I will say this: MC is portrayed as a hero in the first arc but then in the next arc his actions speak of him more like a mercenary. Author might not paint him as such, but he's definitely one through his actions.... Confused as to what the Author wants the MC to be. Compassionate Hero? Or Ruthless Merc? Tldr: just because someone goes against you doesn't automatically mean kill the guy when possible. MC starts as a compassionate fellow but suddenly portrayed as a ruthless, self-righteous and vengeful man. I've only read up to ch36 but his actions makes me think he's downright blood thirsty as hell. [spoiler] I've only read up to the point where he kills the Marshals son Andrei but I have to say the story up to this point would be divided into 2 arcs, the home arc and the Empire big city arc. I don't have any issue with the overpowered powers that he has i.e infinite mana since that was the whole premise of the story. In my opinion I do think first arc was done quite well. MC's first major villain is Cohen, who basically is a angry man-child with a superiority complex. Man-child forces MC to go with him on the hardest dungeon in the area in order to scare him into submission. Once that fails he decides to beat him up until he submits. At no point in the story does it say Man-child wants MC dead, just obedient. MC decides to kill him when the man goes insane trying to defeat him. I think this was fine, if abit cruel. To note, Man-child was not a good man, obviously threatened many people and coerced them into giving him what he wanted. Everyone cheers when Man-child is dead, which is not super surprising since you got a stronger and kinder leader out of the whole mess. In this case I think Author did well. He even added a small touch at the end to show his humanity by training up a 'next' generation of hunters to do Solael's Castle. I do not see much issues with this area. The MC is a new kid who just started hunter business for a week. He makes rookie mistakes and learns from them. Cool. Author portrays his moral compass to be someone who is good, thinks about his community, and willing to shoulder responsibility. Although killing Cohen was done with ulterior motives (so that he can monopolise Solael's Castle), it was initially done to remove a malignant person who was stymied the growth of the region. While Man-child was not necessarily evil since he did beat back the waves and just had a really bad superiority complex, he was hindering people from improving. Also with his complex it was almost impossible for him to be removed without killing him. MC stood up for Rachel when she got beaten up and only killed Cohen after giving ample warning and him going insane. He even did the correct PR thing and saying Cohen died fighting courageously. Shows that he is smart and flexible. All of this takes a major tumble in the next arc tho. The Andrei killing is problematic on so many levels, especially from a supposed 'good' character. It is established that the empire is currently stretched thin due to lack of powerful hunters and they need manpower STAT. Its the whole reason they invited MC to come, in order to bolster their forces. Along the way they realise he's got Rank A potential so great! They'll prolly invest in him more. But through some luck he gets the A rank skill flight after beating out challengers in an arena he so happens to be on that day at that time when lighting man gives out the A rank skill cuz fvck the rules and all that. This is fvcked up for many reasons. Lightning hand for some reason gives out the A rank skill to some randoms for no real reason other than fvck it. He probably knows what happens if he gives the A rank book, which was PROMISED to Andrei and will most likely get killed for it, making him kind of a really fvcked up second hand murderer. I mean if anyone else took the book other than the MC, he would have been killed in the death match, hands down. Then afterwards, Big wig does what every big wig does, and orders for an immediate death match the following day in order to 'retrieve' the skill, killing the lucky guy who got the skill. This doesn't really make any sense. It doesn't take much to realise they know who the man who took the A rank skill was. Its a dude who would potentially be A rank. Killing him for a skill you might get next week is not just retarded but actively suicidal from the empire's perspective. But okay whatever maybe the dude is just incredibly impatient. So the deathmatch goes ahead for some reason and most people are okay with it. Like what??? Is it common for potential A ranks to be mercilessly killed cuz the upper class is impatient??? If so, why is this country still standing??? I mean even the Marshal admits this was fvcking stupid after Andrei dies. Like what made them think this was ok from any person's standpoint? You can wait a fvcking WEEK to get what you need. A. FVCKING. WEEK. It's not even a month. What possessed you to think it was a good idea???? Don't you think this would be a PR disaster???? Killing your potential A class hunters to save a week's worth of time is retarded on all levels. If this was the case there would be a massive talent drain to other competing countries (which in the story exists) and would result in the empire literally crumbling from lack of talent. Perhaps this is what is indeed happening in the story that follows, idk. But it would make the Empire look totally incompetent. Then comes to the actual deathmatch. Before the match MC is determined to kill the guy, which can be understandable. He is new to the city, and if the rules state that he must battle to the death. Thus it is possible that the author is portraying him to be someone ready to go all the way if need be. After all, based on the rules only 1 man walks out. Except that's not what the MC's reasoning is. Instead, MC is bent on killing Andrei for the sake of his sense of injustice and his anger towards the 'upper class'. He has no compassion whatsoever. Anyone who crosses him must die. There is no recompense. After realising that MC is better than him, Andrei does what a pampered kid does when he loses. Cries to