Nikideema - Profile

So far, the story suffers from the syndrome of “everyone is an asshole”, but the good thing is that the MC isn’t a Holy Mother, and is very decisive in his killing. He is OP because he got a head start with his rebirth, but not so OP in that he’d fall behind if he doesn’t actively keep strengthening himself. MC also isn’t a hormone laden teen. I like that he has a pet mutant dog.

It's to my surprise that I found this series has a "harem" tag. It surprises me, because although the MC is surrounded by many beautiful women, as of chapter 200+ he never gets involved romantically with them, and he sometimes even actively avoids them. Though the girls do get crushes on him eventually anyways, and some of the girl's personalities are typically tsundere, they don't cross the line to overly annoying. Because I like the MC, and because the story is written in a manner that feels like the author plans things ahead and there is foreshadowing, I find the series enjoyable anyways. Plotholes not withstanding, there's a lot I can put aside for a decently written book. I'm more invested in his kingdom building.

At chap 70 currently. Although there are some unexplainable things, such as how the MC obtained all the knowledge he has for his hobbies, but if you can ignore these plotholes, the series is an enjoyable read so far mostly because the MC keeps a level head most of the times. The story parodies a lot of the tropes you often see in other cultivation novels.

If you've been reading fantasy c-light novels for some this one might be familiar, in that everyone around the MC, for absolutely no reason, is an asshole. These characters will look down on the MC, mock him, and ostracize him (coupled with snide remarks by anonymous people in the crowd), only so minutes later the MC can show his prowess to shock and awe everyone, as they wallow in their regrets in very exaggerated manners, and the MC's ego is stroked. This happening once in awhile is okay, but this setup is constant in the story in that it happens almost every time the MC interacts with others. Rinse and repeat. I like pets, I like systems, and I like zero to hero stories, but the writing in this one is way too amateur.

Another small pet peeve I have is the usage of vocabulary. Vocab could be a very minor thing for some, but for this instance it bothered me a lot. It was the usage of the words "hot shot". It's a modern word the MC specifically uses in this fantasy setting to describe characters that have cheats and could be protagonists of other stories. He teaches this word to his disciples. Cool, nothing wrong with that, but then another character, completely unrelated to the MC, who has never interacted with the MC suddenly uses the word "hot shot" also to describe these characters. ???? When there is no cohesion of the world, even in something as minor as this, it breaks the immersion.

I was enjoying it until a disturbing theme came up. The MC cooks these martial experts he defeats in a cauldron and refines them into pills to consume. It’s sanitized so nothing gory, and so far they’re only spirits, so it’s not exactly cannibalism, but a cousin of it. In the end, he’s still eating his own species. He’s also constantly ranting about how immoral the protagonists in that world are and how they’re so selfish, killing people whenever they want, but he himself wipes out an entire sect just just so he can have peace, and using the annihilation of that sect as practice for his disciples. When he was talking about immortal and selfishness, he might as well be talking about himself.

Made it to chapter 9 before I had to put it down. The setting is great. Each country gets pulled into a game that plays very much like Hunger Games, where each country has certain quotas of people to defend their tower. If they fail to defend the tower with each wave of enemies, their country in the real world gets invaded by those same creatures in the real world. Good ideas, but terrible execution. The writing is amateur in that 50% of the time, the page is filled up with netizens chatting, trolling, scolding or praising whatever is happening in this Tower world as it is livestreaming. The useless netizens chatter is constant, and happens almost every time the MC does anything. These anonymous users are either used either as a set up for a faceslap, or is a faceslap happening so that MC can be praised and his ego boosted after every move. These useless chatter gets so intrusive that by chapter 9 I was already fed up.

How dumb is the MC? Let me count all the ways. He encounters government people and the first thing he blurts out is that he's died and has been reincarnated so he's super special. These agents ask him to come with them and MC goes "sure!" At their facility there's a mad scientist that wants to study MC. They're unsure if the mad scientist would cut MC to pieces to study him or not, but MC goes "I want to meet him!" Turns out, the mad scientist wants to cut into MC to study him, so the MC and scientist get into a fight, but MC's thoughts are that he shouldn't use his mind powers too much against the mad scientist or else MC might hurt the scientist. Then I stopped reading.

I read up to about chapter 150 or so. I truly enjoyed the concept. You have a mixture of survival, gaming, crafting, and a system. What could go wrong? The first few times the MC dug into a new chamber it was interesting. He would get some new items, fight some monsters, level up and upgrade... but by the time you have him going into the 50th, 60th, 70th chamber it gets mind numbingly boring and repetitive. The only thing that changes is the monster's name and maybe the skills he uses. You can even consider each chamber as a separate story and episodic section that happens in 1 or 2 chapters at a time that is self contained and doesn't really affect the plotline of the story other than be the mechanism for him to get new items.