/lit/ - Literature

>>22228467

After the 10 year time skip, Ryun is a vastly different person. Known as the monster who ended the world, he's responsible for taking the souls and essence of every surviving human being on Earth before they transitioned to the Infinite Realm. This has allowed him to cultivate into the early Lord realm, distinguishing him as the most powerful entity on Earth and well ahead of where he should be upon entering the Infinite Realm. He received this power by painstakingly hunting down every monster on earth and consuming their essence, Reaving it from their flesh and inhaling it. At the end Ryun is something like a vampire, completely absent a soul.

Except something in the Infinite Realm stirs him. Witnessing the same injustices in the Realm as on Earth, he's compelled to act when a Sect Leader attempts to kill a defenseless woman and child before his eyes. As the story develops, we learn what made Ryun the monster he is and if there's a chance for a monster to change.

Zach Gardner was Ryun's best friend and the most powerful Classer on the planet Earth, becoming the defender of humanity and final bulwark against the darkness Ryun represented. At the end of the world he had sacrificed everything to learn a skill called the 'Sealing Slash', which cut Ryun off from his Cultivation. It barely wounded the man... only for them both to be teleported away from each other before he could act again. Still seeking revenge against 'the monster', Zach is quick in his attempts to find civilization and join up with the Realm's 'Law'. Their information network seems to be the best way to find the bastard.

[Final Thoughts]

There was a lot turning me off to this book at first, including the Reverend Insanity-like opening and a few other areas that I found derivative of other series. It wasn't until about 1/3 through the book that it finally hooked me, providing some characters that were less experienced with the system and having OP characters like Zach and Ryun contribute something to their growth while receiving information about their new world in return. The book flips between the past and the present often and while its clumsy at first, the author finds a stride in it by using both viewpoints to inform the reader about events or occurrences in their specific timeframe. There's an interesting breakdown of Ryun as this... Chaotic Neutral and Zach as this Lawful Good and how both extremes can hurt people in horrifying ways. I like that they're both GUILTY except one doesn't quite realize what he was perpetrating yet.

The relationship writing is clumsy, as are some of the resolutions to plot threads in the book. Certain characters are left in the wind and again, as with all litRPG serial-likes, this one has poor final act pacing and doesn't know when to end.

8/10

>Currently Listening
Dissonance by Nicoli Gonnella

>Currently Reading
Fostering Faust by R. Darren