Infinite Competitive Dungeon Society

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The story follows Kang Shin from South Korea, who is raised on tales of fighting monsters by his eccentric father. One day he learns it’s more than just a tale. Follow this brutish lad on his journey as Earth is exposed to outside forces and unparalleled existences.

Associated Names
One entry per line
ICDS
무한경쟁던전사회
Related Series
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Recommendations
Everyone Else is a Returnee (21)
Seoul Station’s Necromancer (10)
The Second Coming of Avarice (8)
The Tutorial Is Too Hard (8)
Dimensional Sovereign (3)
Stop, Friendly Fire! (3)
Recommendation Lists
  1. Awesome Novels I've Read
  2. Op Mc / simulation systems
  3. Novels I have read
  4. Spirits | Espiritos
  5. Lets Climb A Tower (Korean)

Latest Release

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116 Reviews sorted by


Reindeer
Reindeer rated it
July 18, 2017
Status: c41
There's nothing interesting to look forward to and what currently happens doesn't really make you that interested. The goals are only to get stronger and save the world.

Half of the cast of characters are harem members. Said harem members mysteriously fall in love with MC for no reason. They always blush or stutter when talking with MC. All of them are tsunderes of different levels, always somehow getting mad at MC.

The comedy skits are Japanese level of cringyness. If you don't like Japanese dialogues like me, don't read.

Foreshadowing the future,... more>> for me, kinda made it like it's all going to go all fine anyway, why bother reading.

There's no actual mature person, everybody acts like teenagers, even the father and the 300+ shop owner noona. Characters don't act their identities. 300+ shop noona is an easy to fall teenager, strongest person on earth is naive, guy who assumingly spent 2 yrs on the dungeons doesn't know how to communicate with others.

The leveling system isn't that clear. It was stated that the lvl 15 him could take care of 3 lvl 10 hims, but the lvl 50 strongest person on earth is shocked to see lvl 20 him one hitting spiders. He grinds floor masters and has best equipment, but random guy with claymore is physically stronger than him. <<less
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obsessed-reader
obsessed-reader rated it
August 21, 2017
Status: c54
Take away the romance tag. Romance tag implies that there will be a romance. Idk about you but a beyond dense MC, who increased his intelligence but his intelligence never rose, that doesn't like any girl except his little f**king sister does not mean romance. This novel has such a cool idea but obviously this author sucks. It gets really boring. Also having a beyond dense character and hundreds of girls flocking to him but since he is dense he is like why are all these annoying girls here might... more>> be cute to you but it doesn't make it a good story. This is your typical japanese anime with the dense MC where no actual character development happens and him loving his sister in a very creepy way. But if you all like this type of story than good for you and someone needs to keep your little sister away from you. <<less
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Venalitor
Venalitor rated it
September 6, 2017
Status: c138
TL;DR - Ban*l and superficial

Was pretty interesting until MC finished Dungeon's first boss. After that his power soars in relation to the conflict he faces and while there are some minor setbacks, they appear to only be there to fill a quota and have no real effect on the story.

The sis-con subplot is a waste of time that just requires a character to be present that has no impact on the story. The sister is only present to give the MC and illusion of depth. The MCs character doesn't change... more>> throughout the story after some very early backwards character development (he was more interesting with int 5 when he was completely s*upid than after he boosted it and just became a dunce). He's also very uncharitable considering his massive wealth and how little he does for others, even those he considers friend.
Spoiler

At one point, our Sis-con MC has a chance to grab beauty enhancing drugs for his sister that would also make her more physically capable, but passes it up because he's in a rush somehow. He is also very tightfisted with his money, being very reluctant to purchase from the dungeon shopkeeper caring for him and some 4000 others. It's dumbfounding she of them fell for him (when he had a very poor charm stat no less). It's odd he's so tightfisted since his father was making enough throughout his son's life to support their family very well.

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Ultimately his character boils down to: get stronger (his sole love), help friends (if it's easy), save people (if it's practical), and be awkward around girls (eternally).

Speaking of the girls, they all are basically the same flavor of dainty, flustered, easily angered, high-strung, and embarrassed with a few minor personality quirks, a fighting style, and a skin unique to each them (yeah, re-skinned versions of the same character). None of them with a tentative exception of a princess of another world are given any reason to fall for the untalkative, brusque MC except for his magically enhanced appearance and brainwashing charm stat.
Spoiler

The princess' reason is magical foresight. Pretty weak as even at the point I quit reading they know almost nothing about eachother. And she's pretty much the first 'love interest' he meets, though she doesn't come into the story properly till probably around chapter 80.

