Behold the "cute" couple on their path to vengeance.
Kaito was summoned to a JRPG-style world as the only hope against evil. After three years of desperate struggle, he defeated the Demon Lord and saved the world. But that was only the start of his troubles.
The companions that he had trusted throughout his journey turned on him and blamed him for their own disgusting crimes against humanity, and hunted him down for a year before finally ending his life with a knife through his chest.
It was then that he swore to himself. He swore that, if given another chance, he would no longer so rigidly cling to the concept of "blind faith". Instead, he would dedicate himself to enacting the most atrocious act of revenge possible and he would do things right.
「I’ll kill every single last one of you... I swear it...」
And so, he died, leaving behind a pool of blood and a series of menacing last words — but his story had yet to end. A voice resounded through his head and informed him that there was more to his fate than what lay beyond the grave.
【The following is a system message. Tutorial Mode has been terminated.】
The Hero Laughs While Walking the Path of Vengeance a Second Time (JP: Nidome no Yuusha wa Fukushuu no Michi wo Warai Ayumu. ~Maou yo, Sekai no Hanbun wo Yaru Kara Ore to Fukushuu wo Shiyou~ note ) ran from 2016 to 2020, completed in eight volumes. It also received a manga adaptation in 2018. In 2021, Yen Press licensed the title for a North American release.
Compare to:
- Redo of Healer, another Light Novel starring a hero who is betrayed and endures horrible abuse, then magically time-travels to before his adventure started, becomes a Villain Protagonist with a harem and seeks revenge on the princess and all the other heroes who wronged him.note
- The Hero Who Seeks Revenge Shall Exterminate With Darkness where the protagonist was betrayed by their comrades and suffered through many traumatic experiences, later becoming a powerful Anti-Hero/Villain Protagonist that seeks revenge on their traitors.
Tropes included in the work:
- Achievement System: Part of the RPG Mechanicsverse, where accomplishing various feats gets recorded in one's status as a title and grants stat boosts not related to Character Level.
- Anti-Hero: Kaito and his party in the current timeline, hands down. They enjoy torturing people. They raze towns and kill naughty children. And they will persist until the Crapsaccharine World they are in stops worshiping discrimination, slavery, and betrayal.
- Aristocrats Are Evil: So far, without exception, those in charge are selfish, greedy, corrupt bastards and bitches who will do anything and everything to better themselves, no matter how much suffering they cause to others... as long as they think they can get away with it.
- The Atoner: In the first timeline, Kaito's naivety got many innocent people ruined or murdered by his companions. While Kaito's idealism is pretty much dead, he does feel the need to make things up to them in the second timeline.
- Awful Truth: Kaito learns, to his horror, that the summoning ritual not only killed 200 innocent beastman slaves, but 200 of his classmates back home, just to open the dimensional portal between the two worlds. The actual transit wiped out his entire family, father, mother, siblings, and maybe a cousin or two.
- Being Tortured Makes You Evil: The Light Novel.
- Bewildering Punishment: Keryll didn't know his childhood friend, Lucia, was a Yandere, easily believed her lies that Minnalis had been bullying her, didn't know that Minnalis and her mother had been sold to slavers, and honestly has no idea why Minnalis hates him so much. As far as Minnalis is concerned, that is no excuse and only makes him guilty of Never My Fault. She arranges for a Karmic Death, having undead blame him for things he didn't do and torturing him until his mind breaks before she finally lets him die.
- Birds of a Feather: Those Kaito recruits happily join him precisely because the betrayal they endured and their thirst for revenge is an eerie mirror of his own, sometimes even triggered by the same people who wronged Kaito.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
- Everything is NOT better with princesses like Alesia, who can string an adventurer around her finger for three years after gleefully murdering his family with sacrificial magic.
- Children are NOT innocent when they sell their own friends out for the evulz as Lucia did to Millanis.
- The Saint puts on a pretty good show of being a wise and kind-hearted woman, but underneath the surface, the only thing she is ever thinking about is her obsession with Kaito.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: The Merchant, who has both legitimate business interests as well as ties to criminals and a Fantastic Drug.
- Cosmic Retcon: The story begins with the God of Earth ending "Tutorial Mode" and sending Kaito's spirit back four years, to the very moment the wound up in the summoning chamber, right in front of Princess Alesia.
