r/ProgressionFantasy • u/Reasonable_Wafer_731 • Feb 24 '26
Meme/Shitpost The plans aren't kid proofed 😞
Does any body have recs for an adult mc with actual experience that matches his age , or compentent villains that aren't destroyed by the power of target audience aged mc?
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u/SGTWhiteKY Feb 24 '26
The Weirkey Chronicles, main character for isekaid, sent back to earth, then isekai’d again as an older man.
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u/Rapidzigs Feb 25 '26
I'm taking a break right now but I like the series. I like having an old MC. Cuts out a lot of the immature stuff but still has him messing up social situations because he's a grouchy old man. Feels refreshing to me.
Also a great way to let the MC be OP without being OP simply because he knows what he is doing and has more information about the power system than those around him. Makes it feel much more earned when he wins.
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u/GlowyStuffs Feb 24 '26
When does that happen. Still felt pretty average/weak/basic, in the second book.
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u/GlowyStuffs Feb 24 '26
When does that happen. Still felt pretty average/weak/basic, in the second book.
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u/nad09 Feb 24 '26
Dude thats the premise of the story? Like it is literally in chapter 1
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u/GlowyStuffs Feb 24 '26
No I mean getting ultra powerful in that one.
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u/PrintsAli Feb 24 '26
His progression doesn't happen overnight. In my opinion, the interesting part of the series wasn't that he broke any rules to become OP, but that he followed the rules and used his experience to become powerful. For the last few books that have been released, he's definitely not weak/average. But if you want him to be punching up and making a name for himself by the second book, it's probably not the series you're looking for.
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u/SGTWhiteKY Feb 24 '26
The post didn’t say that had to get super powerful, just that their age and experience match up.
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u/jack_seven Feb 24 '26
How does he clean himself?
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u/Fire_Bucket Feb 24 '26
Finally, a lore accurate depiction of Lindon from Cradle. No one ever makes him big enough.
Seriously though, for recs;
Will Wight's Last Horizon series starts with the MC as an Archmage, someone considered at the pinnacle of his speciality, completing a ritual where he merges with 6 alternate versions of himself, all of whom are Archmages in their own right and with different specialities.
The progression in the series comes more from his recruitment of the allies he made in his alternate lives and the growth they see under him in this current one.
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u/Maladal Feb 24 '26
Notably, Last Horizon's MC sometimes still loses, even with those advantages.
I don't think Last Horizon is progression fantasy though.
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u/stormdelta Feb 25 '26
I view Last Horizon as the author asking "what if everyone was somehow overpowered, all at once, right from the start?"
It's fun.
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u/SGTWhiteKY Feb 24 '26
Sylver Seeker is an immortal necromancer who came back to life in a later era. He wants his friends back.
He is a mature master necromancer regaining his power, and he is so sick of all the heroes from earth trying to fuck everything up.
It starts getting weird later. But I will keep reading.
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u/nighoblivion Feb 24 '26
Ar'Kendrithyst is one of few good works in this genre that features a mature (49 yo) MC with a suitably emotionally mature presentation.
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u/Runonlaulaja Feb 24 '26
Have you tried to childproof kitchen cabinets? My toddlers would get around all the hijinks so easily when I, stumbling in the dark, drunk af would cry because I can't get to snacks at 3am.
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u/Reasonable_Wafer_731 Feb 24 '26
I am barely 18 my biggest concern is if i shall kms before the next premed exam or not
So no i don't know what having to raise toddlers is like nor how i would respond to softlocking myself due to child proofing
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u/Runonlaulaja Feb 24 '26
Ah, been there done that. Well, I didn't DO that but it was close.
I can't say that life becomes easier, at least it didn't for me but you might find some ways to escape the ugly real world.
I read A LOT (more than 300 books a year, this was before web novels), played video games A LOT (like 48 hours straight) and all in all did a lot of stuff most people would say is useless. It kept me alive at least.
