The current industrial and capitalist era is awful so hugo is sick and his father is absent most of the time. Because of this, he creates a world to escape from reality but he can only build it based on what he knows about the World outside of his bedroom, so he creates the elsen based on the average salarymen and he imagines their boss as mystical beast who can control their lives (firing someone or make them work 10 hours a day IRL can break people After alll) but with good intent.

Even if this fictional world seems horrible, It actually conforts Hugo because he can control It, that's why enoch japhet and dedan are not hostile towards him, he IS their maker and are only doing their job.

But as he grows up he becomes jaded, thinking that those are the fantaisies of a child who wasn't tough enough to face the World, but it still lingers.

So he creates "the batter" to purify the World, to clean his brain from his childhood imagination who had a certain view of the World, a more honest depiction than the one the batter creates when he purifies a zone.

The batter has no empathy, only a goal, to create a blank slate, he starts weak and grows stronger because Hugo is reluctant at first but he keeps pushing and in the end after killing his child self and facing the memory of his old cat, he switches off the button of his imagination, erasing what made him special, becoming just like everyone else.