This is the story of a Hero who can only live for others, and a Villain who can only live for herself. The tale of two distorted, broken and crazy people as they’re slowly drawn together. As the protagonist plays with the hero as she unwittingly heads toward a basement ending. And the story itself is actually surprisingly good. The protagonist comes off as truly crazy and her erratic struggle between human and monster is interesting to read. The contrast with the hero’s dullness and the rare sparks of life... more>> that the protagonist inspires is really well done.

As for the low rating, TLDR- Neat story idea, good relationship progression, everything else sucks.

Longer explanation? Unfortunately it’s damn near ruined by god awful writing. First off, there’s zero exposition. Nothing is ever explained. You are led to infer basic details because there was never even an attempt made to give any context whatsoever. This is compounded by writing itself being... almost poetic? A lot of purple prose and just aimless sentences that sound nice but don’t actually mean anything. So with the fact that nothing is explained I’m often left with wondering what the hell is happening and why. Seriously the actual premise, races, what’s going on just isn’t talked about. It’s not focused on either. It’s not like it’s a mystery that you slowly learn about it’s just like reading the monologue of someone from that world, it’s normal to them so they don’t question or explain it. So the issue of a world that doesn’t work like ours, magic, other races, societal collapse (?), characters pasts, etc is just not elaborated on at all. I am told there are other races by virtue of 3 characters appearing that aren’t human, it’s never once explain why there are non humans on modern earth. It’s not even acknowledged as something odd. I don’t know the traits of these races. How they work, what abilities they have, and considering it’s the entire premise of the MC’s struggle the fact that this isn’t elaborated on at all is driving me up the wall. Magic exists at this world, something from a game? I’ve seen the phrase “game era” once or twice? But how it works is not at all explained or addressed. Author has this incessant focus on the story and characters relationship and just total inattention to anything else. <<less