What Can You Even Do?

One day, an advertisement appeared on an RPG gaming community.

Downloads: 34.

Reviews: 3 — two of which, not counting mine, were just more ads.

What on earth was going through the developer's head when they made this thing?

"No. Just… no."

I should have known the moment I saw a dating sim with a combat system that felt like pure, soul-crushing grind. The battles were absurdly punishing, the scripts were bloated beyond belief, and every heroine was a personality vacuum. This wasn't just a bad game — it was a genuine dumpster fire. A real, honest-to-god disaster with not a single scrap of redeeming quality that future generations might reappraise. The random elements were so overwhelming that nothing resembling a proper strategy guide could even exist.

"This is just a pure RNG garbage fire, isn't it?"

At its core it was supposed to be a dating sim workplace, yet neither I nor anyone else had ever seen an ending.

It was the kind of game that looked fun on paper, so someone just jammed a bunch of half-baked systems together with zero skill or care — an illegal construction of a game. The deeper you dug, the more it felt like an urban legend. Was this even a game?

The sole reason this thing had any right to exist was the ability to netori other heroes' heroines. Of course, even that was a meaningless feature to someone like ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me — a pure-hearted, monogamy-obsessed romantic who found NTR utterly repulsive.

Having a woman stolen from me? No thank you. Stealing someone else's woman? Equally horrifying. Any normal person should fall in love with one person and stay true to them. That was just common sense.

By every metric, this was clearly not a game I should have been playing.

So why was I?

I was a noble, single-minded devotee of pure romance. I should have been enjoying a sweet, bittersweet, lovey-dovey relationship — so why was I wasting my time on an intolerable NTL (netori) game?

There was nothing to hope for in the gameplay. The heroines were all bland and interchangeable…

Except for one.

The heroine who seized my gaze from the very edge of that advertisement — Louise Bern von Lohengram.

Long, straight black hair cascading all the way to her hips. Sharp, seductive red eyes that looked like they could cut you down with a glance. Not the cartoonishly oversized chests that flooded this genre, but genuinely beautiful breasts that made you say she's gorgeous and mean it. A pelvic line that emphasized her femininity without trying too hard.

It wasn't some weird personal preference. Anyone with eyes would fall for her at first sight. How a heroine like her ended up in a game like this was beyond me.

That was when I should have walked away. When I was still just captivated by her appearance — when I still had enough sanity left to run.

As expected, she was the top student.

[You think she's a genius, but behind the scenes she's grinding herself into the dirt — that gap.]

An elegant, authoritative way of speaking befitting a noble young lady.

[But the clumsy side she only shows to people she's close to.]

A count's daughter who looked like a delicate flower raised in a greenhouse.

[When you learn her house is completely ruined and watch her fall into poverty — that gap.]

The kind of villainess who'd seem like she should have ten thousand handmaidens.

[Being ignored and bullied as a fallen noble who's lost all her power.]

She drove me absolutely insane. I just wanted to protect her, you know?

How could a person even be like that?

Ah — stop. Overinvesting. She's not a person. She's a character.

No, she was alive. She was a real person. I swear she was.

When a character moves and breathes like that, how are you supposed to just stop?

That was why I couldn't put down this godforsaken high-quality revolutionary dating-sim combat RPG — thirteen thousand hours in, and I still hadn't seen a single ending.

But here was the problem: this woman was a villainess. Could you even call a villainess a heroine? Maybe the developer just wanted to cash in on the villainess-noble-lady trend that was popular at the time.

Every time it looked like her route might open up, it never did. The fact that she wasn't even a companion of the hero in the first place? Turns out it was because she simply wasn't a romanceable heroine at all.

This was fundamentally a netori game, so every heroine already had an original partner. And yet, for some reason, Louise alone had none.

I didn't realize it was because she was an unromanceable NPC…

Are you kidding me? Do you even know what a villainess noble lady is supposed to be?

I could behead every last one of those tanned blond pretty-boy bastards. I could conquer the entire Empire. None of it mattered. Louise only had a ruin ending.

Was this even a game…?

Of course, I'd contacted the developer countless times.

I'd long since abandoned any faith that the developer would fix anything.

I have to save Louise from this game. Louise is alive.

That single conviction was what kept me glued to it. And now — at last — I could see a glimmer of hope for Louise's route.

Through every harem route this game threw at me, I never so much as glanced at another heroine. I ran straight toward her and her alone. I trolled the academy exams so she'd take top marks instead of the main heroine. I exploited bugs to keep her family from collapsing. I showered her with countless gifts — money, mostly.

And so I played for over thirteen thousand hours without ever letting her die.

Had my efforts finally brought me to the endgame of the Empire route? Tears welled up. I had kept Louise alive this far.

My hard work had never betrayed me.

With trembling hands, I clicked the proposal command for Louise.

"Louise-chan… forever, together…"

…What?

Wasn't that the copy-pasted rejection line you got for confessing at affection level zero? What kind of nonsense was this? What did she mean she didn't know who I was? Had she suddenly developed face blindness? Our Louise's eyes were perfectly fine!

My head throbbed. I'd seen every bug under the sun in this game, but this? This crossed a line.

The developer had ignored every bug report I'd ever filed, but there was no way I was letting this one slide.

I stayed up through an entire day and night composing a meticulously crafted bug report of roughly 5,700 characters. Despite my seething rage, I remained a gentleman — persuading the developer with restrained language and impeccable manners.

Perhaps my heartfelt sincerity finally got through. After countless bug reports that had never once been fixed or even acknowledged, the developer sent a message.

My heart pounding, I opened the conversation.

…I was speechless.

This crazy bastard. Was this for real…?

Ding.

Real tears were coming. I felt a little wronged.

The ability — the trait — that the developer had patched in exclusively for me was:

The name was grand and ridiculously flashy, but the moment this trait attached to a character, everything around them went to hell. And if it ever stuck to a heroine? That was a one-way ticket to a poison-chalice ending.

Even if I tried to use it myself, the power boost was barely worth anything. Worst of all, once it rolled, the trait was locked in until you completely reformatted your PC.

Had he attached some additional ability? It seemed I'd been ungentlemanly and misunderstood the developer again. Developer, I'm truly gratef—

Click.

…What?

And so, at the age of thirty-two, I was found in my room by my parents and little sister — PC still running.

Cause of death: cardiac arrest, brought on by rage he could not contain after encountering a catastrophic bug while playing a dating sim.

When I opened my eyes—

"Aaron, time for din-din~"

"Waaah."

I had lost my memories and been isekai'd into the game.