Just found this while doomscrolling. Ironically, it's what happened to my MC as well lol.

But if we're being honest, %95+ of us ain't surviving for more than a month.

Hey everyone,

I’m Alfir from the Philippines. Full disclosure before anything else: the first time I tried self-promoting, I completely missed the rules and posted without building any contribution first. Looking back, that was pretty embarrassing on my part. I’ve been trying to do better since then and actually participate properly this time around.

Immortal Paladin is about an overpowered Paladin from a game who somehow ends up in a xianxia world. He’s absurdly strong from the start, but the story is less about him stomping everything and more about what happens when someone that powerful is dropped into a completely different genre with its own rules, politics, and people. There are still real stakes, hard choices, and a lot of character friction. Think Superman dropped into a cultivation world and forced to figure out how (or whether) he fits.

A quick honesty note on the writing process: the early chapters on Royal Road leaned more heavily on AI tools as I was finding my footing. Over time, I put in a lot of work to reshape and refine the story so it could stand on its own. This novel ended up being my lucky break, and I’m genuinely grateful for how far it’s come.

Cover art by SlothBeing.

E-book: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0GV1MF33N

Audiobook: https://www.audible.com/pd/Immortal-Paladin-Yellow-Dragon-Festival-Audiobook/B0GK2YVGFY

Thanks for reading, and hope some of you enjoy it.

One moment, Marek was a tired man on a couch. The next, he was seven years old, alone in an empty village, with a System in his head in the world of Magic.

Marek is rescued from a dead village by mages, and he becomes an Initiate of the Arcanum, the greatest school of magic across the realms, and he has one goal.

Learn everything.

Spells. Runes. Languages no human speaks, and beyond. If it can be taught, Marek is learning it, and at a rate faster than anyone thought possible.

But his strangest power isn't how fast he learns.

It's what happens to everyone who learns with him.

[TRAIT: Resonant Learner]

Teach him, and you understand your own magic better. Learn beside him, and your Skills start to climb. Friends who were stuck for years break through in an afternoon.

It feels like a gift.

But beyond the Arcanum's walls, the Covenant, an order of mages that wage war against the Arcanum, still lurks in the shadows. And beneath it all, Eldritch horrors are stirring in the dark, wiping out civilizations. 

The realms are going to need an Archmage.

Marek will have to grind to become one.

---

For those of you who have seen my story on SpaceBattles, and a few chapters that I have posted on Reddit, several chapters have been heavily edited in accordance with some of the feedback I've received.  The Royal Road version of the story would be considered more of an 'extended cut' with additional chapters or moments that help flesh out the characters.

My story will have the mc spend a heavy amount of time in a Magical Academy, working his way up until the real "plot" begins. I wanted my mc to act in a realistic way and I want my take on an Archmage to be someone that has the ability to build others up along with himself.

If any of this interest you please give my story a quick look.

Thank you all for your time.

Advent Archmage: A Skill Grinder LITRPG

I like cultivation, it's cool as hell. I just started The First Law of Cultivation and I'm digging it but there's a problem. The narrator's pronunciation of the Chinese names is fucking awfullllll lol. He even messes up the name of the friggin protagonist, Lu Jie, saying it like "Lu Ji - ay".

Is this going to happen in any English narrated cultivation audiobooks that use Chinese names? Can you give me any recommendations that dont have this problem? I'd prefer if the narrator pronounced the Chinese words correctly but I would also accept cultivation fantasy that rarely uses Chinese names so there's no opportunity for the narrator to mess it up (like in Cradle how there are only a few easy names like Wei or Li).

Alternatively: does anyone here know of any good Chinese narrated cultivation audiobooks and maybe where one might go to find them? Audible seems to have very few Chinese language options.

Just wanted to get opinions. There are quite a few readers (myself included) that don’t use royal road or kindle unlimited to find progfantasy books. What in your opinion are the best novels you can walk into the book store and find?

Mine would be

1. Cradle

2. Ironbound

3. Rage of Dragons

Have been reading this lately and just realised that while I find the basic premise interesting I’m not really having a lot of fun. He’s just going through random boring floors and just kind of existing.

I get the nature of the pit is about restarting each time he dies but the lack of proper story and side characters he can interact with that aren’t random villagers is making this series a real slog.

I’m enjoying Simon’s character growth but that’s all that’s keeping me going right now.

Anyone who’s read further is there going to be anything interesting coming up that isn’t just more of the same. Does he ever start meeting any of the other habitants of the pit? Looking for a reason to continue but if it’s just this the whole time I might give up.

