The Knight King Who Returned With a God

Used ai and plagiarised mushoku tensei 😞

In its core, this is a "dungeons appear" manwha, but this series sometimes zags when most series would zig, this makes it a better read.

One difference is the MC is unexpected. He isn't a personality less placeholder, nor is he one of the various edge-lords, there is an attempt to depict something unique. You might not like or empathize with everything he does, but it is interesting.

Another obvious difference is its non-negative view of religion, even though the religion here is somewhat pagan.Minor spoiler

Think non-corrupt Greek pantheon trying to help humanity fight evil aliens.

Much of manga and manhwa tends to depict religion as a target for criticism, often casting nobles and kings as grotesque, corrupt figures—bloated by their greed. It is rooted in a vision that aligns with traditional values, not driven by economic critiques, but by a deeper sense of enduring principles, suggesting an inherent order that stands in contrast to the cynicism often found in contemporary storytelling. Basically based but still I felt something was lacking in its story to be remembered for long for me.

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Progress: Chapter 24

This story leans hard into the MC's personality as a holy knight turned king from a fantasy setting. It's a reversal of typical isekai fics; now we have an OP paladin-king bulldozing his way through a modern Earth setting that's suffering from a "pop-up dungeon/gates" crisis. The rarely-mentioned returnee part only highlights how much Leon's mindset is shaped by 300 years as a divinely ordained king -- most of which he spent eradicating demons from his own fantasy-setting land. In short, he completely disregards modern values in favor of those from his 2nd life.

Leon's goals on Earth can be summarized as this:

1. Spread his religious pantheon with miracles from actual gods that patronize him.
2. Establish an order of armed zealots conditioned for decisive violence -- I mean, blessed grail knights.
3. Eradicating the invading evil (with EXTREME prejudice against orcs). Most of the combat features minor characters to keep interest up, with Leon stepping in for the bosses.

Leon's flawed nature makes him satisfying to read -- his forceful personality and rampant racism against orcs comes off as humorous when contrasted against modern sensibilities. He'd fit equally well as the ultimate antagonist in a fake-utopian revenge story due to his convictions being pure but his actions having rather unfortunate consequences for his enemies (victims).

This is gold. The MC is pure arrogance personified, he REALLY reminds me of Gilgamesh from Fate/Stay franchise, except he's all about faith in the gods (good gods, not sketchy ones, like in some franchises) and uplifting humanity.

...he's also completely hilariously racist against demons and orcs. Especially orcs. It's literally the only time i've found racism to be utterly hilarious.

But the series shines when he's either being an epic MOFO with chivalry, or being a raging psycho against demons (or orcs). The side cast is also pretty great, trying to deal with this guy who has insane (yet well defined) moral code (by modern standards).

I've laughed out loud many times when reading even the first few chapters, but that continues all the way up the current chapters (36+).

Highly recommend.

As they mention the hating orcs part was kind of funny. But the way Koreans/Asians idealise royalty kills it for me. The story barely progreses and is constantly introducing more details on know nerfed the MC is or new characters without giving depth to any. I mean there are almost 40 ch out and they haven't even set the scene ...

Edit: it only gets worse, the author missed the timing for him to act normal and the fact that he originally comes from earth ends up not mattering and leaves lots of plotholes with his backstory.

Also making the demons look like porn freaks was a very bad idea.

The epic hatred towards Orcs by this MC is epic.