The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic (Chiyu Mahō no Machigatta Tsukai-kata: Senjō o Kakeru Kaifuku Yōin, literally "How to Use Healing Magic Wrongly: Main Recovery Team Member Running Through the Battlefield") is a Web Serial Novel written by Kurokata, which was originally released on the site Shousetsuka ni Narou in 2014. It was later published as a series of Light Novels with illustrations by KEG from 2016 to 2020 for 12 volumes, and it also has a manga adaptation that began serialization in 2017 in Comp Ace. The novels are licensed in English by One Peace Books. An anime adaptation began airing in the Winter 2024 anime season.
Ordinary High-School Student, Ken Usato and his classmates, Suzune Inugami and Kazuki Ryuusen, are summoned to another world as heroes. Although Usato was summoned by accident, he is soon discovered to have an uncanny gift for Healing Magic. This attracts the attention of Rose, head of the kingdom's Rescue Squad...and not because she wants him to be a mere healer. It turns out the wrong way to use healing magic is to recover from harsh physical training. Hilarity Ensues.
The wrong way to use Tropes:
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: After Kazuki's emotional outburst mentioned below, King Lloyd Bluegust Lyngle gets on his knees and begs the heroes to help save his world.
- Arc Villain:
- Volume 1 features the Black Knight who is the Demon King's first trump card against the kingdom of Lyngel, though they only care about a good fight.
- Volume 2 has Mina Liasya, who is nothing more than The Bully who indulges in the kingdom's discrimination against healing mages and is particularly fixated on keeping Nack under her heel.
- Volume 3 has Nea, who is an immortal necromancer that has taken control over an entire village that Usato decides to stop on his way to the next kingdom.
- Ascended Fan Girl: Suzune, an otaku, is absolutely overjoyed to be in her situation.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: "Bluey" happily serves Usato as a pet because he came to its rescue from a giant snake, and the Black Knight pulls a Heel–Face Turn, in large part, because Usato is the first ever to show any genuine affection.
- Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Inverted. Rose promises Felm, the Demon Black Knight to "beat their character into shape". Considering her training regimen that can make hardened knights shake in fear, you'd wonder if actual torture would be less harsh...
- Black-and-White Morality: Lyngel, as a country, is shown to be the paragon of virtue, and the Demon army, aside from some Evil Virtues, is shown to be the ultimate depth of depravity.
- Chekhov's Skill:
- After the fight between Usato and Halfa in volume 2, it is explained that mages can further amplify their attacks through "systematic strengthening", which manipulates the density of magic one uses. Not only does it come up during the climax of Mina and Nack's fight but it was also the key to restoring Nack's ability as a healing mage.
- Also in volume 2, Wesley explains how to make a familiar contract and how it's different from the friendship Usato has with Bluey. An entire volume later, Nea makes use of a variation to bind herself to Usato as his familiar.
- Combat Medic: Usato is recruited into the Kingdom Rescue Squad, a military unit whose job is to provide medical attention using healing magic. The leader of the Squad, Rose is this trope taken up to eleven, as her training regime is harsher than a knight's, and she can easily crush a knight's gauntlet barehanded.
- Contrasting Sequel Antagonist:
- Volume 1: The Black Knight and the Demon King's army are the main antagonistic threat the heroes have to face. With 24-Hour Armor that also functions as an Attack Reflector, the Black Knight is a dangerous warrior who takes pleasure in the thrill of battle.
- Volume 2: Mina Liasya. Unlike the Black Knight, her magic is purely offensive and focuses on explosive blasts. Her faction is also one of the ones opposing the Demon King and her actions are much smaller in scope compared to the Black Knight's. Furthermore, the Black Knight didn't particularly care about healing mages or heroes as long as they gave them a good fight. Mina's whole goal is to make use of the discrimination against healing mages to antagonize Nack and keep him under her power. Mina's a Spoiled Brat who thinks she can get away with anything due to her noble lineage while the Black Knight only has power on the battlefield. It's also implied that the Black Knight was a victim of Domestic Abuse while Mina is the abuser in her arc.
- Volume 3: Nea is a necromancer who has taken control over an entire village. Unlike either of the first two villains, they do not have a stake in the war against the Demon King. While the Black Knight sought a good fight and Mina sought power over Nack, Nea seeks knowledge and simulation. Like Mina, they have a fascination with a healing mage. However, while Mina's fascination is due to them being Childhood Friends, Nea's is simply due to Usato being an interesting individual who has no prior history with them. Like Mina, the necromancer makes use of lackeys but this is due to stripping them of their free will rather than being an influential figure. Finally, the necromancer also contrasts both the Black Knight and Mina by specializing in support magic rather than purely defensive or offensive magic.
