Prologue
[BREAKING NEWS] The Hero’s Party Who Defeated the Demon King — Confirmed as Enemies of the World After Falling to Corruption?
“Pfft— hack!”
Even a youngest-son freeloader from a family with no financial worries ought to at least cultivate some noble refinement — so said my mother, nagging away as usual. It was under those circumstances that I unfolded the front page of the Imperial Daily, and what I saw made my blood run cold.
Why are they acting like this?
I thought I might have misread it, but the words printed on the page laid out, in vivid and unmistakable detail, information indicating that the Heroes were displaying deeply troubling behavior.
I fell into utter confusion.
“Those guys aren’t the type to go down a bad path…?”
The four Heroes — who seemed to carry the soul of the Original Hero intact, reincarnated along with their sacred calling — possessed souls of pure, untainted goodness, without so much as a single speck of darkness.
Which was precisely why I, a coward through and through, had been all the more reluctant to mingle with them.
Whenever I found myself among them, I felt constantly ill at ease — like a pitch-black drop of oil in clean, clear water.
I had assumed they found me just as uncomfortable to be around. That was why I had accepted the reincarnation deal with the god, believing it to be a happy ending for everyone involved…
……(Abridged) An anonymous source has delivered shocking news: the Hero’s party has made contact with dark mages and necromancers, with the intent to resurrect their comrade, the priest ‘Hyakin,’ who died in battle over twenty years ago.
Who is there to stop these fallen Heroes bent on committing such a forbidden act?
Ugh, I think I’m about to hurl everything I had for lunch. Blegh.
“What the hell is wrong with these bastards? Did fighting the Demon King give them all some kind of collective mental breakdown?”
To think they’d go out of their way to drag someone back from peaceful eternal rest — you rotten, wretched sons of—!
I screamed and tore the newspaper to shreds, then sank into troubled thought.
What would it take for those idiots to abandon their plan to resurrect me?
There was one reason, and one reason only, that I was so violently consumed with every infuriating thing the Heroes were getting up to.
Because I am that very Hyakin they’re trying to resurrect!
“I was reborn exactly as I wished — as the pampered youngest son of a cushy family, living in absolute luxury. What? Resurrect me? Not a chance in hell — not even if dirt got in my eyes!”
Hyakin Rober.
Notable detail: In his past life, he was Hyakin, the priest of the Hero’s party — who died a glorious death by throwing himself in front of every attack aimed at his companions.
In exchange, he was promised a spectacular reincarnation, and had been living quite well indeed.
……That is, until the Heroes lost their minds and started stirring up trouble left and right in their quest to bring him back.
