The MC has to pretend to be super evil and destroy the world so he can travel back and do it again, but with a system providing help this time around to go for the hidden good end, based on the prophecy of his isekai grandpa a thousand years ago. So I was ready to get into shenanigans based on the MC needing to pretend to be evil to power up his system while outplaying the heroines who also returned with him.

Unfortunately, the story is just irredeemably bad. The whole, entire premise of the story, pretending to evil so he can go back in time to have a system (which is powered up by pretending to be evil) to help him kill the demon king completely falls apart so quickly. Why? It's because not only does the MC not need the system at all in order to kill the Demon King, the system is actively making everything worse for the MC.

The MC killed the demon king on his own at the end of the first run. A sacrifice was made to 'awaken' the hero's gear, and combined with his own skill and power he just walked up and one shot the demon king. And when he traveled back, he kept all the skill and all the power from before. The demon king is a cheat character that can literally only be defeated with the hero gear, so the MC is playing along with the system in order to 'awaken' it in order to stand a chance........... except, he was able to do it last time? Like yeah, needing to

to make it work is rough and all, but it was still a path to doing so. He didn't need the system in order to do it at all. So the biggest reason why it worth having a system really isn't even necessary in the first place.

So then, what other benefits might the system offer to possibly help out, you may ask? The answer is nothing. Not a single thing. I've read up to chapter 86 and there has not been a single instance in the entire story so far where the system benefitted him. What's that? He used a consumable system item to cheat death when the heroines killed him? The only reason why the heroines wanted to kill him in the first place, and traveled back in time to be able to do so, was because he was chasing after that system. He wouldn't have been in those situations in the first place if he didn't destroy the world to get the system, and these cheat deaths were only ever used to protect himself from surprise attacks from the heroines, not even accomplishing any of the hero's goals.

So, the system is useless. Annoying to base the whole story around chasing after it, but maybe it's possible to move on past that. Except no, it isn't. Because the system isn't just useless, it is also actively detrimental.

Because if anyone finds out he isn't really 'evil', the MC gets punished. Punished how? Surely not something super dumb that cripples him and threatens to remove his agency as a character, right? Right????

Every time he gets found out, the MC gets his remaining lifeforce/lifespan cut in half. Annoying, right? Well, as long as he lives long enough to kill the demon king, how long he can live after that doesn't matter, right? Wrong. The MC started the second run with ~10 years of life remaining. Two 'stacks' later, and he has 2 years of life left, which may or may not last long enough to get the job done. Apparently, he gets even more in later chapters, so I have no idea how this man is supposed to stay alive. Also, the MC basically powers his skills and attacks and magic through his lifeforce, which has been attacked by the system, so right now he is a cripple of a glass cannon who can do one single attack before he is 100% out of gas and is internally praying that no one sees through his bluff since he can no longer defend himself. He is literally crippled; he spends most chapters coughing up blood and has been defeated by a single punch from a little girl. Why not just get healed you may ask, after all, healing seems to primarily involve life force transferring in this story? It doesn't work. No explanation given. Just, the two times healing as been attempted so far on him in the story, 'it does not work'. This man's condition is more or less permanently 'fatally wounded' or 'critical condition' ever since the first few chapters and it's insane. I am not joking when I am calling him a cripple.

So, this is the core of my extreme dislike for the novel: the MC is going through ridiculous lengths and incurring horrific, permanent punishments to deal with a system that has not helped him at all in any capacity, and doesn't seem likely to do so in the future. All for a reward which he does not need the system to obtain. I just cannot stand it. It makes no sense to me why the core premise of the entire story is like this. Why is he working so hard for the system? He doesn't need it at all. He already was capable of killing the demon king without it! Yes, there are many other societal reasons why the empire will fall even without the demon king that the story likes to talk about, but the system wont fix any of that. Literally the only thing the system even pretends to do is help with killing the demon king, and the MC does not need its help in order to do that.

feels super contrived how the MC is nastier and nastier for the sake of angst but you have to counterbalance it by making the audience feel bad so you beat him down again and again, fatal wound after fatal wound, oh and also he's totally selfless huh don't you feel bad for him???

The MC has strongest mental strength (haha) than anyone except demon king. Cant hypnotise/control MC mind or use magic on MC mind.

But the only main heroine just pulls out a spell that can go in MC which even demon king cant access. Ofc theres 5 paragraph long convincing given so its alright. This only one maingirl then also ens*aves this MCs inner guardian who dumps all of the plot of the novel to her so that she becomes the only heroine who stands heroically with MC secretly while others try to kill him.

Ruby. The fourth ordeal and onwards truly highlights the best parts of her personality as well as to the extent she was willing to sacrifice for the MC, and I feel like out of all the heroines she loves Frey the most, well Serena is a definite close second to this.