Minute Mage

As of writing this review, I’ve read all 150 published chapters.

Blurb

Arlan can go back in time by one minute, once per day.

And every time he levels up, he can go back a little further.

But, even with his growing power, Arlan has never been in more danger. Demon magic was never supposed to make its way into the hands of humans, and its original owners would go to any lengths to take it back.

What to Expect:

• Numbers. This is a LitRPG written by someone who loves LitRPGs. It won’t be overwhelming or confusing, but if you dislike the genre, this probably isn’t the story for you. Blue boxes ahead!
• Meaningful progression. Characters are always working to grow more powerful, but doing so is difficult. Level-ups are hard-earned and bring with them meaningful change in characters’ abilities.
• Tactical combat. Fighting is as much a battle of wits as it is a battle of muscle, after all.
• No harems.

Thoughts

As you may, or may not know, I am a bigger sucker for time loops. Now this story doesn’t have the month-scale loops of others like Mother of Learning, instead, Arlan can activate his ability at will (or on death) to go back up to X minutes in time, where X is his rank in the time loop skill.

There are some changes to the above obviously when he keeps developing and ranking the skill up, but I won’t spoiler the choices he gets and the option he picks.

That’s one of the things I liked about this story—there are plenty of choices. They’re not all fake choices (ie: here are two common spells and one legendary spell), when Arlan gets new spells, talents, and upgrade choices, these choices are important and do have a significant impact on the story and how Arlan solves problems.

Because of the time-loops limited lookback time and number of activations, tensions and stakes remain high in the fights. But that doesn’t mean that things get boring, because going back to learn an enemy’s fighting pattern is just a single way Arlan can use the loops, and isn’t always applicable. Instead, you get to watch the MC creatively solve problems by exploiting his loops in different ways.

In terms of characters, we’ve got three primary ones in Arlan’s group. Arlan, Erani, and Ainash (aka the nymph). They have different voices and different goals, but if I’m honest, I enjoyed the small PoV chapters from the Devil more than other non-MC-characters. Xhag, and the culture of hell revealed through his narration, is great. Xhag is clearly number one, and Asmo is at the bottom. Asmo is a power-hungry archer lifted that gives me /r/IAmVerySmart vibes. Of course, I’m not supposed to like this character, as they’re working against the MC, so I guess you got me, Reg, mission accomplished!

I should insert now a brief aside that, to set expectations, this is very much a video-game-logic story, not an epic fantasy with a system. There are video-game rules, like how mages can’t use bladed instruments, to the point where Erani has to get a knife enchanted so she can pick it up. Similarly, there’s a required video-game suspension of disbelief regarding the main plot. To summarise the main plot: the demons want to kill Arlan to recover his OP class. Xhag could have done this in chapter ten if he just projected himself to Arlan and killed him. We already know he can get a 40% projection, that’s enough to kill Arlan with a flick, and Arlan can be located with divination (and has been, numerous times). But, because that would be a short story, Xhag doesn’t. When he finally does this, it’s at a weaker projection and has given Arlan enough time to get strong enough to beat him. It’s a fun fight, but does have you scratching your head as to why this wasn’t the first plan, instead of a massive and pointless invasion of an entire country. So if that’s not what you want in a story, heads up, but if you’re fine with a video-game-like story, it shouldn’t be an issue. That’s why I’m following it: because it’s fun to read, not because the overarching plot line has drawn me in. But if you are wanting a really tight overarching plot line, you may not be too satisfied.

There’s a lot of crunch in the story, and fairly hefty chunks can be devoted to going over spell options or the math of how things work. I skipped over some of the more detailed explanations, but want to take a moment to shout out something amazing. This is the first time I’ve read a serial that has an “Exponential” power… that is actually exponential. I’m a physicist. It hurts me to see exponential solely used as a synonym for “big” or “increasing”. So when I got clarification that the Exponential Reclamation operated as $\text{Regen} \propto 1.01^{\text{Conjuration}}$ I almost shed a happy tear.

See, crunch becomes meaningless if the numbers just don’t matter. But here, they do! Hurray!

As to the pacing, there are lots and lots of fights. The published chapters (aka first 150 as I’m writing this) still have many many levels and ranks to go before they’re going to be able to solve that pesky demon problem, but I’m here for it. Arlan’s growth is insane, and watching him slowly become an OP monster is a delight.

That’s a good summary. It’s a crunchy, video-game-logic, time-loop-filled, LitRPG delight. Go read it.