Alien Earth (when not even shock value saves you)

If you're expecting alien on earth then I'm sorry to dissapoint but this is not it, despite the name and the cover literally depicting the planet Earth, most the plot happens outside of earth and the focus is not the Xenomorph 

PR: A group of people sent by one of the three factions that govern the earth is sent to retrieve an alien egg, which the manage to do just fine until you-know-what and everyone dies except for that one black dude who is also a cyborg and this is getting awkward in the teen titans sense of the word, who survives by hiding in a hatch, not exactly dignifying but hey as long as it works... 

The main difference between this and alien the eight passager, other than the obvious, is that in this case there's a ninth passanger. Well, actually there's two others, so there's... Eleven passangers. If you think it's getting a bit ridiculous you're absolutely right. 

Alien Earth's called such because "Alien, the eight, ninth, tenth and eleventh passanger" sounds like just workers commuting

The ninth passanger is a literal eyeball with tentacles, which is able to control someones mind by replacing the host's eyeball. How does an eyeball with tentacles exerts enough force to fight and subdue a host or how is it capable of though, much less sapience considering that it's, well, an eyeball, are questions that will remain unanswered. What does becomes pretty clear is that the aliens in alien Earth aren't what they used to be. Not only do the aliens get shot up, locked and even tamed (jesus) by the humans and synths, but the new alien, the eyeball, thrashes them around like ragdolls. Yes. A fist sized eyeball with tiny tentacles whacks a fully grown alien, no problem. 

The other two new aliens are as unimpressive as the eyeball, one is a leech, and the other is a fly that instead of spewing normal acid it spews super alien acid. In fact, they're so unimpressive they barely have any impact in the plot. 

After the ship collides on earth a team is sent to subdue all aliens on board, which includes Cyborg trapping one of them with a friggin expanding polyurethane spray gun because it's a "let's beat the aliens while they're down" kind of show, apparently, after that, the series shift to a completely different, non alien related plot of the new generation of synths and Richie Richard political battle to keep the aliens which consist mainly of him belittling everyone else. I suppose they didn't had enough budget to both get the crappy new aliens AND buy characters a personality. Did I mention all the new synths, which form sixty percent of the cast, are adults acting like children? Yeah. That's about as funny as you'd imagine. 18+ TV-MA people!  

Eventually, the new synths or well, all the child synths guided by the one that tamed the alien because it's the only one that unexplainably grew up when inserted into the new body, confront Richie and sort of take over his operation. That's pretty much it, they're expecting a second season I think.  If you think that these are surprisingly little events for ten episodes of forty minutes each, I wholeheartedly agree. 

Apparently, while this, let's face it, generic garbage didn't had enough time to, you know, develop characters or give the audience the one thing they came looking for which is aliens on earth, they DID had enough time to have their shitty new alien to gruesomely murder a cat, I'm guessing with the purpose of getting some shock out the audience, given they couldn't have us care about any of their other characters. I would've tolerated the cat kill if it was to some purpose other than super bots vs random brat. 

Bio Dungeon (Check publication date, lads)

So basically I was expecting an actual bio dungeon where necromorphs or similar biological aberrations lived and evolved through LitRPG devices, but instead I got this thing.

 Half of the story is about Michael teen, which is fantasy as generic as it gets, and the other half is pseudo realistic immune system which runs out of content halfway through the book, which since it's only half the story already it means it runs out in just a quarter of the story. 

PR: After Michael fails to secure some gem that is never revealed what it does, the thieves guild decides to make an example out of him and after torturing him for a couple of hours, they ditch him in a mine which is scheduled to be closed off the day after. Luckily or unluckily for Michael, when as part of the torture the thugs have him swallow a handful of dirt and stones he incidentally also ingest a peeble sized dungeon core. Why did the dungeon not activate to do dungeon stuff like it always does, why did it end up in a mine of all places and what are the odds for the one handful of dirt to contain the dungeon core...

Anyway. After Proton or Prophet or whatever the core named itself bores its way to the appendix, he finds that while Michael was lucky he definitely wasn't and he's in for a life's worth of efforts to patch up the street urchin, including but not limited to: some kind of pneumonia, some suspiciously intelligent gut infection, something else on the throat, the other non dungeon core rocks and of course all years of starvation. Ah, also cancer because why not. To make matters worse, this Michael person keeps doing stuff that endangers him, like eating trash and drinking suspicious "health potions" from the dumpster, that's when he's not getting stabbed of course. Honestly if I was Proto I'd take a look around and be like 

In a practical sense most the plot is just Proto spamming some of the most common immune cells, which are described as white blobs. I got to say that given the poor election of premise the author chose, the first couple battles all the way up to the stomach were interesting and well written for the most part, but the rest is just a repeat of the same. I'm a bit ashamed of myself to only have noticed that the book was written in the middle of 2020 pandemic when the virus is portrayed as so much more deadly than the bacteria when it's a known fact that bacteria is more deadly in general and particularly on medieval settings where antibiotics didn't exist. Granted, there's healing magic but the premise of the book assumes it doesn't work on diseases. 