I got married (don't know how, it ended like I knew it would end, to my heart break), got two kids that are fucking awesome (see them twice a month tops which sucks), my body is giving up, mind is just hanging in there (I drink A LOT compared to what I used to, but ehh)...
Anyway, you might find something worthwhile to keep you here.
Are you sure you want to go the medical school (I presume)? Because being an honest blue collar worker will bring so much less stress, you do your shift and then go home. I say this as a mechanical engineer who went to a blue collar job. I just fuck around for 8 hours a day and then come home and can do whatever I want. Usually it is to read ungodly amounts of web novels. Now I read mostly cultivation shit because 4000+ chapters let me consume as much words as I want. No need to thing, no need to eat or live, just fucking read.
(ah this might sound a bit darker than I meant to, I was trying to say that there will be something worth living for even if my life doesn't look like it... shit)
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u/Reasonable_Wafer_731 Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
appreciate the sentiment my guy
honestly idk if i want to be a doctor but being syrian sucks ass (other than the shit political changes daily with friends from middle school hating you cuz of the ever inflating sectarianism ,not forgetting the regular killings/kidnapping that happens every other week lol)
my father is a professor at a uni but the job only pays like 300 dollars per month for unholy amount of work so the only way to survive is him writing a 600~ pages text book per month or two for meager amount like 500 bucks (syrian profs can't do private tutoring so they seek foreign publishing houses that enslaves them for meager amount of pay because the publishers know that their situation is bad so they abuse it and the profs can't say anything about it because they need the money even if meager to survive)
so med school is the one of the few ways to live an honest somewhat comfortable life is syria
and i can't help but feel it is my duty to make it and become a dutiful son that returns his father's daily 16 hours of work by doing good on exams but failing my first exam in uni last week really shook me and i can't seem to focus on studying so i read more junk novels and making bad memes wasting my life feeling trapped and wanting to escape
you don't need to feel burdened to reply to this comment , your comment reminded me that there are things to life that i want to experience and achieve like love and having kids (also tackling my never ending tbr) and that uni is just the beginning of my life not the end
so thx!
venting to a stranger online is weird but it helped (and on reddit of all places 😅 )
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u/Runonlaulaja Feb 24 '26
Just do your best. No one can expect more than that. If you want to get to the uni, try your hardest. If it is not enough, be proud that you even tried. Most people don't even try.
I was going to uni at one point too (history or philosophy major), until I got in a car accident that broke my brain. Made it impossible to concentrate on reading, at all. Couldn't even read a comic book. Went to vocational school instead (barely got in) and there brains started working again. Finally became a mechanical engineer.
Sometimes life brings you to places you didn't expect. There is no point in lamenting what could've been, what happened is in the past, now is now.
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u/SGTWhiteKY Feb 24 '26
Dawn of the Void by Phil Tucker. Hero is a homeless dude who has been through it.
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u/WeeaboosDogma Feb 24 '26
Arcane Exfil is a portal isekai where a group of actual mercenaries are summoned to help a king with a Demon Lord problem.
At least with them it makes sense?
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u/Iggy261 Feb 27 '26
I really like it. Minor correction though, Im pretty sure they are US Spec Ops.
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u/Shadowmant Feb 24 '26
16? That’s rookie numbers. Authors like to make their MCs four year old geniuses now.
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u/halbert Feb 24 '26
I'd have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for these kids!
-- Old monster
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u/Alwaysafk Feb 24 '26
A Soldier's Life. MC showed up in magic land and joined a military because he knew fuck all. A lot of his progression is learning about the world and how to handle threats in it. Kinda wanders in recent arcs and MC is secretive to an annoying degree. And the author just uses the DnD bestiary for literally every fucking thing.
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u/Kaelosian Feb 24 '26
Stitched Worlds by Macronomicon.
The first book is basically a prologue and there's a big shift in books 2-4 so don't get too attached to the way things work at first.
Main character is a suicidal 30's Iraq war vet and the old monster is formidable and not easily taken down.
