Eight

Information

Status

Ongoing

Year

2019

Author

Samer Rabadi (aka 3seed)

• Update: Celebrating Eight 5 With Cake
  Feb 25, 2026
• Update: Pre-Order Information & Cover
  Feb 12, 2026
• Eight 1.2: Introducing Eight
  Aug 25, 2019
• Eight 1.1: A Sky Like Robins' Eggs
  Aug 22, 2019

Reviews

Community Reviews(10)

• Warix VivianaRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  To be honest, it is and isn't complicated.
  Europeans and Americans have medieval fantasy (orcs, elves, dwarfs, etc), China has xiania (young master, cultivator, old monsters, spirit beasts, etc)
  This is, the Mexican equivalency. Based on a mix of old Mexican culture, stories, and more. Mixed with Indian and pagan.
  It's a nature and magic based forest throughout the whole story. Theirs spirits, spirits, pagan esk gods, magic juiced up animals, and few monsters. Theirs qi, mana, and the level system is more closer to training with breakthroughs than anything related to an rpg. There's clear, if not directly good and evil, positive and negative ways to "level".
  It starts off pure survival and moves to growing, as a person, as a magic user (not mage), as a weapon user, etc etc.
  You'll see I'm describing the environment, the setting, but not the story. The stories good but it can firmly be separated into "survival phase" and "learning and early growth phase". Both great. But if you don't understand the unique setting, you could be put off by it.
  Hunters are common, expect bow, spear and leather, not armour or sword. Expect magic, but no fireballs. Think buffs and healing. Expect Family to be a massive concept. A very big concept with actualized effects. Expect magic animals, but not goblins or the like. And a never ending forest.
  And Eight has to first survive and then has to learn this all by scratch.
  At first, as I was reading, I can honestly say I felt annoyed. The setting is just very spiritual (Not religious, spiritual). Which makes sense but it just rubbed me the wrong way. The why is hard to lock down, but, put bluntly, it felt stupid.
  Eight felt like he was someone who genuinely believed in fairy tales and then was dropped into a world where they were all true. No one who gets isekaied usually believes goblins and dragons existed on earth. Except it's spirits this time. And the village is extremely pragmatic. As in "We all share. we all do our part. We're all tog
• JircnivRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  I really enjoyed every bits of this. The pace, the tension of the unknown and the characters. Ikfael and Eight's antics and the way the characters interact with each other is WAO.
  Eight and the lichen's symbiotic relationship is quite neat tbh. Never seen a symbiotic story in a litrpg.
• NetiZenRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  A fantasy story with a native american/midieval theme.  Eight travels a different path away from civilisation and the entrapments there of.  Not many story touch upon the spirit of native americans and thier culture seperating it from the pack at the get go.  Reincarnation/system elements are a little cliche but the story doesn't focus on them and instead leaves them as supporting elements.  While the world itself is still building the characters are left lacking but that's mostly due to the passing of the story istelf and less to do with the author not doing it.  the story istelf is a bit on the slow side so buckle up for a long read.  All in all I like this story, it's cute, has a less used theme, and deep.
• OskatatRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  I am so happy to have found this story
  The writing style is pretty good with no or no memorable grammar or spelling problems. I think there was a then/than mistake but that is about it.
  The story is so far mostly a survival story and exploring the world, no overarching plot has been revealed yet, but the story is quite good so far. The boxes it ticks here are:
  Life is Struggle: The MC has to work for his results. The things he has to do are hard. Nothing is ever easy. The opposite is the MC who gets handed everything he needs (power, wealth, teacher, allies) without doing or giving anything in return.
  These are my skills: They are the skills he has learned. His own understanding is given a numerical value. Having the same value doesn't mean you have the exact same skills. The system offers guidance and doesn't dump knowledge. You can't grind or point-buy your way to the next level
  The number of characters are limited, but so far no one-dimensional stereotypes. Nothing wrong with stereotypes at that, but people aren't one-dimensional. The MC has a rich background which we are exploring with him as we go. The people (and spirits) we have met so far all feel like having their own motivation and none fall into specific tropes. Boxes ticked:
  This was Me: MC has a full and relatively believable backstory, explaining where much of his skills and attitude come from. Completely unlike many an MC who somehow found time to become gun-experts, fitness fanatics, gamers, survivalist and kung-fu martial artists by the time they're 19.
  I'm a person too!: The people he meets have their own roles in the world and don't exist just to showcase the story of the MC. No ancient teachers showing him all their secrets on a whim, but also no beligerent characters who pester him because that is what they do
  So for avoiding all my pet peeves and molding the story in a way I like, plus general good writing, 5 stars all around
• Inerudite SageRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  I'm writing this review after reading five installments of the series on Kindle unlimited and only just now discovering it was on Royal Road.
  The author of this series is clever. I share that simple phrase with the utmost nuance and appreciation. Old men are clever. I'm middle-aged myself now, and after a lifelong love affair with stories, I'm a tough crowd. So when I acknowledge a writer's cleverness, one old man to another, I am being deliberately meaningful.
  I can't remember what specifically caught my attention with the first book on the series, but I picked it up to pass some time with moderate hopes of amusement and low expectations of encountering substance and thoughtfulness.
  My hopes and expectations have consistently been blown out of the water with this. I have found it to be immensely entertaining, incredibly thoughtful, and very sneaky with how it discreetly offers insight, character, and depth. Seriously, on more than when I occasion these books have left me contemplative and reconsidering some of my own assumptions about life. LitRPG novels aren't supposed to do that.
  But stories are. They aren't just limited to entertainment, escapism, and distraction. The oldest and most noble purpose of stories is edification. Few authors remember this, and of those, fewer still can manage it functionally, let alone artfully. That's why this author is clever. They sneak it in, and I applaud that with recognition and appreciation.
  I can tell that write from their heart with passion, intention, humor, and meaningful consideration. I love their work and I'm glad to discover they have more stories that I can enjoy.
• Gamerkitt3nzRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  Very methodically thought out and well made piece, but very slow paced. This is a solid piece of writing although it isn't for everyone. If you don't have a long attention span and patience, this fantasy isn't for you. Takes the isekai trope in an interesting if not super unique direction that has very high highs, but also very boring lows.
• GarrdorRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  I like this story, it's got a lot of things I personally like and not a lot of things I personally dislike. Here are some of those things, starting with the more positive:
  First just to get it out of the way, the grammar and wording of the story is great. If you find a reason to dislike this story, it wont be the actual quality of the writing.
  I've said it before I'll say it again: always a fan of survival litrpgs from the perspective of an uninformed protagonist. That's basically all the first 27 chapters of this are, a guy trying to figure stuff out and survive.
  An actually reasonable explanation for the MC knowing a bunch of random stuff. A former documentarian (documentarist? documenter?) production guy, he's got vague memories of a bunch of interviews from experts. Also he's a fairly big nerd, which translates into caution and genre savvy.
  The story has a guy reincarnated in a kids body, but the guy doesn't start actually acting childish. Granted it's just him and an otter in the story, there could be a middle school arc eventually, but fingers crossed we don't get any of that.
  The skills are pretty gnifty impressions of the right way to do something, or knowledge skills are memories of him learning that knowledge that can be more or less detailed. No information downloads out of nowhere, no ancient spear fighting art tracers correcting his stance. I like the ratio of hard work to effective and interesting mc.
  Clear surface reason relatively early in the story for his reincarnation, while maintaining a fair bit of mystery to allow for some wonder. As in , readers know a god reincarnated him as a reward, but he never had a conversation with that god or an expositional character selection moment.
  Cool magic system that starts basic and leaves room to grow, again without making the MC OP. The capability for the MC to eventually be a powerhouse is certainly there, but it's not given to the character on a platter. Plus I like when there's qi stuff and Mana spell stu
• gtrocRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  I liked the first book a lot. The grammar and spelling are fine(I did not notice any issues). I found the System in the story to be interesting, though I do sometimes get confused as to how chi and mana work and what they mean in the world.  I look forward to reading more. Hopefully, I will get some answers.
  The only issue I have is that the main character is...off. He is supposed to be an old man reborn in an eight-year-old's body. His memories of his family and the like are fine and basically fit that mold. He often refers to the Isekai genre, Dungeons & Dragons, and other nerdy things. Specifically modern nerdy things. The main influences in his life were his grandparents and his wife and all his memories of them were outdoorsy. I am not saying that he can't be into these disparate things, but they do not fit into an easily wrapped package. D&D is easy enough to follow, as it hit big in the late seventies early eighties when he would have been in late highschool early college. It really is the anime references I find hard to believe. Anime didn't hit big in America until the late 1990s early 2000s. prior to that, all that America had on the popular level was Robotech, Akira, and ghost in the shell. You had to actively seek out bootleg copies of Japanese cartoons, and then you were never really sure what you were going to get. I was a teenager then and was hyper-focused on getting more anime and it was tricky to get more. I guess I just find it odd that a man entering his fifties would suddenly get into a narrow subgenre of anime. Maybe I am overthinking it.
  I guess what I am trying to say is that the MC comes across like someone trying to sound like an old man, rather than someone who is actually an old man. All of his memories are of when he was young or kind of vague "adulty" sort of things. I think he would have worked better as a slightly younger soul in a boy's body. But do not let this one nitpick get in the way of a fine story. His age is actually not that
• CrowboldRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 4.0