The Michael side of the story is a bit more boring. He crawls out the mine, then he sleeps in his crush's basement while being fed scraps, gets a "job" as an adventurer. Eventually, the thugs from before reach out to him because they need an inside man but do such a poor job at convincing him that they get ambushed and convicted. Later, Micheal gets attacked as a reprisal for this but the thieves guild arc ends there. 

Overall, I'd say that the premise was weak to begin with and gets further diluted in the Michael side of the story which nobody cares about since it doesn't concern the bio dungeon. At first, I thought it was to show the effects of having a literal dungeon core inside your body but like I said it's like its not even there. With that said I understand why the author felt compelled to add this POV as his overly realistic depiction of the immune system made it so the new content run dry in a few chapters, not that this is enough to justify making what's ultimately a promising yet boring and unrewarding experience. Not much going on here... 3/10

"Earthen Contenders," the other five books that follow Unexpected Healer

 

Same as with the other books, the covers are terrible. The more I look at the CGI, the worse it gets. This is probably the funniest one, but they're all pretty bad. 

If you were to ask me, "William, why on earth would you read the following five books of one that you've explicitly said was bad?" then I'd be forced to put a bunch of excuses, such as "I needed to make sure my first review was reliable," "I was in the mood for ironic consuption" or other things of the sort.

Truth was, I just finished reading study stuff and needed some LitRPG to clear my mind and remember that, with all the bad things it had, Unexpected Healer had delivered on loot and skills. I had to skip the first parts of book 2 because I had this annoying feeling that I'd read it, but I wasn't sure, so I kept skimming until that feeling faded.

PR: After the not very notable events of book 1, Thaden continues on his frantic endeavor to do things the weird and annoying way. He finds a magma dungeon for which he's poorly equipped, as it shows when he's practically melted by the heat of the combined creatures. Of course, he survives, and even faces the boss without much trouble, but he's forced to circle back to town since said boss has regenerative abilities. I hate it when they do that in video games too, like, you have a huge health pool of millions, why would you heal? Though invulnerability frames are worse.

 Speaking of which, Thaden continues to be invulnerable to all threats, environment excluded, but fails to make proper use of such an advantage, as proven by the fact that he picks the one dungeon where he's not unbeatable. Really, it's literally the only dungeon in the entire series where temperature is an issue.

Fortunaly for Thaden, he happens to find that one shiny item that only he can use, which freezes everything in a twenty-foot radius, there, lying in the store with a huge "Please take this off my hands" sign. Very convinent.

 After beating the boss and getting nothing to show for it, other than some ridiculous red cap (as described by the author) Thaden finds up that he's fucked up royally, and ten giga lava worms sprout out the ground, destroying the nearby city and killing hundreds of people. It should've been more, but apparently they were prepared for such type of accident which leads to the hastly patched plot hole of "how much do the locals actually know" which is just as much as the plot needs them to. 

Predictably, Thaden kills the worms and reaps massive rewards that no one else has access to and vents off about almost dying to the level 100 vice-leader of the adventurer coalision, who gets mad and attacks Thaden only for all her spells to be innefective and then she explodes, courtesy of "the system's retaliation," even if Thaden suffered no damage at all. Even if it made sense to kill the already trained officers for some fresh recluits, by the time the system reacts, Thaden would be long dead if it wasn't for his cheat-like powers. 

After a small intermission of a few days not like the others which lasts for months, Thaden bands with a couple of randoes and manages to complete his evolution assignment, poor and annoying mechanic if you ask me, and evolves to "solitary shaman" which in my opinion is a terrible idea. Now, at the moment of the evolution, the reader can totally visualize that is the option he's gonna pick because it says "legendary" on golden glittery letters, but on the small print it puts that all channeled spells will be lost, also known as the spells that make Thaden immune to all forms of damage in exchange for an edgy title.

 From a writer perspective, it makes sense to try and deprive MC from his god tool to have him face some hardship, but from Thaden's perspective it's just moronic. Why would you do that? Not to mention that spells on others are only half as effective and if he has any party members he gets no XP, all for some unseen rewards that may not even exist. So much for the strategy of extending his immortality spells onto a DPS class! Granted, one would assume that if the class is called "solitary shaman" then it probably counts with some sort of method to not get popped in the wild, however, would you bet your life on that? 

