The main character is not a cowardly loser. He does not get treated like a doormat. He's just the type to go with the flow, he simply doesn't care about the thing he believes at that point to be a 2D manifestation of his "system" and just teases it while not seeking any real conflict with the thing that is literally his lifeline, he is ignorant of everything in that world so he needs to take a passive approach, he is literally locked in a prison with a chip in his neck that controls his life and actions.

The female lead starts out as a typical annoying marriage hunter but she quickly changes as she realizes her talent for swordsmanship and interacts more with the observer. It takes quite a few adventures before she truly opens up to him and some more before she starts to seemingly like him. Even then, both of them share a give and take relationship based on benefits, even if that might change after a while. The transition is pretty smooth and fast enough to not make readers hate her.

The character interactions are decent enough. While not the most realistic, almost no novels have truly realistic interactions. As I mentioned before, the female lead's emotional change is pretty natural, she never hated him passionately, just disliked him. As he keeps on providing more and more benefits and she realizes how big of a favor he's doing her, she gradually becomes less resistant and finally starts to expect the benefits. But it's not until some adventures that some trust actually starts building, it's not something that happens by chapter 40, at that point the "trust meter" is still at 0 as shown by the system. She just wants to use him at that point, so it's just that reader's misunderstanding that they get so close for no reason and so fast.

The character interactions are indeed a bit frustrating to read about at times. This, however, is not the author's fault. It's the translator's fault for not making it flow well, so it ends up feeling mechanical and a bit off, which reduces enjoyment a lot. Blaming the author for what is clearly a translation issue shows how valuable a certain someone's opinion is.

The immersion issue stems from the same problem. A lot of translations sadly have this kind of problem. The fistfight against igor that this person mentions is something this reader completely misunderstood, perhaps due to the translation not conveying it properly. The MC at that point is a complete newbie and the opponent is a kind of mind sorcerer, capable of reading more obvious thoughts such as what action a person is thinking of taking. The protagonist proceeds to actually compliment his appearance, passing the falsity check and then punching without even thinking of doing so, his body acting on auto due some reason explained later, that incident is actually covered in some chapters later on. A mind reader who is used to read people's thoughts and suddenly someone honestly compliments their appearance in the middle of a fight and even insinuating something more s*xual, is it unreasonable to not freeze up in confusion or amazement and not react in time when the expected thought of "I'm going to punch" not arriving before getting punched?

The power system is indeed a bit similar to reverend insanity's gu system, although quite different. People capture spirits in a "virtual world" or summon spirits with the help of knowledge by reaching a certain level of understanding in a subject, where they suddenly just pop into existence. Sorcerers can temper their own bodies if they want to not be fully reliant on spirits. They keep the spirits in their souls and the spirits can either eat specific materials, which no one bothers with, or eat coins which is an universal feeding material. I also don't like this type of external force power system but it's not too bad, there are crucial differences too. They're not as reliant on gu/spirits as in reverend insanity. The spirits can actually use their abilities without using arcane energy if you get familiar and friendly enough with them. You can summon more if you have the required knowledge. I also think they do get some basic buffs from leveling up. Overall, the power system is indeed somewhat of a shortcoming, but it's never explored like in reverend insanity, people don't seem to lose powers easily here and it doesn't even register as an issue. The power system overall is pretty poorly explained but this is a comedy novel, I wasn't expecting a well thought out power system from the start, just something that works and this works fine enough, a subpar power system isn't a big deal in a comedy novel. As for progress, they actually do have to explore the "virtual world" to progress in strength. They become stronger by accumulating knowledge, which traveling the virtual world provides in various forms, often with dangerous encounters. The stronger they get, the harder the enemies tend to be to deal with. There's still some effort and sense of progress involved.

The advocating for racism part is simply untrue. It's about advocating for freedom as they're literally controlled by chips in the prison so they can't express themselves and the equality is simply a facade, the kingdom itself is screwed up in so many ways and death penalty for racism isn't really reasonable. Tired of snowflakes grasping onto these things to complain about.

The time skips are indeed slightly annoying at times but at the same time, they are skipped because they aren't necessary, the important stuff happens in the real world for now, the virtual world is just a way to get stronger. No point in long battles and boring exploration.

The quote about bluffing being useless was once again from igor. He was never a real antagonist in the first place, he ends up being something of a half-ally later, aiding in the prison escape. He has good reasons to not bother trying to bluff the MC, the protagonist is too unusual and has a rather weird personality, having proven to be immune to his attempts before, simply refusing to listen outright and igor not getting any benefits. Think of the MC as someone rather chaotic neutral, he's not easy to manipulate because he doesn't care and doesn't have a normal thought pattern or experience, his identity also seems to work against igor, maybe a passive effect of some kind.

This novel being a harem isn't a surprise, not sure if it is at this point though but I suppose it's likely. Expecting it to be tagged for things that haven't even happened yet seems a bit overboard.

Seems like I've debunked pretty much every complaint, just goes to show how shallow we tend to read into things when we get a bad first impression, I've done it myself. One thing I can't disagree with however is the translation being pretty bad, although readable. It's the main complaint I have with this novel.

First of all, the terms, words and names used tend to be quite unstable. For example, silver changed to white, sorcerer to mage, one branch is called "masochist", which I gather are body temperers. ashe is changed to ash, igor to igore or even igora, the name of the various "schools" like swordmanship "school" change between sect, faction, tradition etc. Gerard that is likely supposed to be gerald, the same name is somehow also sometimes translated as renard, ronald or ronat, so either the name is gerald or ronald... What was previously translated as ogre is now consistently translated as cannibal despite being a race and it making no sense. Observer is often translated as "viewer" or "watcher" despite being a main focal point of the story. Plural is often used instead of singular. These type of things tend to change from chapter to chapter, switching from one to another.

Then we have various abbreviations, some that make sense like KPI yet is still ridiculous to use, but worst of all is when chinese slang or idioms are directly translated which doesn't make sense in english, like PUA for pickup artist which has been warped by slang in china to mean someone being controlling, making others lose confidence on purpose, a workplace abuse thing. Idioms often don't make sense at all, although you can often somewhat understand what they're supposed to mean.

It's kind of interesting because the translation is similar to some half-arsed ones on qidian/webnovel, where MTL is clearly used and they're poorly edited. I somewhat suspect that some form of machine translation combined with a grammar and sentence structure program is used, perhaps with some keywords input. The grammar and sentence structures/flow appear pretty good a lot of the time and at first glance, it seems completely fine, but it's really messy once you get into it. Some sentences are jumbled up and don't make sense at all, more complex sentences/words tend to be very hard or impossible to understand, often being confusing. Whenever the meaning isn't straightforward, you notice how literally most of it is translated. Also, a lot of things, especially spirits, are clearly wrongly translated right from the start, the effects don't correspond to the name, although it's often something somewhat related so you can understand kind of what they should be.

I still feel like this novel is worth a read and I will probably keep on reading it. Just go in knowing what to expect from the translation and it should be fine. It's not for everyone though, but no novel is.