By Hachigatsumori and Nat. Released in Japan as “Yuusha no Tabi no Uragawa de” by Dre Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by MPT.
It’s been interesting coming at all these fantasy light novels based on Japanese RPGs (which are in turn based on Japanese folklore) without really having played them. The idea of the hero going off to defeat the demon lord, and of course they’re accompanied by the warrior (who is usually “the hero, only not quite”), the cleric (healer girl), and the mage (varies the most, this one seems to be a sad sack of a man) is not one I have played, but I have read enough of these so that it’s as old hat as the author wants it to be. As such, and as you can no doubt tell by the title, this isn’t about the hero. They weren’t even in the original webnovel, and only get a few tiny scenes here. Instead, we follow another cleric and adventurer as they try to stop a prophecy from coming true… though both of them also have their own hidden agenda and hidden tragedies.
Rhuys is a young cleric who is trying to find a strong swordsman as she knows of a prophecy: the newly anointed hero will be killed off early in her journey, leading to devastation for the world. In a rundown tavern, she finds Ariagnée, who is very strong and very cool and wears a strange black gauntlet on her left hand. Everyone is already a bit on edge as the hero, who is supposed to be chosen every 100 years, has been chosen after only ten. Something weird’s going on. Rhuys asks Ariagnée to travel to where the hero is going to be ambushed and take care of the bad guys before the fact, which Ariagnée agrees to partly for hidden motives of her own, but also partly as Rhuys is cute. As they journey on, each one learns about the other’s secret past and horrible backstories, which both tie in with the reason that this hero journey has come so early this time around.
There is definitely yuri here, for those who seek it out, but this is not a romance per se; the focus is on the adventure. Both our heroines are pretty messed up, with Rhuys hiding her true powers and wracked with guilt over her childhood, essentially having become a very passive death seeker. Ariagnée has a past that is not as secret as perhaps it should be – I guessed a lot of it before the reveal – but that doesn’t make it less compelling in terms of the overall narrative. The two of them do make a very good team, and hopefully couple. I will admit that the big fight in this book, which takes up a large chunk of the back half, felt far longer than I would have written it. But this is a fantasy thriller, not a psychological drama or a yuri romance, so it makes sense there’s lots of sword battles and hidden moves and the like.
As with most Dre books, this reads like a one-shot but there’s more. Will we actually meet the hero? Who knows, but the hero certainly isn’t why we’re reading this. We’re reading for the lead couple.