Description

Ever since he could remember, Lucas had been a boy with no dreams.

Lucas had once been a regular guy, trying to get by. He had friends to laugh with, a family to care for, and a girl who looked at him as if he might become something more. Yet, only when they all vanished did he finally realize how much they mattered to him.

A shadow of his former self, he forced himself to keep living, clinging to hope and pushing forward—but once again, he had failed. And this time, he truly lost everything. Even his life, and with it the hope he so cherished...

But death was not the end.

When the lights went out, another lit up before him—one he saw through unfamiliar eyes. Lucas awoke as Luke Dunkelheit, a slain legend from a different world.

Luke was a hero. Lucas is an impostor. Now the hero is dead—and Lucas must live up to his legacy.

Now inhabiting the body of a beloved noble, a magical prodigy, and a virtuous hero, Lucas is forced to play a role he was never meant to fill.

Guided by forces beyond his understanding, he must now journey through the lands and nations of this new world and become the change needed to break the ancient dilemma that has plagued its people for generations, and in the process, find a dream he can call his.

What to expect:- A fairly long story.- A Weak-to-Strong protagonist with gradual, meaningful growth.- Power progression tied to character development.- A complex elemental magic system built into the worldbuilding and uncovered piece by piece as the novel progresses.- An expansive cast, including a growing main party and side characters who come and go.- Roughly 3k words per chapter on average.- A very perfectionist author.-NoGame Elements (Systems, Quests, Stats, VR, etc).-NoHarem, Smut or explicit content.-Noromance... for the MC, though several side characters have romantic subplots, including some same-sex couples.

On Hiatus until I finish Arc 2.

Current Progress: Planning... 11/11. Drafting... 11/11 (yay!). Rewriting... 1/11. Revising... 0/11.

Community Reviews(1)

SaucingtonRoyal Road

★★★★★ 5.0

I like the parallel edits. When two different stories are happening at the same beats in different places. You see it in movies sometimes. Lucas is worried about a boring road trip while Avalon's Luke is worried about a high-stakes mission. Luke clings to blind faith, Lucas clings to his faith in his parents to ignore intuition. And at the same narrative moment, catastrophe happens (explosion and a car crash). I'm a sucker for these "souls interconnected across dimensions" stories.
MAJOR rug pull led to a MAJOR hook. Luke is capable and has unshakeable faith and it's his strength as a paladin (because pragmatism certainly isn't). He's got friends, he's got a plan, he's got healing. Undefeatable! Oh but then you break his leg and make his magic fail him. And the beauty of it is his faith was his poison. THIS is what keeps readers interested.
Tropes:
A cosmically synchronous astrally-aligned truck-kun. Dressed as a car in one reality and a magical experiment in another.
A crisis of faith. Luke's death is physical AND metaphysical. His last thoughts aren't about the pain or what's gonna happen to my hard drive or whatever we normally think, but about being betrayed by his goddess. Dang.
The "In Medias Res": Excellent example of this here. It starts mid-heist and we learn about Luke with no exposition but by watching him do things. He's a leader, he can be sneaky, he can do magic to stuff. Great pacing.