Nan Hon-Jah is a Korean high-schooler from California with a lot of issues. Being pulled into a Crapsack World certainly hasn’t helped any. Now with his new best friend/weapon/flesh-eating book with teeth Grimm, he’s gonna save the world… or burn it down to the bedrock. Probably the latter.
The Chronicle of the Wayward Tome Hero is a self insert for The Rising of the Shield Hero by Lone Taker
It could be found here
but was deleted on May 19, 2021
Chronicles of the Wayward Tome Hero contains examples of:
- Adaptation Expansion: Several elements and countries that weren’t visited in the original story are brought up and elaborated on here.
- Army of Thieves and Whores: Nan's evergrowing group gradually turns into one of these.
- An Arm and a Leg: Nan has made a frequent habit of losing limbs and body parts.
- Ax-Crazy: Nan becomes this whenever he’s been pushed to his breaking point. Wyndia becomes this after Nan convinces her to take revenge of the villagers who tried to sell her into slavery.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Genbu's schtick is this. He has seriously overpowered items and abilities, but their power is offset by incredibly long cooldown times.
- Break the Haughty: One of Nan’s ongoing goals is to break the Three Cardinal Heroes out of their delusion mindests and to beat (figuratively and literally) it into their heads that this is Not a Game
- He managed to do this to Ren. He interrupted Ren when he and his party are about to kill Gaelion, and reveals that the villagers were only using him to kill the dragon so they could sell Wyndia into slavery which shatters his black and white world view. Nan then kills his entire party, then forces him to watch Wyndia kill the villagers while he gives him a Breaking Speech. By the end of it, Ren’s been reduced to an alcoholic loner.
- Butt-Monkey: Malty is the often the subject of Nan's violence.
- Crossover:
- Its only been brought up once, but this version of Itsuki is from the world of A Certain Magical Index.
- It turns out this version of Ren was the Kirito from Sword Art Online Abridged.
- Darker and Edgier: While the source material was by no means kid friendly, this story takes the dark elements that were present or implied in the original and takes them up a notch. What finally cements this is when Nan is on Zeltoble he discovers the opening act of a gladiatorial games is having multiple child slaves being raped by a tentacle monster (which itself is horrific hybrid of multiple monsters that have been painfully forced together).
- Dark and Troubled Past: One of the reasons Nan is so violent is that he was already fucked up before he ended up in Melomarc. He nearly got arrested under false charges of bringing a weapon to school and only avoided going to jail due to only being 17 at the time, but was sent to juvie where he almost got shanked by a sharped pencil. He spent 30 days there before his parents managed to get him out, but by then the damage had been done. He was in middle of going through therapy for his issues when he got pulled into Melomarc.
- Deconstructed Character Archetype: Nan fits several of these:
- Cool People Rebel Against Authority: Despite looking and acting like a badass, Nan isn't even close to a role model.
- Dark Shepherd: While well intentioned, Nan's influence on others only ends up creating or enabling more psychopaths.
- The Dreaded: Nan's fearsome reputation has alienated him from a large number of potential allies.
- Genre Savvy: The tendency to constantly have a general awareness of whats going only makes Nan seem suspicious to onlookers, which is only worsened by him constantly trying to use this to his advantage even in situations where he shouldn't.
- Good Counterpart / Lesser of Two Evils: He is less evil and more well-intentioned than Malty, but that isn't exactly a hard thing to do.
- Guile Hero: The tendency to constantly have a general awareness of whats going only make Nan seem suspicious to onlookers, which is only worsened by him constantly trying to use this to his advantage even when he shouldn't.
- Idiot Savant: His tendency to have inconsistent moments of brilliance means he is considered very untrustworthy.
- Mechanically Unusual Class: The [Tome Hero] is so different from a typical RPG class that its practically from a completely different genre. This makes cooperation with other [Heroes] practically impossible due to having such different combat philosophies.
- No Social Skills / Zombie Advocate: Its almost impossible for Nan to relate to anyone other that the monsters he encounters or summon, making him a monster in the eyes of others.
- Token Evil Teammate / Villain Protagonist: He's extremely unpleasant to work with unless the person shares similiar ideals with him.