- Crapsack World: This is a World of Jerkass where everyone is either stupid, evil, or both. The world Kaito gets summoned into is infested with Fantastic Racism, sociopaths, and sadists. Betrayal is handed out regularly like cotton candy. Even Pragmatic Villainy does nothing to restrain anyone. As the world's guardian deity is a Mad God, it's pretty much rotten to the core. Is it any wonder Kaito wouldn't mind destroying it?
- Cult: Kaito may not be the first hero summoned from Earth, but his summoning was the first one to be visible and proven due to causing so many people to disappear at once. While no one back on Earth knew for sure what happened, some correctly began to speculate that the disappearances involved world transference. Many took it a degree further and started murdering people with a connection to the event, believing it would allow them to reincarnate in a fantasy world after they die.
- Curse: The Saint placed Kaito under one to prevent him from using the Sword of Mortal Sin. If he tries it anyways, her magical power causes him pain, and it gives away his location to her. Even after the timeline gets reset, the curse remains active.
- Dark Fantasy: The fantasy world in this setting fits in with some of its dark aspects with all races being supremacists to each other and the fantasy hero being betrayed and turning revenge. It is saying something that the closest person who is truly heroic is the supposed demon lord.
- Deconstruction: What kind of psychopath would kidnap an untrained teenager against his will and force him to fight a war for three years against the devil herself? Answer: the kind of psychopath who utterly hates his race for merely existing, enjoys the thought of murdering his friends and family, and gleefully betrays him the moment he outlives his usefulness by pinning their crimes against humanity on him.
- Demon Lords and Archdevils: Kaito was summoned to kill the demon lord. But out of everyone he considered a companion in the first timeline, she was the only one to never betray him, and in fact, gave up her life for his sake.
- Depower: When the goddess of Earth reset the timeline, Kaito also lost all of his Character Levels. Nevertheless, he remains fairly powerful due to retaining all of his techniques and the massive stat boosts he earned via the Achievement System.
- Dirty Cop: The police back on Earth turn out to be very corrupt and even attempt to murder Kaito so that high-ranking officials can monopolize their research on the magic items he brought back and because killing him is easier than dealing with the fallout if cultists find out that someone came back from the other world.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
- Subverted. At first glance, it looks like Princess Alesia has fond memories of her deceased elder sister, and respects her parents, the yet to be named King and Queen. In reality, she only looked upon her elder sister with envy for the fact that she had a much better ability to be the oracle for "The Great Spirit" and sees her parents only as useful puppets for her own agency and rise to power. Otherwise, she only treats them with contempt as idiots who wouldn't know how to tie a shoelace without her "obvious genius."
- Yumis has a disturbing Lack of Empathy for most people and used even her own half-sisters as resources, but she genuinely loves her girlfriend. Enough to break down entirely when said girlfriend is exploded.
- Evilutionary Biologist: Kaito's summoning produces so much impact that it effectively confirms the existence of magic to the people back on Earth. A cult starts kidnapping people related to the incident and performs torturous experiments on them, hoping to use the acquired knowledge to open a hole to flood Earth with magic and become magicians.
- Evil Versus Evil: The protagonist and those he recruits to be his "accomplices" on his path to vengeance are vicious, sadistic, and spiteful, caring little about collateral damage and bystanders, but those they're up against are racist, xenophobic mass-murderers who have the entire country duped into thinking they're the good guys.
- The Fair Folk: Fairies in this setting aren't the cutesy kind and are characterized by Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor.
- Fair-Weather Friend: Minnalis's human father seemed to be a loving one for most of her life. But she inherited her beastman mother's race in a Fantastic Racist village. When her race was exposed, he abandoned them and let them get taken by slavers.
- Fallen Hero: Kaito goes from a naive and idealistic hero to a Sadist obsessed with revenge.
- False Friend: The setup for the story. All the people Kaito believed were his companions were just playing him, from the very beginning. Once they got him to kill the Demon Lord, and save their sorry hides, they not only framed him for their own crimes but hunted him down like an animal until they eventually managed to stab him to death, happily calling him "evil" for the Crime of Self-Defense.