  Just finished book 3 and wanted to review before I took a break from this series. I hate cultivation but the way it's handled in Eight is fairly enjoyable and doesn't feel like the typical power-up with no actual work put in.
  The characters are written very well, probably the highlight of the story for me, the action's pretty good, and the world building is solid. My biggest complaint is energy management, I hate how limited it is for people and I do hate how effortless cultivation is the answer given for that problem. It's tacky and poor writing. But at the end of the day it's still a decent story.
• maelos61Royal Road

  ★★★ 3.0

  Both the writing style and grammar are a cut above most of the stories on this site and make reading it bearable, though it this doesn't compensate the lack of a story and the rather boring characters.
  Thing is, the story isn't a story. All we have, 90 chapters later, is a premise. The premise for the story is: an old man from earth dies, gets transported to a fantasy world in the body of an eight year old child and he survives. Even after the 'survival' part of the story, it's still just him surviving and going with the flow. The main character doesn't seem to have any kind of drive or reason besides survival. He's just going with the flow and he reacts to things happening to him. There is no larger overarching story, no plotline, nothing. I guess you could call it a slice-of-life story?
  The characters aren't atrocious, but they're nothing special either. All of the supporting characters are rather flat and get little to no development. Seldomly there's a POV-change, but even then nothing new really gets added to the characters. They're just there and they have some defining characteristics, but there's no real life in them.
  The main character is honestly badly done. He's supposedly an old man, but he doesn't really feel like it. He feels like he's being written as a wise old man by someone who's just starting adulthood and they gave him the body of an 8 year old. Why does nobody comment on how utterly weird this 8 year old child is? Like, really, I get that he might seem like a genius or something to them, but he's a weird, creepy kid. Anyways, the whole 'old man' schtick just seems to be some kind of excuse to give our character loads of 'life experience' and some fake wisdom. He's lacking, and it's kind of saddening. The author could've just made him a young adult dying and given him some room to grow, but the character is already fully 'grown'. There's nowhere to develop and making your character a 'wise old man' template is just writing yourself into a charact