The Utterly Useless Hero Party
The Demon King who had waged a long war against humanity was finally dead.
Yeah. He was dead, all right. The only problem was that I, the one who had fought him, was also on the verge of dying.
I could barely move my head as my strength faded. When I looked down at the massive hole punched through my torso, it really felt like I could drop dead any second.
“It’s a fatal wound anyway. Fuck, this is such bullshit.”
If that damn hero had actually been useful, things never would have come to this. This was all the fault of the hero and those worthless bitches of his.
In this world, the Demon King descended.
For many long years, the war between humanity and the Demon King continued.
The king formed a hero party and ordered them to subjugate the Demon King.
The hero party advanced toward the Demon King’s territory like a raging storm.
The hero Eugene, chosen by the Holy Sword, swung it to shatter the demonic beasts.
The saintess Cyria, blessed by the goddess, healed the party with divine power.
The noble elf Ella of the Great Forest purified the demonic beasts with the power of the spirits.
The mage Noah from the Land of Destruction swallowed the demonic beasts with the power of shadows.
The hero party finally reached the gates of the Demon King’s castle.
They believed that once they dealt with the Demon King, everything would be over.
At least until I, the mage, opened my mouth.
“I really don’t mesh with you people at all. I genuinely want to quit.”
“What?”
The hero’s face twisted at my honest complaint. I had spat it out because I truly wanted to walk away.
“A so-called hero who does nothing but eat, sleep, and play around, along with his mistress number one and mistress number two.”
My words made both the elf and the saintess frown.
Eugene, apparently getting heated as he listened, finally spoke up.
“Yeah. You said it well. To put it bluntly, you just can’t stand that your name is more famous than mine, the chosen hero. You always rush forward before I can even act. Are you trying to replace me as the hero?”
With the Demon King standing right there as our enemy, that was what he chose to say? Shouldn’t we be fighting to protect humanity first?
“That’s right. You don’t belong in our party at all, not with the hero and the noble elf present.”
“And why am I being excluded? Noah. Logically speaking, should a saintess like me really have to work alongside someone who manipulates gloomy darkness?”
The rest of the party joined in with their own nonsense, as if they had been waiting for the chance. I guess sleeping with the hero must have been that good.
“Fucking hell. Even if your mouth is crooked, you should speak straight. Every time we stopped at a village, you three were too busy fooling around to notice. I’m the one who stepped up whenever the villagers were dying, but I guess that never even registered with you?”
“How dare you speak to the hero like that?”
Of course the hero’s women would jump in to shield him, stepping forward to block me from his sight.
This was why, in every world, the problem was always brainless bitches like these and the hero bastard who swung his dick around however he pleased.
“Hero my ass. Hey, you country bumpkin from the woods. You go around throwing your weight everywhere as the hero’s woman, tasting his dick and acting like you’re somebody special now?”
“What? W-what did you—”
“And you, self-proclaimed saintess. Are you really a saintess? Or are you just a succubus pretending to be a priestess? I’m sick of hearing you two moaning and groaning under the hero every single night. It’s rotting my ears. Rotting them.”
“H-how dare you use such language toward a saintess!? Calling me a succubus!”
I was just spitting facts.
Yeah. Since I had already brought it up, I might as well see it through to the end. I didn’t want to stay with these people any longer anyway.
“I said even if your mouth is crooked, speak straight. I didn’t step up because I wanted to. I did it because you bitches and that bastard did nothing.”
I still remember it clearly. Somewhere far off, people were screaming Hero, please save us! while this asshole was inside his tent, relentlessly pounding the elf and the saintess.
“……”
“I didn’t want to say this, but since you all just stood there doing nothing, I ended up swinging the sword, firing the bow, and doing every shitty job myself. You know that, right? The Imperial Sword Guild offered me an executive position. How much did I have to carry you that a mage like me ended up learning swordsmanship?”
I had even earned the title of Sword Saint in their tests, for fuck’s sake. My actual job was mage, yet I got the Sword Saint title first!
“You were trying to steal all our roles! You healed everything that should have been my job and then acted like you wanted all the credit for yourself!”
She sure had a lot to say for someone with such a gaping mouth.