- Fantastic Racism: Not only is the kingdom he's summoned to Human Supremacist, and the Beastman Nation supposedly beast-man supremacist, but they both are supremacist towards those summoned from other worlds to the point that they even agree to an Enemy Mine to take him down and Alesia openly calls him a useful "monster wearing human skin." In the original timeline, Kaito learned this far, far too late.
- Fate Worse than Death:
- Kaito and his comrades basically aim to torture their enemies so thoroughly that they will never recover, remaining broken even after they reincarnate.
- One of Kaito's spirit swords removes the target from the cycle of Reincarnation completely, causing Cessation of Existence. It also Retgones them, making it so that they never existed except in the memories of those who witnessed their demise.
- Frame-Up:
- Kaito's enemies made him out to be the new demon lord and the enemy of the entire world.
- Kaito himself frames the Merchant, making it look like he steals back every coin he spends.
- Forced to Watch: A Hero Antagonist, Leone, tries to convince Kaito to stop putting Revenge Before Reason and ends up getting in the way of Minnalis's revenge. While he opts not to kill her, he does spend a week torturing her until finally making her watch Minnalis slaughter her former village.
- Framing the Guilty Party: Yumis carried out human experimentation during her magic tool development. Kaito uses a summoning spell to bring her victims into her lab and makes her servants disappear, making it look like she used even them in her experiments.
- Girl on Girl Is Hot: Kaito notes that he would have enjoyed watching Yumis make out with her maid... if they weren't people that he absolutely detested, but as things are, it just causes him disgust.
- God's Hands Are Tied: There was no way for the God of Earth to stop the ritual that summoned Kaito, and he's not the first, so it wasn't for lack of trying. Furthermore, the God of Earth also tried various methods to ensure the survival of those summoned, but none of them helped. Thus the "tutorial mode" so every summoned person gets a second chance.
- God Is Evil: If Alesia's internal monologue can be believed, the local god, "The Great Spirit" ordered her to summon Kaito, knowing what the summoning would require.
- Greater-Scope Villain: While it has only been involved in the plot through its servants, the Great Spirit is pretty much responsible for Kaito's plight. And the deaths of thousands.
- Green-Eyed Monster:
- Minnalis and Shuria are begrudgingly willing to share Kaito with one another, but they know that he loves the demon lord more than both of them and do not want him to join up with her.
- The Saint is a Yandere who is not willing to tolerate any other girls, or even companions in general, by Kaito's side.
- The Warrior betrayed Kaito because he wanted to be the world's greatest hero, and as long as Kaito was alive, he would never be able to surpass him.
- Hero Antagonist: Leone, a reincarnator also from Earth, is one of Kaito's few sympathetic enemies, trying to make him stop putting Revenge Before Reason.
- Horrible Judge of Character: Kaito himself notes that he was so easily manipulated, not because his enemies were particularly good actors, but because he himself was too trusting. He is thoroughly cured of that in the second timeline.
- Human Sacrifice: In addition to requiring a cosmic buttload of mana to activate the summoning ritual, 200 sentient beings must die in the world that does the summoning alone...
- Humans Are Bastards: This is a Crapsack World where most people are short sighted backstabbers by their very nature. Good people exist, but are in the minority, and only remain so because they are too stupid and naive to realize that they are eventually going to end up as victims of humanity's intrinsic wickedness, just like everyone else.
- Karma Houdini: In the first timeline, most of Kaito's enemies got away with their crimes completely unscathed. Kaito has no intention of letting that happen in the new one.
- Karmic Death: Part of what Kaito is aiming for to get his revenge.
- Yumis, who betrayed Kaito and her half-sisters for the love of her parents and her maid, ends up a victim of Revenge by Proxy before getting slain by the ones she betrayed.
- The merchant, Grond, who is obsessed with money, finds his money being made worthless by the destruction of his reputation. His fortune is then destroyed by the very same Fantastic Drug he peddled in the place Kaito chooses as his grave. His attempt to stop that from happening not only fails but leaves him vulnerable to Kaito's Sword of Mortal Sin, causing him a Fate Worse than Death.
- Keryll easily believed Lucia's lies that Minnalis had been bullying her. Minnalis convinces a bunch of undead that everything wrong in their lives is his fault.
