A broke gamer. A deadly online world. Can Dahlia level up fast enough to keep the debt collectors at bay?
Dahlia has to pay off her dead father’s bills or risk her life in the lithium mines. Which... no thank you. Besides, the world is run by tech, and this gamer girl is determined to explore the virtual world her father was so obsessed with and get rich while she’s at it.
So, she sells everything and rents a premium VR pod to play Eternal Online.
Enter the toughest realm available? Check.
Discover the fastest way to loot without dying?… in progress.
But when Dahlia finds an epic quest chain that others have overlooked, she thinks she’s struck gold. What she doesn’t expect is to make friends with two deadly warriors and one powerful creature, or find a world boss gunning for them all.
My Opinion: 450 pages, $2.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
This is one of the odder releases, with the audiobook coming out months ahead of the ebook release. Additionally, when I finally started to read the ebook, it was strangely familiar. Then I realized I’d read a short story from the author that was supposed to be the start of a serial LitRPG series, The Broken Sword. I realized this was likely the expanded version of that.
This is a VR game story, where the main character (MC) plans to pay off her inherited debt by earning transferable funds in a VR game. She gets to take with her one object that will be scanned into the game. She chooses her family katana. But upon entering the game, she’s told by the AI that her sword is too powerful for a new player and is broken up into pieces and scattered around the game world. If she can find and reassemble all the pieces she’ll have a truly powerful weapon. There’s also a subplot about her father, and why he spent so much time in the game after his wife died.
But the story is mostly a slice of life adventure. You follow the MC as she explores the world, fights desperately against monsters, harvests plants and animal parts, and practices her skills. All in the effort to become powerful enough to earn a living, find the missing parts of her sword, and pay off the massive debt she is in.
Game mechanic wise, it's fairly standard. Character sheets, stats, skills, special abilities, classes, levels, and quests. There's gathering and crafting in addition to the fighting. All of which feels rather solid, progression wise, and was interesting to follow.
Overall, it's a good read, even if the story has a few loose story threads. The MCs IRL sword skills give her just enough edge to help her fight in game without making her over powered. It was also just as entertaining to read about her raising her class skills and try to puzzle out the best plants to harvest and animals to skin to make the best profit.
Score: 7.8 out of 10