Lmaoo it’s probably because of the verbal abuse the leader was giving him
If you tell someone he’s useless and put him down everyday he’s gonna start believing it
Verbal abuse is way more destructive than you might think especially when repeated over and over, also the impact increases with every person who is repeating it and how much time you are around the abusers versus how much time you’re around people that support you. Growing up as the families kicking dog I was taught that “It is always my fault” no matter what it was or if I was even involved I would automatically apologize. It took a little over 7years for me to finally stop and check myself to see if I was really at fault or not before apologizing and I still have to analyze it first. (My husband has helped me tremendously and has been consistently reassuring me as we are still both recovering from abuse) my husband was also constantly told that he was going to have heart problems because it was hereditary and because he was fat, this eventually caused him to have panic attacks that were simulating a heart attack reaction even though his heart was completely healthy and strong (I luckily had a good amount of medical knowledge and was able to listen to it and it would immediately return to a normal heart rate- not something that would happen with a real heart attack by the way)
So verbal abuse can also cause physical ailments and anxiety to extreme levels and it should never be underestimated. I only used my husband and my own personal experience as an example and I summarized both but it should be plenty of an example.
u and ur husband alright? ur explanation makes sense, but in this situation I feel like the mc is too strong and capable to be so completely unaware of his abilities and he’s also supposed to be knowledgeable. It’s tragic what happened to you as a kid since you were kind of just stuck in that environment with no one to really rely on before your husband, but the mc was already strong before he met his old party and was adventuring with his childhood friend. I just personally don’t think his qualities of being kind of op make sense with his evaluation of himself as weak.
Mc is kind of dumb/weird/slow cause he beat that floor boss basically by himself after buffing himself but he still thinks he’s weak for some reason which doesn’t make much sense, he might think that he just dealt the final blow but that still doesn’t make sense cause he’s supposed to be hella knowledgeable with the exploring and monsters and stuff. The author is trying too hard to make the mc think that he’s weak