papa. And so the duel is stopped. What a normal person would do at this point would be to agree to the stopping of the duel, complain about how unjust the system is, demand some sort of payment and move on with your day. Once you strong enough change the system so no one else will be taken advantage of. With this, you get a boost to your abilities, show off your skills and scare off/impress the Cherovs faction into taking you seriously. This makes the MC seem both unyielding in front of injustice but also flexible in his thinking. The author could even explore this aspect, showing off the intricacies and complicatedness of Diplomacy in this foreign world. It could even lead to Andrei's redemption, where MC shows him the impact of his actions, and his atonement for his past sins. Or it could force Andrei onto a true villains path, jealous of MCs power and popularity. At the end of the day the empire is currently very stressed. A dumb rich kid bit onto something that finally bit back and it hurt. Was Andrei in the wrong? Of course. His actions look like that of a budding criminal. Perhaps in the future he could worsen and truly become a villain. But at this point in my opinion what he sounds like is a bastard who was so spoilt by his family he doesn't understand the repercussions of his actions. By killing him after the match was stopped, it not only shows that you are completely inflexible, unforgiving and ruthless, but also that you are the same kind of person Andrei is: A killer with no morals. Now we come to what the MC actually did. In a fit of some form of weird self-righteous 'yeah fvck the rich people' moment he decides to kill Andrei in front of his father and the whole stadium. He doesn't do this in some sort of rage or in a bout of confusion. No, MC was portrayed as cool and collected during the whole fight, and kills him afterwards despite the match stopping. He killed him fully knowing that he would anger an entire faction, lose more manpower during the current crisis, and kill a son in front of his father. He killed him knowing that he was most likely going to get away with doing it. He even reasons that killing him is just because everyone agreed that it was a deathmatch, so Andrei dying is not his fault. Is he just in killing Andrei? Absolutely. After all, it is a deathmatch, and Andrei did start the fight. But it significantly changes how the MC is viewed. He is no hero. He is a ruthless individual who does not forgive. He will not give you a chance to reflect on your mistakes. He will not bend to anyone's will, and will do whatever benefits him the most. The Empire will have a tough time reigning in this loose cannon.

"*MINOR SPOILERS* I want to say that this is a nice story, and has cool elements, and It has. Fun mechanic, simple to understand. It is so unfortunate that the MC is a walking contradiction. He literally does the opposite of what he said he was going to do. Says he wants to blend in be "safe" and wait to gain his passives from his system. In the next scene when threatened to give up half of the pills he decides to "stand up" against bullies.... Sure he was spouting some crap about not being easy to bully or they will pick on you, blah blah blah... But if you stop and think for a second (which he did, mind you), you realise how mentally handicapped and childish that sounds. What kind of assurance does he have that he won't just get absolutely manhandled and crippled as a result? Conveniently he has a skill that heals him and another that improves his defense. He has never tested the extent of them, nor has he seen its' effectiveness. But sure, go ahead and pilot test them on the most brutal way possible! The enemy is leagues more powerful than you. What do you think will happen if the author doesn't write the MC to safety? And after that, does he think of the potential consequences? The whole point in the crippling was for you to die. This is an evil sect and you have a literal ticking time bomb in your belly. What happens if you are crippled? What do you think will happen if you seem absolutely fine after the crippling? It's like being the only one to resist when the Mafia comes to collect their taxes. There goes the idea of being low-key. Literally everyone else is being beaten to the ground. Resisting doesn't make you look brave, it makes you look childish and stubborn. And all for 5 stupid blood pills. Was that worth it? There are tons of other ways to make the MC look brave or unyielding. This is not one of them. Author has shown before that the MC is not rash or impulsive in previous circumstances. So why do this now? Another aspect of how dumb his decision was is also due to his Gluttony passive. Hello..... You have a skill that literally digests any supplement super quickly. This means that you can take a resource that normally requires a long time to digest in bulk, like food. In essence, this means you can use lower quality resources, at a much higher quantity, and absorb them effectively. Unlike everyone else, you almost no danger of dying to the bloodthirsty gu. So there is no pressure to survive unlike others. In fact, you reasonably would trade the blood pills for a larger quantity of lower resources, like meat, that results in a net gain of total energy absorbed. This means that there is even less reason for fighting so hard for the 5 blood pills. He could even voluntarily announce that he would trade his pills for the highest bidder of meat quantity the moment he leaves the merit hall. Then he wouldn't need to get beaten at all, since the person that gains the pills will fight it out with other seniors to get the pills by either beating everyone else up or trading the largest quantity of meat. In either case there is no loss to you. Lastly it feels like he has totally forgotten his system works on the function of time. The longer he stays alive, the more passives he gains. So why engage? After being low key for couple months, you will have sufficient preparations and information on the seniors. At that point he can easily resist the seniors and maybe even extort them instead. In the grand scheme of things 5 pills is nothing.