If I had to pick one aspect alone for why I enjoy this story, it’s the MC. Hide follows a realistic mindset in an unknown, yet hellish, world. If you want to survive, surround yourself with people that are useful. He realizes and understands that attempting to tackle a world he knows precious little about will inevitably get him killed because it’s simply impossible for him to cover all of his own weak areas. As he gathers allies that he can use for this purpose, he does what’s necessary to gain power himself whilst safeguarding against potential betrayal by making aforementioned allies reliant or otherwise loyal to him.

However, despite all of his craftiness, all of his manipulativeness, he still has his limits, his humanity. His title might be that of [Psychopath], but he’s not an inhumane monster, eager to butcher everything in sight for the experience. He’s simply doing what he feels would benefit him most in the world, and what benefits him tends to benefit his allies as well in the long run. Hide is by far, in my opinion, the most interesting character in the story. Seeing how his mind works, how he processes things, his decisions, his ideas, it’s engaging.

His humanity has been put on display especially in the more recent chapters (as I am writing this Chapter 78 was recently published). His actions are very clearly emotional in addition to his usual logic of "my allies are useful to me, therefore I will defend them." It's clear he's become, on some level, attached to his usual companions beyond their inherent value in this crazed new world, even if he prefers to not show it. It's interesting to see this side of him, the side that attempts to be cold and calculating whilst at the same time holding some odd sense of camaraderie and friendship with those closest to him. I hope this side of his personality gets some time to shine, in-between fighting for his life and attempting to be the leader, or at least take command over, to a slightly larger, slightly more dysfunctional group.

The pace of the story is also something that I quite enjoyed. It’s slow, it’s methodical, it covers its bases. The issues of food supply, bathing, acquiring skills and grinding levels, etc etc, it’s all gives a vibe of being very thought out and well planned. Nothing is just written as “They did this and that and this and that was it, everything was solved”. There’s a certain level of forethought that goes into the character’s actions, a reasoning given for why they’re doing what they’re doing. I like that, the level of detail the author gives. Like I said, it’s slow, but it’s the good kind of slow. The type of slow where everything’s explained and made sense of before the protagonists advance to their next task.

The one demerit against this story is the sometimes spotty grammar. Misspelled, or otherwise missing, words can break the pace and immersion the story gives, requiring the reader to re-read a line two or three times to get the meaning the author is trying to convey. Other than this slight blemish, this story’s fantastic. I’d gladly recommend it to someone looking for a long read and I hope the writer continues it until the end.