Dropout Exorcist Part 1 Prologue
Prologue
"Thank you for your hard work for your duties".
Before him, an endless, crystal-clear blue sky stretched out as far as the eye could see. And within it, pure white clouds drifted.
Two figures stood atop the clouds.
One was an elderly man, clad in pure white ceremonial robes.
Though his face bore the marks of age, it was full of vitality, radiating a quiet majesty. His head was bald and shone with light and a glowing ring floated above it.
"Well done, for lending your strength to the hero and bringing down the Demon King. You have my thanks, guardian of another world."
The voice was powerful beyond measure and yet gentle. The one who heard it was a young man wrapped in a black cloak.
"Four years, huh. Felt like a long time and yet like no time at all."
The young man muttered, with something like nostalgia in his voice. The boy who had been summoned to this world from another, had been called by the being before him to serve as the hero's guardian against the Demon King, had spent four years growing into a man and his duty now complete.
Alongside the hero and his companions, he had crossed the line between life and death more times than he could count, and at last, they had defeated the Demon King.
"It wasn't my wish either, to drag someone from another world and force them into battle. But without it, this world would have crumbled."
This was a world of swords and magic, a fantasy world, as the young man would have worded it.
One day, without warning, a being called the Demon King had appeared in this world.
The Demon King had spawned monster after monster, rampaging to destroy the world.
The being who took this crisis seriously — the same being that had summoned the young man to this world — was a god, and that god had acted to bring down the Demon King. A god could not interfere with the world directly and so he lent his strength to its people indirectly instead.
Through divine oracle, he awakened a hero, bestowed him a holy sword and found companions to help defeat the Demon King.
But even that wasn't enough. Time and again, the hero came within a hair's breadth of victory only to be defeated. It had happened twice.
With no options left, the god finally decided to summon reinforcements from another world.
That reinforcement was this young man: Hoshimori Shinya.
"So? Does this mean I'm done and get to go home?"
"Indeed. Besides, it would be a problem if you stayed in this world any longer. In your own world, even as you are now, you should be able to exist without issue."
"You make it sound like I'm dangerous."
"Because you are. Surely you're aware of that? Regardless of who you are, the entity within you cannot remain in this world."
"...Yeah, I guess so. Oh well it doesn't matter as long as I get to go home."
He did feel some attachment to this world, after all he'd spent four years here. But that didn't mean he wanted to live out the rest of his life in it.
Besides, his original agreement with the god before him had been clear, once his duty was done, he would be sent home.
"There's no place for me in this world. Those guys will manage just fine without me."
The companions he'd traveled with to defeat the Demon King, the Hero, the Holy Knight, the Sword Saint, the War King, the Archmage, the Saintess. All of them are good people. But...
"Do you have any regrets then?"
"...No. I, or rather, *we*, gained a power beyond imagining then but it turned us into something this world sees as an anomaly. Now that the Demon King's gone, if things like us stuck around, neither them nor everyone else in this world can find peace. If you send me back, peace will comes to this world. Also I get to go home. So no problem anywhere."
Shinya shrugged. In truth, having grown this strong in this world had meant that calling himself an anomaly wasn't much of an exaggeration.
(Besides, the culture and level of civilization here are just too different.)
It wasn't just food, clothing, and shelter but even the state of the toilets left a lot to be desired. The food especially as having no rice at all had been almost unbearable. They say you can get used to anywhere you live but there are some things you just can't forget.
"Then it's settled! Now I can send you off without a second thought. Oh, and here's a little bonus, I'll return you to the exact moment five minutes after you vanished from your original world! And I'll make your body young again, too."
"That's appreciated, but what about my power?"
"With your body growing younger, you'll weaken somewhat, I'd imagine. And the thing inside you will also be bound by that world's own constraints, too. Better for the world and better for you as well, wouldn't you say?"
Shinya accepted the god's reasoning. Some weakening wasn't ideal but sure a little wouldn't be a problem.
Even weakened, he'd still be leagues stronger than the failure he'd been called four years ago.
"Yeah. That works. I'll just train myself back up. I've still got room to grow."
