Whisked to another world? Okay... But I get to work for the demon king rather than fight against him? And he's the good guy while the "heroes" are just a bunch of mass-murdering invaders?! Hey... wait a minute, I know those guys!
Kuroki suddenly finds himself in a chamber surrounded by all manner of rather disturbing creatures, and then a rather unpleasant to look at guy calling himself Modes, the demon king, comes forward and begs for aid against a group of armed invaders calling themselves "heroes" summoned to the world by a Jerkass God to annihilate him and his people. With little choice in the matter, he takes to the final line of defense as the so-called heroes arrive, and he immediately recognizes them, especially the self-proclaimed "Hero of Light" Reiji who cuckholed him, taking away his Childhood Friend Romance Shirone as a result of beating him in a kendo spar.
Referring to himself as Dark Knight Diehardt, Kuroki challenges Reiji to a duel. Reiji, overconfident from never having lost a fight before, happily accepts, thinking himself the victor, and loses easily, coming a hairs-breadth from losing his life in the process. After the self-proclaimed heroes have fled, Kuroki takes to exploring the world, under the guise of keeping an eye on said heroes, and learns that the morality of the world is not so simple, with Demon King Modes actually being the victim of extensive Malicious Slander. The "hero party," on the other hand, continue to just blindly swallow Goddess Rena's propaganda because they all just foolishly follow Reiji around, who just does whatever the most recent pretty face tells him, ignoring everything else, and who won't lift a finger to rescue men or children unless a pretty face asks him to.
Ankoku Kishi Monogatari is a Light Novel written by Nezaki Takeru.
Associated Tropes:
- Acoustic Licence: Yelling out loud isn't going to allow others to hear you long distance. Justified as magic allows it.
- All Love Is Unrequited: Most of them in the setting is shot down.
- Kuroki to Shirone. He gets over it.
- Reiji had so many girls gushing over him in their original world but none of the men could do anything about it. The few who tried got injured or were silenced.
- Many men try but Reiji just has so many affairs over the world and the men can do nothing about it.
- Anyone other than Kuroki will be shot down by Rena. Most Gods in the setting delude themselves into thinking Rena loves only them.
- Rembarr towards Almina due to Reiji.
- Reiji gets into a slaughter with Algore youths as he seduces all the beautiful women.
- Omiros towards Regena.
- All Men Are Perverts: It's hard to find a good man that isn't aligned with Kuroki or Modes.
- Beauty Equals Goodness: What the gods of Elios believe. They're wrong.
- Bond Creatures: When a creature is made into a familiar,they are referred to as such and only love their master.When a humanoid is turned into one they are just referred to as Apostle instead.
- Basilisk and Cockatrice: Fiends that debut in Volume 4
- Clones Are People, Too: Mode's wife Mona and Kuroki's wife Kuna are both clones of Rena and have their own distinct personalities, though still carry over some of Rena's less than desirable traits.
- Creating Life Is Awesome: Both Modes and Kuroki get to participate.
- When Modes is exiled from Elios after a Kangaroo Court of Malicious Slander, he agrees to go in exchange for a lock of hair from his primary accuser. He then uses this hair to make a clone that goes on to willingly become his wife, to the original's horror, but Modes is so powerful, the gods of Elios can't do anything about it, hence the Summon ritual that brings the "heroes" to the world.
- As a reward for his meritorious service, Kuroki gets a wife created for him the same way, but he has to gather most of the materials himself.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Nargol, the country where the demon king lives, is trapped in perpetual night, but the demon king himself is a total softie.
- Decoy Protagonist: The Rewritten version has the prologue start off in the perspective of Atar, an angel who is attacking Kuroki for storming Rena's temple. Cue a one sided non lethal beatdown.
- Entertainingly Wrong: The major premise of the story, and most of the conflict, comes from the fact that the logical conclusion of most of the characters is perfectly sound considering the information at hand, but the information at hand just happens to be incomplete, thus leading to the wrong conclusion.
- A Girl in Every Port:
- Reiji has so many lovers ranging from married women to virgin girls. It gets ugly.
- Most male gods in the setting have harems of women everywhere.
- Grey-and-Grey Morality: None of the factions are monolithic. The humanoid races and the "monster" or "demon" races have good and bad among them.
- Harem Genre: Both Kuroki and Reiji wind up with a harem. While Reiji sought out his harem, and is still on the prowl for more, Kuroki had one shoved on him by many, many circumstances beyond his control.
- Jerkass Gods: The entire pantheon has their moments of jerkishness. Modes made a clone of his primary Love Interest when she spurned him as a result of being physically repulsed by his ugliness, and that's the most benevolent example.
- Kidnapped by the Call: Neither Kuroki nor the Hero Party members gave their consent to come to this new world. They were all summoned by ambush,and are now missing in their world.
- Light Is Not Good: Rena, the primary source of light magic, is a Jerkass God that sees nothing wrong with lies, half-truths, and misinformation to make the hero party she summons into a bunch of unwitting pawns, and would happily hurl them into the Void Between the Worlds when she has no further use for them, and even tried to use a Love Potion on our protagonist to have him murder the demon king, and make him eternally devoted to herself, but when that backfires, she rapes him repeatedly in a "Groundhog Day" Loop for almost two weeks then mindwipes him.
- Love Hotels: Commonly run by the Ishtia faith.
- One-Gender Race: Several races have only one gender, and require Interspecies Romance to propagate. When giving birth to children of the other gender, the child is the race of the other parent, most commonly human. Some examples:
- Elf: All female. Male children born from an elf have higher magical power than the norm for the father's race.
- Centaur: All male. Female children born from the union of a centaur and another race are taller, stronger, and more agile than the norm.
- Harpies: All female. Bonus traits for male children are currently undocumented.
- Minotaurs: All males.They descend from Labrys and are created from Yarven (human) females. Mostly through Minotaur Gangrape
- No Guy Wants an Amazon: Subverted a lot, as the main girls are too attractive and girls who fight are usually beautiful in the setting on the human side.
- Perspective Flip: The work is an isekai story written from the perspective of the Demon King, and his chosen "summon." Where the demon king is Not Evil, Just Misunderstood and the so-called heroes are hardly heroic, but are instead more like walking-talking natural disasters that occasionally just happen to do something helpful, but even then, they never, ever consider the long-term consequences of their actions.
- Religious Bruiser: Anyone who worships a god and is capable of fighting.
- Switching P.O.V.: In the original version, the narrative is written in first person through the eyes of various characters.
- Trapped in Another World: The summoning ritual that brought Kuroki and the Hero Party to this new world is one-way, and there is no known method to get back. Kuroki checked. Goddess Rena promised the Hero Party a trip back when they defeat Modes, but this was a straight-up lie. Had she used the equipment as is, the best outcome would be dumping them in some other random world, but hey Somebody Else's Problem.
- Women Prefer Strong Men: Common preference for any female in the setting.