The bet pays off, sort of, when Thaden's shiny new spell called "wild life leech" is now appliable to himself, effectively nullifying his one difficulty of "what happens if there's only one monster to kill?" but realistically speaking he still has the same issues he had before plus now he has to juggle five different protections spells at all times with an all times high possibility of him dying. 

Thaden then finds that the ragtag bunch has been killed for some hardly reasonable matter by the guilds, which proves that it's not only Thaden who's an idiot, but all of humanity according to Johnny Brooks.

 I'm not a sociologist, but IMO if humanity suddenly found themselves in a hostile environment surrounded by literal monsters they wouldn't just turn into murderous sociopaths because some text of dubious credibility affirms that the people on the top of the rankings will have their families safety assured. Anyways, the system realizes it has fucked up, thing that happens a lot in this series, and patches the problem by giving the murderers a black aura which gives carte blanche to the other sociopaths to murder them in exchange. Literally the wild west out there. 

Now that he no longer has a party to worry about because the author killed them off as soon as they've fulfilled their purpose, Thaden goes into a dungeon called "the devil's nest" which is non-descript white and filled with meme canon bible angels, you know, the type that has tons of eyes and scream in quivering red letters "be not afraid." There are also some generic, muscly, white winged angels that aren't given a good description but I'm going to choose to imagine them as mortification's album cover "the evil addiction destroying machine" 

From now on, probably before this too but I just noticed the pattern here, whenever Thaden enters a dungeon there's a vague description of the place which is the only one we're going to get, e.g. white walls with white lighting all over and twisting hallways, or rocky canyon with some dirt mounds on the sides, a dark forest, an upscaled backyard, etc, then two or three  monsters which may be things like "evil vampire tinkerbell" (author's words) or giant skeleton, or giant skeleton with four arms. Then, there's the boss which is generally a mixture of the mobs and some difficulty that Thaden steamrolls by just spamming healing abilities, most often than not his latest acquired one. 

Remember the long ellipsis I've mentioned? Well we get the first one shortly after Thaden gets his shiny new legendary healer set, which literally glows and I imagined it a bit like a full-white Hollow Knight character. He decides to check every single dungeon for more of these "anchor dungeons" since he's timed to do so or more magma worm catastrophes will be unleashed to the world. There are like a hundred dungeons which we never get to see because bam four months have passed and Thaden only has a bunch of xp to show for it. A hundred dungeons, no notable equipment, no notable achievements or effects, creatures, resources, only a few succintly written passages of a blurry Thaden flying around mountains and a "it wasn't any of them" statement.

Instead, he accidentally stumbles onto the next anchor dungeon which happens to be in the forest adjacent to one of the three major cities of the region, you know, like the other anchor dungeon, and maybe, just maybe, like the third anchoring dungeon. Because three cities, three dungeons, right? Thaden himself said that the wording of the mission implied that the anchoring dungeons hadn't been previously discovered... Ok, lets just roll with it and say hindsight is always twenty-twenty. To make matters worse, its just so convenient that the people that actually trigger the dungeon happen to be on Thaden's path, but like I said, don't look too hard.

The dungeon, if it's even worth to be called that, is just a forest with overgrown spiders in it. Yes really. Yes, very generic, but according to Thaden these are very scary spiders so I'm guessing that makes up for it. There appears to be a minuscule moment when the spiders appear to overwhelm Thaden but he just pulls his new spell out his ass and throws in some line like "Bro, did you lowkey forget I'm the prota, no cap? You bussin fr?" And every monster dies of cringe. The final boss of the dungeon, which is, yes, another spider but larger, dies unceremoniously and the system wipes the whole event out the minds of those involved except Thaden. It wants him to live with the shame of having cheated with his giga plot armor. Or maybe it was embarrassed at the lack of originality of the so-called "main plotline"   

At some point, I don't recall exactly when, the system had done something similar when the father of the deceased (exploded) level 100 vice-leader of the coalition summons a super-demon level five trillion but Thaden explodes them both with his protagonist magic, so it's not something new. Thaden gets to keep all the eye-bulging rewards, just in case he needed to get any more overpowered. At some point I recall trying to make some calculation of what level equivalent his stats are in regular progression, but the author has given him so many that I literally lost count, so, no idea. Higher than the "world ending threat" of the super-demon, evidently. 

After completing the third dungeon on the bottom of the sea next to the third city, which predictably enough was populated by squids and sharks, spare me the Legendary Pokemon reference please, the system gets sick of Thaden BS and decides to lock him in the bottom of the dungeon until further notice, which in this case means about six months. Lucky for Thaden, this is exactly the amount of time the other people needs to catch up with his level- which he needed to complete his next class quest, and even more luckily he has enough food and water to last exactly as much time as the system decides to leave him there. All very convenient if ask me. 