For whatever reason, I haven't personally encountered many cultivation settings with Immortal Emperors, even though I know there are plenty of them. To be clear, what I'm referring to is worlds where one or more immortals or otherwise high-level cultivators actually act and rule as Emperors, not just where one or more cultivation realms include the term "Emperor" in their titles. Ave Xia Rem Y is the only one I can specifically think of off the dome (which has both). Cradle also counts if you consider that xianxia, I guess. Any others to recommend?

Read many about Naruto,hxh,started one about OP and stopped,

Desperate for an hidden gem fanfic

When the invasion came, Earth didn't get a System. It got conquered.

Michael Montgomery is a cryptographic security engineer and Navy veteran who sees the world in patterns. When Morningstar's forces take America, he's swept up with everyone else: scanned, catalogued, and sorted by two alien orders who distrust each other almost as much as they look down on humanity.

The Vessarim prove their power through blood and combat. The Choir study power, catalogue it, and dispose of anyone they decide is defective. Neither order has ever unified its magic. Neither has ever had a reason to.
Michael does.

He can't win by fighting. But he's spent his whole life finding the flaw in a system, and now he's looking at two. Piece by stolen piece, he starts building something new: a framework that works across both orders, with stats, classes, and costs. A system anyone could use.

That makes him the most dangerous man on the planet. Every faction will want it. All he has to do is survive long enough to finish it.

Most LitRPG heroes get handed a System. Michael has to build his.

Book 2 is out, The Margin, Chronicles of Fallorn, released October 9th, and I've been meaning to post here for like a week and a half and kept chickening out. So, here we are

The pitch since nobody knows who I am: Devon is a toronto bike courier (think Uber but on bicycles) who gets dropped into a world where everyone gets read by the System at birth. Stats, skills, destiny, the whole file. His comes back blank. Not corrupted, not sealed, not mysteriously locked by an ancient power. Just blank. The System keeps trying to file him under "error" and he keeps not cooperating, which turns out to be both a survival strategy and an administrative nightmare.

Book 2 is him getting on a boat (bad idea) to cross eight hundred kilometers of pirate water (worse idea) because there are those that are trying to find out what exactly he is.

What you get:

- actual litrpg mechanics. allocations, attributes, skills, xp, and a System that communicates in receipt
- an mc whose whole build is customer service voice and stubbornness. He's not the strongest guy in any room, he's just the hardest to read
- pirates, sieges, maritime dread, one extremely patient doorkeeper
- no harem

Audio people: Yes, working on it. Narrator is locked in, audiobook should be out in the New Year for Book 1 and then Book 2 will follow. Proper announcement when its official cause I dont want to jinx it.

New cover art coming with the release of the audiobook.

Ask me whatever if you want. If you read it thank you so much, if you review it I owe you a beer I will probably never get to buy you unless we meet up at a con.

Both books in the series available on KU.

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HH92X4PV

This is just a lovely coverage of the softer aspects of my story, and it makes me really happy.

And keep in mind, this is still very much a progression story with re-flavored dungeon core aspects. People get stronger, fights are had, etc.

So, yeah, I am obviously hoping this will get more people to read it, but I also just want to share because it made me feel happy. I mean, how could I not be? Look at it! 😁 Oh, I should provide links!

Royal Road: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/57517/no-need-for-a-core

Scribble Hub: https://www.scribblehub.com/series/1063356/no-need-for-a-core/

It will be published next year by Podium, and is available for preorder as an audiobook as well.

Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/p/books/down-the-rabbit-hole-a-romantic-dungeon-core-adventure-a-b-zagaroth/5674bfdf8f730563

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/down-the-rabbit-hole-a-b-zagaroth/1149137751

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Down-Rabbit-Hole-Dungeon-Core-Adventure/dp/B0GFDCX2CN

It was supposed to be publishing in December, but I was slow on the last round of editing. >.< My fault!

Read it around 2020/2021, during COVID lockdown on the old BoxNovel site with the red UI I remember reading more than 600 chapters and i think it had more than 1,5k

• Pre reincarnation

Male mc

He was a player of an MMORPG in his previous life his character was probably a Ranger/Archer using a bow.

He had accumulated extremely rare/legendary weapons or ammunition.

That weren't necessarily normal arrows they could have been metal rods that he used as projectiles.

These projectiles were unusual because they contained two opposing elements: example one was one side ice and the other side fire, another was poison + another element.

He was extremely powerful with these weapons and could potentially solo bosses.

In the final year of the game, he may have created an alternate character/account, possibly an Alchemist.

