Ch.2Chapter 2. But the Hero’s Affection is Negative

# The Arrogant Saga

The Arrogant Saga was a turn-based adventure game released in the 80s and 90s that embodied the classic JRPG feel.

Though it had a simple story about the hero Luciana Estel and her party members defeating a demon lord who sought the world’s destruction, it evoked nostalgia. Despite offering a familiar experience, it focused on the fundamental fun of gaming, which helped it gain enough popularity to develop a dedicated fanbase.

That’s not to say it blindly adhered to the sensibilities of that era.

Aside from Luciana being a hot-blooded but overconfident and cocky character—typical of Japanese anime and game protagonists of the time—what made the game unique was having a female protagonist and an affection system for each party member.

The issue was that this affection-based romance mode didn’t discriminate based on gender.

Another distinctive feature was that players could choose the final hero party member to recruit.

The hero’s party basically consisted of the hero Luci, shield knight Rainfold, mage Tigria, elven archer Naidrian, and martial arts saint Arsil.

As you progressed through the story, Arsil would automatically join, but the last member was different.

Players were given two character options.

One was a female thief.

Unlike Arsil, who could discover hidden items or traps on maps and provide ally buffs in battle, the thief applied debuffs to enemies. Sometimes, she could steal rare items from enemies that were otherwise only obtainable at extremely low drop rates, or steal consumable items to support the party.

The other option was the Porter.

This character was essentially just an extra inventory window.

When the combat characters’ inventories were full, items could be temporarily stored with the Porter.

The Porter had a generous inventory capacity, and obtaining the special item “Porter’s Pouch” expanded the already spacious storage even further.

However, Arrogant Saga was designed to provide special items and balance stats as you approached the ending, so consumable items became less necessary later in the game.

One might argue that carrying lots of healing items or status ailment cures would be useful, but the thief could steal the necessary items for each battle and boss, making her quite valuable.

Crucially, the final boss, the Demon Lord, was extremely powerful.

The Porter was classified as a non-combatant and was forcibly excluded from battles by the system, so no matter how many items you gave them, they couldn’t be used in combat. They were literally just a carrier.

And the original end-game content, the Demon Lord, was disgustingly strong.

Even with the thief selected and all six party members attacking together, victory was barely possible. No matter how hard one looked, there seemed to be no reason to recruit the Porter.

In fact, a battle scene where the thief steals the Demon Lord’s horn—at odds lower than winning the lottery—to end the fight was only recently discovered, leading to YouTubers making “Thief Horn Stealing Challenge” videos that became quite popular.

That’s how it was.

The Porter was completely superfluous.

In a way, it was like a penalty that the developers attached for veteran players, saying, “Want to try clearing it once?”

And only one person in the entire world had cleared it.

Perhaps due to that karmic burden, this unique player had reincarnated as the Porter they once controlled and was now suffering through hardship.

Sadly, he couldn’t clearly remember who he was in his past life, how he lived, or how he died.

He only knew that he had cleared Arrogant Saga as the Porter and that he had been a Korean man with the surname Lee. The only advantage was that he could recall the game’s content with excruciating detail.

“This is a complete disaster.”

It wasn’t possession but reincarnation.

And he only awakened to his memories after entering the early-to-mid stages of the game.

‘Greetings! I’ll be joining as the Porter…’

‘Enough. I don’t want to see any male faces in the party except Rainfold’s, so wear a mask or something.’

It was on the day of his greatest life achievement—joining the hero’s party—when he first met Luci, who immediately berated him, forcing him to wear this strange mask.

It was odd.

While the Porter had significantly less dialogue and interactions throughout the game compared to the thief, they were never treated with such dismissal or ignored outright.

But he was being ignored.

How exactly he was ignored would be explained later.

Right now, Porter Lin was being swept away by the current while holding the hero whose limbs had been severed, making it difficult to elaborate.

“That’s strange, we should have reached land by now.”

Several minutes had passed since jumping off the cliff, but there was no sign of reaching anywhere.

Luci in his arms had lost consciousness, and her lips were pale.

To prevent her from swallowing water, he was swimming on his back with her placed on his stomach, which made it impossible to see what was ahead.

Sensing they would fall into an abyss if this continued, Lin desperately looked around.

“Over there!”

With great effort, he spotted land leading into a forest diagonally ahead.

For some reason, there was also a log blocking the water flow a bit further ahead. Lin struggled to swim within range of that log.

THWACK!

“Ow! That hurts…!”

Without any other braking mechanism, he had to stop by ramming his head into the log.

The pain was greater than he had anticipated, making him grimace, though no one could see it behind his mask.

Lin wriggled his back to slowly move toward the riverbank.

“Huff, huff.”

Naturally, the water was cold.

After carrying Luci into the forest, Lin took out a scroll from the Porter’s Pouch once he judged they were deep enough inside.

“Common: Embrace of Warmth.”

After setting up various bedding, he laid Luci down and used the one-time skill.

When he placed the scroll on Luci’s stomach, a warm energy enveloped her.

Confirming that her wet hair was beginning to dry, Lin gathered dry branches and lit a fire with a fire starter.

“Special: Presence Alert (Lv. Max)”

He activated another scroll.

This one was of special grade.

Having just escaped from traitors, he used the highest grade to prepare for possible encounters with pursuers.

It was a skill that would mentally alert him if anyone with hostile intent or who could cause harm appeared nearby.

Being a Lv. Max skill, it would unconditionally notify him if a hostile person was in a position to attack the party, regardless of distance.

