August Intruder [SOL Progression Fantasy] (Stubbing 27th of April)

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

This story is an SOL Litrpg but the Litrpg elements start showing up around chapter 20, so please be a little patient. It is also a slow burn story.

Melmarc Lockwood dreams to be a Gifted. And even if he's lucky enough to be one of the minute few to develop Skills and a Class, and go into Portals to seal them, his goal to be a Delver so powerful that fights would end with his very presence before they even begin is still very far in the distance, so far that it's almost an unreasonable dream.

With an uncle with an odd penchant for collecting 'civilized discarded items,' and a murderous portal chibi, who knows what he can achieve.

Average to strong MC

Schedule is Tuesday and Friday

Information

Status: Ongoing
Year: 2024
Author: The First Observer

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.4/ 5.0
Followers: 4,242
Views: 1,946,439

Chapters(206 total)

What readers say about August Intruder [SOL Progression Fantasy] (Stubbing 27th of April)

“Great book, hard to put down once you pick it up. I wish the author would release a chapter a day though. Another thing is the author should start a discord or patreon to earn some extra dough to focus on being an author full time. Extra word extra word”
IsaacLRoyal Road5.0 / 5
“Fantastic Story so far. Always keen for the next instalment! The characters have multiple dimensions, the family dynamics are realistic (at least from my own interactions with siblings) and magic system is interesting. My only criticism is that there aren’t…”
KaldazarRoyal Road5.0 / 5

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(10)

IsaacLRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Great book, hard to put down once you pick it up. I wish the author would release a chapter a day though. Another thing is the author should start a discord or patreon to earn some extra dough to focus on being an author full time. Extra word extra word
KaldazarRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Fantastic Story so far. Always keen for the next instalment! The characters have multiple dimensions, the family dynamics are realistic (at least from my own interactions with siblings) and magic system is interesting. My only criticism is that there aren’t more episodes, but I guess that just leaves me hungry for more
omniknight2008Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
As a fan of another of The First Observer's works, The Hallow of Blood, I decided to give this story a try. So far, I'm glad that I did. August Intruder's premise is interesting, with Earth being regularly invaded by otherworldly beings via frequently appearing dimension-spanning portals. Besides creatures of myth, the invaders can also be humans given deadly system quests to complete, reminding me of something akin to Dark Souls PvP invasions. Earth is defended from these invasions by their own champions of humanity, a relatively small number of people who were lucky enough to spontaneously manifest supernatural abilities and classes. Though there are already hints that manifesting powers is not quite as random as people believe.
August Intruder is seemingly a slow burn litRPG story, and so far at chapter 15 the main character has not yet manifested powers or a class. Personally, I'm a fan of stories that take their time. If THoB is anything to go by, the MC will regularly go through hell and back to earn and grow his powers, not start OP and face little challenge, which I appreciate. I'm looking forward to seeing where the story goes from here.
TSnorRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Really solid, well written, unique story. The main characters point of view is amazing. Can't wait to see where this goes. Well worth the read. Nothing cringe. When this comes out on Amazon (not AU) I'll buy and re-read. Not all books are re-readable, but this one likely is.
perversityRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
The char's are mostly well written (except the MC, and I THINK that is done on purpose, but the MC would scare me if I knew someone like him in RL.). The MC is also a little strange in that he has limited interactions with people, but it doesn't take away from the story.
I do like the MC's family and 1 of his friends (the one obsessed with conspiracies I can't get behind atm, not sure why.).
The Brothers pet demon is hilarious.
The MC's Dad seems to be awesome, I had no dad growing up (he was murdered when I was 9 months old), so I can wish I had someone like Madness on my side.
The way that the powers are done is interesting, and pretty unique even if a little strange (on how the skills / powers will stalk / harass the person.)
The definitions of the environments is handled in a way I like, he doesn't go all (wheel of time spending 5 chapters describing the color of someones wall paper.), and the interactions with the people that the MC deals with is a lot of fun.
I definitely recommend this story to everyone who enjoys super hero stories where the MC has the possibilities to be a power house, but are not OP right off.
DavethemanRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
There are a lot of comments comparing this to Super Supportive. The author even admits that he was inspired to write his own novel from that novel.
The novel is SoL like SS. It's mostly well written, and has superpowers. The similarities end there.
The superpowers work off of mana instead of soul (termed Authority in SS.) The MC has got a bona fide useful class, and is not necessarily in a support role. He has very little trauma to work through so far, 1st chapter notwithstanding.
The one nitpick I would give is that the chapters are clearly in need of editing. More than once a chapter will reveal a fact to the MC. The next chapter, the same reveal is done again in a different way, and the MC is surprised. Once some clean up is done, I would put this next to SS in terms of personal novel rankings.
betoRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
The story has been surprising and interesting to read, with well written slice of life, intense fights, POV changes when needed, and relatable characters. It shows the author's skill that they can pull it off so well.
The first 3-4 chapters are harder to read, I don't know if it is a matter of lower quality, or that its a more complex and difficult setting, especially as opening act for this story. So don't be discouraged!
The worldbuilding is really good, giving this feel of complex real world, yet very different from our own. The author has been able to convey this without long expositions, nicely done.
MusicManRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
This is a lovely gem of a story. I can't really say anything beyond the fact that it feels so...real. So lived in. So well crafted and true. Admittedly the slow burn tag is definitely correct, but boy what a lovely burn it has been so far.
Style: incredibly well-written. We're talking actual published work, down to the use of description and tying everything into emotion/character and having a reason for everything. It's not plain functional writing, it's not excess purple prose, it flows.
Grammar: haven't picked anything up.
Story: intriguing and captivating. I do have to say that if you're wanting fast-paced litrpg numbers-go-up power fantasy this isn't the story for you, but I have fallen in love with the world. It's honestly incredibly well-designed, and the details have slowly been revealed naturally instead of info-dumped wherever. Plus the dangling plot threads foreshadow things that make sense but still are exciting to think about.
Characters: they feel like people. Every interaction makes sense, all the dialogue flows and is witty and funny and shows character so well. Nobody feels cardboard either. Even throwaway characters with only a few lines aren't caricatures.
Honestly, this is one of my new favourite novels, and I cannot wait to see where it goes.
DCatRoyal Road
★★★ 3.0
As the review title says, this story is a very very slow burn that focuses around the daily interactions between our MC and those close to him. As of this review, we're still at a point before he's about to start training.
The writing has little grammatical errors and decent in conveying the author's intent.
The style makes use of show and tell, but heavily relies on telling us the MC's thoughts with how introspective the MC is. The story relies on the the MC's introspection and his interaction with the others for giving us expositions and info dumps, which makes a lot of dialogue stiff and removes some character from the speaker. Altho we do have a few dedicated info providers, the way they provide some information doesn't feel in tune with their character.
Each introduced character has a depth of their own, altho they are still stiff and 2 Dimensional. With how slow the pacing of the story is, it may take some time after the exposition and info dumps are done along with a few hundred chapters revolving around each character before they become fully fleshed out.
A few plot holes here and there, so far nothing too jarring, but if the trend continues while the pacing remains, it will become too much - as a slower pacing is supposed to be good at stablizing plot lines.
Overall an interesting read, but way too slow of a pacing to continue reading. Felt like over half the chapters could have been removed and we'd still have the same story.
Caitlin_aarkRoyal Road
★★★ 2.5
Okay let me first say that I'm enjoying the book a lot, at least most of the time. The main character's skills and powers are pretty OP and I think it could be fun to read more of it. But there's a very important issue.
The consistency of the story is treated as a joke. The skills will be introduced with a cooldown of 8 minutes, or 3 charges, or the inability to use other skills while it's active, and the very next chapter will have those skills have 10 minute cooldown, 4 charges, and the inability to use skills part will be completely ignored. Every single value you are given in one chapter is completely ignored in the other, skills with certain descriptions suddenly change for not much reason after picking them, and let me stress that this is *not* those skills simply leveling up or something, this happens completely randomly. There were also cases of the skill cooldown being said to be 1 minute but then later on the character activates it and then does a lotttt of stuff only for us to figure out that the cooldown remains 57 seconds? And then the main character does a few things and then suddenly the cooldown is down by the next time the main character needs to use it.
What this feels like when I'm reading and going through the chapters is that the creator at first wrote the story completely normally, but then eventually maybe posted it somewhere else and instead of stubbing the story they just went back and completely *scrambled* the information on the available chapters so that 1/4th of all information was useless, never used again, or completely inconsistent.
The writer clearly has ADHD or is writing a character with ADHD and they do a decent job at that, I guess. But it turns out to be more annoying than relatable and expressive. The main character thinks about 1 thing and then suddenly 50% of the way through his logic he starts randomly thinking about 100 different topics before *sometimes* going back to finish the thought, and that was really stressful to re