After doing absolutely nothing to get out despite literally saying it would be better to try his chances at emerging to the surface (or maybe get back into the dungeon? The door should be right there...) than to die slowly waiting to starve, the system randomly decides to let him out and propells him to the surface, where as a sign of apologies it showers Thaden with even more overpowered rewards for being "the best of the best" which on itself is an achievement that gives him +10% all source damage and XP gains. The most notable reward though its the "mimic plates" which duplicate the base stats and effects of the equipment currently equipped, and he gets fifty two of them. Then comes a rather prolonged LitRPG, dungeon math moment where Thaden practically masturbates at the possibities that such plates would enable him and then applies them to his already overpowered equipment. In fact, the onanistic compulse is so strong all skill names get swiched to something suggestive, such as "bigger is better," "delayed gratification," "indecent proposal," etc, etc. I think it would be crass even if the effects of the skill were actually related to the sex name, but I suppose some people get off it or find it funny. 

Speaking if which, there's a very uncomfortable character named Muriel which is sex jokes incarnated. I'm not even going to start talking about how poorly constructed Muriel was because I'd have a book of my own by then, just take my word that it's very bad and very unnecessary.

After getting his super rewards, Thaden searches for a party to team and complete his evolution assignment and gets rejected because of his class which reduces everyone's XP rewards by 90%, but fortunately for him, he's so massively overpowered that once again he steamrolls the problem by showing that he can do dungeons not only solo but five times faster than anyone else, and that because of the other million rewards the system has given him, the practical reduction in XP is just 60. We get a couple chaps of him showing off, imagine superman in fantasy setting and you'll be pretty close to what happened. 

After we get introduced to a questionable sidekick character named Sadia (a squirrel who duplicates Thaden's magic output, another gift from the system) the plot starts to circle around "the adversary" and it's relationship with the system in a way that I'd describe as a downgraded Matrix mixed with Neverland, the anime. The adversarial entities claim that Tart (the place they're in) is a simulation and that only death can set them free, and later its revealed that the assimilators, entities in charge of the system, brainwash and nurture the contenders to sell them in lots like slaves or cattle. If you're asking youself why, you're out of luck because everything is a glancing mention as the book is too busy having Thaden kill the adversarial entities, then killing the Wardens who were supposed to kill the adversarial entities, then reviving them and repeating the process while upscaling things. First, the adversary thing, which is basically a blob of shadows, is level 500 like the wardens, then level 700, then level infinite and the wardens are three at first, then five, then like twenty. After Thaden kills adversary level infinite, the dungeon blows up and the last book begins. 

I'm going to make a small pause here to mention that the entire narrative at this point is basically a cheese grater judging by the sheer amount of plot holes. Who is the adversary, why is it absorbing planets, why is it uses monsters, why if it uses monsters it also uses these shadowy things, how did it breach Tart, why did no one do anything, why is the system killing billions of people when it has an endless supply of monsters to drain the energy from, where did it come from, why does it brainwashes people, why did we not hear about this before, why does it sells people in auctions like slaves, why does it has factions instead of an united front, why isn't there a third position that opposes both the system and the adversary, it is suggested that the adversary and the system are working together, as if the adversary was one of the system factions... But this makes no sense. Why does Thaden has infinite mana, how did no one had infinite mana before him, if Thaden has infinite mana, how can the system's assimilators simply block his access to said mana, what's the point of the whole training thing if when it's over all progress is reverted back to zero... anyway you get the idea.

The last book is probably the worst one, even if the whole "warden" thing was supremely underwhelming and the level infinite boss just got killed the same exact way than the very first high level boss monster back in the first book, mostly because it's where the author attempts to broaden the overarch and most the plot holes come to action. Well, that and the "wiping the slate clean" thing. You see, for a good chunk of the book, about a third or maybe even half, it's just Thaden going in and out of proto-dungeons called NESTs that are barely described to be basically just a cave system and not a very large one at that. The monsters in this release are also the less imaginative ones, and we have "evil vampire tinkerbell" as a contender, so imagine. I'm just going to say that "fire seals" as in mammals was one of them, not that any get much description other than three or four words. Then, he stops grinding NESTs and goes back to grind dungeons, to powerlevel the other contendants so they become able to defend the NESTs he takes over. There's a tiny bit of tower defense because he gets "subjugation points" he uses as currency to build defenses around the subjugated NESTs but other than the one chapter where the mechanics are described this barely has any impact in the narrative. In fact, half way through the book, Brooks just throws everything of the board and has Thaden perform some stunt that makes him slip into a hidden fold where the "annihilators" are being held, and after some unanswered questions and more plot holes a stray "wild leech" triggers the egg where the "annihilator" is being held.