- Visionary Villain / Well-Intentioned Extremist: Nan believes the world needs to change and view himself as the catalyst for that change. To everyone else he's a mass murdering psychopath that needs to be stopped at all costs.
- Unscrupulous Hero: His horrible actions have caused him to lose all public support.
- Do with Him as You Will: Nan is a big fan of doing this during Rage Breaking Point moments
- Expy: Palomar Polnareff is Sky Pirate who is apparently an expy of Propeller Knight.
- Evil Weapon: Nan gets a sacrificial dagger that has the power to turn ordinary people it stabs into monsters and forcefully awaken the cursed series for Heroes.
- Fight Magnet: A passive ability of Nan’s increases his chances of encountering rare monsters.
- Honor Before Reason: Nan notes that most of Melomarc refuses to use shields in combat due to their hatred of the Shield Hero.
- Loophole Abuse: Nan discovers two ways to get around the [Heroes]' "no other weapons" restriction:
- Broken weapons count as items meaning that they can be interacted with and absorbed by the Legendary Weapons.
- Hybrid weapons are weapons that share have dual class and as long as one of those classes is the same class as the Hero's weapon then they can be used.
- Mechanically Unusual Class: The [Tome Hero] is this compared to the other Heroes.
- No-Sell: Nan has acquired several abilities that can make him resistance or completely immune to certain kinds of attacks.
- Protagonist Journey to Villain: Nan starts off the story as a well intentioned Anti-Villain. However as the mental and physical scars start piling up he becomes more insane and cynical to the point he rapidly starts becoming a Villain Protagonist. It eventually leads him to become a Humanoid Abomination who intends to destroy all life .
- Rage Breaking Point: Nan has had this happen to him repeatedly throughout the story. Mass slaughter and collateral damage always ensues.
- Revenge Before Reason: Aultcray is obsessed with bringing down and discrediting Naofumi because the Shield Hero is sacred to the demi-humans, even though Nan is a much bigger threat.
- Sanity Slippage: Constantly having to deal with the cruelty of the Crapsack World he has found himself in has caused Nan to slowly become more and more insane as the story goes on, to the point that the chapters eventually added a sanity meter to the author’s notes at the beginning of each chapter. He really loses it after seeing an alternate version of himself commit suicide.
- Seven Deadly Sins: The curse series of weapons as usual. Nan later unlocks the two removed sins from the original lineup, Despair and Vanity, as well as a mysterious 10th he hasn't unlocked yet. He finally unlocks the last sin after sacrifing most of his mind to an Eldritch Abomination, Suicide.
- Shout-Out: This story has enough that they may eventually need their own page:
- When Nan compares his first meeting with Grim to Light meeting Ryuk in the Netflix Death Note film.
- At one point Nan refers to Malty as "Whore Princess of the Uterine Sea".
- Summon Magic: One of Nan’s main abilities is this. It eventually starts to push him into One-Man Army territory.
- Then Let Me Be Evil: Downplayed. While Nan jumps into villainy pretty early on, he's not quite sure if his actions are justified. Then he receives a recorded message from an alternate version of himself that came to Melomarc decades ago. Said alternate self was even more fucked up when he came to Melomarc, but he tried to do some good. Unfortunately, his attempts to do good lead to a chain of events that caused the Melomarc-Siltvelt war and he commited suicide. Upon learning that there were 16 other versions prior to that one who all met similiar fates trying to be a hero, Nan decides that only way to break this cycle violence is to plunge headfirst into villainy.
- Tiered by Name: This story has the [Affix] system, which adds an adjective to a monsters name that temporarily or permantly gives them special properties.
- Unluckily Lucky: Downplayed on the lucky part. Partly in thanks to one of his passive abilities, Nan has a tendency to acquire or discover new abilities that, while beneficial in the long run, tend to show up at the worst possible time and end up putting him in extraordinary amounts of danger.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Nan rarely plans things out beyond a general goal. He tends to make up his plans along the way and only manages to pull them off thanks to (as the author puts it) Marshall D. Teach levels of good luck.
- Unperson: It is revealed that the Tome Hero and several other heroes had been almost completely erased from all history records. A side goal of Nan's is to investigate and gather them up.
