No Hero Volume 1: Vampire Butler
Original novel in Chinese by: 御 我 (Yu Wo)
Character Introductions —translated by raylight
Charles Endelis: The protagonist of this book. He is a fifth-generation pureborn vampire. His mother is a vampire and his father an ordinary human from an old and influential family of butlers. He has been raised by his father since he was young and aspires to be a perfect butler.
An Xiang Ye: Charles’s employer. He seems to be a university student who is wealthy yet keeps a low profile. He is of the combat department, his actual strength so strong it is unfathomable.
Master: An Xiang Ye’s elder brother. His actual ident.i.ty is a mystery.
Kyle: The Master’s secretary-slash-butler.
Master An Te Qi: An Xiang Ye’s father. However, it seems that he is not the master’s father.
Dark Sun: The most mysterious hero.
Solitary b.u.t.terfly: The only female hero.
Dragon Peace: The strongest hero.
First Wind: The most dashing hero.
Bramble: The captain of An Xiang Ye’s bodyguards.
Dell: One of An Xiang Ye’s bodyguards.
May: One of An Xiang Ye’s bodyguards.
Briar: Bramble’s daughter. Has once been saved by Dark Sun.
Olga: The owner of X-Killer.
Jill: The female employee of X-Killer.
Luo Lun: The male employee of X-Killer.
Ezart: An Xiang Ye’s friend. Fighting free-for-all matches is his livelihood.
Melody: A female vampire. She was once sent to be a subordinate of the young master but was dismissed by the young master afterwards.
Elian: The master’s bodyguard.
DSII (Dark Sun II): The young master’s modified human clone.
SKII: A cosmetic brand. (Provided by my good friend Shui Quan)
Afterword —translated by dahlys
(Before reading the contents of the book, please don’t sneak a peek at the afterword!)
My previous book, The Legend of Sun Knight, was meant to expose the true colors of knights. This time, Yu Wo has decided to dissect heroes, so the t.i.tle of this book is No Hero. When you see the English t.i.tle of this book, the meaning becomes even clearer. “No Hero,” meaning that there are no heroes.
The first book is used to introduce the characters, such as the heroes and the world they live in. The main idea wasn’t touched upon much, so perhaps most of you don’t feel much about this story. However, subsequently, I will bring up the so-called “Grand Exposure of Heroes’ True Natures.” (By the way, there will be about 3-5 volumes1 of No Hero.)
Writing this book was a huge challenge. I’m writing about heroes; however, the main character is not a hero but a butler. It ended up this way because I wanted to let everyone view a hero from an observer’s perspective.
When we talk about the observer beside a hero, the first person Yu Wo thought of was a butler… Not the butler in the Black Butler manga! I know, when everyone read the first few chapters on Yu Wo’s blog, they all instinctively thought of Black Butler. However, by the time we reached the end, everyone should have clearly understood that I wasn’t referring to Black Butler. I was referring to “Batman”!
If you have seen Batman before, you might have noticed the white-haired Mr. Butler in the story.
Every time I see an image of that butler sending his master, the hero Batman, off on his Batmobile, Yu Wo will start randomly thinking:Deep down in his heart, just what is that butler thinking? Does he feel proud because the man he serves is a hero? Or is he worried that he would lose his job if his master dies?
This character is really interesting! Really interesting indeed!
Therefore, without hesitation, Yu Wo naturally dug her own grave by writing about heroes with a butler as the main character, even writing from the first person perspective… This is crazy! Totally crazy! The result of torturing myself was that, in order to let a stay-at-home butler see his hero master’s actions, Yu Wo wracked every gram of white tofu in her brain and finally completed the first volume, Vampire Butler.
By the way, the t.i.tle of the second volume is “The Hero Grim Reaper.” The date of publication probably, possibly, could be September. (However, according to my readers, books are usually published half to one month later than the publication date announced by Yu Wo.)
What? The actual publication date is still very far away, so telling you the t.i.tle is just whetting your appet.i.te? Oh my! As long as you’ve been Yu Wo’s reader for more than half a year, you should already know that whetting your appet.i.te is the thing Yu Wo is best at! (Continues being hunted down by murderous readers)
I’ve finished writing the actual afterword, so now I’m going to talk nonsense.
While I was writing the script, my friend Shui Quan commented that my first victim was a knight and following that was a hero. So, is the next victim a prince?
Cough! Yu Wo loves to destroy everyone’s happy dreams and deserves to be punched. Since the next story hasn’t been written yet though, please don’t hit me first!
As for the prince, we’ll talk about it next time.
In addition, there is a set of books related to No Hero called Eclipse Hunter. This story is about Ah Ye and his brother. The book is set five to seven years before No Hero, but this book is independently published by Yu Wo and artist Ya Sha, so I’ve heard that it is currently very hard to find. I’ve also heard that more copies will only be printed in July. Even though more copies are going to be printed, you can only order them from rental bookstores and manhua stores (That still doesn’t mean that you will definitely be able to order it).
So, if everyone is still interested in Eclipse Hunter, you can go to the rental bookstore in July when the gate to h.e.l.l opens.2 If you really cannot find it, please don’t throw bombs at me on my blog. Even I don’t know where the books can be obtained at besides the above two locations. For readers who can’t find the books, I hope that you can first reread No Hero! (Runs away)3
By Yu Wo
June 2008
Character Introductions – translated by lucathia
Charles Endelis
Profession: Butler
Favorites: Old-school styled hero movies
Motto: Both Father and the code of a butler details, “The master is a butler’s heaven and earth.”
An Xiang Ye
Profession: Student
Favorites: Gēge
Motto: Gēge says, as long as I’m happy.
Melody
Profession: Free person
Favorite: Good men
Motto: Falling from grace would wrong others; not falling from grace would wrong myself. For the sake of myself, I’ll just have to wrong you!
Footnotes1 ”3-5 volumes”: Don’t panic! No Hero now has 8 volumes! It is scheduled to end in 9 volumes, with the last volume supposedly coming out in 2014.
2 ”Gate to h.e.l.l”: Chinese people believe that the gate to h.e.l.l opens every seventh month of the lunar calendar.
3 ”Eclipse Hunter”: Yu Wo self-published Eclipse Hunter before No Hero, but after No Hero’s release, she handed Eclipse Hunter to an actual publisher. Now, you can purchase the second edition of Eclipse Hunter from bookstores.