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Banished from the Hero’s Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside, Vol. 14, page 23
Copyright
Banished from the Hero’s Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside, Vol. 14
Zappon
Translation by Dale DeLucia
Cover art by Yasumo
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
SHIN NO NAKAMA JYANAI TO YUUSHA NO PARTY WO OIDASARETANODE, HENKYOU DE SLOW—LIFE SURUKOTO NI SHIMASHITA Vol. 14
©Zappon, Yasumo 2024
First published in Japan in 2024 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo.
English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo through TUTTLE-MORI AGENCY, INC., Tokyo.
English translation © 2025 by Yen Press, LLC
Yen Press, LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Zappon, author. | Yasumo, illustrator. | DeLucia, Dale, translator.
Title: Banished from the hero’s party, I decided to live a quiet life in the countryside / Zappon ; illustration by Yasumo ; translation by Dale DeLucia ; cover art by Yasumo. Other titles: Shin no nakama ja nai to yuusha no party wo oidasareta node, henkyou de slow life suru koto ni shimashita. English
Description: First Yen On edition. | New York : Yen On, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020026847 | ISBN 9781975312459 (v. 1; trade paperback)
Subjects: CYAC: Ability—Fiction. | Fantasy.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.Z37 Ban 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020026847
ISBNs: 979-8-8554-1683-1 (paperback)
979-8-8554-1684-8 (ebook)
E3-20250627-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Insert
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue: A Letter
Chapter 1: The Day Approaches
Interlude: The Demon Lord Goes Fishing
Chapter 2: Yarandrala Returns
Chapter 3: The Demon Lord’s Demon Lord–Slaying Sword
Interlude: Gem Beast, Reprise
Chapter 4: The Story of the Hero and the Demon Lord
Epilogue: The Couple’s Goal
Afterword
Yen Newsletter
Illustration: Yasumo
Design Work: Shindousha
Prologue
A Letter
To my dearest Red and Rizlet,
I am currently in the harbor of Bias.
They have a mail service using carrier pigeons here, which is what I’m using to send you this letter. It is a dangerous town with a powerful Thieves Guild, but their techniques for rearing carrier pigeons are exceptional. I find it fascinating they have developed such a safe and swift method of letter delivery for the very reason that it is such an immoral town.
As to the main reason for my letter, I am writing because there is something I wished to let you, my beloved friends, know in advance: From here, I will be heading back to Zoltan by boat. In all likelihood, the ship will arrive in Zoltan six days after this letter reaches you. There is so much I wish to tell you two and Ruti about what I have seen and learned on this journey.
But what’s more important than any of that is your wedding ceremony! You didn’t forget what you said about getting married once I returned, did you? You can look forward to the gift I’ve prepared for you. I could go on endlessly, but I shall set aside my pen so this letter doesn’t weigh down the pigeon too much.
I look forward to the day when we all meet again.
Your truest friend,
Yarandrala
Chapter 1
The Day Approaches
The day Yarandrala’s letter arrived, a cold wind was blowing.
It was the middle of winter in Zoltan, and tree limbs bare of leaves shivered in the chill.
“Yarandrala will be back soon!” Rit said happily, setting the letter down on the table.
Yarandrala was a high elf Singer of the Trees, a former member of the Hero’s party, and our dear friend.
It was a little strange to think that until a short while ago, our comrades—some of humanity’s greatest heroes—had all been in this remote frontier town of Zoltan. However, they had all since left it far behind.
“I wonder what they’re all doing now.”
“Danan and Esta and everyone?”
“Yeah.”
They had been fighting against the demon lord’s armies, but now the war was over. Maybe there would come a day when we could meet again.
“It’d be nice if we could invite them to our wedding.”
“…Yeah, but we don’t have any way of getting in contact with them.”
Zoltan was on the frontier, so even carrier pigeons only delivered one way out here. To send a letter out, you had to rely on the occasional trade ship that would stop in port. That worked fine if you were sending it to a neighboring country, but the odds weren’t great if we were trying to reach Esta and the others wherever they were on the continent. The chances were about as good as getting a goblin to make a fashionable outfit for a noble ball. In other words, zero.
…The wedding.
Yarandrala had said she wanted to be here for our wedding, so when she’d left, we’d promised to have it after she got back.
“It’s finally time…”
I was filled with a mixture of anticipation, joy, and just a few nerves.
“…Mhm.”
Rit’s face turned bright red, and she covered her mouth with the red bandana around her neck. I’m sure my face had turned the same shade.
