Sorry, the pink haired-cat girl is not a heroine or a main character.
Cheat Magician Life That Started From Being Judged Useless (Hazure Hantei Kara Hajimatta Cheat Majutsushi Seikatsu) is a Japanese light novel series by Chira Shinoura.
The story begins with Princess Camilla Resenberg summoning the entire third floor of a school of 8th graders, 201 students and their teachers, to her native world, not to be "heroes" but soldiers to fill in the shortfall of her army. When the magical [Evil Eye Crystal] fails to react to the main character, Kokubu Kento, he is driven into a dangerous forest, at sword-point, told that he can redeem himself if he somehow manages to make it to an allied fortress on the other side. This is a total lie. Having no combat training or survival skills, it isn't long before Kento finds himself being Eaten Alive by a horde of goblins. By some miracle even he doesn't understand, he winds up awakening his mutually contradictory [Light] and [Dark] magic abilities with his [Light] magic healing back to perfect health despite having his entrails being chewed on and his [Dark] magic summoning a squad of skeletons which were formally members of Resenberg's armed forces that fell in battle, said soldiers killing the goblins and guarding him until he recovered.
Disguising his identity, Kento makes it to the other side of the forest and approaches the fortress he was informed of, posing as the Sole Survivor of a caravan headed that way. At this point, he learns that he was never meant to survive the trip and the fortress is, in fact, part of a foreign country. Much as he rightly wants revenge, learning how to survive in this new world, trying to rescue the rest of his class, and getting everyone back home, if at all possible, takes priority above all else.
To make things even worse for our protagonist, those goblins he encountered were just the warning sign that the forest is about to start having stampedes headed to the fortress city of Volzard where he now finds himself, and his fellow classmates were tricked into putting on slave-bracelets, and all the horror that goes with it.
Tropes:
- And Then John Was a Zombie: Eating monster meat and stones is a fundamentally bad idea. You might get away with a mouthful of monster meat once in your life, but eating the monster stone for a power-up inevitably results in turning into a monster yourself. Kent learns this when "exorcized" individuals start attacking his fiancé Seraphima while she's in her caravan headed to Volzard and when one of his classmates is fed monster stones on Earth as part of an experiment to see if magic can be used on Earth, long term.
- Beware the Superman: There's actually a damn good reason Camilla treats the class she summoned so horribly. According to the official history, not the fairy tales given to the masses, the first time the Resenberg royal family summoned an otherworlder, he was actually brave and heroic, for a while, but began making more and more horrifying demands until the price was completely unpalatable and the local revolted, seeing him as worse than whatever he was summoned to deal with, naturally he retaliated, and set up shop in the south part of the continent, becoming the Maou. It got so bad that the royal family summoned a second otherworlder who turned out to be just as bad as the first, but the two wound up fighting for some reason, with the second losing to the first due to the difference in experience, but leaving the first weak enough that the army was finally able to put him down. Fearing the same would happen with her instance, she did everything possible to keep them all cowed. Unfortunately, that all came back around to bite her in the face because her very first victim actually survived, and now has an irreconcilable grudge.
- The Cake Is a Lie: Princess Camilla tells Kento that if he makes it to the other side of a dangerous forest, to an allied fortress, he will have redeemed himself and start undergoing training so he can be a useful soldier. The fortress in question is in another country, and she never expected him to survive. She also tells the rest of the class that if they perform well, they will be rewarded and returned to their home world. Not only does she trick them into happily putting slave bracelets on themselves, but they are all horribly abused. To make it all worse, there is no mechanism to return summoned people to their native world. The summoning ritual itself is completely arbitrary, just randomly choosing people that match the summoner's parameters, so even Camilla herself has no way of knowing where her summons came from.
- Cerebus Rollercoaster: The story bounces back and forth from wacky Slice of Life antics to nail-biting drama and back again with alarming frequency.
- Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Boosters. They are alchemial medicines that give their imbibers immense power boosts (hence the name) for a brief period of time, but the backlash is nasty. The first time Kent used one, he was completely immobile for four days afterwards, unable to move, speak, or use magic, and had to have his harem nurse him back to health. Trying to avoid the backlash by using multiple boosters can be fatal When Kent has to use multiple boosters to deflect an incoming Extinction Level Asteroid, he has to frequently pause and gorge himself on snacks and energy drinks, and even then, once the crisis has passed, he goes into a three day coma, wakes up day four having lost 7 kg of weight, deathly pale and extremely lethargic.
- Deconstruction: Of the isekai genre. While everyone gets a New Life in Another World Bonus, the summoned people are not, in any way, treated with respect, but fear and loathing, tricked into accepting enslavement, abused, and if they won't obey or are found to be less than useful, killed.