I hope you didn't had much expectations for the "annihilator" because its literally a raccoon shaped vacuum cleaner. I can almost visualize the moment where the author was like "hmm maybe just supersizing a raccon and having it suck things into its mouth isn't interesting enough... Oh, I know what to add! Let's have it throw lasers out his mouth too!" 

maybe the author saw this book and said "hey I want one too!"

Anyway... Thaden has another evolution choice, and same as before it's obvious which of the two options he's going to take, even if it's not really clear if it's the best option. The bet pays off, like it always does for him, when a deus ex "green fog" of materialized luck manifests as a consecuense. Predictably, he kills all raccoons and completes the last development phase by having them laser remove the remaining NESTs thus circling the "having to defend them" requirement. If you're imagining some kind of epic battle, it wasn't that. It was just Thaden getting tossed around like a volleyball while saved from the lasers by the green fog, all while waiting for the wild leech to tickle the raccoons HP down to zero. There are no notable rewards, no achievements either, nor would it had matter as the next thing that happens is that everyone gets teleported into the assimilation (real?) world  where all the things they've achieved or attained are wiped clean. Thaden himself explodes when the pending raccoon XP catches up as his giga stats no longer help him accept the prompts fast enough, but guess what? He survives the explosion. How did he survived the explosion if according to the author himself, "he was just like a regular human, without powers, spells nor stats?" No idea. Why does the XP makes him explode, if it can't perform any physical change on Thaden as that aspect of the system is forbidden to him? Good question. All we know is that the story ends with a level 1 Thaden on Pangea or however the assimilation world is called ready for part II that hopefully will never arrive. 

If I'm being like really generous with the story... I'd say that it's pretty decent until volume three or so. Considering the genre, mostly. LitRPG is filled to the brim with unreadable thrash, and unexpected healer is... Readable, for the most part. In book four and onwards the whole "adversary" thing starts kicking in and it's just very generic and rather bland. I'd give it a 3.5/10 for the first few volumes and a straight 1 for the rest. 

If you're wondering, "but William, if it's so bad howcome you read so much?" Honestly I don't know, but it wasn't that much time really. I read the whole thing in a bit over a week, since most the content is just stat blocks and numbers that I skimmed over

Dark Healer, volume 1-15 (Richter... or Reichter?)

"People thought we were weak and incapable of defending ourselves and our property. Those who wished to do harm swooped down on the clan like vultures." - Literally the book's description

 Well, let's see, the plot goes like this : Maximilian Richter, a tall, blonde and muscular man of germanic origins tries to restore his clan (notorious for having skull shaped pins and imagery) to its former power, as a coalision of five, not four, not six, five major powers refered to as "the allies" had demilitarized and reduced their clan to mere indebted servents- thanks to exploting an internal betrayal, as Max himself remains undefeated in battle.

Richter's Grandparent and predecessor (not described like this in the book, but well, they get all the descriptions wrong, make the blonde brunette, etc) often argues that pure, unadultered military superiority beats emotions and idology, and Richter often brings up his defeat to claim that he's wrong, and that with the power of emotion will organically grow their military might. He brings that the clan had still persisted after his thousand year leave, and proof of this is that his first Assault Division (SA for short), were working as mercenaries without knowing yet that the Richter spark was inside each of them, awaiting to be awakened. I like to call this the Thousand Year Richter theory.

Of course, since he was starving for resources he had to secure a few allies, but not too many: he managed to convince a tribe "from the south" (the Valasco) after settling some territorial disputes. The involvement of the Valasco is small and rather late, and their leader, Isabella, often points that her relation with the Richters is purely out of convinience, especially regarding land grabs and monetary rewards (plunder). You could say that she only needed a few thousand dead to sit at the conference as a clan that fought. Shortly after, he reels in a formerly "overly traditionalist and concerned about looks" asian clan (known for their particular, spiritist magic). It is to note that the connection with this clan are exclusively made with a very fervorous middlewoman (tasked mainly in communication) that is always at Berl- I mean, Richterberg, and doesn't see herself as part of her own clan but rather of the Richters, and seeks always to please them (Oshima, is that you?). Naturally, they arranged a mutual "defense" pact, a kind of triangular force (the word isn't quite coming to mind) that ensures that whenever Richter proceeds to attack a new territory, both powers will be there to back him. 

This way, he waged three "mini wars" against the immediate neighbours to remilitarize himself, always under the excuse of self-defense and preentive attacks. If it serves as a visual aid, though it's obviously not related, imagine it a bit like when the Austrian painter decided to expand onto Normady, Austria and finally Poland, the last of which finally triggered a military response from the French. A funny thing, here too the power that first movilized (the Vellons) had all french names. Another funny coincidence, is that the book paints the Vellons (Specifically their head, Catherine) as a manner of prostitute power that goes with whomever has the greatest strenght, first the Richters, then the Desmonds, which made the chinese-styled Shaolin dude, Shakanwar, feel destitute. Huh. 