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Comedy... Nonexistant, so far as I can tell. It's the schlockiest of eastern styled schlock. There obviously are jokes, but they are incredibly uninspired and only hampered further by the lack of investment the poor characterization demands. Augh! Hot weather and smoke filled skies must have addled my brain to read so much of this. I didn't even get tricked into going so far into SAO and that didn't have anywhere near so many reasons to not be invested. Hell, Kirito is deep when put side to side with Kang. Anyway, you may get a few laughs if you aren't used to this style of humor, but if you are... Oh, I think I just discovered why I've been so quick to bed these last few days!

I believe the crowning turd of this steaming pile though, is that for all of this to take place, the author wants the reader to buy that all the other explorers of the dungeon are absolutely, irredeemably imbecilic. That the way the MC goes through the dungeon, soloing each boss and farming their stat enhancing drugs thus making advancement easier and materialistically rewarding, hasn't been common sense for millennia is mind boggling. It's like the MC is the only one there who actually wants to get stronger and incredibly wealthy.
Spoiler

With each world under threat from some form of monster or demon race and the dungeon explorers the only ones who can effectively combat that threat it becomes extra unbelievable.

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The author tries to explain it at one point in story, but I couldn't make any sense of it. Something about being given greater recognition the higher they advance in the dungeon, but also given more responsibility in fighting the invaders, so the higher they advance the less attachment they feel to their homeworld. Of course this is a problem entirely solved by the MC's solo everything strategy.

Related to the last, the dungeon starts giving Mr. MC achievement for doing things that have become incredibly easy for him. The semi-intelligent dungeon give's out achievements and titles for essentially taking a walk in a park.
Spoiler

Yes, clearing five floors of the dungeon in seven hours would have been impressive. If the mobs could have damaged the MC... or even hit them without his explicit consent.

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So, yeah... It's not Ouran High School Host Club. It's not Overlord. It's not even Isekai Maou to Shoukan Shoujo Dorei Majutsu or SAO. It's just Ban*l and Superficial. One Star... I miss-cl**ked. <<less
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CreamPuffDelights
CreamPuffDelights rated it
November 15, 2017
Status: c192
I liked this novel. Could even say I loved it like I loved Everyone Else is a Returnee. At least for the first 100 or so chapters, or more specifically, up till the point where he becomes somewhat self sufficient and the romance becomes more obvious.

Let me explain why my feelings for this novel changed though. To start off, the novel was great. It had all the necessary ingredients to be as great as EER, a somewhat dumb but proactive MC that noticeably grows stronger. Sweet and substantial dialogue between... more>> the MC, other dungeoneers and especially Lorreta, the shop NPC who turned out to be not so NPC-ish after all. Altogether? pretty dang close to 5 star level. It was fresh and there was great potential, the idiot MC knew he was an idiot and was trying to fix his problems.

The selfish but realistic attitude of not sticking his nose into the Earth saving business unless there was something material in it for him bugged me a little but it made some sense. I mean, if your damn world was overrun with monsters, its not like you or your family could survive for too long without a home either right (There ARE ways to do this, but we don't find out until much later so the impression is if the Earth gets overrun, everyone dies) ? But since there were other local heros doing the work for you, I could see the reason behind his selfish decision.

And then he unlocked his class and things went downhill rapidly. Grinding bosses over and over and over again makes for horrible reading, so at least the author had the sense to make it go by quick. However, that is offset by the impression that the MC is lucky and gets power for no goddamn reason at all since his efforts are not actually described. Skills come in one after another until all they are just another statistic on an imaginary page that devolves combat scenes to a simple question of: "Does my skill counter yours? If not, can my raw stats outright ignore it anyway?"

The romance part is even more stiffling. Lorreta I understand given she's one of the few characters to have any consistent contact with the MC over his career as a dungeoneer. Now lets take a look at all the other harem candidates.

Fire witch: Met twice. Fall in love on the third meeting. Confesses on the fourth, upgrades to undying love no matter if its not returned on the fifth. Each meeting is barely substantial enough to last 3 chapters and each meeting is less of a meeting and more of a "a dungeon just popped up, and I need help destroying this MC" kinda thing.

Foreign world priestess: This one is even better than the fire witch. They meet once as noobs. They insult and fight each other. Boom, she falls in love and they basically ignore each other for 100 chapters. Their second meeting sets the tone for the rest of their interactions, wherein the priestess finally realizes that she is horribly outmatched simply because the MC is a Hero and hence by default, has a rather unbalanced stat growth distribution that puts him head and shoulders above every other dungeoneer simply because someone somewhere decided he'd make a good hero.

Protip: It's chapter 192. He still isn't.

the author then gives us a plot twist wherein the priestess' sister who was actually once a potential harem candidate, turns traitor and backstabs the MC and the priestess. Sounds like a good way to add some depth to the relationship right?

