A great novel. The MC is strong, but not to the point where all conflict is trivialised. His moral dilemmas and clinging to his humanity is really well written.

The only problem I have is that lorenovels seems to have deleted their translation and I can't find it anywhere else ;-;

TL;DR: While dabbling in numerous genres, this novel excels at none of them.

This novel is many things that are individually great.

It has brutal fights with detailed descriptions of each partaker's moves.

... more>> It has deep philosophy on the main character's motivations and desires.

It has a game-like world, filled with demons, artifacts, and other game-like elements.

It has a grimdark world telling the tale of humanity on the brink of destruction.

It has a main character with a mysterious past that may hold the truth of the world.

It has betrayals, friendships, and loss.

Each of these are praiseworthy on their own. However, when they are all clumped together into one novel, that is not even 100 chapters yet, it feels almost clunky.

Let alone these aspects working together to better the world, many of them simply contradict each other.

For example, this novel has both game elements, such as levels, and takes place in a very dark fantasy land. The game elements almost infantilize the rest of the novel. It is very hard to take a novel seriously when the main goal of the main character is to "level up."

These elements also diminish the main character's own efforts. No matter how much he works, he physically cannot get stronger unless he goes to a shrine and prays. It is unrealistic it entirely worsens the novel as a whole.

This is merely one of the many elements in this clustered novel that ultimately make it a worse reading experience.

Despite that, this novel still holds many good scenes and lines that make me unable to give it anything below 4 stars.

I would recommend this novel if you are into the VRMMORPG genre, otherwise, there are better usages of your time. <<less

A solid start, well within ranks of other quality writings, I'm excited to see more.

The character being half undead, and such leaves us with very interesting paths forward.

***

I've gotten through more of it, and the quality is great.

***
The quality keeps getting better, I really like the developments so far, 1/21/24 a really charming protagonist. The elements of what happens when he dreams, I think that's wholesome as heck as well it could seed some serious depth into the later arcs.

**
Simply put if you don't like this, you have questionable taste, or have been such a glutton that you're indifferent even to dishes well made.

Oh I like this very flavorful

side characters have depth little story of their own to make me acknowledge them as a being and real personality not a cardboard cut out which is can't be say for a lot of novel I have read

The flow of story also look very promising. Make me want to read more 👌

[c.77]

Still enjoy reading every chapters of this, the way MC try to hold tight on his humanity is so heartwarming and his open mindness is so refreshing to read about

One of those slow burn mercenary type of novels but the story is actually progressing and leading to an overarching goal, something I feel a lot of them lack. It's also interesting to see how the main character progresses both power-wise and morality-wise. Beyond that it's an interesting read with pretty good writing and a pretty good translation, can definitely recommend it so far.

Fresh premise. We are dropped in the middle of the journey rather than at the beginning. The negative comment criticise the MC inhumane nature that is actually the whole point of the MC's character device. A half dead soul with a broken memory most likely reincarnated, died and revived into a game world that was already ended or halfway to the end.

MC's inhuman tendencies are mixed with his journey of rediscovering and losing connections. A back and forth between undead instincts and his fixation with staying "human". A concept the... more>> author describe as vague.

We do know the MC is special in some way and the Goddesses and Demons can tell, however the mystery remains.

If you enjoy show not tell type of stories you'll like this. If you have trouble reading between the lines, it can be quite confusing at times <<less

Honestly I rate this about a 2.5, so I could've rated it 2 or 3, but I stopped reading it for almost a week and the novel was so unremarkable that I got it confused for another novel for a bit. It's not that the novel is bad, it's just really average.

On face value, the novel is about someone who transmigrated into a game character who's half-undead and so his undead side is fighting his human side, like good vs evil is inside the same body. However, even though the... more>> author is trying to depict him like he's someone with good morals that are trying to fight his evil instinct, it's more like the character has ambiguous morality and is just rational about things, and his evil instincts are just there.

Spoiler

For example, in like the first or second chapter the MC is like "I'm not going to suck people's souls or else I'll lose my humanity". Then a couple chapters later, without any internal conflict or anything, basically says, "Yeah, bad guys have no rights" and sucks their souls. A better novel would have the character be like the naive priestess and slowly become the character he is now.

[collapse]

Spoiler

Another example is that the goddess of Night treats him nicely, but he just treats it as a business relationship. It's not even like the he knows something about her so he's wary, iirc he says something like there's no reason for her to be friendly and that he's going to treat it like a give-and-take situation.

[collapse]

(the events in these spoilers happen super early on, and honestly not worth putting in spoiler boxes, but just in case)

It's not that the examples I showed are something inherently bad, nor is having a rational MC, it's that it's not what the premise is or should be. It's like we're reading an MC who's from the middle or end of a novel with this premise. Like the author just copied the MC without any of the nuance.

For what it's worth, the novel does have characters with distinct personalities though. <<less