Helmut: The Forsaken Child

The story starts fairly cliche, but with a couple unique points. A boy, taken from his family at birth and banished to the “Forest of Roots”; a forsaken forest in which only demonic beings reside. Its purpose is to isolate any and all demonic beings that the church can get their hands on to the forest, whether that be monsters, dark wizards or children born with the Seed of Darkness inside of them. In this world, from what we’ve been told, the Seed of Darkness is implanted in you when you would have otherwise been a stillbirth, but your will is too great to die. The Seed of Darkness then becomes that heart of the child and lets the child live, but in return, when the child grows older, the Seed of Darkness will inevitably take over the body, turning them into a demon, regardless of their will.

Within the forest, our main character Helmut is found by one of the demonic creatures that rules the forest. Elaga, a demonic creature in the shape of a giant white snow leopard, raises Helmut as one of her own. Normally demonic creatures don’t have intelligence, but it seems that the stronger they get, and the more demonic power they obtain, they gain more and more intelligence. That being said, there is never any explanation as to why almost all of the demonic creatures in the world are man-eating psychotic monsters and Elaga is just a big chill tiger, but whatever. I get the feeling that there were certain plot beats at the beginning that didn’t have an answer when the author wrote them, and while some of them ended up turning into pretty decent mysteries for Helmut to uncover, some, like this one, seem to require a little bit of trust in the author.

As Helmut gets older, Elaga mentions that there’s a man living in the forest with them. To this point, Helmut had not really had the opportunity to fully consider that he and Elaga were not of the same ilk. He has a moment of despair at the thought that he was fundamentally different from the being that raised him, but he takes the opportunity to push Elaga to help him find the human who’s also living in the forest. Elaga reacts like a real mother in this scenario; hurt that Helmut seems so eager to leave her, but also wanting the best for him, and she knows that if there’s a path forward for Helmut that doesn’t include him becoming a demonic being, that it’s going to be through another human rather than a demonic beast like herself, so she begrudgingly yet encouragingly lets him go meet the man.

The man, Darien, is a solitary, stoic, absolutely jacked old dude. It’s the classic “stoic swordmaster who’s somehow got the body of a 30 year-old bodybuilder while somehow simultaneously being on his deathbed, living just long enough to train our main character and pass off his destiny to a sole heir” type beat. It’s fine. It’s an incredibly worn-down trope, but it’s fine. Darien is likable, and their relationship is nice enough, and in reality it doesn’t drag too badly, so… yeah, it’s fine. Darien spends the next ten years training Helmut until he’s able to wield his sword, as well as wield “vis”, the chi/mana/aura/force for swordsmen of this world. Once again, it’s incredibly cliche, but it’s not criminally cliche, and vis itself isn’t actually a huge focus of the story, so it works as a plot device well enough.

We come to find out that within the forest there are other humans as well, but they work under the “Leader of the West”, Naho, another intelligent demonic beast like Elaga, but (like all of the other demonic beasts in the story other than Elaga) is a man-eating demon monster rather than a chill motherly figure. The men that work under Naho are there for only the sole purpose of feeding Naho women, due to it preferring their “fattier texture”. Honestly this part kind of sucked ass. I don’t really know what I was expecting, because it’s sort of a lose-lose even including it in the story. The short version is that Helmut needs to get information on how to leave the forest from the human leader of this group that feeds Naho living human women, and he’s successful in doing so, but he lets him live. And, sure, in a vacuum I get the cliche; our hero is so heroic and thoughtful that he even keeps his word to evil people. But my guy, we just saw that he lives his days out by raping and murdering women, and literally giving them to a giant two-headed snake demon to be eaten alive. If you’re going to have this demonic slave camp for devouring women in the story, don’t just have our main character “be honorable and keep his word” to the exact guy who is responsible for enslaving the women. I don’t know. Massive L in story writing.

Eventually it’s “sort of solved” when the dark wizard goes back on his word and calls Naho to hunt down Helmut as he’s on his way out of the forest, and Helmut fights him and does a decent job but starts losing, then Elaga comes in and gives him the tried and true “go, and don’t look back. Don’t make my effort go to waste” bullshit. We don’t know what happens after that. So presumably, one very possible result is that Naho just kills Elaga, goes back to the camp and they return to business as usual, eating and raping slave women. I don’t know. Surely there was a better way to do this.

Anyway, this is where the story really starts. As soon as Helmut makes his way out of the Forest of Roots, the first being to ever escape the forest with demonic energy in them, he ends up meeting a mercenary crew. This is where the story actually gets pretty decent. From here on out, the story is far more focused on Helmut’s newfound experiences in life, his interpersonal relationships, finding out what friendship and trust is, and growing as a person. The biggest two mysteries in the story are of Helmut’s origin and his master, Darien’s origin. Darien’s origin is solved within the first 105 chapters or so, and is the primary plot line that carries us through the first few arcs of the story. As for Helmut’s origin, the only thing we’re left with is right at the beginning of the first chapter; he was left with a golden amulet when he was left in the forest, and that amulet seems to have his mother’s name in it. We get hints here and there, but to this point in the story, at chapter 130, we don’t have anything definitive.

All in all, for a power fantasy slop manhwa, I’d give it a solid 7/10. It doesn’t do anything spectacularly, although if you’re into (fake) BL, then this might be one for you. The romance in this gets pretty involved in the later chapters, and it’s pretty cute. Nothing groundbreaking, but for me it’s just a huge boon if there’s no harem, and it seems that this story really does lean away from that. The side characters are also pretty fun, and manage to not just be trope after trope. If you’ve read it, I’d compare the main ensemble to “The Lazy Lord Masters the Sword”. It’s by no means a 1-to-1 comparison, but the four main characters give similar energy to me, although I’d venture to say that the ones in this are a bit more interesting, even if they have a bit less backstory to them (so far).

The artwork doesn’t do anything incredible, but it’s sufficient to keep me interested, and as with all of these manhwa that go on for long enough, improves pretty drastically after the first season.

If you’re looking for something that’s an easy, mindless read, but has a fun story and no huge pacing issues, that leans a bit away from pure power fantasy and more into interpersonal relationships with a bit of romance, I’d say this is a good one to pick up.