Lin took off his soaked clothes and hung them by the fire.

It was common sense that wearing wet clothes would cause more severe body temperature loss, and he had plenty of spare clothes in the Porter’s Pouch anyway.

Though he too was shivering from the cold, it was better to save skills and magic scrolls.

He needed to use them primarily for Luci.

Especially considering their destination, he had to stockpile as many survival-related scrolls as possible.

After changing clothes, Lin removed his mask to wipe his face.

It had been a very long time since he’d taken it off.

His revealed appearance was ordinary.

Slightly drooping eye corners, black hair and eyebrows, eyes neither small nor large, and a nose neither high nor low.

It was no wonder that Luci, with her high aesthetic standards, had told him to wear a mask.

A grassy breeze swept across his face.

It felt cool momentarily but quickly turned chilly.

As Lin wiped his face with a dry cloth, he contemplated the mask lying on the ground.

“How ironic.”

Since joining the hero’s party, Lin had always worn the mask.

As a result, as the hero’s party gained fame, people easily recognized him as the Porter of the hero’s party just by seeing the mask.

Conversely, if Lin were to go around without the mask, very few people would be able to identify him as the Porter.

That’s why Lin uttered the word “ironic.”

There was no one to hear him.

There never had been, which is why he had developed the habit of occasionally talking to himself.

In any case, having finished his deliberation, he picked up the mask and put it in the Porter’s Pouch.

“Ah, this wasn’t in the plan.”

Sitting on a relatively flat patch of ground, he repeated what he had said while rescuing Luci.

Was he surprised that he had saved the betrayed hero? Not really.

In the original game, after defeating the Demon Lord, the ending shows the party celebrating victory on the cliff. But in the subsequently released DLC, as we’ve already seen, the hero’s party betrays the hero.

And only one party member stands by the hero, struggling desperately for her sake.

Which character comes to her aid is determined solely by the affection points accumulated during the original game.

Naturally, if all party members’ affection is below a certain threshold, no one takes the hero’s side, resulting in a bad ending.

Even if the mage, archer, or saint join in their respective routes, they’re in a state of complete exhaustion due to the battle with the Demon Lord, with their mana or divine power at zero and suffering from exhaustion debuffs.

Moreover, for some reason, they realize the situation and join the battle slightly too late—only after at least two of the hero’s limbs have been severed—meaning the hero starts with critically low health.

In other words, another bad ending.

If you go the thief route, she does save the hero immediately.

But in a forced event, the thief dies instead and pushes the hero off the cliff.

The hero, drifting alone down to the valley below, has a 1% random chance of survival.

But what good is that when she has no limbs?

If she regains consciousness by the riverside, she can’t do anything and dies from starvation or hypothermia.

Ha, another bad ending.

What about shield knight Rainfold, the mastermind of the betrayal?

Congratulations to those who raised Rainfold’s affection! You can restart the game.

He leads the betrayal regardless of affection level.

This is because he’s set up as a fiancé who doesn’t actually love Luci.

This led to a famous incident where a female player who was a Rainfold-only fan screamed and punched through her monitor.

Players were confused.

They released a DLC, but players couldn’t even complete Chapter 1’s intro.

The result was the same no matter which character they used.

What was the point of all their hard work? What meaning did all those hours of gameplay have?

It was very easy for loyal fans to turn into extreme anti-fans.

So many trucks were sent to the developer’s office that they could have played “Ring Around the Rosie” with them.

And at that point,

A video of someone clearing Chapter 1’s intro was released online.

Specifically, it was a video from achieving the original game’s Demon Lord subjugation ending through clearing the DLC Chapter 1 intro.

As some may have already guessed, the key was the Porter.

The reincarnated Mr. Lee, who had been obsessively trying to beat the game with the Porter, finally managed to defeat the Demon Lord by raising affection points by the slimmest margin.

And in the subsequent DLC, the development that unfolded before Mr. Lee—who was prepared for the first bad ending—was quite different from what had been seen online so far.

The party betrays. The hero’s limbs are severed. So far, as expected.

However, at the moment when Rainfold delivers the final blow and the hero is completely incapacitated,

The Porter dumps out all the items stored in the Porter’s Pouch, saves the hero, falls off the cliff with her, and eventually ends up in the forest lighting a fire—just as we see now—concluding Chapter 1’s intro.

The internet went wild.

Fans who had turned bitter repented, blaming themselves for not conquering all the original content.

Numerous inquiries and handshake requests poured in for the reincarnated Mr. Lee.

Did they know?

That the reincarnated Mr. Lee had already cleared the DLC and was editing the next video.

Given the lack of subsequent memories, it seems Mr. Lee was unable to upload the video and passed away for some reason not long after.

Therefore, the one beside the betrayed hero Luciana Estel was effectively her only lifeline.

How reassuring it must be to have a veteran reincarnator who not only saved the limbless hero but also knew everything that would happen next.

However, Porter Lee Lin just felt overwhelmed.

Because,

“I have absolutely no affection points with the hero.”

It’s not just zero—it’s negative, breaking through the bottom.

In the original game, Luci was the active subject and protagonist who worked to raise affection.

But his reincarnated self was the Porter.

Since their first meeting had gone awry and he was ignored, there was no affection to speak of.

Yes, the DLC was supposed to start a new adventure with the character whose affection you had raised, but Luci had no affection for the Porter.

“This is a big problem.”

Despite his troubled tone, Lin’s expression remained perfectly calm.