- Japanese culture is also heavily deconstructed as the vast majority of the authorities Kento seeks help from pointedly ignore his struggles, frequently insulting him to his face and take it as an insult when he's offended. Talk shows have "discussions" that is just a bunch of talking heads trying to speak over each other, no idea what they're talking about. And paparazzi running around, forcing the victims' families to go into hiding or trapped in their own homes. Small wonder Kento doesn't want to go back.
- Drugs Are Bad: So bad, in fact, that they're used as covert weapons of war, which has some truth in reality...
- Fantastic Drug: Falzalal. Going by the description, it's some kind of opiate unlike anything on Earth. The smoke is instantly addictive and causes euphoria as it inflicts brain-damage. By the time symptoms such as listlessness, hallucinations, and lack of focus emerge, it is too late for even the strongest healing magic to do anything. The only cure is death.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Most isekai stories forget the fact that modern Earth still exists while focusing on the adventures of the protagonist. This story doesn't. In addition to the traditional swords, magic, and monsters, there's modern intrigue including warlords in the modern era, social and other media "news" shenanigans, Bond-esque spy escapades, with the antagonists willing to use nuclear weapon self-destruct devices to evade capture or rescue of their kidnap victims, and even an extinction level event asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Yes, Kent has to deal with all that and people are still envious of him and complain the instant even the tiniest thing goes wrong.
- Inconvenient Summons: The entire third floor of a school, including the classrooms, was summoned, in the middle of class. Even if the students were somehow returned to exactly where they came from, they'd be returning, mid-air, to a place three stories up, and landing in the debris or ongoing reconstruction, at best.
- Irrational Hatred: There are at least two factions that are utterly determined to undo Kento's hard work in trying to return his schoolmates home and normalizing relations with Rosenberg, the offending other-world country.
- Funayama Sr.: His son died in Camilla's "boot camp" and his body was fed to monsters, rather than risk him rising again as an undead. He holds Kent entirely responsible against all evidence or reason. It makes a certain amount of sense if you're willing to cross your eyes, squint real hard, and drink yourself silly like he did.
- An unknown self-proclaimed "civil group" with clear extra-national resources not only tries to repeatedly sabotage the repatriation, renumeration, and meeting between foreign dignitaries, up to and including sending a Deep Cover Agent at Kent in Volzard by holding the guy's wife and daughter hostage, but they're willing to kidnap, assault, and torture the transfer victims and/or their families in broad daylight, in public places, and go through a series of events that looks like it was ripped straight out of a Bond 007 film, with the final freighter out of Japan's Tokyo bay rigged with a suitcase nuke self-destruct. The only reason any of them has given is that Kent's got a harem in the other world, where polygamy is legal, duly recognized, and justified.
- Join or Die: Immediately after the summoning ritual is over, Camilla Resenberg makes it abundantly clear that the people she summoned are to join her army, at sword-point, or be killed, and to prove she's not bluffing, sends Kento into a dangerous forest, and after finding bloody remains of his clothing, reports to the rest that he died, eaten by monsters.
- Monstrous Cannibalism: The monsters are all truly mindless beasts, aside from those killed and reanimated as Kento's genus. As such, they will eat anything put in front of them that they can catch, even each other. It doesn't matter if they're the same species or not.
- Paparazzi: An ongoing problem with Kento's efforts in Japan to assist getting his classmates home. Despite there being plenty of Kento impostors, including one who conveniently faked the isekai experience, reporters act like rabid hyenas trying to track him down, even photographing him at his mother's grave and publishing the photo without consent. Naturally, this causes all sorts of problems.
- Real Politik: Once Japan is forced to acknowledge that the other world exists, the Japanese Diet starts making plans to enter into diplomatic relations with the local powers to try and gain access to the new world's resources and try to put Japan in the lead back on Earth.
- Schizo Tech: The story takes place in a medieval setting, and all that implies, yet Camilla is shown using a modern shower with heated water to bathe.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Camilla is downright cruel to the summoned eighth graders, to keep them from becoming her country's worst enemy as a result of being Drunk with Power. Her cruelty turns and bites her in the face because it fills Kento, the protagonist, with an irreconcilable grudge, becoming the very "Maou" she was trying to prevent.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: What happens when the entire third floor of a building magically vanishes? The fourth floor and above come crashing down on the second floor and below. Kento finds this out when his classmates pressure him into trying to return to Japan for a peek and he succeeds.