Noooope. First, the MC discovers the betrayal, and I can't say that there was no foreshadowing whatsoever, but it is so small and insignificant that there might as well be none at all. Second: After the priestess essentially loses her world, her family and her friends, she becomes a leech in the most literally sense of the word. There is no reflection or analysis on what it means for someone to lose their world other than a short paragraph, and said priestess simply becomes another moon orbiting around the MC simply because.

i wont go into details for all the other harem members, but considering there is currently at least 8 of them, well... let's just say there actually isn't that much detail at all.

Lastly, 12 year old girl. She was mentioned in some reviews above and she's also one of the main downfalls of this novel, but for a different reason. She's rather precocious and arrogant, but definitely well meaning. Selected as the one who bestows super powers to all the local fighters, she basically thinks herself as a saint, and the MC as her, and the Earth's Hero. Logic holds up so far, since its explained in story how she knows the MC is a hero, so she as the saintess and future wife of MC (because that's how all fairy tales end up amirite?) decides to mobilize her very large and very rich family's resources to build a massive organization with enough manpower to support the MC in saving the world.

Sounds great right?

What does the MC do?

Throw a tantrum on the spot.

Why?

He doesn't like people making decisions for him.

What conclusion does he come to?

Since he doesn't like being manipulated like a puppet, he must become strong enough that he can do whatever he likes.

What does he do for the next 50 chapter?

Do exactly what she's been doing.

How does he do it?

In a less effective, far more aggressive and ineffective manner in which he manages to insult every other person on earth, massacre most if not all the rankers on Earth who do not like his methods, bind all those that obey him to his Guild, and then flip everyone else off simply because he is that strong.

Ladies and gentlemen, our Hero.

The less said about his summons, the better. Cute moeblobs that serve little purpose other than power boosts and add some diabetes level sweetness to an already watery story. <<less
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Suzzie
Suzzie rated it
July 1, 2017
Status: c16
As expected of the author of Everyone Else is a returnee. Filled with nonstop dungeon explorations and comedic moments makes this novel very interesting. Will wait for more chapters to be translated before I start again... hehe
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woahchocolatemilk
woahchocolatemilk rated it
August 29, 2017
Status: c135
Starts off nice. But that's the best of the novel. The rest is just downhill since more and more problems appear and some even get shoved down your throats.

... more>>
Spoiler

First of all, we start with a fresh beginning with the dungeon system that we all know and love with some minor differences. Nothing new but a working formula, it was alright but nothing amazing. Then the novel becomes a rinse & repeat.

Spoiler

We have the MC discovering that fully farming a boss gets you a special price. It is interesting at few occurrences but then you discover it is the same thing since dungeon 5. Right now he just finished dungeon 50 I think, same formula for the dungeon as dungeon 5, so the author has repeated that around 10 times now.

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That's minus points but it doesn't fail the novel. After all it can still be good with a repeated formula, only 1 problem which is the fact that the author decides not to create a sense of danger/urgency/.... (feeling that gets the reader running some adrenaline), basically from reading chapter 5 I knew what would happen in chapter 50 since he doesn't change anything. He adds new components to the story but never decides to have someone die/MC lose/ MC in any proper danger.

And the worst problem of the story, the ladies. Their function is to fall in love with yer boi MC. I think its like 5/6 people who have fallen for him already in a bit more than 100 chapters. There isn't even any plot or reasons for it, just the author tells us how the "Hero" of a world has much higher charm than other people to hide his plothole which is the fact that all the girls, no matter their age, are all pure and never been in a relationship/or off a relationship for 1000's of years like that Lorretta bit*h but the second the MC appears and says hi, they want to climb into his bed. Forget your personality/ feelings, this guy has high charm so you will fall for him in 1 chapter of meeting him.

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Overall, a long review in sht english, but don't read the novel, it's a downhill battle with yourself to see when you'll quit. Will you quit when it starts to get sht (around chapter 40 if I remember rightly) or will you quit when it continues to worsen. If you beat my record of 135 chapters, kudos to you but you have none of my respect. <<less
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toyyoda
toyyoda rated it
December 22, 2017
Status: c230
I started off loving this novel - it has a great premise, as expected from the author of Everyone else is a Returnee. This is the reason why I'm giving this novel 4 stars instead of 3, or even 2.

