, using magical power in a small amount.

Walk on water
Cid can walk on water using his magical power on it. This is seen after Cid finishes training with his sister Claire Kagenō when they were kids in the anime.

Air travel
Cid, while wearing his Shadow suit, can use his magic to perform air jumps and glide through the air, allowing him to fly for extended periods of time.

Stick to wall
Through the use of magic, Cid can cling, walk and stay fixed on walls or any solid structure, it is speculated that he can also stay fixed on these structures without using magic like a ninja. In the anime, he uses this ability to avoid his sister, Claire, who visits him in his room and he sticks to the ceiling so as not to be seen, as a curious fact, Cid can also exercise this ability unconsciously, since when Rosa I try to get into his room on the train during the night, Cid stuck to the ceiling again but while he was sleeping.

Enhancement of magical senses
Cid can reinforce his 5 senses through the use of magic, allowing him to sensitize and overcome more than the capabilities of the human sense to the point of noticing small things that cannot be perceived, when he disguises himself as John Smith, Cid reinforces his eyes with magic to notice and see the difference between the counterfeit bills made by Yukime and those of the Mitsugoshi Company.

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.

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 he is in. Known forms include:

Spinning Guard, 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.

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.

Acting
Outside of his combat abilities, Cid is a master actor who successfully portrays himself as a mundane individual as well as other secret identities such as Mundane Mann and John Smith.

Knowledge of science and business
Knows various sciences, both in the economy, as well as in science, commerce, and agriculture, among others, which he has managed to retain, although in a somewhat vague way, from his previous life, which has served him to educate his most subordinates nearby, "the 7 shadows", while he trained them since they were little when he rescued them, that without intending it and without knowing it, they have used that knowledge taught by Cid, to manage to use and recreate the things that he knew from his previous life.

Piano Proficiency
He is a skilled pianist who can play Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata", which is his favorite musical piece and for which he is most skilled with it, and has knowledge and ability to play other musical notes.

Through it, by order of his parents before reincarnating, he has become so skilled in it both for pleasure and for others. Through this knowledge, he has taught Epsilon hers how to play them and other things, while he took care of her and taught her Members, like the other original Shadows, since Epsilon told him that he liked music. her.

Luck
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.

Trivia

 * In the web novel, "I am Atomic!" was written as "I am Taepodong!" (a North Korean-ICBM), but the author soon changed it to "Atomic" for political reasons.
 * Pre-reincarnation his name was 影野実 (Minoru Kagenou) 野 may be ateji to substitute の, thus 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.
 * Post-reincarnation his family name is カゲノー (Kagenō). When read in the Japanese naming order (Kagenō Cid) which becomes "Kage no Cid", as in "Cid of the Shadows".
 * It is unknown how many languages Cid has learned throughout his previous life on earth and after reincarnating. Currently, it is known that he knows four to five languages in total including Japanese and English and the language of his current world.
 * 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.
 * Only nine people, of the more than 600 members in Shadow Garden, have received their power directly from Cid. These being the Seven Shades, Victoria (No. 559) and Rose Oriana (No. 666).