The fl has a pretty obvious crush throughout. He only reciprocates her feelings in the last chapter. It felt tacked on to me, because there was no sense of him falling for her and her crush seemed pretty unimportant during the main story. However, because it only really came up as a “happily ever after” plot in the last few chapters (and wasn’t even really fleshed out until the end of the last chapter), it didn’t impact the story enough to bother me.
TLDR: the romance was such a small part added to the end of the last chapter, I wouldn’t let it be the reason you don’t read this.
I dropped these months ago because it was taking so long and i only remembered it a few days ago so i looked at the comments. Honestly, i’m not very into forced or sudden romance if there’s not a single chemistry between the two or if the two made a efforts and from your message and other’s message too, it felt like Hayley is the only one who was crushing on him and by the end chapter that was the only time Ian showed genuine effort affection and that felt like a stretch to me. Either the author is not good at romance or just really wanna add romance at the end or if they were advised by their editor to add romance. If it’s the latter then i hope they didn’t because romance doesn’t always result a guaranteed success. There are very big and famous manhwas out there that has no romance yet were able to be favored by a lot because romance ruins the entire plot and goal of the main character
“But the romance was added at the last part” that’s just like lazy writing for me. I prefer FMAB and Code Geass romance parts because the writers at least gave out hints of chemistry throughout the entire story but I think for this, Ian never had any chemistry with Hayley until the last part or maybe he did but it wasn’t enough and their only time together was working together when he also did that with other characters already so it’s nothing new except Hayley being all blushy.
Sorry if this is a long reply. I know you think this can’t be the only reason why i won’t read but i prefer reading stories that have good development and pacing whether it’s romance or not. “All-to-sudden” development for the sake of happy ending are just a no for me
I thought this won’t have romance but there is because i saw comments ian got married. I have good and bad opinions when there’s romance in a very good plot and i read this before but i stopped, i guess i stopped before the romance happened. So here’s my question: is romance well paced here or not? Is the female lead annoying or not? Is she a tsundere bitch like that one character in another blond mage manhwa?
Sorry if the questions are harsh, i wanna confirm if the romance ruined the plot of mc losing slightly his original goal and started protecting his girlfriend. I prefer a romance pace similar with sung jinwoo and cha hae in from solo leveling
If the romance isnt forced then i’ll come back to reading this. But if its rushed for the sake of adding romance then i’ll abandon it