Because everything goes downhill from there, for the following reasons:

    1. A constantly growing harem of bland girls, that are all attracted to him because of his OPness and no other reason. I might be biased against harems, but surely this is 'poor' by harem standards, with every female character basically made from the same cookie-cutter, only decorated differently. It was when I reached the 'vote for your favourite female lead' that I realised none of them are likeable.
    2. Poor development of MC. In my opinion, he does nothing admirable apart from killing monsters and being strong enough so that no one can oppose him. His defining character traits are being calm, confident, strong, and nothing else. The novel goes from challenging and entertaining grinds in the dungeon and going through actual hardship to get achievements, to generic world-saving with a terribly fake harem.
    3. Recycled plot of 'an enemy pops up which puts all of Earth/another world in danger, but our MC is just strong enough to beat it, hence he gets amazing abilities and rewards which coincidentally synergise with his existing abilities and will counter the next enemy that comes along'. Battles are nothing beyond a display of MC's abilities and showing how he's stronger than these Goliath-like creatures.
I don't think this can be boiled down to different writing styles, because the characterisation and plot simply falls short from Everyone Is a Returnee. Overall, it's a great read to start with, but don't look for any commitment, and feel free to put it down any time as it does not get better.
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Reputation
Reputation rated it
May 21, 2018
Status: c352
ICDS begins so well: quirky cast, character growth, decent world-building. Yet, the story drags down and slumps over around the halfway point where he gains most of his harem members.

The harem literally killed the story for me. Instead of proper plot development, the author sinks in a massive amount of dialogue trying to balance each love interest. It’s a problem of quantity versus quality honestly.

Ever had your favorite manga series axed? ICDS feels like it was axed because of the breakneck speed the author drove the conclusion home. Makes you... more>> wonder how much of the story was cannibalized by the incessant dialogue. <<less
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BQDJ
BQDJ rated it
November 24, 2017
Status: c224
Interesting at the start but the author couldn't cope with character building after 150, there are too many characters introduced and they don't have a personality. There's just the hero and the girls, he can't make a decision about the main girl, and they all treat him the same way calling him "husband" when he doesn't show interest, typically cringe and chunnibyou, it's getting to a point where when there's dialogue with different girls at the same place, we don't know who speaks. I understand now the part in Everyone... more>> Else Is A Returnee where the author explained that his readers called his previous novel's characters too plain, he learned his lessons and reduced the amount of characters and made them a bit different from one another, ICDS is just a big fail and the draft for EER. And EER isn't the best novel either but it's a lot more readable, I got through the end at least, here I just can't, I'll just stop reading. <<less
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Fluffums
Fluffums rated it
November 2, 2017
Status: --
I liked this early on. I could even say I loved it while the protagonist was an orc. It's when the main character interacted with... well... anyone, that my opinion of the story started dropping. The absolute arrogance of this guy, except it turns to indecisive wussiness in front of his harem. The harem members who seem like they might be interesting until they get added to the harem, at which point their traits turn into just "I love the main character and will do whatever he wants!" The people... more>> who aren't harem or family members... barely show up. I think most of them just exist to help push harem members to the main character, actually.

If it was just this much, I'd still read it because the system was fairly interesting, but then the 12yo blind girl in a wheelchair shows up. The way the main character treats her is inexcusable and inexplicable to me, and the way the author treats her character the second time she shows up made me drop the series entirely.

Spoiler

a 12 year old girl from a wealthy family is let out of the house wearing a see-through dress (she's blind and in a wheelchair, so you can't just say "well, it's her choice" no, she also has bodyguards following her so they all accompany this little girl in a wheelchair wearing this see-through dress and it's just creepy) and then she's left alone in a room with an adult man on top of that.

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There was no reason to treat her like that, author. It was 100% unnecessary and just made everything creepy. <<less
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ArCiel
ArCiel rated it
September 14, 2017
Status: c163
Reading those previous reviews that hates the Novel just because it's Harem, that's like a vegan talking sh*t about bacon and gave every bacon dish 3 star. Dude, it was not for you in the first place so all you said is full of bias, might as well don't review.

Now Enough ranting, lets go into the review.... for more rant

First of all, the novel gave similar vibe to Death March, Arifueta and Every One Else is a Returnee. The MC works hard on the early stages until he grind his... more>> stats, receive cheat titles and then snowball to grind even more. To those who says: "Hey its a walk in the park.", author did explain that MC achievement is something impressive even with his ability
Spoiler

and thus he receive those pots while potato witch doesn't.

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For the heroines themselves, they each have their own screen time to improve the character depth, sure some of you don't agree, but hey this isn't a K-drama that only revolves in Romance. Main Focus is Action and Adventure, sub focus is on the Romance and Comedy. And for those who says they are too 1-2 dimensional, please refers to harem CN novels and you will see a real 1-2 dimensional Chara: Cold and almighty that transforms to warm girl in love looking in reverence to her Man.

For those who keep blabbering that: Hah, MC too dense, so annoying, typical jap MC etc etc. I'm currently at ch 163 and I assure u, he realize the girls feelings,
Spoiler

but after the dimensional mercenary arc thing, he decides to become stronger so that he could live without relying on others.

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so Him having difficulty in accepting the advances of other girls are, following that logic, perfectly normal.