It's crazy how when Richter finally takes full power over Richterberg he turns all the governing cabinet into puppets, bypassing all forms of democratic process through sheer coercion. 

 After the first major victory against this definitevely not french power which was "coincidentely" located immediatly to the west of Richterburg (According to Richter, the weakest clan of the main antagonists), another power known for its naval prowess (The Salazars) creates a supply blockade to try and starve the Richters. To be precise, it's only when the Richters manage to defeat the Salazars and break the blockade that the Valascos can openly declare themselves allies, and Richter promptly continues to ship them abomination coal, I mean, crytals which the Salazars had intercepted. It's also "funny" how the power known for its extensive railway tracks (the Desmonds) joins last in the war. Very funny. 

Richter's small strike teams derail one of the Desmond's trains, blowing up the rails themselves and causing massive casualties with the goal of crippling the allies supply routes. Any similarities with operation Pastorious are purely concidental.

In order to maintain the battle front, Max Richter utilizes his undead as slave labor, whose corpses are supplied by a vigilante squad under his command that sweep the streets (sometimes following official documents) as according to himself, the criminals are "barely human scumbags who can only return value to society through labor," one may say that Richter is exterminating criminals through labor. He also convinces a prominent merchant clan to work for a reward that he will get after winning the war against his enemies with the supplies provided, a manner of IOU bills, and most of his asset come from forceful seizure of enemy property that he claims "belonged to his clan on a first place."

Shortly after reviving the Richter youth, whom the other clans had forced into slumber, he realizes that the Academy would take too long and forwarded the multi-year schedule to a two-month bootcamp, gave the barely legal soldiers the skull badge and sent them to the front, a type of "Volksstrum" for the lack of a better word.

Average interaction among Richter youth

 The end goal of all this is a Richter ruled world and, in max words, "a total erradication of those who betrayed him." This is all supossedly justified because the allies had forged a pact with an eldritch abomination alien in exchange for power to dethrone him, and now the alien is consuming the planet. A quirky type of "New deal" one would say. To put it in other words, since here "energy" powers all of modern contraptions, bullets, TVs, cars, you could say that the abomination energy, that "nearly free" energy is a type of economic incentive, and that the aliens here would be acting as a manner of "interdimensional plutocrats" financing the modern world.

The remnants of the Richter clans was forced to serve the other clans as a manner of "cleansers" to prevent the users of this "dirty" energy from fully turning into Foci monsters, because the Richters are the only bloodline capable of eliminating, no, "purifying" said dirty energy. It is also to note that one of the main enemies of the Richter clan are the Scipions, a clan whose main activities unfold in what's basically Egypt (with pyramids and all) and it's the most invested in the usurpation by the aliens, a clan made solely of powerful women whose power consists on manipulation, mental magic, cunning, spionage and seduction- in fact, the leader of this clan, Regina, is so affected by the aliens she had turned into a full fledged monster herself. But luckily, Richter stop this contra-natura nonesense on its tracks and destroyed all the magic dolls and threads of manipulation laid by her. It's funny that Richter captures this Regina person, a high ranking and trusted source of  this clan of spies, and through what's basically torture and cohersion forces her to spill the beans about how the Allies had sold the world to the Aliens, it remind me a lot of a certain Venlo incident. Must be me.

 The other clans weren't able to resist the temptation either, as they were too weak, greedy, and morally corrupt- fearing that the other ally would destroy them if they didn't take the power bestowed by the aliens. In fact, the world got so polluted by these dirty, pasitic aliens, that Richter had to devise a special contraption just to upscale the clensing as he was concerned his troopers would simply not be enough, or that the Foci would elude his myriad camaras through which he controls th city: this Heliovitrus flower, a concept originally deviced by a Steiger (definitely not russians) exile and perfected by Richter himself, an industrial, slave operated type of tower-like facility which acts like toxic gas for the abomination, clearing it by the bulk, and producing money in return. It's even harmful for the Steigers! Amazing, gotta praise Richters "efficiency"  

Even Richter's decisions regarding Richterberg seem, say, "odd." Oh, yes. Let's bullduze the low income neighbourhoods to build military bases, and just under my bunker let's place a floodable tunnel network. Hmm-hmm. 

 Another particularity is that when Richter kills the aliens themselves, the "shadows," which are often hiding, he does it in a very particular way: the aliens latch onto Richter and try to siphon his life energy, but he inverts the polarity and sucks the aliens dry, which gives him "terrible pain" but also power. So, if richter is Reich-er, and the aliens are jews, and the energy is money... 

