When Ty (not Tyson, not Tyrone, not Tyler. Just "Ty") gets some fancy shimmering letters on his computer telling him that in six months time either he gets into some portal to another dimension for some undisclosed reasons or they kill his grandma, he does what every anti-social hikikomori that lives in the basement of said grandma would do: he borrows money (from grandma), quits his job, gets indebt to the neck and pretty much pawns everything he owns to become some sort of training maniac sambo, krav-maga badass, sharpshooting survivalist and also a part time prepper, stocking on random stuff like crates full of cheap watches and tons of insta-stew. Perfectly in-line with the lazy bastard that didn't got up his chair even to go to work (he had home office). Grandma knows the little bastard is full of shit when he says he wants to enlist out of nowhere and ask her for a gaming manual immediately afterwards, just prior squeezing some cash out the hag, but apparently this is what Grandpa would've want. "Grandson, you're dumb as a mule and twice as ugly, if a strange god wants you to cross some shady portal I say cross it!", along with some other cliché lines about being your own light and that "When the call comes, it’s up to you to decide the sort of man you’re going to be" whatever that means, good thing the asshole's dead.
Anyways, as it turns out all that prepping was completely, utterly useless. Even the watches, as it turns out the world he's now in has twenty five hours. The only sort of useful thing was the rifle and he could've gotten it at walmart with a two days notice. Who'd say that Krav Maga doesn't do shit against super hydra-riding demons that, I quote, "could take a couple direct hits from your world’s tanks and keep going"? Even the rifle becomes trash after a couple episodes! Anyways. "Ty" has to choose and bind his soul to one of the many gods about who he doesn't know squat about, other than apparently all-mighty immortal beings can't be bothered with picking a name. He settled for "Inspiration" since Death, War, Magic and Nature were apparently too mainstream. To the surprise of none, this was a bad choice. Not only does this "god" look like he works as a fashion coordinator, he also dispices all of what RPGlit stands for. The first thing he does is to change his leveling system from EXP to milestones, which was not only ridiculous but also effectively left him more than six levels behind everybody else (in a world where none made it to level 10). Fabrizio (tentative name for the hipster god) wasn't happy with only this, he also jammed some crap class "merit hunter" onto Ty because since only two people on the entire planet has it that makes it "underground" or something.
Unlike those other boring novels where the character gets skills more or less consistently, the "merit hunter" uses a "merit system". Whereas a normal person would get a skill every level, a "merit seeker" needs to invest at least four points to get a "sub-par skill", but he only gets three merits per level, which means he gets a skill every two levels, and a sub-par one at that. Poor Ty got so caught up in this "flexibility" business that he was so proud of a "auto-looting" skill that so far in the novel hasn't given him anything of note.
The one that did help Ty, and quite a bit too, it's another god that goes by the name of "seeker". A bit edgy, the guy for my taste, with his whole mad lab thing going on, but he gives Ty forty-thousand souls to form an army, a mind related legendary skill, a super dagger, a mega robe, and also got him out of some real deep shit he got himself in. Much better than that other "inspiration" jerk, I tell you.
Well, the book was pretty boring despite my amusing summary. The combats were pretty unimaginative and the strategies that the author took pride in were mostly ridiculous. Like the "strategy" of dropping a barrel full of explosives on top of your enemy, or the "strategy" of attacking the enemy encampment in broad daylight when the enemy is most rested. I have to say, if his "advisor" , who has "great experience with war" gives tips like "Attacking early with surprise can lead to great victory, but if the enemy counters the ambush it can turn the tide against us" I should cut Ty some slack. What I dislike the most of the book was that in the description it sold us game-like features that weren't present and that the core of the story, "foreign gods invading earth" was completely inaccurate, at least for the first volume where the Gods barely have any influence on the story other than the Monster God who basically acts like your everyday Demon Lord. Promising, yet thoroughly average. Maybe it gets better later on? Who knows 5/10
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