Kidnapped the Saintess of the Hero Party

rob z says:

Got through all chapters in first upload. Starting with the basic premise (warning: mild spoilers), MC is a regressor in a fantasy world with magic, demons, demon king, all the basics. He was raised in an orphanage with FMC, and together they both become powerful with holy magic – FMC is named the Saintess, and MC is basically like a paladin.

FMC is sent off with the hero party to kill the demon king, whereas MC is basically a noble in a town on the border with the demon realm where he fights demons. After 10 years, the hero party loses – in fact, they don’t even get close (i.e., they don’t even kill one of the four henchmen of the demon king). Demon king demands that humans kill the hero party for the affront. MC rushes in to stop FMC from getting killed, but is stopped by a powerful magical field and chains – much more powerful magic than folks who are conducting the execution should have. (All of this is being run by the Prime Minister). MC ends up seeing FMC get beheaded, with MC next – however, MC has some prayers are answered, and he regresses.

However, MC is a little mind f@cked to start. He is obsessed with making FMC and himself stronger so they can defeat the demon king this go around and keep FMC safe (he is also completely obsessed with the FMC in general – ZERO chance of harem). In so doing, he is kind of a jerk – he inexplicably doesn’t treat her very well, and will pretend to be in danger (even though he is pretty powerful and has past life knowledge) to try and force her to grow and develop. He also seems to want to force her to stay in a support role and only buff herself so he can protect her. However, she ends up growing much more quickly than he anticipated, and develops the ability to push back on him and tell when he is lying. They also both grow much stronger much more quickly than in their first life (although its hard to gauge just how strong MC is – the power scaling in this novel is not very consistent).

However, as this process moves forward, MC realizes that not is all as he understood before the regression (A Returners Magic Should Be Special used a similar plot construct, where it is only upon regression that MC starts to see things everyone missed in his first life, and that the world was more effed than anyone realized). In short, the hero party was set up to fail, and was sent out way too late to do any good- after the demons had already infiltrated and done a lot of unknown damage to the human realm (as one example, he pretty strongly suspects the Prime Minister is a demon, but that aspect doesn’t really get developed in these chapters). MC also spends a lot of time thinking about why the FMC was blamed for the failure of the hero party – that’s what the lines in the synopsis are about re: not having enough healing power, which MC knows is BS.

So this first part is just the MC and FMC training and developing, and sort of feeling out of their relationship. MC takes FMC and basically goes off on a journey into the wilderness with her to conduct her training. Basically, he doesn’t trust any of the formal organizations (not the church, not the knighthood) and wants to manage the training all by himself. The story then really picks up once MC and FMC enter a town for the first time after they started their training.

So I agree with the below comments – the initial training / relationship setting arc is pretty slow – you need to get about 30 chapters in for the story to pick up. Also, I am not sure if its an issue with the MTL, but I had a hard time following what was the deal with the MC and FMC in these chapters in terms of their character and relationship. As noted above, sometimes he seems like an a-hole, but it may just be his mental damage. And its hard to say at times what FMC feels about MC – for a time it seems like she doesn’t like MC or trust him, but then can’t live without him (although this seems to settle down). There’s even a couple scenes where MC says he wants / plans to kill a rare magic puppy that is a mascot for priests that he and the FMC found in the woods – kind of a WTF for me, but maybe it was all meant to be a joke? (don’t worry, puppy lives).

Now that I have read all the chapters, to follow on from my earlier post, there are some elements of “hide my powers” because “reasons” as well as dense MC, but they are not super offensive so far (e.g. he hides his full powers from FMC to help her training and make her think there is danger, but still kills a wyvern with his bare hands in front of her). But its something to keep an eye on. The romance development is also slow – MC is too fixated on keeping FMC safe / training her, so he is kind of missing out on some signals.

I don’t think there is enough here to give a grade – it needs probably another 20-30 chapters and the development of the next arc. With that said, its not poison (at least not yet), but not for everyone.