After a rocky start (spawning in a black ops research lab can be such a pain, especially when you're the test subject), Mirikon is now free, but his escape 'plan' quickly unravels with a Princess literally dropping into his lap. Sure, they managed to escape, but they're still in Sol System, the heart of the Terran Empire. If he's going to get out of this, he's going to need some gear, and he's going to need a crew. Good thing both can be found on Choson Ring, one of the shadiest ports in the solar system.

Sure, it is a hive of scum and villainy, and sure, he's got a princess to protect, but what's the worst that could happen, right? Right?

Follow Mirikon's continuing adventures, as he strives to make his own path in this new game universe.

My Opinion: 95 pages, $0.99, Not available on Kindle Unlimited

Stuart Grosse has signed up to play an scifi MMORPG on the most difficult settings. In the game he’s a shapeshifting Psi user named Mirikon, who’s on the lamb from the multiple governments. Not only because of the people he’s killed, or his illegal genetics, but because of the rouge princess he’s transporting.

Now, he’s looking for a few new crew members to round out his team and take on some more challenging quests.

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The first 11% of the novel is a recap of the previous short story and an info dump of possible upgrades the ship the main character (MC) uses can get. It’s not bad info but some of it feels like filler, since there’s no way the character can get all those upgrades for the ship, nor does he intend to.

There’s lots of good action in the story, and some expanded understanding of the game world.

However, there were also a few things that just didn’t appeal to me. When the MC goes to get more crew members, he decides to buy some sexy slaves to fill the positions. Also, after one battle with a gang of thugs, instead of sending a defeated female player off for respawn, he instead slaps a special slave collar on her that will trap her in her own mind and sells her off into prostitution to make money for him. Additionally, the MC gets an upgrade that confers a power boost to him but also require that he has sex every couple days or he’ll become really weak. He fulfills that requirement with his new slaves, who can’t really say no. Especially since that same upgrade makes his ‘fluids’ addictive like a drug. So, it all feels a bit like rape by the main character.

I want to be perfectly clear. The parts of the story I had a hard time with were a small part of narrative (10%) and other people may be able to overlook it. However, it seems it’s going to be an ongoing theme for the authors stories. The authors other LitRPG series, Rules-Free VRMMO Life, has more a lot more of a darker theme and includes a lot more sex, rape, and even graphic torture.

Overall, the RPG mechanics are solid, there’s lots of good action and even some space battles. But the sex stuff and the few questionable parts of the story were so off putting for me that I’m dropping the series. I'll still note below when new books in the series come out though.

Score: 6 out of 10

Into the Black (A Sci-Fi LitRPG Story): Book II: Choson Ring