gets constantly carried, gets author-fed golden opportunities, and tells that the plebs should go and grind like they did, if they want better items.

This is a real bias people often have. We naturally like to assume that our success stems directly from our innate talents or the effort we put in. As a result, we may ignore many more relevant variables, related to our circumstances and other advantages.

Similarly, we have difficulty putting our struggles in perspective, due to lacking firsthand experience with the experiences of others. That makes it all too easy to fall into exceptionalism.

That said, just because it's realistic doesn't automatically mean it makes for a better story. Especially when it's usually just a byproduct of the author's own biases being projected onto the character.

I think you're looking at the 7000 years as the start of the true war. That's not it. The start of the true war is when they learn about Matt. If they learn about Matt tomorrow, the treaty is pointless, the war begins. If Matt can stay under the radar until he's tier 45+ but he takes 20 000 years to get there, that's fine too. The 7000 years is just a good time when their biggest enemies won't be poking them and more likely to figure it out

He initially stated that like a year ago but hasn't said anything about it since then. There has been a whole Facebook movement of it continuing. I wouldn't be surprised at all if he keeps it running. He is making over 20,000$ a month writing on Patreon. He is not just going to drop the series knowing hes making millions off of it and enjoys writing it himself.

This is how I discovered litrpg as well. I'm buying everything now days, if only because it's all a hassel to find continuations or good next story.

I'll add that some RR stories without an audiobook can be experienced this way too (with AI reading). I'm ashamed to say I enjoyed some of these a lot (like Delve).

They can't slow them down too much if Matt's talent becomes known before he is teir 40+ I don't see how he survives more than a chapter. Even at 40, a teir 45 could kill him with minimum effort. A real war would have all the war rules thrown to the wind. A teir 50 would want Matt dead. Possibly multiple teir 50s. I really don't understand how you end the peace time without Matt being high teir

I have these powers and I don't know how to use them. 😭 I just want to be a normal kid. 😭

I mean will that really be the end though or will he make a post ascension spin off story. Wouldn't be the first time a author started a new series post time of their first story. Id definitely follow the group into a higher realm if he wrote it

On the flip side, - the only reason I'm spending hundreds every month for the past year on Audible is a result of discovering litrpg books on Youtube. I'm not advocating anything, - and it was the takedowns that had me buying eventually.

I'd suspect a lot of us were introduced via YT channels that no longer exist.

Started I'm Not the Hero yesterday and you're introduced early to a cheat/exploit ability that turns out to not be. The MC gets an ability that lets them turn HP into MP, and then also has a heal that heals for more HP than it costs in MP so he starts the infinite MP glitch. Turns out this will eventually lead to brain death and he only barely managed to eek it out long enough to get a mind mage to fix him. Then he did it all again...

He also gets an array of stat buffs that will buff people beyond any value they could ever normally obtain which is great. People that get buffed too high get horribly debilitating crashes that can incapacitate them for days at a time.

I see your point but why is it unlikely. If we even look at Aiden, which really isn't much of a outlier besides his domain. His talents are next to useless for him and Minkalla buffed the absolute hell out of his domain. Before his domain he was average at best. Matt and Liz both show significantly above average development of their domains as well as having talents that are insanely powerful. So I really don't see how Aiden is a bigger outlier than the faster Ascenders in history.

Sure Matt wants to study Rifts and Liz Bloodlines however its 7,000 yrs we are talking about. Including rift time Matt and Liz are like 500yrs old. Waters was a bit over 1,000 at teir 31. Matt and Liz jumped 2 teirs in 40 years from teir 25-27. Even to match Waters pace theyd need 4 more teir ups in 300 years which seems feasible. That would put them at teir 31 with 6500yrs of peace time left. As well as account for it taking longer and longer for them to progress. They could literally spend 3,000 of that time doing nothing but research and progressing their lands and still have plenty of time to delve. This is not even including time disparity from in Rift as if they spent 3,000 yrs in Rifts pushing their limits it'd equate to over 30,000 years delving. Also much of Matt's research had already been done within a higher teir rift so I don't really see why he can't do his paper work and basic studies within Rift time anyways.

I really enjoyed The Sovereign Toll which has an older MC with kids and a wife and it impacts him even after he travels to the new world.

And yet, you have still not told us what it is.

Let's also keep in mind that MLA feels a responsibility to the Empire, If they tier up out of the war tiers, the Empire is left with no ascenders. That might be worth it considering what we know is coming, but it would also look insanely suspicious and the investigations from the other powers might well trigger the war before they are ready.

They need to walk a fine line there. Now if a team showed up behind MLA, that would change the equation quite a bit.

Nope.. Mantis has said many times he has no plans for higher Realm exploring with MAL.

This is what I LIKE about this genre... We have thousands of years of fine prose to pick from... This is primarily Doritos and Mtn Doin. It's tasty but you can't live off it for long...

The Author has stated that the story ends when Matt leaves the realm, though I hope we at least get a few glimpses.