For those saying MC is full of contradiction, hey here my personal thought about the MC behavior for you who skimmed through the chapter you deemed annoying:

Spoiler

MC train and go to dungeon to achieve his and his father dream of mana -> MC learns the truth that he is a hero which shouldn't die -> MC hates it because he feels that people look at his achievement because he is a hero and not vice versa -> MC hates it because some one suggest that he should sacrifice others and he must hide so he don't die-> MC trains even harder so those won't happen.

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Well, again this is not some LOTR epic fantasy (Nothing against LOTR, infact thats my favorite story of all time) in which main characters struggles, filled with all the disadvantages in the world and yet managed to have an epic comeback, people dies, and even more people dies. so if you expect that kind of story, well this is not your bacon. If you don't want Harem, there is a tag on the left side somewhere, read it before you read the novel and spare those who love Harem from your rants.

If you love a harem light novel in which the MC appears to pretty much snowballing each stages with a little bit of twist and comedy in between, then this is for you. <<less
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Commentator
Commentator rated it
June 28, 2017
Status: --
Very interesting, it is face slapping comedy so far. It's rare KR comedic novel.

Story about boy who dreaming to become explorer on dungeon that no one knows about it's existence.

MC is naive but strong, thanks to training from his father since he's young.
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Cardman001
Cardman001 rated it
June 3, 2018
Status: Completed
In the beginning, I thought the WN had a lot of potential to be one of my favorites, but as the story progressed, I became disappointed and lost interest in the plot. In fact, I think I would rate this story a

2.5/5, but I rounded down, because I feel like the writing is just not good; it didn't really evoke any emotions or tension out of me. I've never read anything by this author before, but I have read other Korean novels, and it certainly does seem like lots of... more>> them have similar characters/stories/worlds. Below, I'll give a brief summary/commentary on the story, followed by a list of pros/cons, and then my final thoughts.

Spoiler

The story in ICDS follows Kang Shin, who starts out as a teenager on Earth without many abilities, but throughout the story becomes stronger and stronger at a rapid pace. He powers up primarily through dungeon crawling, while getting some benefits from fighting the enemies invading Earth. He's basically the stereotypical hero, who seems to grow from naive and mana-less, to mature, decisive, and overpowered. For the first part of the story, his struggle to grow and the clear distinction between his power and his enemies' power was interesting. Then, he began to grow to the point where no fight had tension anymore. Even though he went in thinking "I might die" or "I was tense", there was no real trouble or possibility of him dying. It's incredibly repetitive, and the loop of dungeon -> Earth -> dungeon becomes quite boring, but most of the fights are pretty descriptive and intricate, even if the ending seems like it came out of nowhere.

The plot itself is standard to this kind of story. Monsters are invading Earth, and Earth isn't the only world that's being attacked. The way to level up is to go through the dungeon, and to defeat the attackers that come into someone's home world. There are a variety of abilities, items, and enemies, so even though they're not all that unique, the quantity keeps anything from being boring or overused. That being said, the explanation for how and why everything happens, and the ending in itself, is incredibly forced and done just to continuously keep the reader guessing, rather than having something that is logical and makes sense.

To add to this, the author withholds information in parts of the story which are relevant to what's happening. Since the story is told from the MC's perspective, it's incredibly weird for him to somehow say "it was all part of my plan" several chapters after. It's not an unreliable narrator, it's simply poor storytelling. There are "clues" to figure out how it all happened, but it's a pointless endeavor anyway: why try to be secretive with the reader when even the MC knows what's going on?

The side characters are pretty one-dimensional and generally aren't that useful in the big fights anyway. The harem of women that the main character gathers constantly ruins any kind of tension or suspense that may be built. In fact, the way the characters (including Shin) act is very childish and annoying, and the dialogue is incredibly basic and filled with "witty" quips. It's a very stereotypical type of dialogue and character portrayal from what I've seen in Korean novels, and there's nothing special here.

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Pros:

    • The monsters, skills, and items that the MC sees throughout the novel, while not necessarily unique, have enough variety that it won't bore the reader (even if some of them are quite overpowered).
    • There is a lot of fighting in the novel, and the fights are actually quite detailed and described in an interesting way. It might get a bit repetitive, but this is definitely a strength of the novel.
    • The beginning is interesting, filled with both victories and defeats. It shows how the MC, albeit powerful, still has a long way to go. At this point, the situations the MC faces still have some sort of challenge.
Cons:

