But the Hero's Affection is Negative
Arrogant Saga was a turn-based adventure game released to capture the nostalgic feel of JRPGs from the '80s and '90s.
The plot was simple: the Hero, Luciena Estelle, and her party set out to defeat the Demon God who sought the destruction of the world. Yet, by evoking nostalgia and focusing on the pure, classic fun of gaming, it managed to build a dedicated cult following. Its popularity was decent.
But did it rely solely on retro nostalgia? Not quite.
Aside from the fact that Luciena was a hot-headed, boastful, and arrogant protagonist—typical of Japanese anime and games of that era—the game was unique in that the main character was female, and it featured an affection system for each party member.
The only catch was that the romance routes unlocked by this system didn't care about gender.
Another unique feature was that the player could choose and recruit the final member of the Hero's party.
By default, the Hero's party consisted of Lucy the Hero, Reinhold the Shield Knight, Tigria the Mage, Nydrian the Elf Archer, and Arciel the Combat Saint.
As the story progressed, everyone up to Arciel would join automatically. But the final member was different.
The player was given a choice between two characters.
The first was a female Thief.
She could detect hidden items and traps on the map. In battle, unlike Arciel who buffed allies, the Thief specialized in debuffing enemies.
She could also steal rare, enemy-exclusive drops or consumable items with a very low success rate to support the party.
The other option was the Luggage Carrier.
He was essentially a walking inventory expansion.
His purpose was to hold items when the combat characters' inventories were full.
His inventory space was incredibly generous to begin with, and once you acquired his exclusive item, the Luggage Carrier's Bag, that already massive storage space expanded even further.
However, Arrogant Saga was designed so that as you neared the endgame, you were showered with character-specific gear and stats, rendering most consumable items obsolete.
One might argue that carrying a mountain of healing potions and status-recovery items was useful, but the Thief could easily steal whatever specific items were needed for each boss fight on the spot.
Crucially, the final boss, the Demon God, was simply too powerful.
The Luggage Carrier was classified as a non-combatant and was systematically excluded from battles. No matter how many items you piled onto him, you couldn't use them once combat started. He was, quite literally, just a pack mule.
And the Demon God, the ultimate endgame boss of the base game, was brutally difficult.
Even with a full six-member party including the Thief, victory was a coin toss. There was absolutely no logical reason to recruit the Luggage Carrier.
In fact, a combat strategy was recently discovered where the Thief could steal the Demon God's Single Horn at an astronomically low probability to instantly end the battle. This sparked a trend among YouTubers to run "Thief Horn-Steal" speedrun challenges.
That was the reality.
The Luggage Carrier was the ultimate useless addition.
In a way, he was a self-imposed penalty offered by the developers, as if asking the most hardcore players, “Why don't you try clearing the game with this?”
And only one person in the entire world had ever cleared it.
Perhaps as karmic retribution for that feat, that sole player had reincarnated as the very Luggage Carrier he once controlled, and was now suffering immensely for it.
Sadly, he couldn't clearly remember how he had lived, how he had died, or even who he had been in his past life.
He only knew that he had cleared Arrogant Saga with the Luggage Carrier, that he was a South Korean man surnamed Lee, and that he possessed an incredibly vivid, almost terrifyingly precise memory of the game's contents.
“This is a total disaster.”
It wasn't a possession; it was a full reincarnation.
Even then, his memories had only awakened well into the early-to-mid stages of the game.
'Hello! I am the one joining as the Luggage Carrier...'
'Save it. I don't want to see any man's face in this party other than Reinhold's. Put on a mask.'
It had happened the moment he was forced to put on this bizarre mask after being snapped at by Lucy—the very first party member he met on the day he joined the Hero's party, which should have been the greatest achievement of his life.
It was strange.
Although the Luggage Carrier had far fewer lines and interactions throughout the game compared to the Thief, he was usually just treated as invisible, not outright mistreated.
Yet, he had been despised.
As for how he was mistreated, that was a story for another time.