- Determinator: Usato's defining trait is his desire to overcome any obstacle he faces, no matter how difficult it may be.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: There is no question that Nack has had a Dark and Troubled Past, with him being kicked out of his family and bullied relentlessly because of him having the wrong type of magic. However, thanks to Training from Hell on Usato's part and despite nearly being killed by Mina in a mock battle, he successfully severs all ties with his past, regains his ability to heal others and is able to join the Rescue Squad.
- Evil Brit: The demon faction, and the formerly evil Felm, are all made to speak like this in the dubbed version of the series.
- Evil Can Not Comprehend Good: The demon king lists all the vices they've noticed among humanity, as a whole, some of which they've suffered under, and he's honestly flummoxed that the people of Lyngel don't have any of them.
- The Black Knight, as a POW, expected to be tortured, and is completely gobsmacked when Usato instead heals the injuries resulting from the capture, to the point of crying Tears of Joy.
- Evil Is Not a Toy: Nea learns that trying to use a giant, zombified Ancient Evil Dragon as an attack dog against Usato is a very bad idea, when the dragon regains its free will and threatens to destroy her, her home village, and the entire continent.
- Fantastic Racism: The kingdom outside Lyngel's rule is guilty of two kinds:
- Healing mages are often seen as inferior to pretty much any other kind and are regularly bullied by groups of people.
- Beastfolk are not treated well, to say the least. However, it goes two ways with beastfolk, somewhat justifiably, are hesitant to trust humans and can get outright aggressive with them even if they haven't done anything wrong.
- The Good King: Lyngle is a kindhearted ruler who even insists that prisoners of war be treated fairly.
- The Good, the Bad, and the Evil: There are three factions in the story:
- The Good: The kingdom of Lyngle are undeniably a paragon of virtue, only summoning the main characters out of sheer desperation in their war with the demon king, where the demons are undeniably the aggressors.
- The Bad: All the other human kingdoms and the demi-human kingdoms. They are rife with corruption, elitism, racism, and all of them inevitably scorn Healing Magic as a waste of resources because "restoration" is sufficient for most daily needs. Who cares about those "rare unfortunates" that need a genuine healer? And if you are a healer, good luck in avoiding getting brutalized on the daily, with the townsfolk not even caring. Heck, all of these countries see Lyngle as an eyesore and would throw a party if the demons win, not caring that they might be next.
- The Evil. The demon king and its armies are the clear aggressors in the conflict. They celebrate corruption, strife, and pain, and their morality is extremely myopic. It's okay if they engage in nastiness, but dare to defend yourself, never mind retaliate, and you are only deserving of extermination, and that is if they're feeling merciful.
- Healing Magic: Healers are not only capable of healing others and/or themselves, but can also improve their physiology, enhancing their physical prowess to superhuman levels.
- Healing Magic Is the Hardest: In two different ways:
- The first is that users of healing magic often have to go through Training from Hell just to be even a Combat Medic. If you want to make a significant impact on the battlefield, training your body is your only option while comparatively speaking no other magic user has to have training quite as hard or taxing. Even worse if you've got a defect that renders you unable to use all of its applications like Nack or Olga.
- It's also this from a social view as everyone can learn recovery magic to heal their own wounds. While healing magic does make the process go faster, strictly speaking it's not necessary for anyone to have if they want to make it in this world. As a result healing mages are often subject to Fantastic Racism, which makes it harder to form relationships and such.
- Heart Is an Awesome Power: The human mage kingdoms look down on healing magic, thinking it "inferior." Lyngel doesn't. Why? Aside from the fact that "restoration" magic can't treat illness, or handle curses and such, it's not light magic that's the Demon army's greatest weakness...
- In Volume 6, the demon king, of all people, privately implies that this disregard started relatively recently.
- Heroic Build: Usato gets pretty ripped from his training.
- Humans Are Special: The only race in the new world that can learn healing magic is humanity.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Unlike several Isekai stories, it's actually subverted, at least in regard to the Lyngle kingdom. The kingdom who summons the protagonists is the passive side of the war, summoning the heroes when it became their only option to fight against the demons, who are presented as the aggressors, and is seen as particularly moral even when compared to other human nations, not having either slavery or discrimination against beast-humans.
- Insult to Rocks: When Usato's friends see how he trains Nack to deal with Mina, they ask him if he's a demon. Usato retorts that he's human, and states such a claim is rude to demons. When he's asked to elaborate on the training he endured, as a member of the Rescue Squad, his friends quickly agree with him that, yes, Usato's right to call it rude to the demons.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Rose may be rude and abrasive, but she really does care about people, which is why she founded the Rescue Squad.