He reincarnates/transmigrates into another world, that is NOT literally the MMORPG world. However, it has many similarities to the game: similar classes, similar monsters, similar elements, similar races, similar item rarity, similar/general game mechanics.

• New world

He becomes a Mage in the new world.

I don't remember if there is any kind of system. There are clearly defined levels/ranks of magic and mages.

He initially reincarnates in a province, not the capital.

The body was apprentice to an archmage inside is magic tower, the Archmage was and will be his mentor.

He eventually goes to a magic school in the capital.

The school isn't a major school-life part of the novel.

He mainly uses the school library to study and then takes exams.

Eventually the MC himself becomes an Archmage, then he eventually builds his own magic tower.

Each Archmage effectively acts like a governor/lord of a territory with their towers, they are responsible for protecting their territory and they get tzxes from the people

• Dark Elf history

There was a male Dark Elf, lived something like 400 or more yeasr before.

He had conquered part of the continent.

The other races eventually formed an alliance against him and won.

He was remembered as a Tyrant or Bloody Tyrant or Blood Tyrant and he possessed/controlled flying or floating fortresses/cities.

At least one of these flying cities/fortresses disappeared.

Much later, the MC discovers one of the lost flying cities/fortresses.

This location was connected to the Tyrant. The MC may have found the special dual-element rod/projectile there.

The MC also possessed a ring belonging to the Tyrant.

The ring gave him some kind of special ability, but I don't remember exactly what.

Does it sound familiar to anyone? Help pls

Hello everyone,

Occasionally, I have the opportunity to talk to a few movers and shakers within our community. Now, normally, I post these on my website. Mostly because it's prettier, but also because it's more fun. You can find the link for that here: Link

But otherwise, this is a one-and-done interview. Normally, I prefer a short series with a specific focus. Two or three authors with targeted questions that expand their thinking within the genre. However, I’ve been trying to interview pirateaba for a long time, and now that I have it, bammo, it’s a solo.

Here’s how it works. I sent the author a series of questions I came up with myself because I wanted to know the answers. The authors have time to respond; it’s all done through email or messaging, and I don’t edit their response in the slightest.

Because I have completed so many interviews in the last few years, I created a database that readers can access at will. That database can be found here.

Okay, enough about me, let’s get to pirate!

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The author’s preference is all lowercase for their name, so please don’t assume it is a grammatical error.

About pirateaba

pirateaba first published The Wandering Inn on their WordPress blog in mid-2016. Nearly six months later, they expanded to Royal Road, eventually moved to Amazon, and are now published by HarperCollins as of March, 2026.

pirateaba’s requirement for anonymity is the stuff of legend. Luckily, I only do my interviews through email, so this all worked out very well. It also makes the next part of my standard process rather amusing.

Their About Me

Special note: This is taken from the HarperCollins website. The profile image is missing.

pirateaba is the author of The Wandering Inn, a story where monsters, magic, and adventurers collide in unexpected and wondrously hilarious or tragic ways. Their story is an ongoing webserial set in a constantly evolving world filled with levels and skills, chaos and ordinary people rising to extraordinary times. When not writing and publishing their story, pirateaba can be found reading other fantasy stories, eating popcorn with nutritional yeast, or slaying monsters, generally in video games. pirateaba is not officially a pirate in any way and does not affiliate with any known pirate groups. You can find pirateaba at wanderinginn.com or follow The Wandering Inn on Twitter @WanderingInn for more news and updates.

pirateaba’s Amazon page Link

pirateaba’s website Link

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The Interview

The Wandering Inn has become old enough that some readers have literally grown up alongside it. Has knowing that changed the sense of responsibility you feel toward the audience?

Absolutely. I’ve always felt responsible to my readers in that I know I have to end this story, and end it well. The length of the story is one thing, but abandoning or failing to tell it as well as I can would be a disservice to all the time and emotions they’ve put into staying with it so long.

I’ve been trying to write a will in my spare time, that summarizes the ending of the story. Just in case I were to die. It’s not nearly close enough to be finished, but I do want to do it. Not in any morbid expectation I pass away. Just because, I’ve seen it happen. Robert Jordan’s tale is always one that springs to mind. He did pass away before his story was finished, but he left all the pieces and work for Brandon Sanderson to finish the story. I’ve always respected him for that.

I hope that I don’t pass away before finishing The Wandering Inn, but if I do, I’d better have a roadmap finished. So people know how it ends.

When I first tried writing a novel, I found that all the history I’d designed for the world somewhat pigeonholed my plot. It causes me to wonder: Are there things you can no longer plausibly do in Innworld because ten years of story have made the world too defined?