    • There is basically no tension or serious atmosphere in the novel. In the beginning of the novel, fights can be a bit risky, but the premise of the dungeon is that you can't truly die, so it doesn't quite matter. Once the MC becomes strong enough to fight regularly outside the dungeon, there's no more tension, as he's well-prepared, and there's no chance of him dying or suffering a setback. Even the atmosphere in the story lacks gravity. Every time there might be a serious conversation, someone immediately starts making jokes or clever retorts. Even during fights, the MC constantly says one-liners and jokes around, and the enemies' dialogue is standard and uninteresting. Somehow, the author still thinks it's a good idea to remind us that the character is feeling tension or that the situation is extremely dangerous, despite the fact that it truly isn't. The lack of tension makes the novel incredibly boring and lost my interest, especially towards the end. This is the biggest

      problem with the novel in my opinion.
    • The entire novel somehow seems like fan service. This contributes to the above lack of tension and removes any kind of seriousness in the story. The harem of women constantly argue and are constantly interrupting important discussions by trying to compete for the MC's love. Not to mention having a harem, even the dialogue during fights is one-liners and quips that becomes annoying very quickly. Add to this numerous gundam references and very one-dimensional, black-and-white characters and enemies. I can only imagine that all of this is too much fan service even for the author's fans.
    • The author withholds information throughout the novel. Several times, there will be instances where a twist occurs and the MC basically says "but it was all part of the plan". It's just bad writing if the MC does something big, that we as the readers, have to figure out. If it was done in a different way, perhaps I would feel differently about it, but I certainly didn't enjoy it.
      Spoiler

      Kang Shin uses Sky God's Play/Wold Trickery several times without telling the reader, only for the author to comment "there were tons of clues!" It's completely unnecessary and is simply a way to knock the reader out of their immersion.

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    • The ending was pretty forced and contained twist after twist. It really felt like the author was struggling to make the ending interesting, so he kept leading the reader down the wrong path only to then break all expectations, and lead the reader somewhere else. The worst part is that this was planned, and it seems like this sort of twist ending is a common occurrence for this author, which is somewhat disappointing.
    • There are some plot holes, but for most of the story, these are minor points that I wouldn't hold against the novel (as these sorts of things happen in most WNs). That being said, some explanations towards the end basically make the previous actions of characters completely out-of-character, pointless, or illogical. There are also lots of unexplained questions by the end. Still, these are the smaller qualms I had, which says a lot about the novel I suppose.
Overall, I enjoyed 100-150 chapters or so, but afterwards, the novel felt very repetitive, boring, and simply had writing and plot devices which completely turned me off from reading. I finished this novel, but considering that this is supposedly "more of the same" from the author, there's a low chance I'll pick up anything of his in the future. Still, if you like these sorts of Korean novels, and you're mostly interested in descriptive battles, overpowered heroes, and hero harems, then this would be a good fit for you. <<less
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Four-kung
Four-kung rated it
March 3, 2018
Status: c143
Dropped! Can only read at the beginning. This novel is Boring as usual. Korean novels love to link with game system and Dungeon theme. Nothing new. No need to read this novel if you read others with similar themes previously. Many Korean adventure/fantasy novels usually have the same MC personality. That is selfish, self-centre and stingy. MC in this novel is similar too. Nothing new. Author wants to create MC to be special and unique. He seems weak at the beginning but somehow cheat at the end. Ex. Shop, drop... more>> loots ad etc. At the end, he is as strong as god. Nothing new. Example of similar novels:

Everyone Else is a Returnee (Very similar MC personality, unique MC with cheating with help of fairy)

Seoul Station's Necromancer (MC is lunatic, stingy and extremely self-centre, boring dungeon theme and cheat with double warrior and necromancer job)

Dimensional Sovereign/reincarnator (MC is lunatic and boring game system). The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor and Ark (mc- extremely stingy, self-centre, game system with cheat on MC job). These examples are shown to assist other leader. If you have already read one of these novels, then no need to read this one. Nothing special about this novel. Just change characters' name but the story is similar. You only need to pick up one of Korean novels and read it. Then, enough. The rest is the similar. Hopefully, someone will look for any Korean adventure/fantasy novel with any new aspect? However, I believe that these very boring Korean novels will keep coming out. This may be because these novels are similar so it may be easier to translate to get patrons/donations. <<less
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wait321
wait321 rated it
February 20, 2018
Status: c133
This series is rather boring. The hero levels up and solves problems without any trouble. Except for the very beginning, there’s no situation where he’s in any danger. Supposedly he is all the time but, maybe it’s the casual tone or quick resolutions, it never seem like it.
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keklel
keklel rated it
July 18, 2017
Status: c49
Spoiler

Suddenly, Ren asked me a question.
“Are you dating the shopkeeper?”
It took me a moment to process what he said. After standing around as if I suffered from a lag, I barely managed to reply.
“... What?”
“No matter how I look at it, that was a lover’s quarrel.”
Our conversation from just now? I suddenly thought of a possibility. Ren certainly had a masculine face and a healthy body. But...
“Ren, have you been single your entire life?”
“H-How did you know?”
I was right. I could tell because I was the same. Damn it, I didn’t want to relate to him like this!
“You think any man and woman talking friendly are in a relationship, right?”
“Huk!”
“If you see a girl staring at you, you fix your hair and think about what to say when she starts walking toward you, right?”
“Huk!”
I planned to continuously tease Ren as we walked to the boss room. But because I felt like I was tormenting myself, I stopped.

