Runeblade

Blurb

He only wanted a class. Instead he restarted the apocalypse. The world will pay the price.

Kaius has spent years working to awaken his family’s forbidden Legacy Skills, powerful and vanishingly rare skills forged through methods that wars have been fought to obtain. Even with his father pushing him to his limit, Kaius has barely managed to merge the first two.

Now those skills and his training are the only thing keeping him alive. A bandit ambush forces Kaius into the Great Depths, a world-spanning mega dungeon, and he’s trapped in a place where survival demands a class he doesn’t yet have, with exits held shut by ancient horrors.

To escape, Kaius will have to manage a feat no one without a class has survived: slaying one of the Guardians that defend the exits. But the guardian is a distant concern, as the Depths are rich with danger. He realizes that might be exactly the crucible he needs to collect all of his merged skills before class selection. And, just maybe, force the world on the path of progress after stagnating for far too long.

Thoughts

As of writing this, I’ve read the published two ebooks and two more books of content on Royal Road.

Alrighty, this is a long series, but I’ll not to make a review too long. For a quick summary, the closest comp to this is probably Defiance of the Fall in my mind, so if you’re a big fan of that series, you’ll enjoy Runeblade.

Like DotF, we start with our MC stranded, alone, and up struggle creek. Only their indominable willpower, astounding proclivity to violence, and insane thrill of being challenged keep them alive. It doesn’t take long (thankfully) for the silent-MC problem to be resolved when Porkchop arrives - a sentient greater beast (think of a bear but fluffier) who forms the other half of the fight-obsessed duo of powerhouses. Dialogue between the two is good, and better when its not focused on systems, skills, or LitRPG system mechanics and we get the cultural and world-building side of things. The party eventually expands to include a solar mage, and then later on a Skyrim stealth archer, and each addition is welcome and helps expand both party dynamics and the wider world.

The wider plot has two parts. There’s the personal vengence theme (after all, Chapter One had unfortunate father death) and the whole “Oops Kaius and Porkchop kicked off a little apocalypse I hope everyone survives”. That said, I’m four books in (and these are very very big books, like 300-400k words) and both plot points haven’t moved much from the start. The plot has potential, but it’s going to take a long time to get there. Also very DotF-like.

I think the slowness (or moreso verbosity of writing) is going to be the biggest split in readers. Some will love all the words. Others (normally where I stand given I’ve called DotF and a bunch of others out on this) will prefer tighter things. For example, book two on hindle is a whopping 1400 pages, but the plot of the second book is effectively “Kaius and friends escape the dungeon, visit the town, get kidnapped, and escape. A monster swarm/migration happens at the end.” Now, if you’ve read book two, yes, yes, many other little things happen. Monster kill requests from the delvers guild. Lots of little fights. But for me, those 1400 pages could easily have been trimmed down to 700 pages. If we wanted to focus more on the plot and remove conflicts or fights which didn’t progress global or character-specific plot, we’d get it down to 400.

In terms of standard 125k-word book size, I’ve read about 10 books worth, and yet integration hasn’t progress from the first phase Kaius and Porkchop start. I still don’t know whats happening with the beast tide plot. Or other cities. The writer is prolific (like 5 chapters a week or more, ridiculous), so there’s tons more to read, I just want more to happen outside of system musings and fights. For one final example, at the end of book one, there’s a big fight (challenging enemy but a basic fight with an ogre that hits shit with a club), and then this jumps into class selection. The fight is four chapters long, filled with detailed blow-by-blow accounts of this very long fight (health works as effective quick healing in this system, so fights are very grindy where you have to wear beasts down to deplete their health pool and then they’re much easier to kill as they stop regenerating from wounds). The class selection (and musings over alternative classes, and class skill selection, etc), then takes up the next TEN chapters. That’s a lot, so crunchy system lovers will be screaming with joy.

Alright, enough about that, you get the picture. The worldbuilding in the series has some good potential (just got to get Kaius out into the wider world). The conflicts between the noble houses and the guild, elves in the Aboral Sea, the dwarves somewhere in their fortress towns, the struggle of frontier villages to survive, the monsters lurking in the high-mana areas, there’s a lot scaffolded out that hopefully we’ll get to explore soon.

It’s been fun so far, and I’m taking a break after book four because I’ve promised other people I’ll read specific books. Anyone who likes the more system-introspective LitRPG-slow-slide-into-cultivation, slower plot progression with an absolute glut of fights, you’ll enjoy this series.