First a sheltered nation attacks them with the demon lord's ship, which is huge. Turns out the queen has the hots for Red and wants to recruit him or kill him. No one knows why the sheltered nation is there. Turns out they are looking for the rightful queen who was chased away. There are two sides, the ones trying to find the queen cause her "son" is the crown prince. And the other with the rightful queen's sister who is current queen that wants to find her and murder her.
They finally figure out that the previous mayor is the rightful queen. She left her nation with pirates and then came back and raided her old home and became the queen with the pirate as king. King started to go crazy slowly cause the queen's sister was working with demons to poison his mind. The queen couldn't get children and was thrown to the side, her "son" is actually half elf. He is the son of the elf general who always worked under the previous queen. They did this to save face for both of them. But once the king went crazy she left and hid in Zoltan to hide the truth.
The new queen, the sister did bear children but they both die. She then replaces them with two asura demons. So her two prince sons are actually demons. They decide to attack Zoltan and get crushed by Red and the queen, who is blessed by youth by killing young women, has her spell broken and she turns to dust. The asura demons are killed and the demon lord ship is left stranded in the bay. The rightful queen is needed to verify the crown princes right to the throne still. So she will have to at some point go with them.
Well a new hero appears. The paladin tries to be his guide. He is a crazy religious nutjob though so he kills anyone he thinks is hindering him. If a peasant doesn't want to aid him, death. If an assassin shows up in a bar, that is a criminal profession only made for the hero to kill and gain XP so, death.
That is essentially how he keeps going. They then decide they need to go to Zoltan to retrieve the demon lord ship despite the paladin's objections. She sends out her boyfriend to warn them that they are coming. They essentially arrive and they hide Ruti so that the bishop who is traveling with them won't recognize her. Well the new hero obviously starts treating everyone like shit, I think he tries to kill someone and Ruti intervenes from a distance. He keeps going crazy from failing over and over again.
They finally try to use some magic item stolen from some dark dragons to force the village to help with the ship in the bay, make them all sail it with him into demon territory. While the town would get destroyed by dragons looking for their item. So now Red intervenes and stops him with his team, new addition is the elven druid team mate. Ruti defeats him and he loses his little remaining reason.
Next book, think this is 11 or 12. Red tries to guide the crazy hero. They have lied to the hero that it was an eleven machine that defeated him. And they take him out trying to guide him right a couple of times. Meanwhile the hero's companion pixie is actually some calamity level pixie that is hiding some kind of marlboro like appearance behind a cute pixie appearance. She is in love with the hero and doesn't get what love is but threatens to kill anyone who interferes with the hero or his thoughts. So Lit tries to reason with her while Red tries to get some sense into the hero.
They both lose it in the end. When he tries to kill a pixie dragon that gets defended by the paladin boyfriend. He loses horribly and the paladin tries to kill the hero. And then he tries to murder everyone. The hero is convinced that killing Ruti is his calling. Red duels him without any of his hero armor. He fights like an idiot full of openings and gets defeated. Apparently he is just a braindead kid who had the bishop role but it switched to hero. And he just had no clue what the feelings anger and frustration was. So yeah a stupid kid.
And then Red takes him to some elf ruins to find out what a hero really is. Which all seems to be some weird ancient elf experiment that made asura demons. And I haven't read further yet.