Realizing we were both blushing, Rit and I started to chuckle.
“Do you think this part of our relationship will end soon, too?” Rit asked after we’d laughed together for a little while.
“I dunno. I’ve never been married, so I couldn’t say.”
“This is my first time, too, so I don’t know, either.”
As a knight and as an adventurer, we’d both seen all manner of sights no one else had ever witnessed before—yet neither of us knew anything about something as common as marriage.
That was the source of my tumultuous emotions.
Right now, I found the thought of our future after getting married more exciting than any adventure.
“Why don’t we take a break from the shop tomorrow and start getting things ready for the wedding instead?”
“Really?! That sounds great!” Rit exclaimed, leaning forward excitedly. “I’ve been waiting so long for this… I knew this day would come as long as we were together, but it still makes me so happy!”
“It’s been about a year and a half since we reunited… I don’t know if that’s slow or fast for people to get married.”
“There’s no other Red and Rit, so there’s no point in comparing us with others, is there?”
“That’s true!”
Our happiness was ours alone. I could confidently say getting married now was the perfect timing for us.
“If we’re going to be discussing the wedding tomorrow…then we should also think about the other meaning in this letter,” I said.
“Right.”
The reason Yarandrala had gone to her homeland, the Kingdom of Kiramin, was to research the true nature of the Demon Lord blessing and its relationship with Ruti’s New Truth blessing.
Yarandrala had addressed her letter “To my dearest Red and Rizlet,” but not to Ruti. That could only mean she wanted to talk with us before telling Ruti about what she’d learned.
“Just what did Yarandrala find out?” I wondered aloud.
“If it were good news, there would be no reason not to let Ruti know right away…”
“Yeah. We should probably assume there’s a clear connection between Demon Lord and New Truth.”
Yarandrala was the sort of person who would make decisions when the moment called for it. While we’d been traveling together, she had decided by herself whether to let Ruti know when issues came up. If she wanted to talk with us before deciding, then that meant there was a chance somethin g bad might happen if Ruti knew about New Truth.
“The New Truth blessing that freed Ruti from the Hero was born from her own will… I don’t want to think it might be something bad, but…”
“I feel the same way… However, whatever its true nature is, Ruti is strong enough not to lose to the Hero blessing, so I’m sure she will be fine,” Rit said, putting her hand on top of mine.
“That’s right. And she has all of us, too.”
It would come down to what Yarandrala told us…but even so, no one could sully Ruti’s happiness. Not when there were so many people here in Zoltan wishing for her to be happy.
The next day, a grave fact was brought to light.
“This letter reached Zoltan four days ago?!”
“Yeah, sorry ’bout that. We hardly ever get carrier pigeons, so it was a big mess gettin’ things cleaned up,” Eugene, the vice-chief of Zoltan’s Post Guild apologized, scratching the white hair on his head.
Unlike the Adventurers Guild, which was a big group with serious international connections, the Post Guild was a small, town-level institution. The only connection it had with Post Guilds in other cities came from sending and receiving letters in the care of traveling merchants and trade ships. The majority of its work focused on handling the post inside the city, and for anything going outside, its job ended when the letter was handed off to a trade ship.
Given that structure, a carrier pigeon was a fast but expensive means of communication. Zoltan was on the periphery of the continent, so carrier pigeons almost never came here. Naturally, the laid-back people of Zoltan had slacked off maintaining the coop where they could rest after a trip.
Surprised by the sudden arrival of a pigeon, it sounded like they’d had to hurry to get the coop cleaned and buy some feed…and in all the commotion, they had completely forgotten about Yarandrala’s letter, which they’d set aside after taking it off the pigeon’s leg.
“There’s been a cold going ’round among the staff, and what with having to do something we usually never need to, it just sorta slipped our minds,” Eugene explained.
Sure enough, looking around at the number of people working in the Post Guild, it seemed there were fewer staff than normal.
“Well…that’s just how it goes, I guess. If you need some cold medicine, come and buy some at our place.”
“I’ll let the sick folks know.”
That’s just how things were in Zoltan.
We had taken sudden breaks from the shop in the past as well, but our customers hadn’t cared and kept coming anyway. Everyone just smiled and laughed it off, saying that sort of thing happened to everyone. I’d grown to be able to think like that, too.
Still, though…if it had been four days since the letter had arrived, Yarandrala would be arriving in Zoltan in just two days. There probably wasn’t enough time to put together a big party, but I wanted to at least do something.