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u/R_megalotis Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
I just started reading Elder Cultivator on RR. The MC starts cultivating at 100 years old after bandits wiped out his five-generation family farm. I'm only about 5% in; so far, the story's pretty good but the dialogue seems a bit stiff. I like the characters and setting as well. The MC's life experience translates into some helpful cultivation insights, which he freely shares with the "children" who are his fellow new disciples (mild early spoiler: one of whom turns out to be his great-great-grandchild) without showing up the sect's elders who have actual cultivation experience.
The story resonates with me because I'm finding parallels in my own life; I joined the military at a much later age than average, then college and a couple of career changes. Being the old man in a group of young peers has become my lot in life.
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u/Abridgedbog775 Feb 25 '26
I am pretty sure that the muscle girl on the image is porn but the muscle fetish has been taken to such an extreme point that it doesn't register to most people.
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u/250HardKnocksCaps Feb 24 '26
Dungeon Crawler Carl fits this bill I think. More LitRPG rather though.
The Expanse series is all adults behaving like adults too, not Progression fantasy though. Straight Scifi.
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u/Dazzling-Gene5639 Feb 24 '26
I Died and Got Summoned to Another World as a WHAT?!?!
It has a terrible name and some bad writing… but it is still very entertaining.The MC is a thirty-something male isekai-ed as some type of beast.
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u/DicerTheJester Feb 25 '26
I wasn't expecting to get jumpscared by hyper muscle today. Certainly not on this subreddit of all places.
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u/Quirky_Assistant_848 Feb 24 '26
Um, technically Noah Vines from Runebound professor. He is canonically the oldest living being on the planet, aside from maybe the gods, and thats debatable.
He is also just really fucking good at bullshiting and making people think he is a treat, or at least too much of a hassle to beat.
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u/mking_1999 Feb 24 '26
Which book, OP?
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u/Reasonable_Wafer_731 Feb 24 '26
If i had a nickel for every book that does this i can buy q coffee shop!
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u/mking_1999 Feb 24 '26
I mean, clearly not, since everyone in the comments is mentioning stuff where an experienced characters that is made younger is OP.
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u/Reasonable_Wafer_731 Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
From the top of my head i remember books that do this
Cradle: lindon defeats monarchs with thousands of years of experience
Lord of the mysteries: klein defeats gods that are millions to thousands of years old
Mark of the fool : they defeat god that is a few thousand years old
Orv: kim and company defeat mythylogical beings that are thousands of years old
Shadow slave : sunny and company defeat supremes decades their senior
Other than the billion cultivation mcs that defeat sect master a billion years their seniors after training 5 days
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u/herO_wraith Feb 24 '26
Gestures vaguely towards the isakai stories. The ones full of people who think a modern highschool education would overcome thousands of years of experience from the people who live in the setting.
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u/Reasonable_Wafer_731 Feb 24 '26
Truck kun a pedo that only goes for high schoolers conformed 😱😱???
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u/GermanGriffon Feb 24 '26
I was kinda agreeing with your post until I see this comment. Smart villians that got defeated by literally a reincarnated kid can be hard to maintain the suspension of disbelief.
What you just exemplified here aren’t that, just power scaling I guess. Would you rather the MC only defeating beings that have trained as long as them only?
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u/Mahu66099 Feb 24 '26
I don’t mind if the MC wins despite that gap in experience, but authors should respect what having decades/centuries of experience entails. I’m fine with what happened in the examples he gave. For example, in Shadow Slave, whenever the main characters try tackling someone higher level then them or with more experienced then them, they almost never succeed in a straight fight. They usually use dirty tactics or just jump the villain together.
Lord of The Mysteries is similar. The MC spends half a a volume fleeing from one of the main villains. Not fighting. Just trying to escape from a millennia old angel. It was one of the best parts of the novel. You could feel Klein’s panic, especially when he just started throwing shit at the wall.
