I'm Quitting the Hero Party

That was the last image of them I remembered.

They trampled the Hero into the dirt to protect their own ugly vested interests.

What made it even more goddamn disgusting was something else entirely. They played the hypocrite, acting like noble victims forced into an unavoidable choice for the greater good.

The system window handed down its verdicts one after another every time those bastards betrayed me and turned their backs.

Right after that, a warning flashed red.

System window, you piece of shit—what exactly do you want me to do?

No matter how many times it guided me like that, not a single person in reality believed a word I said. Rumors were everywhere that the real Hero was dead and I was just an empty shell wearing his face.

Trapped inside a perfectly written script, I was framed beyond escape, slapped with a horrific false charge, and publicly dragged through the mud and humiliated in front of everyone.

I really was a pathetic fucking idiot. Judging that I could trust those bitches…

Lunea. Cerise. Erenhart. Ophilen.

For a full two years they had watched me up close as my innermost companions. The process of walking the line between life and death, the hardships—we had overcome those grueling days together, so of course romantic feelings had started to bloom. When things got hard we comforted each other; when someone was about to collapse we became each other’s pillars.

That was why I believed at least a minimal scrap of human affection still remained. Even if they were the children of the ducal houses that sat at the very center of the corruption and graft.

They had marched across the battlefield with me and witnessed with their own two eyes the suffering of the common people. Even if they couldn’t help me overturn this rotten world, I never once doubted they at least wouldn’t condemn me and sell me out.

But as everyone knows, my naive faith was shattered in the most catastrophic way possible. Those bastards took the lead in driving me into a death trap for the sake of their families’ safety and power.

No matter how many times I turn it over in my head I still snort with laughter. The fact that I once believed those kinds of people were my comrades…

Thrown onto the floor of the freezing underground dungeon, at first that was the only window that floated before my eyes.

…

…

Time simply slipped away like that. At last, when the text Day 100 of imprisonment floated into the air, a new message filled my vision.

With that final window I entered the Witch Trial Gallery.

The place looked so similar to the Jungphangel I used to frequent that I adapted almost immediately. It was a hidden refuge that invited people who, like me, had been falsely accused and wronged.

The entry ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠conditions themselves were tragic. Only those who had acted with selfless motives, only to be framed or misunderstood until they were utterly broken, could receive an invitation to this gallery.

It’s a little embarrassing to say with my own mouth, but as a Hero I had started out light-hearted too. Yet once I came face to face with this world’s ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠tragic realities one after another, I had no choice but to grow serious.

The corrupted vested interests sucking the blood of the people from the inside were a hundred times more monstrous than the external enemy—the Demon King’s army.

If I didn’t cut out those rotten parts entirely, the fundamental problem would never change. Even if we won the war under those conditions, it would be meaningless.

From the moment I turned resolve into action, the days were anything but smooth. I frequently clashed and turned red-faced with high officials and nobles, yet I could never give up. Some might mock my actions as arrogant bravado or a cheap sense of justice.

But through the eyes of a modern man who had lived in twenty-first-century civilization, this world was simply too unreasonable. Human lives were treated as less than livestock.

There were no means or institutions ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that could raise a voice for the powerless commoners crushed under that oppression. The result was a world so thoroughly messed up that I came to believe I had to step forward myself.

For reference, every user of the Witch Trial Gallery was someone alive and breathing somewhere in this world. Meaning that under the same sky, somewhere, they existed—so one day we might even run into each other in reality. But the enormous distances made actual meetings nearly impossible.

More than that, these were people carrying deep wounds, so they seemed to have no desire for real-world meetings anyway. Everyone thoroughly hid their true identities and found comfort behind anonymity.

Anyway, that day finally arrived—the day I had crouched and endlessly endured inside this cold, damp prison.

The moment midnight passed, a blue guidance window appeared.

The moment I faced that window, a flood of emotions washed over me and everything felt new again. How many days of humiliation and persecution had I silently endured for this day? I had bled and fought for this world as a Hero, yet the people’s sharp arrows had ultimately turned on me.

Among all the emotions a human can feel, the absolute worst is injustice. No one believes your innocence; everyone joins together to brand you garbage. Only those who have lived it know how the blood can reverse in your veins from that.

In the early days the boiling rage made my teeth chatter so hard I couldn’t sleep, but communicating through the Witch Trial Gallery let me regain control of myself. The users there were fellow sufferers in the same boat, after all.

Even so, facing this window again, I couldn’t suppress the hot surge of rage rising once more from deep in my chest.

I reached toward the button floating in the air. Then, in a voice that was both calm and thick with deep resentment, I murmured quietly:

The moment I pressed the button, a new guidance window immediately covered my vision.

“Ha.”

A hollow laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it. Thinking about it, I hadn’t expected this part at all.

Lunea, Cerise, Erenhart, Ophilen. Those four beast-bitches had also been sharing the Goddess’s protection and power through my Hero Contract as the medium. They must have been certain that even if they locked the Hero in a prison, as long as they kept their own power they could somehow handle whatever remained of the Demon King’s army.

“Puhahahahahaha!!!”

I burst into loud laughter for the first time in ages. I was genuinely looking forward to it. Imagining them panicking as the sacred power of the Goddess they had been enjoying simply vanished. It felt like a long-standing lump of indigestion had finally cleared.

The system still calls those bitches ‘companions’? That’s fucking hilarious.

They were trash who had led the charge to drive me—the guy who’d worked his ass off—into a death trap just to protect their own vested interests. They were even worse than the Demon King’s army.

“Consultation my ass. Whether they lose their power or not is none of my goddamn business.”

Without a single shred of hesitation I pressed the confirmation window. At last it was time to completely free myself from the loathsome shackles of being a Hero and from the long period of atonement.

At the same time I could feel in real time the invisible massive force that had been crushing my body slowly dissolving. My chest felt as open and clear as if a clog had been punched through it.

Even breathing inside this poorly ventilated semi-basement dungeon felt fresh and clean in a way it never had before. I had always been tormented by Saintess Ophilen’s restraints, so everything felt brand new.

The position of Saintess was not simple. It was a kind of safety device the Goddess had arranged to keep a Hero from going wild, drunk on overwhelming power and fame.

In short, a Hero suppressor.

This generation’s Saintess, Ophilen, had stood on the side of the vested interests and actively agreed to throwing me into prison. If I’d had any brains I wouldn’t have stupidly taken it lying down. But Ophilen had activated the constraint system and locked me so I couldn’t use the Hero’s power at all.

It was a curse exactly like the golden headband the monk used to control Sun Wukong in Journey to the West. Because of those shackles I had been forced to take the beating one-sidedly and stay locked in prison, powerless.

But now I was no longer a Hero. No matter what schemes Saintess Ophilen cooked up outside, her control no longer worked on me.

The contract is already broken, so she must have lost the Goddess’s power too. Not even worth thinking about anymore.

I confirmed that the Saintess’s energy that had been binding me had completely vanished.

Time to start moving.

If the Hero’s power was completely gone, I was nothing more than an ordinary human. No—worse than that. After long starvation and torture in solitary confinement I had grown so weak I was worse off than a normal person.

But I didn’t waste all that time like an idiot just browsing the gallery in prison.

During those hundreds of days of confinement I had been receiving secret teachings through the Witch Trial Gallery. I hurriedly opened the translucent UI and entered the board. Then, with trembling fingers, I composed a new post.

Our master usually only lurked and never wrote first. But whenever I desperately looked for him, he always appeared like a ghost.

Before long a comment was posted.

Master was there.