- Legions of Hell: The heroes were summoned to combat a demon army, who are steadily extending their influence.
- Last-Name Basis: For some reason, Usato is never referred to by his given name.
- Light 'em Up: Kazuki has an aptitude towards light magic.
- A Mother to Her Men: Although Rose (founder and leader of the Rescue Squad) is mean and even abusive towards her subordinates, she cares about them a great deal and feels personally responsible when one of them gets injured or killed.
- Not the Intended Use: Allowing for even harder Training from Hell is not precisely what healing magic was meant for.
- Neither is infusing healing into your Megaton Punch so that you can beat the bejesus out of someone without actually damaging them. Inukami gives a Title Drop upon witnessing Usato doing just that to the Black Knight.
- Oh, Crap!: Given her status as The Dreaded, Rose elicits these reactions a LOT, but the most memorable one is right at the beginning when Usato reveals the color of his magic, which gains him Rose's undivided attention and thoroughly freaks out the King and everyone with him.
- Only Sane Man: Inverted. Everyone else seems to fill this role whenever they see or hear about the new strange thing Usato has done.
- Our Demons Are Different: At least in the manga, the demons are a type of beast-kin, as opposed to a supernatural threat.
- Parental Abandonment: An interesting case in the sense that Nack's parents were a case of Good Parents... until his ninth birthday where his magical aptitude was discovered to be healing instead of water. Eventually, they straight up kick him out of the house and send him to Luquis.
- Pet Monstrosity: Usato adopts a blue grizzly cub that he creatively names Bluey.
- Pure Is Not Good: Eva, the princess of Samaria in chapter 84 is this. Unlike any of Usato's other companions, she is completely innocent in her way of thinking. However, this means that she doesn't quite understand right or wrong or the fact that people just have different opinions. For example, her reaction to people not liking her favorite cake is to force them to have it until they like it.
- Shock and Awe: Suzune has an aptitude towards lightning magic.
- Short Range Fighter Long Range Fighter: The big difference between Nack and Mina in terms of combat. Nack's magic is only useful for giving him a slightly faster Healing Factor, while Mina's allows her to shoot out balls of explosive magic. This actually plays a large role in their fight in chapter 63. Nack has no option but to get in close and force close quarters combat. By contrast, Mina can easily shoot out explosive blasts but she can't use them too close for fear of injuring herself.
- Shout-Out: The story of the previous hero who fought the Wicked Dragon is one to the Isekai subgenre of “summoned-hero but the humans/summoners are the actually evil/amoral ones”; which the story itself could be considered a subversion of.
- Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Although slavery has been outlawed some time before the start of the story, there is still human and humanoid trafficking going on.
- The Tease: Suzune occasionally flirts with Usato in a joking manner. However, such teasing completely flies over his head.
- Title Drop: In the battle between Usato and the Black Knight, Suzune cries out the title, by name.
- Training from Hell: Rose's training regiment is so intense and traumatic that even hardened knights cringe in fear whenever it's mentioned.
- Underestimating Badassery: A rare case occurs in chapter 63, in which both combatants are guilty of this trope. Mina naturally underestimates Nack in their fight, having been his bully for years as well as being extremely adept in explosion magic. Even though she witnessed first-hand how powerful a healing mage could be in the form of Usato, she had no reason to assume a mere 5 days of training would cause Nick to significantly improve to her level. Likewise, Nack presumed that Mina's only strong point was her explosive magic which he could easily dodge but this caused him to completely neglect her shield, which actually helps her once he gets into close-range.
- Villain Has a Point: The demon king highlights that their genocidal grudge against humanity is justified, as demons, among other non-human races, have suffered a great deal at humanity's hands.
- White-and-Grey Morality: The source of friction between Lyngel and its nominal "allies." Lyngel lacks any of the vices assigned to humanity, while all the other kingdoms struggle with them, especially Fantastic Racism and Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil.
- Worthy Opponent: Mina actually praises her former victim for making her go serious and how well he was able to last in what she presumed was an absolute loss for him.
- Nero, the current demon king, thought of Rose and her now-deceased subordinates this way, even if Rose was not in the mood to hear him say so.
- Yandere: Mina. When Nack was revealed to only be capable of using healing magic and got kicked out of his family as a result; she proceeded to bully and belittle him in a twisted sense of possession. However, when it looked like Nack was about to sever ties with everyone in his dark past, including her, she used her Explosion magic at its fullest potential and used Reinforcement to strengthen it further, which had the capacity to harm everyone present including herself. All of this to keep the "one she can't let go".