- There Are No Therapists: Volzard doesn't even know the word "therapy" and this is justifiable by the fact that the new world is still in a feudal pre-renaissance society, not to mention being far too occupied worrying about the next monster outbreak to have time to hold anyone's hand. When Japan gets around to sending a therapist there to help deal with the issues posed by a mass-kidnapping, captivity, and enslavement, the therapist turns out to be extremely antagonistic to the victims, especially one Kento Kokubu who is not only cooperating with Japanese authorities to try and get everyone back home, but is the only bridge between worlds. And turns out to be a Deep Cover Agent who got picked thanks to bribes being paid to the committee in charge of the selection, and tries to straight up assassinate Kent with a garrote. The only reason he gives for his animosity is that, in his mind, having a harem, even in a world where polygamy is legal, automatically means someone has forfeited the right to be treated as a human and must be corralled like a dangerous wild beast, or else.
- This Is Reality: Yes, this story does feature swords, magic, and monsters, starting with a summoning ritual, but there's almost nothing handwaved away by A Wizard Did It.
- Kento, despite having immense magic power, has to learn to live in a completely alien city with no idea of the local norms and culture, so he starts small, working in a grape farm, and attends classes in weapon-handling, martial arts, and other forms of combat, so he knows what he's doing when he inevitably ends up in a fight, seeing as monster attacks on the city happen with some frequency, and has to earn quite a few favors from the local lord before he can even ask for help in rescuing the rest of his class-mates, and that takes months.
- The remaining students, who joined Camilla's army at sword-point, and tricked into putting on slave-bracelets, are all abused, with the School Idol, who showed immense potential for [Light] magic healing being repeatedly compelled to heal townsfolk to the point of exhaustion, and if it wasn't for Kento being able to sneak in and use his magic to heal her, she would have died. In fact, to discourage any act of rebellion or insubordination, Camilla's knights actually kill one of the biggest trouble-makers Funayama, and doesn't even give him a burial, but instead just throws the remains into the monster filled forest to be eaten, while the rest are Forced to Watch.
- The ones who have clearly obvious combat utility, like Takawa, who has immense skill with Fire Magic, are pampered and coddled, even giving the guy his own exclusive maid, with said maid being strongly encouraged to have sex with him, looking to get herself pregnant so the child may inherit the talent, but the guy is left completely in the dark about the fact that the moment he starts showing signs of becoming a threat, is to be killed. Naturally, the preferential treatment goes completely to his head, making him think he's a "hero" and a talented fighter, when he's not.
- Not everyone is grateful for Kento's efforts. Many, many people are jealous of his talents and rewards, either seeing it as him actively enjoying the work he does, monopolizing the monster kills, or ignore his struggles entirely, and want to take away what he's earned, whether it's wealth, fame, or the affections of the women he's close to. Case in point, Kento does manage to rescue some of his classmates, provides them some living expenses so they don't have it as rough as he did, and warns them not to cause trouble. They cause trouble, and immediately look at him like a traitor because he won't bail them out, and some other use up all their living expenses right away on shopping sprees and come to him, hands out, demanding more. While others still, are quick to verbally abuse him even though they refuse to do anything to become self-sufficient and rely entirely on his charity.
- Most of the students who returned to Japan thought their lives would return to normal. They were wrong. In addition to the media acting like rabid hyenas, nefarious individuals target them for torture, abuse, kidnapping, and all other sorts of nastiness, just to get at Japan in general, or Kent in particular, for unstated reasons.
- Those Were Only Their Scouts: Monsters like Gryphons, Gigas, and Storm Cats, known as calamities in the human countries? Small fry compared to the monsters found in the southern continent, as Kent finds out by first hand observation. Even his three skeleton generals had a hard time with a couple of the weaker ones. The reason Kent went there? Monsters started showing up in strange places coming through spatial anomalies.
- Ungrateful Townsfolk: Not the people of Volzard, or even Lastock, once Kento's exploits become known, as the vast majority of them are quite grateful he puts himself in harms way, repeatedly, to come to their aid, but his schoolmates are, by and large, a real headache. It doesn't matter how hard he struggles or how much he does for them; they turn to him as if he owes them a living, saying things such as "you have 'cheat' powers and we don't, so you owe us!" They have to near constantly be reminded to take into account that they'd be slaves in Lastock, getting abused by Camilla's knights, or thrown into the Devil's Forest as monster bait if he hadn't recued them, he provided them start-up expenses and negotiated space for them in the garrison, and provided them employment at the adventurer's guild, so they can take care of themselves. The moment he so much as looks like he's enjoying his meal or the tiniest thing goes wrong, they jump on him like he's the devil incarnate for not getting them back to their families fast enough. Even though the first time he managed to get a student back, the backlash was so severe he felt like he could well have died. EESH!
- Written by the Winners: First it's suspected by Camilla, of all people, that the official history of the Rosenberg kingdom in regards to the southern continent and the "hero" summons may not be accurate, and Kent, the protagonist, gets confirmation of that when he's investigating spatial anomalies coming from the monster-filled southern continent and encounters some undead that have a very, very different account of what happened centuries ago to turn that continent into an uninhabitable monster nest in the first place, and even that is only second-hand information.