This novel is quite close to The Tutorial Is Too Hard in terms of overall atmosphere and setting. However, I feel that it is slightly inferior due to a few problems.

The first is that there is no seriousness in the novel. I dislike slice of life, so this is a minus for me. There has been 50 chapters already and there has been zero mentions of anyone doing anything bad ever. The author tried to excuse this by saying the dungeon only chooses those with a good personality, but what about the ability users? Are they "chosen" for having a good personality as well? Seems pretty strange to me. Especially after Guardian became corrupt and profit-seeking instead of seeking to protect humanity from monsters, it seems that ability users aren't all saints, yet there is no mention of any evil ability user even though these must exist. Every character whom the MC interacts with is a good person. Every single one. Even if you are the most reclusive hermit, if you live in a big city you are bound to encounter a thief or a scammer at least once in your life, but not the MC. Every girl he meets is tsundere (or dere-dere) for him and nobody ever tries to cheat or betray him. In short, this novel suffers from a lack of villains. I personally don't see why the MC wants to get stronger if he doesn't have a reason to. I mean, his father makes good money just from doing the dungeon level 5, and it's not like they're under threat from monsters or anything, so why go through that much trouble?

The second is that the grinding became a little bit annoying for me by chapter 49. There is no reason to read through the MC fighting with minor monsters in a dungeon where there are no consequences for dying, and even fighting with boss monsters does not seem to teach any lessons that might be useful in future. The Tutorial Is Too Hard also has grinding, but it mixes in interesting things during the grinding that relieves the tedium, for example:

“You must be hunting whole day. Are you not bored of it?”

The response was,

“Are you not bored of living? Life is repetition of daily routines, and I get to repeat what I like to do every day. I don’t get bored of it.”

I became a professional gamer because I liked winning. It was not because I liked playing video games.

This is, for me, what sets The Tutorial Is Too Hard apart from Infinite Competitive Dungeon Society. TTITH is littered with musings on life, whereas ICDS can only be barely considered self-reflective through the jokes. Although the jokes contain hints at a deeper meaning, they never manage to delve as deeply into human nature as TTITH.

Third, and yes, you might laugh at this, but the fight scenes in TTITH are more interesting and better written than the fight scenes in ICDS. Compare the TTITH MC's fight with the lizard woman Idaltaru to the ICDS MC's fight against the lizard knight. In the battle with Idaltaru, although the MC thought up a strategy to win against her gaseous form transformation by using a weak attack to bait out her evasion ability and then following up with his most powerful attack, it didn't work because she went berserk after his provocation and didn't use the evasion ability at all. He only narrowly avoided death by appealing to her love for him. Whereas in ICDS, the MC won against the lizard knight by simply cancelling its attack spell with his own attack and then beat it up using martial arts. And this "spell cancelling" is supposed to be some super special high level technique, wtf! Anyone who has played a video game knows it! The fight against the spider woman was also rather underwhelming - the MC literally just jumped on her and punched her to death. Not very interesting for a boss fight.

This novel does a lot of things fairly well. Firstly, on the humor side, it pulls off a lot of jokes well (like the quote above, from chapter 38) because they are in-character, making fun of the characters' ignorance for example. It does not overuse the jokes too much, for example the MC keeps on forgetting to call back Palludia (a running joke).

Fourth, the MC has to interact with multiple annoying female characters, such as Palludia and Loretta, whose lines are just frankly annoying. Yes, Loretta has her counterpart in TTITH in KiriKiri, but at least TTITH has normal female characters like the archer and the leader of the Order. In ICDS there has not been a single normal female character in the entirety of the first 50 chapters! The author even notes this himself:

Why were all girls around me so strange? There was Yua, who was strange as her cuteness went beyond the realm of humans, Palludia, who after seeing me only once 4 years ago, shamelessly asked me to climb to the 25th floor in just three months, Su Ye-Eun, who had a bigger monsterphobia than ordinary people even with her cheaty stealth ability, and Mastiford, who I couldn’t tell if she wanted to fight me or draw me into her organization... and Loretta too.

Yes, recognizing a problem is not the same as solving it. The fact that the author cannot write a normal female character speaks volumes about the nature of this novel. It is not a serious work. It does not even try to be serious, unlike TTITH with its Representative Federation. The entire story in the 50 chapters so far is just the MC grinding the dungeon along with a few side characters that are literally no more than comic relief.