The funniest part is that at first I thought the author was going for the typical, false "I was sealed in the 1200 and awoke in 2020" noblemen that's actually progressive, this supposed "aristocrat" (term that didnt even exist at the time) named "maximilian" (name that also came later in history) quoting things centuries after his time, like the 17th century "hell knows no fury like a woman's scorn" and the 19th century "ancient's philosopher's" quote on "those who don't learn their past are doomed to repeat it," and making bold statements such as real noblemen don't care about things like "shopping trips" and "fancy clothing," nor would he ever treat his only remaining descendent as an "incubator" to extend his clan.

"You're without doubt, the worst nobleman I've ever heard of"

 In volume 14, it's even revealed that ancient stone castle walls were reinforced with Rebar. I half expect him to fight for racial equality or abolish slavery at some point through the novel, but huh, so much for that. The author does tries hard to make it look like turning people into eternal slaves is truly justified at first, but later down the novel we move from "organ and sex slave traffickers," to "rapists and harassers" and now it's just anyone who opposes Richter. The moral justification slowly becomes less "Richter is good" and more like "the people who Richter comes to replace are worse" and just pulls completely bogus things such as the other princes (the clan heads refer themselves as such because apparently the figure of top authority within a clan is... a prince.) running crime rings or slave mines for no apparent reason other than making more money, despite them being absolutely, filfthy rich with a 90% of the share on every legal market. The Vellons, for instance, as the healing clan, despite them having a complete monopoly on cosmetics also turn into unsanctioned human experimentation, organ trafficking and the leadership allegedly works under the motto "A healed patient is one less costumer."  

Then we have the battles, oh god the battles. I'll just pick one, the most ludicrous example. The battle for Turm (Volume 14) is, without doubt, the one most face-palm worthy thing I've ever read in my life, and believe me I've read bad stuff. Is so baffling, so absolutely proposterus that it it leaves me at a loss of how to mock the, for the lack of a better word, "strategies". It is literally impossible to concieve something worse than this, hear this out:

Turm, a city localized just beneath a mountain containing azurite, a resource of strategic value to the Richters (it powers their concentration camps), is assaulted by the Steigers. Gunther, the leader of the Steigers, despite being about to fight in his vassal's city and being the one with the highest interest in NOT destroying the city, decides that the best way to fend off Richter, an objectively inferior foe in terms of pretty much everything, is in urban warfare- and that the best way to fare said urban warfare is rolling in twenty five tanks. Gunter doesnt really comprehend elusive concepts such as "combined arms" so there's not a single footman or wing following said tanks, there isn't even a supply wagon for repairs and I guess they pull their ammunition out their ass.

 But, Richter, always the wisest, instead of sending a few stormtroopers through the derelicts to deal with Gunter's tanks, he comes up with a much better tactic: cavalry charge. Fifteen elite cavalry, including the recently appointed eighteen-years-old chief strategist gallops towards the tanks which did had mounted machine guns and then split and cut through their flanks like "a hot knife through butter."

Now, the cavalry charge could've been defensible IF the tanks were in the middle of the city, but at this point of the battle, they where positioned on the outskirts of the eastern district, shooting from the streets towards the open field, then slowly get pushed back further into the city as they await the reinforcements from the north. The author points that the turret can't maneuver fast enough to deal with the targets at 150 feet, but what happened to the other like... 2250 feet of effective range the MGs have?

 During this whole process, the Steiger Mayor expresses his wish there for some kind of formation that could counter cavalry.

 As the tanks begin to fall to the literal medieval swordsmen, the tanks (technically golems, but multi-ton armored golems armed with cannons and machine guns? Come on) deploy kamikazee drones that manage to force the cavalry to retreat and even destroy a few armored vehicles under Richter, that during all this time got inside the city... but Richter, having foreseen this, had a magic worm dig a retreat tunnel network that for some reason doesn't collapse under its own weight and doesn't hinder his vehicles movement, giving the soldiers that survive the drone explosion (thanks to magic) a chance to escape the battlefield, least they be shot down by machine guns or shell fire.

 I personally feel this was unnecessary, as apparently the Steigers are even worse than Star Wars Stormtroopers, as these at least fire their weapons.

 As the battle appears to be leaning towards Richter's side, a terrible news reach the front: Steiger is sending fifty more tanks as reinforcement... Through the forest. Track by track, in packed formation. Yeah. If only there was some kind of vehicle specially designed to transport heavy loads through miles and miles, owned by his allies, literally by the city... Its funny that he later says "the battle belongs to he who plans the better."

