The first rank four dungeon ever born. An unusually talented party of adventurers. Both must face the terror that destroyed the kingdom that came before them.
Will is the newest in a long line of dungeons born into the world—and he’s a rank higher than any dungeon that preceded. He’s born along with seven other dungeons in a small area, but so many dungeons were born in one place because of a magical disaster… A disaster brought about by the Voidbringers who sought to conquer the world.
Now the unthinkable has happened. The Voidbringers have returned, and they have the ability to corrupt dungeons. As a powerful dungeon, Will is one of their targets. He comes under assault by their minions, has to deal with aggressive neighboring dungeons, and of course, adventurers.
With the aid of his dungeon fairy, Amber, and an adventuring party run by Gar Adamant, displaced prince of the kingdom destroyed by the Voidbringers, Will must grow his dungeon to become as strong as he possibly can, grow his nearby town, defend himself and the locals, and fend off the enemies that surround him everywhere.
A Dungeon Core story.
My Opinion: 394 pages, $4.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
This starts out as a fairly typical dungeon core story. Core wakes up, starts to instinctively absorb the surrounding rock, gets a dungeon fairy to explain how things work, and then builds a dungeon. The first 10% or so, is pretty much an info dump of game mechanics and the initial choices for the core to make, and some mildly annoying hand holding by the fairy guide as she tells the core step by step how to build his dungeon and create monsters.
The first dungeon invader shows up at the 10% mark, but it's a rather unsatisfying experience. The invaders are all level 1 which doesn’t really make sense as the dungeon is in a random location so you’d expect some variety of levels. Additionally, the core just can’t bring himself to kill the perceived good invader, a level 1 elf girl, but has no qualms about killing the three level 1 goblins. There’s no setup for this sudden moral compass, nor does it really mesh with a creature whose sole purpose is to kill invaders with traps and monsters to grow stronger. Though this moral compass does shift as the story progresses.
There’s also a second point of view with the dwarves and elves that live around this undescribed location. I’d say you spend 70% of your time in the story with this dwarf prince and his group as they dungeon dive, develop the town, and manage competing interests with the elves and adventurer’s guild. I actually found this second narrative a bit more interesting than the dungeon core section. The characters develop some depth through dialogue, there’s some world building as the dwarf prince travels to recruit villagers and tradesmen, and eventually there’s a big conflict that adds some action. They level too, so you get some RPG progression there.
Speaking of game mechanics, this is a LitRPG story as both the dungeon and the adventures gain levels and new powers from killing monsters. The basic mechanics aren’t complex and there’s enough level theory thrown in that it’s interesting. But there’s nothing particularly original about any of the mechanics. The dungeon has an earth and nature affinity (called Wylde) and he has some choices on how he develops, but it doesn't really amount to anything particularly unique. Nothing bad or broken here either though. I’d only complain that it felt particularly forced that both the adventurers and the dungeon core start at level 1 and level up in tangent.
Which brings me to the fundamental issue with the story. It feels very patterned upon other dungeon core stories without bringing anything particularly new to the table. There’s nothing really bad here. Decent writing, fleshed out game mechanics, regular action from the dungeon dives, and a fairly entertaining second POV. But the dungeon core stuff just didn’t do much for me. From the core character and snarky fairy companion, to monsters to how the dungeon develops, and the big ending conflict, I’ve read it all before.
Overall, the novel is a solid LitRPG Dungeon Core story and it’s fairly entertaining, there wasn’t anything that wowed me.
Score: 7.3 out of 10