Right now, Rin the Luggage Carrier was being swept away by a raging river while holding a Hero whose limbs had been severed. He was in no position to reminisce.
“This is weird. We should have washed ashore by now.”
Several minutes had passed since they leaped from the cliff, but there was still no sign of land.
Lucy lay unconscious in his arms, her lips pale and blue.
To keep her from inhaling water, he was swimming on his back with her resting on his chest, which completely blocked his forward vision.
Sensing that they would plunge to their doom if they kept drifting, Rin frantically scanned his surroundings.
“Over there!”
Straining his neck, he spotted a patch of land leading into a forest diagonally ahead.
For some reason, there was a log blocking the current like a small dam just ahead. Rin thrashed his limbs, steering himself toward it.
Thwack!
“Ow! Son of a...!”
Having no other way to brake, he had stopped himself by slamming his head directly into the log.
He grimaced at the pain, which was far worse than he had braced for, though it was hidden behind his mask anyway.
Rin wiggled his back, slowly crawling onto the riverbank.
“Pant, pant...”
Naturally, the water was freezing.
Carrying Lucy deeper into the forest, Rin decided they were far enough inside and pulled a scroll out of his Luggage Carrier's Bag.
After setting up various bedding materials, he laid Lucy down and spoke the activation command.
“General: Warmth's Embrace.”
General: Warmth's Embrace
As he placed the scroll on Lucy's stomach, a gentle warmth enveloped her.
Confirming that her damp hair was beginning to dry, Rin gathered dry twigs and started a fire with a fire starter.
He activated another scroll.
“Special: Presence Alert (Lv. Max).”
Special: Presence Alert (Lv. Max)
This time, it was a Special-rank scroll.
Since they had only just escaped the betrayers, he used his highest-grade scroll to prepare for any potential pursuers.
It was a skill that sent an alert directly to his mind if anyone hostile or harmful approached.
Because the skill was at Max Level, it would trigger an unconditional alert the moment an enemy was in a position to attack them, regardless of the distance.
Rin stripped off his soaked clothes and hung them by the fire.
It was common sense that wearing wet clothes accelerated hypothermia, and besides, he had more than enough spare clothes in his Luggage Carrier's Bag.
He was shivering from the cold as well, but it was wiser to save his skills and magic scrolls.
He had to reserve them for Lucy as much as possible.
Especially considering their destination, he needed to hoard every survival-related scroll he could.
After changing, Rin took off his mask to wipe his face.
It had been a very long time since he last removed it.
The face revealed beneath was remarkably ordinary.
Slightly drooping eyes, black hair, black eyebrows, eyes that were neither large nor small, and a nose that was neither high nor low.
It made sense why Lucy, with her incredibly high aesthetic standards, had demanded he wear a mask.
A breeze carrying the scent of grass brushed against his face.
It felt refreshing for a brief moment before turning chilly.
Wiping his face with a dry cloth, Rin stared at the mask resting on the ground, lost in thought.
“How ironic.”
Ever since joining the Hero's party, Rin had always worn that mask.
As the party's fame grew, people easily recognized him as the Hero's Luggage Carrier simply by looking at the mask.
Which meant, conversely, that if Rin walked around without the mask, almost no one would be able to identify him.
That was why he muttered the word "ironic."
There was no one to hear him.
Since he had always been alone, he had developed a habit of talking to himself from time to time.
Having finished his contemplation, he picked up the mask and slipped it into his Luggage Carrier's Bag.
“Ah, this definitely wasn't in the plans.”
Sitting down on a relatively flat patch of ground, he repeated the words he had muttered while rescuing Lucy.
Was it surprising that he had saved the betrayed Hero? Not really.
In the original game, the story ended with the party defeating the Demon God and celebrating their victory on a cliff. However, in the subsequent DLC, the Hero's party betrays the Hero, just as he had witnessed.
And only one member of the party would stand by the Hero's side, struggling to protect her.
Which character stepped up was determined entirely by the affection levels built up during the base game.