- Kick the Dog: Not only are Kaito's enemies are guilty of too many to count, but Kaito himself makes it clear to Yumis that while he won't go out of his way to kill random people, he has no problem with sacrificing hundreds of innocents to hurt his vengeance targets when he arranges a massacre and frames it on her to destroy her reputation.
- Lack of Empathy: If you aren't a member of Yumis's inner circle, then she just considers you a resource to be used in her experiments.
- Lie to the Beholder:
- One of Kaito's spirit swords allows him to disguise himself as the opposite sex.
- Minnalis is an expert in illusions to disguise one's self and was taught how to do so by her mother to hide her race from Fantastic Racists.
- Light Is Not Good: In a fantasy perspective, the people who look like typical fantasy heroes are the villains.
- Love Makes You Evil: Pretty much Yumis's motivation. As the only legitimate child, her parents expect her to produce an heir. Due to her love for one of her maids, she is reluctant to grant their request, but she genuinely loves them and still wants to make them proud. Her chosen solution was to make them proud in another way, by creating a magic tool that would be widely recognized. To produce this tool, she murdered countless innocent people as experimental test subjects. As a result, Kaito's revenge against her mostly consists of Revenge by Proxy.
- Mad God: Later chapters reveal The Great Spirit is legitimately insane, and definitely has multiple-personality disorder. Her personalities range from Anti-Villain to Ax-Crazy.
- The Magic Comes Back: Turns out it used to be possible to use magic on Earth, and some families still have records of how to use it, though it stopped working long ago. A major goal of a cult back on Earth is to achieve this, hoping to use the transference incident that abducted Kaito to flood Earth with magic. According to the cult, the reason you can no longer use magic on Earth is because that it was depleted long ago, but the multiple world transferring incidents in the same location are starting to bring back the supply. According to Kaito, it's because Earth actually has far far too much, making it harder to use and the learning curve too high for the natives to figure it out. Either way, when Kaito recovers his memories, he discovers that he can use magic on Earth just fine and that while it takes more effort to control, it is also far more powerful. Furthermore, with each world transference, Earth magic is becoming easier and easier to use in general, to the point that even natives have rediscovered a number of tricks.
- Money Is Not Power: The entire reason the Merchant betrayed Kaito despite Kaito still being useful to him was a fairly petty one; He couldn't stand the fact that Kaito's greatest wish was to return home, a wish that could not be bought by money which he values above all else. Part of how Kaito gets revenge against him is by trashing his reputation with a Frame-Up until no one is willing to accept his money, making it worthless.
- Newbie Immunity: Kaito is summoned to a JRPG-style world and manages to defeat the Demon Lord, only to be betrayed and killed by his companions, but because he was in "Tutorial Mode," instead of dying, he is sent back 4 years to when he was first summoned to the world.
- New Game Plus: In a very sense, after discovering his reward for defeating the demon overlord in his first playthrough was a grimdark Cruel Twist Ending, Kaito is given a second chance through time travel (restart the game), but chooses the Evil path in an attempt to invert the ending trope. He's literally lost all his levels and even has an experience point debt (from being, well, dead), but retains achievement bonuses that put him above the mooks.
- One-Man Army: In the first timeline, Kaito pretty much became one. While he is no longer the world's strongest due to the Depower of the second timeline, he remains capable of taking out entire bands of mid-level knights and mercenaries.
- Our Souls Are Different: Combined with Our Demons Are Different and Our Angels Are Different. All the "spirits" in the story, regardless of origin, are just large, sentient masses of mana, and can be killed with the right tools and methods.
- Power at a Price: The Sword of Mortal Sin is Kaito's strongest weapon, but it has painful drawbacks that prevent him from using it every day.
- The Power of Hate: Drives the protagonists in this timeline.
- Power Parasite: Yumis made a contract with a demon in order to steal the magical talent of one of her illegitimate half-sisters.
- Reincarnation: What is widely believed to happen after one dies.
- Released to Elsewhere: The cover story adults tell their children is that when Millanis and her mother were stoned, beaten, and driven out, another nearby village took them in so they could "atone" or being beast-men. In reality, everyone, save Keryll, knows the two were handed over to slavers, and not expected to survive.
