My childhood friend the hero was genuinely angry

Marl Malone says:

A lot of people in this story have some form of mental deficiency. Most of these stories written by these Korean authors are starting to give me migraines. The only reason I even read this was because I was bored on the 4th of July.

~ Let’s start with our MC, the main problem of this entire story. The MC is a reincarnated individual, but he must’ve been a special level of dumbass in his previous life because he can’t seem to comprehend the concept of gratitude, something that only toddlers would struggle to grasp. He saved the lives of the people of the Empire but can’t seem to understand why they express gratitude for his service and sadness for his leaving. He solved a drought for an entire kingdom and can’t seem to grasp why they are so thankful. He destroyed a Magical Mountain overflowing with Magical Beasts like it was nothing and can’t comprehend all the praise he gets. He becomes the Prime Minister of the Kingdom, becoming the most competent Prime Minister the Kingdom had ever seen, and can’t seem to understand why his popularity continues to grow. This guy even beat all Four Heavenly Kings and doesn’t grasp why he is idolized. He is an almost universally revered figure across the continent besides mainly from the nobles who wanted to kick him out of the Empire. Everywhere he goes, he is treated with the upmost kindness and respecy, yet he keeps trying to justify why he shouldn’t be treated nicely by saying he’s a “criminal banished from the Empire.” Nobody gives a crap about that besides you, stop shoving that point down our throats! How was this guy the assumed leader and strategist of the Hero Party, yet can’t even understand basic human emotions? Though still bad, it would’ve been better if he was just naturally born into the world because the fact that we know he’s a reincarnated individual makes the MC seem like an incompetent human being. Low self-esteem having ass. The only good thing he has done is that he finally accepted the feelings of the Kingdom’s Queen and kissed her.

~ The Saintess. She suddenly comes in calling the MC’s act of saving the Kingdom’s drought through magic an act of blasphemy against her Goddess. When she tries to turn the people of the Kingdom against our MC, they start throwing stones at her and call her a witch for trying to accuse the MC of being a sinner. Then she starts a fight with our MC but when she tries to use Goddess Advent (the ability to access power directly from her Goddess), she is pulled into a space by her Goddess and the Goddess scolds her for trying to attack and label the MC as an evil pagan wizard. Come to find out, the Saintess didn’t even investigate anything, all she heard from the Church was that there was an evil pagan wizard in that area and she immediately assumed it was the MC. The Goddess decides to forgive her and tells the Saintess to apologize and if the MC doesn’t accept her apology, the Goddess will abandon her. So the Saintess’s idea of an apology is to get on her knees while naked and beg for forgiveness. Obviously being the beta he is, the MC immediately accepts the apology, and the Saintess immediately asks the MC to impregnate her according to the words of her Goddess and give her 5 children. After the MC locates the actual evil pagan wizard, who turns out to be his former classmate who was always 2nd place, he very easily makes quick work of him while inwardly monologuing how much weaker he is compared to the other members of the Hero Party, and the Saintess instantly falls in love with the bozo. The Saintess relinquishes her title to her younger sister and makes it her new mission to get impregnated by the MC for his supposed superior genes. She’d even go as far as trying to r*pe the MC in his sleep. Is it really worth it to raise a child who might grow up to be as mentally challenged as their father?

~ Empire’s Princess. After the MC, she is the most annoying one in this story. She kicks the MC out for being a commoner and believing him to be a useless mage. This immediately backfires once the Hero returns and finds out the Princess kicked out her childhood friend. At the same time this is happening, the Demon army decides to attack the Empire. Everything pretty much goes to s*it, with the Princess antagonizing the Hero for kicking out the MC and her not realizing how powerful and important the MC. This leads to the King taking away her status as a Princess and banishing her like she did to the MC. The Princess decides to find the MC and tries to seduce him after discovering how much the Kingdom has changed because of him. The MC hears her out and decides to make her a farmer, one of the few good things he did. She is pretty much a narcissistic gold digger.

~ The Hero. The Hero is the childhood friend of our MC, and she is a yandere. For some inexplicable reason, she decides to gaslight the MC by calling him a useless mage as a prank. Obviously, 99% of the people don’t believe it, except our resident dumbass MC and the Empire’s Princess. She’s a massive yandere who has kept all woman away from the MC. When she finds out the MC was kicked out of the Empire and is engaged with the Kingdom’s Queen, she loses her damn mind and decides to eliminate everything that stands in the way between her and the MC. This leads to the Goddess taking away her powers. The former Hero decides to confess her feelings to the MC anyways. If she was honest from the beggining, none of this nonsense would’ve ever happened.

There are characters that aren’t annoying, like the Queen of the Kingdom for example. In the beginning, after the MC was kicked out of the Empire and arrives at the Kingdom, she is still a princess ordered by her father to get closer to the MC since he wants our MC to be his son-in-law, though he won’t force his daughter to marry him. The Princess interacts with the MC and is initially skeptical, but after she sees him use magic to effortlessly end the drought, she becomes very interested in him, until she falls in love with him after living with him for about a month after lying that she got into a fight with her father. She’s not annoying, but just like everyone else in this story, you have to question her mental capabilities considering she fell in love with a man with the emotional understanding of a rock. Eventually, her father abdicates the throne to her and she becomes the Queen. She spends her days trying to seduce the MC and gives him a kiss on the cheek. Surprisingly, the MC does understand that she likes him, but his low IQ having self can’t seem to comprehend why she likes him, as well as why the Former Saintess likes him as well. However, just like the Former Saintess, she also considered trying to r*pe the MC in his sleep, but she changed her mind at the last moment, which means she at least has a semblance of sanity.

Another character that isn’t annoying is MC’s former classmate Latika. She barely has any magical prowess, but she is a person the MC believes can kickstart the Industrial Revolution in this fantasy world.

The most pitiful person in this story is the Master of our MC. She’s just a timid wizard who was chosen by the Hero to be the Master of the MC since the Hero knew she was too timid to try anything with the MC. The Hero eliminated all the other female wizards she felt would threaten her relationship with the MC, leaving our MC’s Master as the only one left from the ashes. She’s so scared of the Hero that she acts indifferenly while teaching the MC, leading the MC to believe that she doesn’t care about him. She also believes that if the MC were to find out how weak she really is, he’d be mad at her. This is the only time where the MC not understanding something somewhat makes sense. But the MC having the emotional capacity of a rock can’t understand how smart he is. He is type of person who solves all the hard problems his Master can’t figure out thinking it’s some sort of test, and gives her credit for “helping” him figure it out.

Overall, I’d give this story a 4.5/10 after reading 50 chapters. The MC gets better after the first 35 chapters, but it’ll be hard to bear witness to such a dumbass for that long.