Naturally, if every party member's affection fell below a certain threshold, no one would take Lucy's side, leading straight to a bad ending.
Even if the Mage, Archer, or Saint joined in their respective routes, they were completely exhausted from the battle with the Demon God. Their mana or holy power would be at zero, and they would be afflicted with an exhaustion debuff.
Furthermore, for some reason, their intervention was always slightly delayed. They would only realize what was happening and enter the battle after at least two of the Hero's limbs had already been severed, meaning the Hero started the fight with a sliver of health.
In short, another bad ending.
If you went down the Thief's route, you could save the Hero for the moment.
But a forced event would trigger where the Thief sacrificed herself, pushing the Hero off the cliff.
Swept down the valley river alone, the Hero had a mere one percent chance of survival.
And even if she survived, what then? She had no limbs.
Waking up on the riverbank, she would be unable to do anything, eventually dying of starvation or hypothermia.
Yes, yet another bad ending.
What about Reinhold the Shield Knight, the ringleader of the betrayal?
Congratulations to anyone who maxed out Reinhold's affection! You might as well hit "New Game."
He would lead the betrayal regardless of his affection level.
After all, his character setting was that of a fiancé who didn't actually love Lucy.
Because of this, there was a famous incident where a female player who had dedicated her entire run to Reinhold screamed and punched a hole straight through her monitor.
Players were thrown into utter chaos.
They had released a DLC, yet players couldn't even get past the Chapter 1 intro.
No matter which character route they chose, the result was the same.
What was the point of all our hard work? What did all those hours of playtime even mean?
It was incredibly easy for loyal fans to turn into rabid haters.
They sent so many protest trucks to the developer's headquarters that they could have formed a giant circle and danced around the building.
And right at that moment,
a video of someone clearing the Chapter 1 intro was uploaded online.
To be precise, it was a video showing the transition from defeating the Demon God in the base game to successfully clearing the DLC's Chapter 1 intro.
As some might have already guessed, the key was the Luggage Carrier.
The reincarnated Lee, who had been perversely running a "Luggage Carrier only" challenge, had somehow managed to max out the Luggage Carrier's affection and defeat the Demon God by the skin of his teeth.
When he started the DLC, bracing himself for the inevitable bad ending, the events that unfolded for Lee were completely different from anything seen online.
The party betrays the Hero. The Hero's limbs are severed. That much was scripted.
But the moment Reinhold went for the finishing blow and the Hero was completely incapacitated,
the Luggage Carrier dumped every single item he had hoarded in his Luggage Carrier's Bag, rescued the Hero, leaped off the cliff with her, and ended the Chapter 1 intro by starting a fire in the forest—just as he was doing now.
The internet exploded.
The enraged fans repented, blaming themselves for not fully conquering every piece of content in the base game.
A deluge of inquiries and requests for handshakes flooded Lee's way.
But did they know?
That Lee had already cleared the DLC and was in the middle of editing the next video.
Judging by the lack of memories beyond that point, it seemed Lee had met his end for some unknown reason before he could upload the video.
Therefore, the man standing beside the betrayed Hero, Luciena Estelle, was practically her sole lifeline.
With a veteran reincarnator who had saved her from dismemberment and knew everything that would happen next, she couldn't be in safer hands.
Yet, Rin the Luggage Carrier felt nothing but despair.
And for good reason.
“I don't have any affection points with the Hero.”
Actually, it wasn't just zero; it had plummeted straight through the floor into the negatives.
In the game, Lucy was the protagonist, the one who actively worked to raise affection levels with others.
But in this reincarnated reality, he was the Luggage Carrier.
Their very first meeting had gone horribly wrong, and he had been treated like dirt ever since. There was no affection to speak of.
That was the problem. The DLC was designed to start a new adventure alongside the character whose affection you had maxed out. But Lucy had absolutely zero affection for the Luggage Carrier.
“I'm in deep trouble.”
Despite his troubled words, Rin's expression remained perfectly calm.