"Kill. Kill them all." It's the first four words Lars usually wakes up to every morning as the voice in his head nags him, telling him she's just giving him a 'quest' that will help him 'level.'
But even if he wanted to do it, he can't. They're cultivators -- beings with ancestral bloodlines that have powers he could only dream of and that may as well be gods while he is stuck as a puny human.
Even if he could kill them, the people who bullied him, beat him, treated him like a punch-bag pariah for being the 'tailless worthless human' that he was to them, he wouldn't. It just wasn't in Lars's nature.
That is, until a vicious group of murderous psychopaths called a 'sect' descend on his village. The vicious group brutally kills everyone he's known his entire life, taking a select few with them as slaves.
Lars must now trust he isn't going insane and find a way to complete the voice's quests and level up, so that he can save his mother from her cruel and heartless captors in this cultivation themed LitRPG and Gamelit adventure.
My Opinion: 490 pages, $3.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
*Full disclosure: I may have been anthropomorphized as a martial arts porcupine in the story but my undeserved death will not color the review.*
This is an interesting new story from the author. It kind of pits RPG mechanics against cultivation with humor, an interesting storyline, and good action-adventure. There are many places the author lovingly pokes at both genres but it's a good mix. The storytelling pacing and tropes will be familiar to anyone that’s a fan of cultivation, but the author definitely puts his own spin on things. There are even some nods to other series the author has written for those that look carefully.
The only thing I could point to as a minor issue, was the beginning. I wished it did a little more to connect me to the character early in the story with more detail about his upbringing and the trials he went through as someone that couldn’t cultivate. But there was loads of good character development that still made me like the character, it just took longer to connect.
Overall, it’s a good story that tries to branch into cultivation without leaving the RPG stuff. Even someone like me, who isn’t a huge cultivation fan, enjoyed it.
Score: 7.4 out of 10