《Welcome to the Upward Bound System, V.2》Non chapter, Notice
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After putting some thought into the lengthy review of one of my readers and looking back on the story as a whole I have decided to make a true revision instead of continuing this partial attempt.
This will allow me more freedom to add and move around chapters and their contents. It will also allow me to fix a few issues with the math as well as major and minor issue with the story.
Many of you have expressed discontent with how powerful Dante has gotten in only a few days. This is a fair assertion. You have spoke of how far or how slow certain aspects of the story have been and I would like to try and fix those issues properly.
Never let it be said that I do not try to be responsive to the comments, suggestions, and feedback of my readers.
I will apologize now that we're going to be seeing another revision. But as you all have seen with the previous one, with each new iteration the story improves quite a bit.
The new version of chapter 1 will be out on Friday at noon. I don't really have much else to do this week so I will try hard not to procrastinate.
The reviewer who triggered this decision I thank you. Also to pad out this notice I will include his review.
Review from PlasmaticPi
First of all adding side stories to spread things out doesn't really solve the issue of the fast pace when it doesn't actually slow down the pace. Its more like a bad distraction, like your saying "Oh don't worry about this issue, look over here instead for a bit." Its like hoping by the time they turn back around they will have just completely forgotten the issue despite it still staring them in the face. If anything it will just backfire even more because you have the pace so fast and intense and made the reader so invested, and then you just start talking about stuff completely unrelated to the current big event going on. It will just be annoying and make some people skip that chapter entirely, which is bad if you happen to include important info in it.
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Instead what you need to do is just fully slow down by emphasizing how much time the character has and spending more time on what could be considered slice of life or character development stuff. Like that conversation with that other party in the adventurer's guild. You glanced over that in like a second or two, made it entirely a lore dump about system mechanics and stuff, and left us with characters who despite having read the chapter within the past 24 hours I can't remember anything about other than that one had a hidden class and another was a paladin. Can't remember their names, what they look like, what the rest of their classes were, nothing. What that should have consisted of is multiple chapters of them chatting with each other and getting to know each other, talking about how they became a party, how they gained their classes, what they like and dislike about the system, their regrets, maybe a confrontation between the party and the MC once he got aggressive about the whole rank 3 class thing the "Ranger" had followed by each side gaining respect for the other once the reasoning behind the aggression was explained.
Overall it could have been a much more major but slow paced event that showed off a lot of personalities that readers could relate to or gotten invested in and been a nice de-stressing session for the mc. And this is just the first example that came to mind. What about when they first met the Flesh shaper? Like, oh you are interested in my business so I will just show you my life's work out of nowhere? No how about they build a relationship over several visits which culminates in that relationship as the MC shows interest and passion for the business while being a good customer and asking the owner for help with his blood magic. Or what about the Cat? Like instead of him just randomly nearly sacrificing his life for it after just meeting it, he first runs into the cat after having a minor panic attack thinking about all the pressure on him or while getting over the pain from the mana cleansing and it comforting him, and him coming back to visit it a few days in a row to help relax and then sacrificing stuff after finding it wounded during the latest visit. To put it simply you had the MC say that these people aren't NPCs and shouldn't be treated as such, but then you go and do exactly that, making it seem like just greeting random people will lead to them being his friend out of nowhere and giving him stuff for no real cost to him.
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Speaking of, let talk about all the stuff he has been getting. First of all with the items you need to at least hide the extra currently unusable effects stuff like the crown has. Say that the crown's AI or whatever lost memory of some of the effects when it gave up some of its power or intentionally is keeping them hidden until they can be used so people aren't after it as much. Because right now showing all that stuff just makes it seem like op loot he got for no reason other than plot armor. Then there is the skills. Out of like half the skills you have given him, each alone have had entire books based around how op they are and the amount of effort it took to get them, and yet you have just been giving them willy nilly like its candy. I mean if you want to make him a god in another dozen chapters that's fine but that is in no way gonna be good for the book. Its seriously taking any and all suspense out of the book at this point because of how easily he is handed these things and how broken they are. You need to heavily retcon a lot of stuff and hold off on giving it to him until he has actually done something to deserve it such as beating the local hall of the dead. And that should get 1 skill back. Basically what I'm saying is that you are doing the equivalent of blowing your load after only a couple of minutes, which no one is gonna climax to.