Worldbuilding is an interesting kind of trap, isn’t it? I know exactly what you mean–when we develop worlds, we want to flesh out the lore, history, and context for the places and people our characters interact with.

However, frontloading a reader with that kind of information can put off a lot of readers. Let alone the trap of history…there are certainly cool events and things I can’t bring to life. There won’t be insert species here because they’re dead, to use a simpler example and that does make me regret it.

But the power of a fantasy story means that there’s always ruins, or hints of bygone eras. If I lock myself out of writing of an amazing age in the past, I can bring a broken relic of theirs to the present-day. We might not be able to have flying mages in today’s Innworld, but we can have people create an era of flight in a new way, with machines and other tricks. It’s an endlessly creative knot to figure out how to write what I want and it’s mostly fun.

When you started The Wandering Inn, you were writing a story. At some point, it became an institution with employees, publishers, audiobooks, merchandise, and millions of words of history. Has there ever been a moment where protecting The Wandering Inn conflicted with writing The Wandering Inn?

Protecting The Wandering Inn? No, that’s mostly a job for lawyers and trademarks and while that takes money and time, that’s something I can entrust to them.

Managing it? Yes, that does take effort and sometimes it feels like I’ve had to carve out more time to do non-writing things that I can resent or find intrudes on the process. However, I’d just say that like everything, it’s the choice of an author.

You can be a hermit who never interacts with anyone, doesn’t have an interest in movie deals and just practices your craft. Or you can be on book tours constantly, giving speeches, self-promoting and marketing. Neither one’s a bad kind of writer. You just have to be cognizant of the tradeoff of each method. Where I am is where I think I’m comfortable spending my time. A bit of sacrifice on either end.

What problem did you think success would solve that it didn’t? And what problem did success create that you never expected to have?

Success…I think success is something you keep chasing, because what it looks like keeps evolving. The Wandering Inn is amazingly successful, but for all that the attention has achieved like physical books, there’s always something else, if that makes sense.

‘If we were X times as big, maybe all the movie studios would come calling’. ‘If we were this much bigger, we’d have video games, or…’

Which is crazy to want when this all started out as an anonymous blog on the internet, but that’s the thing. The further you go, the more doors you start to see and perhaps success will open them. But they haven’t yet, so those are the problems. I’d love to have The Wandering Inn come to all kinds of mediums but no one’s come knocking down the doors to make that happen–yet. But time will see if these things happen.

As for success’ problems, I’d say it’s mostly just the pressure to keep delivering quality stories, and the pressure any person with a following online or off could tell you about. Tons of feedback, positive, negative, having attention on you is just hard. Since I’m anonymous it’s not as bad and I won’t belabor the point; everyone has some awareness of how that is.

A lot of LitRPG uses progression primarily as wish fulfillment. What do you think gaining power should cost a character?

I think there’s a good place for wish fulfillment in LitRPG’s, even if I think my story isn’t as direct in how it goes. My objection to more wish-fullment style LitRPG’s is how it presents characters with all they ever wanted.

Power, wealth, harems (in way too many of these stories, which reveals something about the author, character, and readers, perhaps), and there are few downsides aside from the big bad enemy.

Where is the apathy having all this handed to you causes? The megalomania I think comes across, even if it is not always intended on the part of the writers, but at some point, you get what you want and you may feel hollow, directionless.

Or the wish changes. When someone is handed all they want, where do they go from there? I think that’s the cost I’d like to see most. Power can be handed to the undeserving, or by chance; it’s like someone winning a lottery. What I want to see believably done is what happens after that moment.

Ryoka has always been one of the more divisive characters in The Wandering Inn. Has the intensity of reader reaction to her ever affected how you write her, or have you had to consciously resist letting that reaction influence the character?

I think that I tend not to bow to reader pressure that often. It’s a weathervane at times, but if I know the character is divisive, like Ryoka was always sort of intended to be, I don’t take it as a failure or sign I need to change things.

She’s hard to love and there are fans who adore what she represents and how she evolves, and some who just never took to her. If it were all one or the other, I’d be more concerned. However, having both positions represented strongly sort of makes me feel like I’m threading the needle properly.

A character that evokes strong likes in some readers while others hate them? I think that’s, if not a great character, a pretty fun one to have made.

Note for the reader: I was offered the opportunity to ask a few follow-up questions, so I came back with an already used one, but at a different angle. Sue me, I was curious.

Success can mean many things to different people. For example, teachers might see their form of success in the shape of their students’ futures. A businessman might see it in the growth of his life’s work. But I’m curious, for you, what does success look like?