 I was at first surprised that Richter did seemed to try and do what the Ukranians did to Russia's convoy in 2022, attack the tanks in the front and the back with a Pterodactyl (basically the fantasy version of a helicopter) but after all fifty tanks AA guns missed, the Pterodactyl didn't used bombs or explosives... it threw cobwebs at them to ensnare them and "win a few minutes."

It really is just a race to see who has the worst ideas.

 After the few minutes are due, the tanks manage to avoid all of Richters artillery (while in a column, the best formation to avoid concentrated fire according to Steiger) and begins to retake the city, taking advantage that none of Richter's guns actually moved towards the buildings and are, actually, clustered and exposed.

 When things become too dire, Richter shows up with a skeletal dragons and kills everything, achieving the miraculous zero casualty city takeover against 75 armored units with modern weapons while having fifteen cavalry teens, about fifty infantry and three artillery guns. Its almost funny how Steiger pulls the "actually I have fifty more right next to your capital" as if we deemed them a threat of any kind after such embarrassing performance. Its to no one's surprised that the "blitz" is destroyed by magic weed, and that Steigers complains later that "no one had told him" of the flowers that drained the tank's batteries. Yes, the multi-ton tank that jumps with jetpacks operates on batteries, double A probably. 

Not to mention that the very plan of using a "decoy" and rushing to the capital was bad, even if had been well executed. It's like Schlieffen's plan if he had been lobotomized, rolled over by russian tanks and was actually living among apes in the savahnna. 

 Lets imagine that Steiger actually knew what "intelligence" was and he, like the entirety of the city and even the vassals of the Richter clan was aware of the flowers and the weed, and he had in fact actually sent a force that made sense against a capital city instead of just freaking fifty tanks, how did Steiger exactly imagined that playing out? He had Richter to the front with the exodia bone dragon and the fifteen teenagers that he couldn't kill, he has Richter vassals to the sides, Richter vassals to the back, its like Steiger was purposefully trying to cut his own forces from supplies! It doens't even makes sense as a knockout strike, since the literal head of the clan is right there, on his decoy, that by the way, has more units that the main attack! Like, maybe try to kill him, Steiger? Maybe consolidate in the front where the literal head of the snake is fighting? "I knew Richter would show up, it was all part of the plan!" Yeah, right! 

And yet another meme: Steiger, who didn't even managed to convinced his allies to join the war, actually gets a third party, Regina, to walk into his camp and say "You want Richter dead, so do I" and proceeds to lend him 10000 ground troops, five armored "Boss" units, 5000 attack drones and a dragon that she herself rides, but Steiger sucks so much at planning the attack that Regina's advance was literally one hour after all his forces had fallen. Not to mention that Regina tells him that the seventy five tanks on the decoy mission are a "negligable" part of his forces and that he shouldn't whine about their loss... So what does that leaves the fifty units he sent to the "main" attack? Then, the next volume, the author pulls the "Actually, that was two thirds of his entire force." Ok, author.

All he had to do was lure Richter out of the capital with the battle for Turm which Richter HAD to fight since it yielded him a tactical resource, entrench and deploy mines outside of the city since HE controls it instead of practically yelling to Richter "I'm going now! Be ready!," send an actual force of say three armored divisions (about 1000 tanks with additional personnel and actual repair and supplies) through the railway that his allies own instead of the forest, send actual infantry, NOT THE TANKS, to hold the city along with some specialists, a few birds to stablish air superiority against the dragon which he KNEW Richter had (despite claiming that he didn't in ten chapters later) and time Regina's blow to catch Richter's army between the hammer and the anvil. Its not Clausewitz, its not some tactic worth of Tsun Tzu, its literally the obvious thing to do, and he would've killed Richter and won the war. The explanaition? It really is just Nazi propaganda of early WWII Russia tank warfare, mass numbers, lack of quality and lack of combined arms. Even the fact that Richter uses a Dragon, you could say "Dragon's teeth" to defend against Guntehr's tanks is just top notch.

To conclude, from a prose stance, the action is relatively well paced despite it making no sense, the story itself is like Iron Dream but unironic which would've been far more respectable if it wasn't a 1-1 fantasy translation of WWII- admitedly, it did took me a little while to really grasp the parallels. The worst part is that despite all of this, Dark Healer doesn't really escapes the worst aspects of LitRPG, all the harassment scenes are very long, tedious and repetitive, Richter's dialogues read preachy instead of profiled, literally all characters are subserviant to the figure of Richter himself (women in particular) and there's a whole incest subplot with a goth loli that you just can't shake off. "Oh, it's fine if she's Scipion because she has Richter blood. That spares her from the madness!" 

I don't feel comfortable scoring it a one since I did actually enjoy the WWII overplot when I thought it was inspired by and not just poorly traced. I'll give it a 3.6/10

Just a bit toxic, thats all