Lineholder: The Road’s Tax
Ten years after the Calamity split the world and let monsters crawl into daylight, the roads belong to whoever can hold them. Ryn—a half-elf handyman no one noticed until the killing started—survives by knots, nails, and nerve. When a bandit warlord and a new kind of “taxman” carve up the frontier, Ryn’s late-blooming System awakens not with swords and spells, but with lines, traps, and field control.
He isn’t the strongest. He isn’t the fastest. But he sees anchors where others see chaos.
Dragged into evacuations, ambushes, and siege-nights that turn houses into coffins, Ryn builds kill-corridors from junk and buys minutes with blood. Each fight feeds a cold, clinical interface: stats tick up, skills sharpen, and a dangerous shard whispers shortcuts that cost more than stamina. Between a graft-mad warlord, a sponsor who rents safety at knife-point, and a Warden who keeps balance by breaking people, Ryn learns the only law left: every mile costs.
No knights. No prophecy. Just rope-burned hands, quick, brutal tactics, and a refusal to let the road choose who dies.
Expect:
• Dark, gritty LitRPG progression: visible stats, hard-won skills, no cheats
• Tactical, high-stakes combat: traps, terrain, improvised devices, split-second choices
• Survival and community: evacuations under fire, fortifying ruins, paying for every hour you hold
• A corrupting power system: tempting shard mechanics with real consequences
• Enemies who adapt: bandits with monster grafts, sponsor “taxes,” and a Warden who tests more than he protects
He started as a handyman. The frontier will remember him as the one who made the road pay.
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