meh tbh I dont like his ex party.
even if they did it under the guise of 'protecting' him they were still pretty selfish and even now one of them is deciding they should retire and take him somewhere after finishing up some gate when he is just now starting to get his motivation back.
"Selfish"
Y'know, I'm seeing a number of people hate on the former party for all of this, when this was actually one of the most considerate party expulsions I've ever seen.
First off, the leader expelled him
herself, without telling the rest of the party beforehand, so that takes the other party members out of the matter.
Second, this was something the MC himself
knew was coming. He recognized that he nearly fucking died in the last adventure, and that it was a direct result of him lacking power. He even apologized to the leader for making her expel him when he really should have bowed out himself (and the only reason he
didn't resign on his own was because he wanted to spend as much time with them as possible before they went their separate ways. They clearly had a
really good relationship with him) much earlier for his own safety.
Third, she was 100% ready to make sure he was in a good position when he left, offering to provide him a full quarter of the party's finances, items, etc. (which is a fair amount, given that it was a four-person party). The only reason they didn't was because the MC himself refused the offer and instead asked that they use those resources to properly equip whoever they wind up hiring to replace him.
There is no "guise" here, this genuinely
was done for the sake of protect the objectively weaker MC. Remember, the MC's newfound abilities were bestowed upon him after he was expelled, so he genuinely
was weak (compared to them, at least) beforehand.
She didn't even take any kind of flippant or condescending attitude when expelling him. She treated the situation with the gravity it deserved.
As for the retirement thing: Even if he's got a second wind of motivation for himself, that probably won't mean much if his old party clears the gate she's talking about. As others have mentioned, that gate is the
Origin gate. It's basically the final boss of gates. She's not saying "once we clear this dungeon, let's go pick the MC up and pull him into an early retirement with us", she's saying "Hey once everything is said and done, and we've beaten the demon king and saved the world, let's reunite with him and go find somewhere peaceful to live the rest of our lives together".
Honestly it's been kind of baffling to me that people are viewing his old party negatively when they've never
once behaved poorly towards him. At the
very worst, maybe they should have put more effort into helping him level up (though it seems like that's generally pretty difficult for trap masters in this world), and perhaps they've not been as open with their feelings as they ought to have been. That's it.
