The story makes no sense, the characters make no sense, the romance makes no sense, and I don't know if it's the author's intention to make me weigh who I hate more between the MC and the female leads.
The story tries to be a romcom about misunderstandings but at the same time is super serious with the setting taking place in the trite Korean hunters with gates/dungeons/tower fantasy setting where there are stakes and tension. Where even the tiniest of mistakes can ultimately lead to death. Instead of the MC telling his party members that he's tired from being constantly ordered around (which almost leads to his death in future chapters), he decides to just keep it inside for reasons that make no sense at all. Leading to fatigue, stress, and exhaustion.
After the event where it's supposed to be some kind of character development leading to the gimmick and title of this novel, the MC decides to listen to his brother's s*upid advice of telling his party members that he has a girlfriend. Like that's somehow supposed to stop them from obsessively wanting to be near him instead of just telling the MC to man up and say no. To which the MC basically just decides to finally obtain a pair of balls and outright say no to them that you wonder if he even needed to pretend to have a girlfriend in the first place to do it
As for the main female leads, they're all equally as bad as the MC but that's combined and I can't really fault them for it. Because they're just cliches and caricatures given the bare minimum reason that's justifiable for them to lust over the MC for this setting to happen. I say combined because they're all just the same character with different names, backstories as to how they fell in love with the MC and personality (yes their personalities are somewhat different, like one of them is meek and a crybaby compared to the other two but theyre all still essentially same character) . While the MC being an obvious self-insert feels like he has actual thought put into his character despite him being this s*upid. If he didn't, then the female leads (each of them) are all worse and disgusting as human beings in comparison to the MC. They would go through any lengths to get the MC to pick them over the others (r*pe, gaslighting, manipulation, etc) except confess their feelings towards him because they fear that they'll get rejected. The author doesn't portray this or them as disgusting as it should be and just shows them as super desperate shy girls who can't live without him.
I'm caught up to the translation and there are some developments here and there that makes me hate them even more while also giving me a hard time of deciding which of the 2 I should hate most. For example
Mc
Spoiler
after almost dying twice already with him experiecing bleeding to death and seeing how much they care about him (selfishly), he still decides to keep the charade up so the author could still milk this rubbish in the excuse that he actually gets rest instead of coming clean and deepening their trust and bond, while at the same time saying that he only did that in the first place was because of them, thus setting boundaries and making them reflect on their actions and go about earning MCs love in an honest way.
[collapse]
Female leads
Spoiler
after MCs second near death experience they all decided that waiting for MC to breakup with his imaginary gf was no longer an option:
"They realized that the desire to wait for the next opportunity was as foolish as the Starchis' Pact.
He had never waited for them.
It was the same this time too.
'Give me just one last chance.'
That's what they desperately thought.
If he could just get up, they wouldn't wait anymore.
They couldn't help it if Starchis didn't like them. They would just push enough to not receive hatred. Because...
They had to act selfishly.
They shouldn't be ashamed.
They shouldn't leave any regrets.
'Be a little more honest, but be pretentious in certain aspects. Be a little more proactive, but be discreet in certain things. And be a little more lovable. Be able to receive a little more love.'
That's what they thought, that they would act that way from now on"
What did they do after this? Obviously they would confess their romantic feelings towards the MC and be done with it, whether they get rejected or not. Lol no, they still continue their gaslighting, seduction and manipulation tactics. Why the author wrote this scene then get back to square one? Idk.
[collapse]
What ultimately made me decide to hate the MC more is the moment where not only did he actually weigh which guilty conscious affects him more; him betraying his imaginary girlfriend's setting of her not wanting him to go out with other girls or him not listening to his 6 year friendship with his party member asking him to spend some time together, he actually picked the former as something he feels more guilty of doing. Lol