Now this is a lot of criticism but its not all bad. Overall the plot is good and the skills and items fit the build of the mc great, you just really, really need to slow the fuck down. If you can do that this has the potential to be something great. I mean seriously you don't see systems or concepts for them this good very often, but at the same time it is very easy to mess up if you don't think things through. Just scale things back and put on the brakes a bit. If you have any questions or comments on this let me know and I will answer what I can.
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The Selection
Former title: Lusarth Fauxun. Roughly two millennia ago, Mana and monsters appeared in the world of Eiruta overnight, forcing all organisms to undergo a selection process; those who could not adapt to the Mana died while the remaining reproduced and lived on. This catastrophic event was recorded in every race living on the continent of Sholoth, a land mass covering half the planet, except the Humans, who seem to harbor a secret. Beyond Sholoth lay the 'Cursed Territory,' where anyone brave enough to venture has never returned... In a safer part of the world, a young Kai recently turns 11 years old and can finally enroll at the Academy. It has been his life-long dream to become an adventurer, alongside friends, exploring the world and fighting monsters. How could this innocent boy end up abandoning his childhood ambitions and instead end up working for Cascabel, an infamous organization that commits the most atrocious crimes? DISCLAIMER: While there's a "Strong Lead" tag, this is not an "OP MC" story. Also, this is not wish fulfillment. Additional Genres/Tags: Romance, Adventure, Drama, Hard magic Arc 1 (Trigger to the Past) : CH1 - CH40 ~186400 words Arc 2 (Drosera Army) : CH41 - Current [Estimated 300k words] (Currently ~224800 words) Vote for me at TopWebFiction.
8 163The Traveling Shop Keeper
Humanity has survived on Earth thanks to the Towers created by the AI council, sheltering humanity from the damage done to the earth from the war. To help humanity through the idea of living in upgraded caves, it created a method to digitize the human concious, allowing a user to enter a completely digitized world. Tyler, just hitting the required age to safely digitize into his local Tower digital world, is in a race to establish his trading company head office. With HYTOMA running for over 150 years, competition is fierce to buy property against other trading guilds, and the richer, more powerful raiding guilds. He could imagine that in his excitement that he would run into a Wanderer, a human that snubs their nose at the Towers, and spend their time wandering the ruined planet. Surviving by scrounging up old PC hard drives, and selling them back to the AI Council, allowing AI to add lost information to the Tower Network, and impoving the digital world. Hang on for a ride, as Tyler discovers he was given a hidden class by the ruling AI entity, slowly rolling through a digital world on a rickety cart. Will this Traveling Shop Keeper survive dragons, and lead Humanity out from the Towers, into a brand new world built by Articifical Intellegence? Note: I am a new writer with difficulty getting words from my head to sheet, so edits will be frequent. I do not have an editor, if you are interested, I am more than willing to discuss options for your involvement.
8 94Forever Online - Wanderer
Wanderer The journey of one young man to greatness. Will he succeed? Will he die almost instantly? Probably the former because of the special trait is known as 'Plot Armor' achievable only with the level 1000 legendary title 'MC'. “This world may be infinite but I will not stop until I see every inch” Currently on Hiatus so I can focus on my Fiction for the NaNoWriMo competition, linked here https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21354/an-ent-like-existence
8 298The Devourer
To devour is to swallow ravenously or to consume destructively. To take in greedily and to absorb everything. Alaric dies in a traffic accident and finds himself in a mysterious forest with a game like screen in front of him. On the screen there was a message. [Welcome to my World] [You can do anything with my powers on the condition that you do the Main Quest]
8 199All of Me
Storie Sovany is used to being dismissed as the fat friend, until she moves from New York City to rural Ohio for college and the charming frat boy Liam Alexander approaches her. Torn between disbelief and flattery, Storie hopes her luck may have finally changed - but is it too good to be true?
8 83IMAGINES ❤️
Random imagines about you and Kendall Jenner. Feel free to request some stories. Thank you guys! GXG only. G!F but no smut. 😂 I don't know how to write it. Just kidding! There's SMUT inside. 👌🏼
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