Preparations for a little celebration at home had just gotten added to today’s to-do list.
“If a cold is going around, then we can’t keep the store closed for too long,” Rit said behind me.
She was right. If possible, I only wanted to keep the shop closed today. But Yarandrala’s letter wasn’t why we’d come to the Post Guild.
“Putting all that aside for now, we should get to the main reason we’re here.”
“What’s that?”
It was just a coincidence that we’d found out about the letter having been delayed. We were actually here for something else.
“We don’t need to do it just yet, but I was hoping you could tell us about sending out invitations.”
“Invitations, huh?”
“Yeah. We’ll be sending them to a lot of people at once, and we need to be able to receive responses about whether they’re going to attend, so we wanted to talk over how to do that.”
“That sounds like a pretty formal sort of invitation. You plannin’ some big event?”
“Something like that,” I answered with an evasive smile.
We probably didn’t need to keep it a secret, but the Post Guild’s job took them all around town. If the news slipped out here, it would spread everywhere. The people of Zoltan would keep your secret for decades if you were trying to hide your past—but if it was something joyous like a wedding, they were all too quick to gossip. I’d pretty much adapted to Zoltan, so I could guess how people here thought.
But even with that, reality just didn’t seem to want to cooperate lately…
A woman working at a desk suddenly bolted to her feet.
“Are you and Ms. Rit finally getting married?!”
“Mina!” Rit put her elbows on the counter and leaned forward to talk to her. I guess they knew each other.
“If you’re sending out formal invitations, Ms. Rit, then a wedding is the only explanation!”
“Is it really?”
“Yep, it has to be!”
Seeing the two of them so excited, Eugene gave a wry smile.
“Back when Ms. Rit was adventuring, we relied on her for some jobs, and Mina here accompanied her a number of times.”
“Ah, so that’s why.”
From the looks of it, she was totally convinced it was a wedding…and it was pretty hard to deny it.
Eugene patted my shoulder amiably.
“Don’t worry about it. And congratulations!”
“Haha…”
All I could do was muster another unconvincing, evasive laugh.
The war with the demon lord’s armies was over, and the soldiers had returned from the battlefield to their homes.
Zoltan had sent financial support to the Kingdom of Avalonia, but it hadn’t mustered any forces for the front lines. It was a small country on the periphery and far from the fighting. Even if Zoltan had sent an army, it wouldn’t have had much of an impact on the war, hence why none of the allied countries had complained. However, there were still those who’d wished to fight when the fate of the world was at stake, so some volunteers had left Zoltan to join the war effort.
Now that they had returned, I recognized some among them who’d fought with Ruti and me. Just recently, before the Harvest Festival, it had come out that we were Ruti the Hero and the knight Gideon.
“Medicinal chikuwa bread! Anyone want some medicinal chikuwa bread?”
Right now, that very same former Hero was pulling a cart and making a very odd sales pitch. In between yells, she blew on a little horn, drawing attention.
“M-medicinal chikuwa bread?”
“Oh, Big Brother!”
Ruti smiled happily when she saw me and pulled the rattling cart over to us.
“Good morning! Today’s bound to be a good day if I’m running into you and Rit here.”
“Hi, Ruti. What’s all this about?”
She was pulling a cart loaded with pieces of bread that contained green sticks of chikuwa.
“It’s a new product from our herbal plantation. A collaboration with Tisse’s chikuwa bread,” Ruti said, brimming with confidence.
“Oh, can I buy one?”
“I’d like to try one, too!”
“Mhm, there are plenty!”
They were five coppers each. Cheap enough for the masses.
“Here you go.”
Ruti gave me one. The white bread was nicely baked and had a stretchy piece of chikuwa through the middle. It was the product Tisse had come up with, but it was clear from a glance that this chikuwa wasn’t normal.
“It’s green,” Rit said.
The chikuwa sticking out of the bread was a pretty green color. They must have mixed medicinal herbs into the fish paste. Was this a new-and-improved recipe based on the medicinal oden Tisse had experimented with for the festival?
Let’s give it a taste… Ooh.
“That’s good!”
“Yeah. It’s a little more bitter than normal chikuwa, but it has a refreshing bite to it. It goes well with the bread’s simple sweetness!”
Both of us found it surprisingly tasty and were shocked by the high level to which it had been perfected. The medicinal oden had an interesting, fresh flavor, but it didn’t have the sort of appeal to become a staple for the store. This medicinal chikuwa bread, on the other hand, was something I could eat every morning without getting tired of it.