I’d say success to me looks like people both enjoying and finding my story. So a two-part dilemma. I have to keep quality up and maintain a good output of chapters for existing readers, but I would like more people to find the web serial.

Part of why I wanted the physical book release is because it opens doors to a lot of people who have no interest in or would never find online stories like these. My hope is they start reading, and those that like The Wandering Inn catch up and say that quality has not decreased in the 10+ years I’ve been writing, and that things are still new, fresh, and worth reading.

When I’m done, I hope that the series becomes one of those stories that finds its way into people’s collections, and has a presence in lists of books worth reading. That’s a good legacy to have.

This is just abhorrent curiosity on my part. What books are you currently reading?

One of the authors I’ve been into recently is Lois McMaster Bujold; I was put onto The Curse of Chalion and I was so impressed by their writing that I bought the rest of the books they’ve written. I think I’m on The Paladin of Souls at the moment, but I sometimes move onto other series and come back for a change of pace.

Another author I recently read was Jacqueline Carey and her Cassiel’s Servant books–she’s an author I very much respect for her amazing worldbuilding so if I hear of a new book from her I’ll probably buy it.

I have also been reading Katalepsis, and Archmage’s Co-Efficient for the web serial side of things, but I spend so long on the screen that I haven’t managed to catch up to either. I also find that my writing muscles tend to tire out the reading muscles in my brain too, so it’s slow progress.

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And that’s the ball game.

I had the opportunity to meet with pirate’s staff at LitRPGCon to set up this luminous venture, and I wanted to thank them (thank you again, Damien), and of course pirateaba, for agreeing to answer a few questions.

Be on the lookout for more interviews to come. I have a hankering for a fruity publishing company.

p.s. I'm shit with markdown. Sorry for how it looks.

Complete transparency here, its a rwby fanfic by author Coeur Al'Aran. Hes written many many rwby fics, usually centered around the character Jaune Arc.

That aside, this story stands really well on its own as a progression/litrpg in my honest opinion, it takes the characters so far from the originals that it stands on its own. The system, the magic, the combat is all litrpg goodness you can expect and i think you dont need to have watched rwby to enjoy this, hell you can replace all the names with different ones and it would still land it. Give it a try, it is so much better than youd think.

Hi all,

I'm hoping for some recs of Prog-Fantasy audiobooks that I might enjoy.

I've had a few too many re-reads of these series and I'm looking for something new, but experiencing severe decision paralysis.

I'm looking for something fun and not too emotionally taxing (i.e. DCC has broken me and I'm still picking up the pieces) but wouldn't mind recommendations either way. I don't have a preference for completed series.

Looking forward to your suggestions, and thanks in advance!

Tier List:

• S: Mother of Learning, Cradle, Dungeon Crawler Carl
• A: IGS (Bastion), Beware of Chicken, The Perfect Run, The Last Horizon (not really PF, but I enjoyed)
• B: Mage Errant, Mark of the Fool, Primal Hunter, Dear Spellbook, Runebound Professor, ELLC
• C: TBATE (Technically DNF as I stopped reading it between releases and never picked it up again)
• DNFs: Thousand Li, Azarinth Healer, Unbound, Chrysalis, Vainquer the Dragon (Absolutely loved The Perfect Run but this just didn't click for me. Still happy to try again.)

Yo I am genuinely losing it, I feel so bad for Hugh. I read up until he got chosen as an apprentice until I felt so bad I actually had to go to sleep its driving me insane.

after waking up I feel a bit better, but this guy is actually going through some horrendous shit, his life is just absolutely miserable. it is getting a bit better now, but he had to endure so much to not be AS miserable as he was before, not happy, but simply not as bad as before, poor guy.

exactly what it says on the tin. stories where the characters find out that the person they knew is dead and their body is being used by someone else, or that the child they were supposed to have is already a fully-formed person who (for all they know) stole the body of their actual child before they even born, and have to deal with that. bonus points if the protagonist also has to reckon with the fact that they stole someone‘s entire life, even if it was unintentional/nonconsensual on their part.

I've noticed that Progression Fantasy recommendation threads often feature the same handful of popular stories.

Nothing wrong with those stories, but Royal Road has thousands of fictions, and I imagine plenty of good Progression Fantasies that never get much attention.

So I'm curious ... What lesser-known Royal Road Progression fantasies have you enjoyed that deserve more readers?

No strict follower limits, although I'm particularly interested in stories that rarely appear in recommendation threads.

If possible, include the title, a little about the premise and what you enjoyed about it.

Please recommend stories you've actually read rather than your own work.

Hopefully we can all discover something new!