- Revenge Before Reason: Kaito is well aware that his desire for vengeance is driven by emotion, not reason, especially once he gets the "email" in his status window left by the God of Earth that states he was sent back in time four years, and those who wronged haven't wronged him, yet. He is still proven justified in his pursuit; however, as these same individuals are indeed horrible, horrible people who commit atrocity with as much care and regularity as brushing their teeth after every meal, and couldn't be bothered to care about the consequences, as long as it serves their wants and needs. Nevertheless, since Kaito is going out of his way to give them torturous Karmic Deaths rather than quick assassinations, he is giving the enemies that know about him plenty of time to plan out how they are going to deal with him.
- Revenge by Proxy:
- While Yumis herself was a monster, Kaito also slaughters her servants, most of whom were probably only guilty of being cared about by her.
- Minnalis tortures Keryll to death, partially because she genuinely hates him, but also to hurt Lucia for betraying her.
- Revenge is Sweet: The entire story revolves around this trope. "The Evil Adventuring Party" were originally good people who had suffered horribly at the hands of society because of discrimination, enslavement, and betrayal from people they thought they could trust. Becoming sadistic vigilantes who seek revenge on the ones who wronged them, the Sword of Vengeance compels them to take revenge on their targets lest they feel the pain of death. The party's righteous vengeance is considered equally cathartic on both sides of the fourth wall, and while it's unknown what will happen if they run out of Asshole Victims, it's implied they will never run out of Asshole Victims.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: The entire point of "Tutorial Mode", resetting the timeline while leaving Kaito with his experiences from the previous timeline so that he can have a better idea of how to avoid dying this time. Tutorial mode also benefits other people with souls from Earth, like Leone, who came to this world via Reincarnation. Likewise, the Saint retains her memories of the previous timeline. Kaito figures out a way to make his enemies remember what they did in the previous timeline so that he can have more satisfaction when he kills them.
- RPG Mechanicsverse: Part of how the world Kaito got summoned into works. Experience Points can be used to gain Character Levels. With Character Levels, women and children can be every bit as strong as adult men. All stats can be measured in one's status screen. The relationship between Hit Points and injuries isn't direct, but Hit Points provide a measure of how much lifeforce you have left until you die. There is an Achievement System that gives bonuses for accomplishing various feats.
- Sadist:
- Inventing new torture methods is basically a hobby for Kaito and his party members. They also take pleasure and satisfaction in inflicting pain upon others.
- The Princess took a great deal of pleasure in telling Kaito that everyone he ever cared about was killed by the Summon Everyman Hero spell they used to bring him there.
- The Scapegoat:
- The demon lord was used as one for the social discontent caused by the kingdom's crimes.
- One of the biggest reasons Kaito was betrayed. With the demon lord dead, his enemies wanted to pin their crimes on himself.
- Sole Survivor: Kaito's little sister, Mai, somehow avoided getting killed by the summoning spell, but out of their entire family, she's the only one left.
- Spontaneous Weapon Creation: Kaito's main power are the spirit swords. When he accomplishes certain feats via the Achievement System, he unlocks new magic swords with new abilities that he can materialize with his Mana.
- Stalker with a Crush: The Yandere Saint retains her memories of the first timeline and is now stalking Kaito with the help of The Church in order to make him marry her.
- Start of Darkness: Kaito's and his current Evil adventuring party are former heroes who were so thoroughly betrayed and abused by the 'good guys' that they will tear through anything associated with discrimination, including townsfolk and small children.
- Summon Everyman Hero: Deconstructed. Kaito was summoned to fight the demon king because the summoner's had no care at all for his well-being and in fact saw his suffering as a bonus.
- There Are No Therapists: Truth in Television, seeing as part of the story is in modern Japan that treats any and all mental illness as a moral failing. Thus those who survived Kaito's summoning are left to their own devices and those who are Driven to Madness by the unflinching workaholic Japanese culture jump on the chance presented to try and escape to another world, regardless of how much blood they have to get on their hands.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Minnalis ended up exposing her race to Lucia in order to save Lucia's life. Lucia uses this knowledge to get rid of her.