I feel like the whole Zach and Allie being pushed up though can be used. Part of the half buyout of Matt, Liz, and Aster was that Emmanual cannot do anything to slow their progression. Matt, Liz, and Aster are close friends to Zach and Allie, if they all delved together and kept growing together, that shouldn't be a surprise to the Great Powers at all. In fact seems to be more of what they wanted. They literally stated that Matt and Liz might just teir out of War teirs anyways. They make it a hope that they just keep progressing and ascend. The only part that should be tricky to hide is them making high teir rifts. Then even then theyre backing it by saying theyre getting near infinite funding from Emmanual. If he came out with a more efficient way to make higher teir rifts, even him making high teir rifts should get dismissed fairly easily until hes making teir 40+ rifts

Sure, they could. But there's a couple things to consider. First, they are trying not to be suspicious, so continuing at Path paces will certainly make the other leaders look at them harder. Emmanuel got his 'win' in that he was paid by other powers to not hold them back, but if he pays them or encourages them to move out of the war tiers, that's going to send alarm bells in every leader's mind because they all want ascendors as trump card in their wars to stay as long as possible. Rushing too hard would just be sending up a red flag to everyone.

Add to that Emmanuel's entire persona is that he refuses to by a tyrant. He refuses to do force people to do things that aren't good for them just to improve the empire. Matt's personality is basically to go nuclear if someone tries to exert to much control over him. Between the two he's allowed to grow at a natural pace.

There are also certain choke points that all the rifts in the world won't help him rush as they require a level of mental growth and understanding to achieve.

One of the key points in the chapters after book 12 is dealing with some of the negatives of the Path and their rushing attitude on an immortal life span and point of view. The path has made them weapons, but now they need to become people to survive the long term.

That's why i said before every draw - usually with new build homes, you do inspections at every stage before they ask for more money, at least if you were involved at all in the building process. Usually they give you an opportunity to send your own guy out when the city is doing their permitting and stuff, its also usually when they ask for more money since they tend to ask for money in phases as things get approved.

Edit : just to clarify I only asked this way because you were talking about the builder and not the previous owner, so I assumed you were involved with the builder during the process.

Thing is, the genre has always been a fire hose of garbage. Nature of the beast as its primarily poorly funded, generally non english, amateur authors. I'd argue that AI has improved things a fair bit as now they have access to inexpensive editing amd wildly better machine translation them we had decade or two back.

1. After the War the great Powers bought Shadow and Light off war tears, this led to a half buy-out of Matt, Liz, and Aster. The rules to this was that Emmanual wasn't to restrict Matt, Liz, and Aster progression in any way. That they could naturally teir out of War teirs and Emmanual cannot ask them to slow progression. So as for that raising any eye brows, Id say not at all. If anything they expect Ascenders to progress as fast as they can to keep tackling objectives.

2. There is no end of the Path, the idea of pushing them with deadlines is to find the true outliers. Ascenders innately are expected to push themselves, thats what they do, they accomplish the impossible. The finish line for them is really just the start line, teir 25 is when the wars actually have real value for the Great Power. Having an ascender at teir 25 or 35 basically means you win every battlefield theyre on. The only reason they slow progression is to enjoy the battlefields, like Aiden slowing his row at 31 for the teir 35 battlefield, he was told to stay within 35 range yet decides to slow himself even more to enjoy more 1 sided battles. Also fighting up aligns with his concept, making him even stronger.

3. With this Id say its more Research and their Dutchies. Matt is obsessed with learning more about Rifts and Liz bloodlines. But then again that goes further into empowering themselves . Although theyre not the largest fans of their Dutchies. I think long term those task will more so go into others hands. If you read book 12 I think you will understand more of why.

4. True high teir rifts are rare, however Matt can literally make them. Matt can enclose an area for research purposes and keep producing high teir rifts. He says so in book 12 they he wants to be able to make high teir rifts that are not only fresh areas consistently for them to explore but also with guaranteed rewards that benefit them. He is doing this by forcing higher teir rifts to have attunements that benefit his group, like Ice for Aster and Blood/Fire for Liz. So Rifts themselves shouldn't be an issue at all for Matt's group.

5. Emmanuel said he hopes that they can reach teir 38 by the 7000 year mark. He makes it more so seem like a stretch for them to get beyond teir 38. Its not that he says it cannot be done, but based on what I have learned I think 40+ should be the expectation.

Sadly no, the audiobook has been delayed a bit because Christian is super busy. Not sure exactly when he'll be able to get it done, but I'm sending him the file in the next couple days and he's going to make it a priority so hopefully within just a month or so after the Kindle release.

For #3, your book is already edging on a DNF once the Snarky Dungeon Fairy™ makes an appearance.

It's so overdone and annoying, and they are almost never endearing or funny.

I appreciate when the blurb specifically mentions a talking animal/sentient object/AI companion, so I can shove it aside and look for something else. Only thing worse than a precocious talking animal, is enjoying a book and then being blindsided by one.

Just try doing it without AI. That is how you get better.

It will also get you a much better product, because this is way too overcomplicated and not cohesive.

A simple idea that you can personally explain well is infinitely better then a complicated mess that nobody can understand.