Arthur never expected to wind up in Hell. At least, not because he found an ancient sword in a pawnshop. To make matters worse, Hell isn't as he thought. It's a desolate wasteland under siege by an all-consuming void known as the Darkness.
Now, he's trapped with no way home, a ragtag army of women, and a sword whose only power is to modify the abilities of those around him. Not exactly winning odds.
Worse, if the Darkness isn't stopped, not only will it devour Hell, but Earth will be next on the menu.
My Opinion: 338 pages, $4.99, Available on Kindle Unlimited
From the description on Amazon, I didn’t actually think this was going to be a LitRPG story. However, it is.
After spending his life savings on a beat up, old sword, Arthur Curie, has the power to see people he owns character sheets and spends their experience points on stats and new skills. He’s then kidnapped to hell and told he’s the Legendary Builder and that he has to save an all woman hell using his new powers. He inexplicably becomes the owner of a town and all the woman in it and can thus use his upgrade power. It’s a trapped in a world ruled by RGP rules LitRPG story.
Most of the early story seems to exist solely to show off the main character’s power to upgrade. All these powerful capable women just need him to upgrade them before they can fulfill their potential and be useful in defending hell against the vaguely defined enemy, the Darkness.
From the cover and early scenes, there’s a promise of a harem aspect to the story that’s not fulfilled until the last 20% of the story. It’s fulfilled humorously though. There no graphic sex, just lots of fade to black stuff.
However, there is a definite lack of world building in the novel. By the end of the story, I know more about the villain than I do about any of the other characters in the story. That’s not to say that there’s no character development but there’s definitely less for the main characters.
Additionally, there are some huge plot holes and inconsistencies that will bother some people. Like why can’t the MC just summon a certain someone when she’s kidnapped and avoid the whole 2nd half of the story. Why do some people and not others know about the experience point thing that only the MC is able to see? How do some people just happen to know the right weapon to make to kill or control some unbeatable monsters? Why doesn’t the over powered villain, who doesn’t show up till half way through the story, not kill the MC the half dozen times she has him in her hands? There’s also a lot of magic wand waving, saving the MC from the villain and solving the story problems.
But if you can ignore that stuff, then you’ll find a lot of things to like. The dialogue between characters is well written and very funny at times. The combat is detailed. There’s a nice variety of monsters to kill and they come in ever more difficult waves.
I really did enjoy the skill tree details in the story. The crafting isn’t as detailed as I would have liked, it’s mostly the MC telling a skilled craftswoman what he wants and her coming back later with it done. It falls into a God game view of crafting, assigning task and waiting for them to be complete before you can move onto more complex projects. However, it was still enjoyable to read how important crafting it was to the story.
Overall, not a bad story. It reminds me of an expanded version of a town building fight scene from one of the author’s other novels combined with the unique skill of upgrading his property from Super Sales on Super Heroes. The fight scenes are well written. I like the game mechanics and crafting in the story. However, the lack of world building and some big plot holes, inconsistencies, and magic wand waving stopped it from getting a better score from me.
Score: 6 out of 10.