- Unholy Matrimony: The ritual Kaito and his "accomplices" swear upon the aptly named Sword of Vengeance binds them together, for life. Not only do they share their targets, but one of them dies, and they all die, including Kaito.
- Vicious Cycle: According to Leon, every so often, the Mad God that controls their world arranges for an event involving a hero and a demon lord that throws the world into tragedy.
- Weak, but Skilled: In the second timeline, Kaito no longer has any of his previous skills or Character Levels, but his technique remains at the level of perfection he brought them to last time. The Saintess retained even less of her power than Kaito, but likewise retains her technique.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Two of Kaito's companions betrayed him and the demon lord, not out of greed or corruption, but because they genuinely believed it to be the only way to Screw Destiny and avert The End of the World as We Know It, freeing it from a Jerkass God before it becomes even more of a Crapsack World than it is already. Kaito doesn't fully understand their motives, but naturally, he couldn't care less whatever they were anyway. All that matters to him is how they made him feel.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Kaito receives one from someone he pitied as a fellow victim and it sinks in. While he remains willing to pursue Revenge by Proxy and inflict collateral damage to hurt his enemies, he agrees to stop killing random kingdom citizens out of Guilt by Association.
- Where I Was Born and Razed: Minnalis spends three days torturing the villagers of her former home before finally letting them die.
- Whole-Plot Reference: Uses the same general plotline as The Rising of the Shield Hero (betrayed and shunned by the people who needed him, swears revenge and to be less gullible, battles the evil princess who victimized him and the evil god/goddess she is tied to), except this time the hero really went off the deep end, turned sadist and brought his party with him.
- Wistful Amnesia: If a hero gets sent back home, it erases their memories of what took place in the other world. The Saint manages to banish Kaito back home in hopes of resetting him so she can take him as her lover when she summons him back. It mostly works, but bits and pieces remain, and Kaito's emotions remain damaged and far darker than before... until a Dirty Cop unlocked Kaito's memories for his own amusement, and that turned around to bite said cop hard.
- World of Jerkass:
- Good lord, where do we even begin? The main character is betrayed and murdered by the very people he saved, the princess who summoned him to begin with goes into painstaking detail on why he can never go back home, betrayal is in abundance like candy. After the main character is resurrected in a new timeline, he makes it his mission to get vengeance on everyone who betrayed him, everyone being his former party members and cares little if innocent people are caught in the crossfire. It really does say a lot when the nicest and most likeable character in the story is the original Big Bad!
- Modern Japan turns out to be just as bad, if not worse! Corrupt cops and politicians sell out the survivors of Kaito's summoning and found a cult of "Transcend Applicants" to make their lives hell, respectively, to pass off the initial summon as an act of insane terrorists and to personally profit, either by being paid in cash or by monopolizing the ability to use magic.
- Yandere:
- The Saint's motive for betraying him. She couldn't accept that Kaito had feelings for the demon lord when she wanted his heart all for herself, so she helped kill him to "purify" his soul and hopefully meet him again in another life.
- Minnalis's "friend", Lucia, revealed Minnalis's race to her fellow villagers because she wanted to keep Minnalis away from Keryll. She indulged in similar behaviour when they went to school, threatening other girls away. Seeing as Minnalis ultimately tortures Keryll to death for Revenge by Proxy, she honestly needn't have bothered.
- Kaito's only surviving relative has a very strong interest in Brother–Sister Incest, and is willing to kill any other woman that tries to get close to him.
- You Can't Go Home Again:
- Invoked, and quite cruelly, by princess Alesia. After she manages to corner Kaito in the original timeline, she spells out, in precise detail the "sacrifices" the summoning ritual demanded, just to get Kaito to this new world. Even if he is somehow whisked away back to Earth, all his friends and family are already dead, having been killed by the spell.
- Subverted when Kaito's sister got lucky and survived the sacrifice, and Kaito managed to rescue her on Earth. However, the remainder still applies, especially since the high powers of Earth want to dissect Kaito and his party for their powers, and have used their influence to turn all of Japan against them.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: When the Demon Lord Kaito was summoned to kill and sacrificed her own life to help him return home, his "allies" instantly turned on him, no longer considering him an asset, but an overly powerful nuisance to be used as a scapegoat.