"Indeed. To be honest, your power four years ago was nothing to speak of. I couldn't summon someone too strong so I called on you instead, someone with plenty of room to grow, who could become the hero's guardian. And just as I'd planned, you grew into exactly that. You carried out your duty to the fullest."
What the god had wanted from Shinya was never overwhelming strength. Not someone to help mow down enemies and slay the Demon King himself.
What he needed was someone to protect the hero and his companions from anything and everything that might harm them.
And that was exactly the role Shinya had fulfilled, just as the god had calculated.
"You have my thanks, Guardian Shinya."
"Being thanked by a god isn't something that happens every day. And not just any god, not one of the eight million kami, nor the god of some monotheistic faith, but the administrator god of an entire world. Guess I'll take it gratefully."
"Hmph. Such a foul-mouthed, disrespectful brat. If I weren't who I am, I'd have struck you down with divine punishment by now. Though I suppose you could probably shrug it off easily enough as you are."
"Unfortunately for you, I've got no interest in picking fights with gods for no reason."
"Enough of this. I'll let this much slide with a laugh. Now hurry back to your own world already. I'm a busy man, you know."
Summoning someone on a whim, only to tell them to hurry home the moment their use ran out and that was just how selfish gods could be. But then, they were gods so perhaps that was simply allowed.
"Well then, farewell. We won't likely meet again, but may you be blessed."
The god clasped his hands before his chest and light enveloped Shinya's body. It flared as though exploding and then he was gone from that place.
On this day, the young man who had served as guardian to the hero's party that once saved a certain world finally returned to his own world.
When he'd first come to this world, he'd gone by a different title.
Exorcist. One who purges vengeful spirits, evil spirits, and demons, the beings of darkness.
Exorcist Hoshimori Shinya.
But four years ago, he'd been called something else.
A failure of an exorcist who was born into a prestigious exorcist clan.
This is his new story, one that begins the moment a boy once called a failure and a talentless exorcist returns from another world, having gained tremendous power.
* * *
Long ago, in an age when the line between the human realm and the realm of darkness was blurred and the two lay close together, people lived in fear of the beings of darkness. Those beings cursed, attacked, violated, killed and devoured humans.
Those who rose to stand against that darkness were once known as onmyoji.
Reading the stars, divining fortune from misfortune and purging darkness, they were a rare breed who protected the people for generations.
But as the ages turned and the fight against darkness grew ever fiercer, a new breed of specialist, one built purely for combat emerged.
Exorcists. Practitioners descended from the onmyo arts, honed purely for battle. Rather than valuing star-reading and divination the way onmyoji did, they specialized and sharpened themselves in raw combat technique alone, and through that, they seized overwhelming superiority over the darkness.
The onmyoji, meanwhile, dwindled sharply in number. In terms of raw combat ability, they simply couldn't match the exorcists and many of them lost their lives in battle.
The onmyoji had also been prized by those in power, valued for more than just purging darkness, but that same closeness to authority dragged them into the fallout of political struggles and more than a few were wiped out alongside their patrons' rivals. Caught in one calamity after another, their numbers dwindled further still.
On top of that, mastering the onmyo arts demanded even greater talent than becoming an exorcist did and the onmyoji themselves, reluctant to see their standings erode, took on only the barest minimum of disciples. When they weren't fortunate enough to find an heir, their line ended with them. In the end, pure onmyoji had vanished entirely.
In their place, the age of the exorcist began.
Exorcists drew on a special power, like the onmyoji before them, once called curse power — known today as spirit power — and used it to drive back the darkness through spirit arts distinct from the onmyo arts. Their talent was largely hereditary and in time they built many exorcist bloodlines all across Japan.
Among the many exorcist bloodlines, six stood out as especially powerful factions.
The Hino clan, masters of fire spirit arts.
The Mizunami clan, masters of water spirit arts.
The Raisaka clan, masters of lightning spirit arts.
The Himuro clan, masters of ice spirit arts.
The Kazama clan, masters of wind spirit arts.
And the Kyogoku clan, said to be the finest of the six, gifted with an aptitude for every form of spirit art.
But there was one clan that even those six families held in high regard, a clan spoken of as the strongest of all.
They are known as the Hoshimori clan, a family renowned as the strongest exorcists.
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