Also, it is frustrating to read about the MC's plans to hide his identity constantly being thwarted by his comically s*upid father. If hiding your identity was important then wouldn't everybody be doing it? And if it isn't, then what's the point? None of the other dungeon explorers concealed their identities.

Fifth, there are some plot holes that stick out to me. First of all, why does it take years to clear dungeon levels, when the information on how to clear them should be publicly available? The ability to form parties seems incredibly abusable, given how easily higher leveled people can help lower leveled. Of course in the story it is stated that you cannot challenge a lower level boss once you defeat a higher leveled one, but why is it that nobody in the other continents thinks of doing things similar to what the MC did, i.e just staying at a level and helping others get through it through parties? Isn't Palludia supposed to be super important in her continent? So why didn't she have higher leveled people helping her for e.g level 5? Especially given that certain continents are facing life-or-death threats from demon lords? Surely it should be a priority for the high levelled dungeon explorers to teach other people how to level up in the dungeons?

All in all, I think this is not as well written as The Tutorial Is Too Hard and it is not anywhere near as interesting. It's just a dungeon-crawling slice of life basically. I should have stayed away after seeing the Shounen tag.

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ziki
ziki rated it
October 5, 2017
Status: c102
If I wrote the review earlier the score might even been 5 but now that I reached chapter 102, there are way too many things that annoyed me... naturally what annoyed me the most was how the great story about a guy doing dungeons and having zero care about the entire world suddenly started slowly turning into "MC IS OP, MC WILL SAVE THE WORLD, EVERY GIRL MC MEETS FALLS FOR HIM BUT MC IS DENSE (and just to be clear about deffinition of the word. Dense=as*hole character who is... more>> ten-timing every female character that appears in the story and yet not a single of those female characters cares about it)

Now then let me enter a little bit into spoiler territory.

Spoiler

The story starts with MC entering a dungeon (just for sake of it: dungeon = place filled with monsters and bosses. When defeated MC is strengthen gets items, skills and spells.). Before story hits chapter 10 though, the earth experiences the change and monsters and such start appearing in real world, at the same time people with super powers start appear as well. Unlike most idiotic MCs that would go out to save the world, our MC decides to stay at home and level up in dungeon as unlike in real world, in dungeon he is immortal (even if he dies he just needs to wait a week for re-spawn). In any case for few years MC is just doing his missions and interacts with people from other worlds in dungeons with absolute zero care about what happens on earth. At this point the number of potential heroines is 3 so it's not too bad.

Still suddenly the story takes shift. For absolutely no reason what so ever, MC suddenly becomes a hero... not by doing anything mind you but rather by ignoring the world and doing his levelling up. He didn't save anyone, nor did he defeat the big bad boss, no he simply got few achievements and grinned his stats but suddenly the author decided to label him as a "HERO". Soon after, yet again author changes MC and MC suddenly has misgivings about helping people and saving them from dying... worst part of all without any warning before I even noticed MC became a generic dense protagonist that wants to save the world... sigh, where did MC that had zero care about world's problems and just wanted to earn money went to? Putting those two together it's really like two different MCs and two different stories all together.

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In short, what I am raging about is that author butchered the entire plot and it's MC, changing it all into hero's journey to save the world. <<less
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Oukis Lips
Oukis Lips rated it
September 26, 2017
Status: c153
The story is great, the skill/level system is well defined, the characters are somewhat well developed, and the plot doesn't jump around randomly like a child with ADHD like a lot of web novels do. However, the MC has one personality trait that I can't stand: he's a herbivore, y'know, like he runs away when girls confess to him and loses his cool when they make eye contact. This is bad enough in a non-fictional environment, but in the world that this author has created, where 1/100 people have some... more>> sort of charm or mental ability, if the MC doesn't take responsibility for these girls he's eventually going to get NTR'd (although it hasn't happened yet). It kind of ruins the story for me because in my mind even if you're the all-powerful master of the universe, if you run away when a girl confesses to you, you're still worthless. <<less
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trollballz
trollballz rated it
July 13, 2017
Status: c30
Great humor, fun characters, tons of action. ICDS basically sums up why I read Chinese webnovels.

That said, everyone has their own cup of tea, and this may not be yours. If you want a MC who thinks 81 steps ahead, brooks no insult, and slaughters all who oppose him.... this is not that story. If you like "Everyone Else is a Returnee", Arena, or other novels that mix humour with action however, you will certainly like this.
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Dima1
Dima1 rated it
January 8, 2018
Status: --
This is a good novel... it gets a bit repetitive, and if you stop reading it and come back week to week it loses some appeal because harder to remember his 50 skills and be as into it. But it’s short, 2/3 over, how bad could that get? Feels like other world novel but in real world, so no recreating soy sauce and all that nonsense.
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