“Hey, you brain-dead bitch. How many times did I tell you? The villagers are dying! Heal them! And what did you do? You were rolling around with the hero. If I hadn’t healed those people, they would have died. It wasn’t just once or twice, either. Do you know what those people started calling me? The High Priest! A mage, yet they call me High Priest, for fuck’s sake!”
When a mage gets called Sword Saint and High Priest, that pretty much says everything, doesn’t it?
The elf was glaring at me, having finally caught on. Yeah, they even called me Divine Archer. A mage, yet I was addressed as Sword Saint, Divine Archer, and High Priest instead of Archmage or Great Sage.
The saintess had the nerve to try refuting me. I was genuinely curious how someone like her had become a saintess. If the goddess had truly chosen her, then the goddess probably had nothing in her head either.
“What? Roles? Why do you think I used a sword? It was to leave evidence on the demonic beasts the hero killed while you all stood idle. It was to leave traces of the arrows the elf shot. You stupid bastards. Don’t you know that if our party evaluation drops, the support gets cut off?”
The nation wasn’t stupid. They weren’t going to keep funding a so-called hero who produced no results and only consumed supplies. They had to earn their keep.
These idiots had nothing left to say and could only glare at me.
“Look, I’ll be honest. I can’t keep going with you people anymore. What’s the point of me nagging you a hundred or a thousand times? Honestly, I don’t think you could beat the Demon King even with all your strength. You know it too, which is why you’re just trying to coast along and enjoy the sweet life.”
“So what exactly are you trying to say?”
I smirked and pointed my finger at those brain-dead bitches.
“You’re expelled. You pathetic hero and your useless gang of whores.”
I didn’t even need to call their names. I expelled the former hero and all those useless women.
And so, the hero-less hero party consisting of just me charged toward the Demon King’s castle.
After kicking out the hero party, the hero-less hero party. The one-man mage party smashed straight through to the Demon King’s castle with refreshing efficiency.
The only issue was that I hadn’t taken down the Four Heavenly Kings. Those idiots were off in other regions and never imagined I would come alone, so it was the same as striking the capital directly during a war.
The real problem was that something I hadn’t anticipated happened.
And that result led to right now.
“Ha, fuck. This is really goddamn awful.”
I laughed bitterly as I stared at my perforated stomach.
Wow. After being called Sword Saint, High Priest, and Divine Archer by everyone except the Archmage title, I was going to die here.
Still, going one-on-one with the Demon King and getting this far—wasn’t that pretty impressive? At least I had cut off the Demon King’s head in the end.
I turned my head slightly. In the corner of the Demon King’s castle, which had been shattered by the large-scale battle, I saw the Demon King’s severed head rolling on the ground.
The sight of his head rolling around signaled that the war between humans and demons was finally over.
“Ha. Hah. Fuck. Nothing but curses come out.”
The nation might not know it, but out in the provinces the people had called me Sword Saint, Divine Archer, and High Priest. The Demon King must have believed those titles completely, because he had fought me accordingly—only for his head to fall to my shadow in the end.
Even so, he was still the Demon King. The attack he fired had punched straight through my stomach.
Couldn’t he have let me die a little more gracefully? Though there was no point in cursing the Demon King. It was an attack I could have blocked if I had known about it in advance.
“What a fucking dogshit world.”
It was already too late to heal this. When I thought about it, wasn’t I the only one getting a pathetic death?
Let’s be real. Those brain-dead idiots would still be running around calling themselves the hero party and acting like they mattered.
When Eugene first came looking for me, I cursed him out with every swear word I knew. Yet he said he needed me and crawled in begging, so I let him in. And then they treated me like some kind of slave.
If they had at least paid me well, maybe I could have overlooked it. But that pathetic bastard wasted all the support funds, so I had to split what little remained and use it efficiently. I really suffered for it.
Maybe they would go around bragging that they were the ones who defeated the Demon King. Or maybe they would laugh at me now that I was dead.
Either way, they knew my strength. If they waited in front of the Demon King’s castle just in case, they could snatch the achievement of subjugating the Demon King for themselves.
What garbage. It would be better if they all just died.
Once I die, I might even become an evil spirit. And if I do, I will definitely curse that hero.
With that final thought, my vision went dark.