- #1
This story is very good, but the start is VERY weird. Basically both MC and the body MC ends up posessing are in bad situations and know like nothing about the world, in ways that are very annoying but make sense in context. It also fascinatingly introduces half the characters with violence; there are two theoretical love interests that don't punch the MC on greeting/meeting and like 4 that do. Why? I can't tell you, because the violence is basically absent in the story or romance, just the first few chapters.The plotline is very good: MC was the best potion crafter in Korea, but was basically under house arrest/several magical contracts to be a s*ave manufacturer for a guild called Nox, specifically the guild master (who is absolutely the standard korean yandere ML oops all domestic violence). Anyways, he kills himself and tries to tear down Nox as he dies, and then wakes up in the body of a Guide who works for the government in the hospital. So we have mysteries upon mysteries: Where did Nox's guildmaster go? How is the Nox guild doing? Why does everyone in his team hate him? How did the person he's posessing die, and why did someone want him dead? How can he get his skills back, and why does the system itself seem to care about this situation? And maybe most significantly, why are espers and guides so highly controlled by the government that they are basically stuck on a prison island and can't even see their own statuses???It is a BL story, and it's not queerbait, but MC is so uninterested that it's kinda irrelevant for most of the story. He's called attractive a lot, and just says 'thanks.' Guiding in a s*xual manner is implied to be more effective/common and he doesn't care. He wants to go make potions again. Kinda refreshing, but it depends on how much romance you wanted.To clarify, there are dungeon gates, and several classes of awakeners. There are hunter, producer, esper, and auxiliary (guide/support) systems, with espers being much more powerful than hunters but having mental stress problems that only guides can fix. And espers & guides basically all go to the government the second they are identified, for "safety concerns" (military power). I like this distinction of espers/guides being special, while all the other hunters are just chilling doing their own thing; it mixes the two universe types amazingly well and gives reasons for the strong governmental "protection" as they are rare and valuable.The story/worldbuilding basically puts MC in a massive elaborate cage where he has very little agency, and you watch him fight his way out: guides have their status screens controlled and can't hide information, you can't get through any of the buildings without a dedicated keycard/license, and he's stuck on a man-made island that only has planes/helicopters entering and exiting. That being said, the cage is described to be a lot more scary than it is: the first 10 chapters or so have him basically treated as a criminal, then have him dragged around with no privacy or, like, keycard access to the buildings he's moving through, but then 5 seconds later he's riding a bus around the island. Long story short, it's a cage, but it's a much better cage than he was before transmigration/possession, and it seems like he almost doesn't mind most of the time (especially once some character development makes people not hate him).TLDR he's constantly being damseled the entire plot except he also like pulls out pepper spray and undamsel's himself the entire plot. That's it that's the draw of the story. The princess gets kidnapped, the princess drags the kidnapper through the court system and then shows up in prison with a potion to curse him for life.