Masayuki Rudra Nam Ul Nasca

""Bernie, I'm going back. I never had a chance to tell you how I really feel because I didn't want my true identity to be known, but I really wanted to get to know you guys better. I'm a coward, but I don't want to be scum.""

- Masayuki

Masayuki Rudra Nam Ul Nasca (マサユキ・ルドラ・ナム・ウル・ナスカ), typically shortened to simply Masayuki or Rudra, is the Emperor of the Eastern Empire and a legendary historic figure. He uniquely serves as a supporting character and a central antagonist simultaneously due to different versions of him from different points in time sharing the same time-space, with the earlier version of him being under the influence of Michael.

Appearance
Masayuki has the appearance of a handsome young man with teal-blue eyes and blonde hair. While acting as a Hero he wears simplistic outfits that are easy to move around in and while acting as a ruler he wears expensive and ornate clothing inter-weaved with gold thread.

Personality
Masayuki is at his core a rather timid and reserved individual who could be said to have difficulty communicating his intentions to others. However, despite this timid nature, Masayuki is an extremely honorable person who would rather die than run away from his responsibilities.

Masayuki is the type of person to never give up. Be it in his original life where he did his best to be the king and hero that Veldanava and his people expected him to be or in his new one where, even without his memories, he again took on the roles of Chosen Hero and Emperor even if he complained about it.

While his excessive pride is mostly a mask that he wears, he has a strong sense of "doing things the right way" and complained about how easy it was for him to gain an Ultimate Skill the second time around. Even after regaining all of his memories his personality remains more or less the same, meaning that his current personality and his original personality were most likely nearly identical to begin with.

Background
Masayuki, known at the time as just Rudra, was born millennia ago as a prince of the Nasca Kingdom with the ambition to unite the entire world. At some point, he was taken under the tutelage of Veldanava, who trained him to be a Chosen Hero that could rival Guy Crimson. Over the course of the many years of his training, he obtained both the Unique Skill Chosen One and the Ultimate Skill Uriel. He was also blessed by the Elementals and their Queen, awakening as a True Hero sometime after. Before his first confrontation with Guy, Veldanava approached him and proposed that they trade Ultimate Skills, his Uriel for Veldanava's Michael. Rudra accepted the offer and received Michael, a skill better suited for his dream of unifying the world.

He set out on an expedition to the Ice Continent, taking his sister Lucia and the woman he fell in love with, Velgrynd, along with him. When they arrived at the Frost Palace, he dropped any pretenses of an honorable duel and promptly demanded Guy to hand over all their valuables. He had no intention of killing Guy, only wishing to deal with him to gain the support of the rest of humanity as well as Guy himself. In the duel that followed he was unable to get an edge in on Guy, even with the Holy Field and Holy Blade spells cast by his sister combined with his immense swordsmanship. Guy simply analyzed his movements and copied his every move, only making the demon lord stronger as their fight went on. Even Michael, and the immense power it possessed, wasn't enough for him to achieve victory. The skill had yet to accept him as its new master and he could only control its power for an extremely short duration.

From there, he frequently undertook expeditions to rematch Guy, with no decisive winner ever arising between the two. Back at home, Lucia and Veldanava's romance blossomed and resulted in the birth of his niece Milim. With Veldanava now bearing a mortal life span and living a normal life, Rudra strived more than ever to unite the world and give their family a life of peace. In this vein, he decided to change the nature of his match with Guy. The two of them directly fighting each other would never go anywhere, so he proposed that they duke it out using their subordinates as a proxy, the winner being able to claim rule over the entire world. However, this ideal wasn't something that was fated to last. The unexpected death of Veldanava and his sister drove him into a deep depression, one that the will residing within Michael was able to exploit to slowly twist Rudra's heart into a cold and heartless puppet. The next two thousand years were a constant internal battle between him and Michael, one that exhausted his physical body and forced him to reincarnate over and over, losing pieces of his soul every time due to the strain. Over time he lost more and more pieces of himself, even his status as a Chosen Hero, until he was eventually taken over and killed by Michael.

His lover Velgrynd, empowered by Rimuru Tempest and Ciel, set out to gather all of his soul fragments that had spread across time and space in various worlds. She gathered every fragment, piece by piece, living alongside dozens if not hundreds of versions of Rudra until only one remained. In the presence of the young Japanese high-schooler, Masayuki Honjou, all of the soul fragments flew toward him of their own will. The instant that the fragments merged with Masayuki, the sudden return of his powers created a counter-force that sent the young boy across time and space, with him returning to the Central World. However, due to him returning before the death of his previous self, large parts of his soul, including his memories, laid dormant. He was left with only the pieces that his past self had lost, namely his status as a Chosen Hero and the Unique Skill Chosen One.

Trivia

 * During Masayuki's introduction, the crowd of people around him deduced that he's the missing legendary blonde Chosen Hero returned, foreshadowing his true identity as the first Chosen Hero.
 * It is likely that Masayuki is partially based on the Fate character Gilgamesh. His appearance is strikingly similar and the kanji for his Ultimate Skill reads "Eiyū Ō", a nickname commonly used for Gilgamesh both in and out of series.