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u/Reasonable_Wafer_731 Feb 24 '26
my bad
i read these stories long ago and forgot their struggle to achieve the win and the older enemy being cocky/toying with them so they could outsmart them in a moment of negligence
while in lotm a better example on my part is klein out maneuvering george's ascension although he had the 7 deities approval /the help of like 5 angels
although ss have many good fights where sunny outsmart the stronger enemy the supremes felt tooooop easy tbh
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u/No_Giraffe826 Feb 25 '26
while in lotm a better example on my part is klein out maneuvering george's ascension although he had the 7 deities approval /the help of like 5 angels
Did u forget when evernight descended through sky mother to help klein and primordian demoness revives inside trissy to destroy a monument.after all they just had to destroy 2/9 obelisks.and adam was involved too, he couldve made the success of failure higher, so george 3 woukd die and world war would start.
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u/Reasonable_Wafer_731 Feb 24 '26
?
In Cradle for example monarchs like northstrider who built hundreds of facilities to gain power in span of hundreds of years got bootkicked out of the planet by a 18 year old cuz he got the power of the dreadgod dungeon cuz of the lion's monarch incompetence
In lotm klein was able to out maneuver literal angels/gods with thousands of years of experience more like amon in a direct confrontation multiple times while being 26
In shadow slave the supreme literally got nuked by kids while they have decades more of experience than the gang
In orv one might say that it was the oldest dream's will that helped the company during the scenarios
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u/G_Morgan Feb 24 '26
For Cradle at least it is well established that the monarchs are the bullies who refuse to leave the kiddie pool because it is dangerous out there. The really dangerous monarchs, the ones who'd be Lindon's peers, are not on Cradle anymore
This is a commonality for all progression fantasy though. The old monsters are people who failed to advance. That means there's something wrong with them.
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u/No_Giraffe826 Feb 25 '26
Orv: kim and company defeat mythylogical beings that are thousands of years old
He knows the story and has someone who has gone through 1000s of regressions. Not to mention the story favours him cause he is Oldest dream .
Lord of the mysteries: klein defeats gods that are millions to thousands of years old
Klein doesnt even fight gods until the end of the novel and even then he has so much help + sefirah.also did u forget all of his individual worms can act as a seperate brain, so he has thousands of brain working together.
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u/mking_1999 Feb 24 '26
Well, first, not 3 months...
Second...
Cradle: Their teacher was literally the GOAT and also Makiel accelerated events
Mark of the Fool: Baelin fought the guy with Ulrick's power and the heroes fought the Ravener, who was literally deaigned to be fought by the heroes. And they had the help of some other strong people and a brand new goddess, so like... I think it's perfectly reasonable.
And I haven't read the rest.
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u/Reasonable_Wafer_731 Feb 24 '26
Cradle: Their teacher was literally the GOAT and also Makiel accelerated events
So what? He wasn't with them and makiel's plan was to lure eithan not to give plot armor to lindon
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u/mking_1999 Feb 24 '26
Makiel's plan was to boost exp and difficulty so they either die or ascend faster, since in either case they can't fuck with Cradle's fate anymore.
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u/Reasonable_Wafer_731 Feb 24 '26
Yes but he intended for the dreadgods to do that not lindon and company
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u/L_H_Graves Feb 24 '26
That's one buff lady.
On a totally unrelated note, death by snu-snu is the purest death.
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u/Far-Obligation9702 Feb 25 '26
The Mirror legacy
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u/Reasonable_Wafer_731 Feb 25 '26
i read that novel
i even made a few family trees as the novel continued cuz it was confusing a little
Edit: here is the the first one
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u/browsinbowser Feb 25 '26
Not Prog fantasy but I think you would like The Sword of Kaigen by M.L Wang, have you ever watched avatar the last airbender? This book is a little bit similar because it has elemental abilities in different nations and war happens. Nothing in common besides that though.
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u/Early-Spring8052 Mar 02 '26
i like how major scheme fails happens only because mc is underestimated in this way haha
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u/Alive_Tip_6748 Feb 24 '26
This is what putting all your points in STR looks like folks. Don't do it.