Magical Girl Ghostslayer [Cyberpunk Post-Magic Apocalypse]

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

In the shadows of the cyberpunk future, a magical girl is born. The magical girls and guardians are dead. Earth is flooded with mythical creatures, the paranormal and the eldritch. Humanity is relegated to sprawling cities and ruled by megacorporations who liken themselves to the divine. Ghostslayers – armed with cybernetics and guns – stand between humanity and extinction, but are bereft of morality and answer to the highest bidder. Two years after losing her parents in a wraith attack, Evantra awakens as the world’s final magical girl in an abandoned laboratory. She is gifted the ability to use occult artefacts to access skills and rituals fuelled by the souls of her enemies. With a series of mysterious murders and the arrival of a megacorp to the slums of Wisptown, Evantra’s journey to becoming an [eldritch] Ghostslayer begins. She must find ways to level up, expand her repertoire of guns, artefacts and friends, and uncover the secrets behind her awakening. Maybe, she’ll even make it all the way from her late parents’ church to Elsecaller city. The city where legends are born. Hers, is only just beginning. What to expect:A weak to broken (slow burn) character drama with slice of life, darkness, world mysteries, found family, and comedy. With a side of: Guns, ghosts, shady megacorporations, skills, rituals, occult artefacts, haunted megabuildings, mythic realms, haunted space stations, hypercars, cybernetics, eldritch entities, raids into lost territories. System:Stats-lite - oriented around levelling up, discovering more powerful artefacts and completing quests to unlock skills and rituals. Updates W - F - Sun Patreon is 6 weeks ahead.

Information

Status: Ongoing
Year: 2025
Author: Emberhare

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.6/ 5.0
Followers: 2,483
Views: 454,639

What readers say about Magical Girl Ghostslayer [Cyberpunk Post-Magic Apocalypse]

“I've enjoyed this book, it's well written and engaging and I think it gets a lot of difficult balancing decisions right. What I mean by this is that there is a lot of trauma and darkness, but good people and hope as well. There are mistakes made by the MC a…”
AaradurRoyal Road5.0 / 5
“I usually dislike magical girl storys but in this case it's just clickbait. The story is great and not very "magical girl" at all with very well wittern characters and a fantastic worldbuilding and interesting, refreshing power system. I really don't have o…”
DiamondscaredRoyal Road5.0 / 5

Reviews

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Community Reviews(10)

AaradurRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I've enjoyed this book, it's well written and engaging and I think it gets a lot of difficult balancing decisions right. What I mean by this is that there is a lot of trauma and darkness, but good people and hope as well. There are mistakes made by the MC and others, consequential ones, but while it can be slow the characters are capable of learning and growing from them. Evantra has some power, but at least so far it is not enough to fully stand on her own, so every fight still feels desperate. The book is good.
DiamondscaredRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I usually dislike magical girl storys but in this case it's just clickbait. The story is great and not very "magical girl" at all with very well wittern characters and a fantastic worldbuilding and interesting, refreshing power system. I really don't have one thing to complain about exept for wanting book 2,3,4,5... right now.
Great job.
VesperalRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I'm glad I gave this a chance. The story shows a lot of promise and I can't wait to see where it goes.Honestly I'm kind of hoping she takes the corpo route and gets trained by that Urial girl who helps her avoid getting too tied up by the company. But things seem to be going with a street streetkid path instead which I'm okay with too.
Will It WorkRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
The author calls it ‘ghouldark’, and that's about as perfect a description as we could get. Maybe ‘this is Shadowrun when reality ensues’? It's certainly dark, the end of existence is at hand brought through the greed and suffering inflicted on humanity, by humanity. But while the situation is grim, the people are not. If you want to read an entire book of Dylan Thomas's rage against the dying of the light, you've got it here.This is not grimderp — I cannot stress this enough. The future is not yet written, fate is not turned to destruction. There is no glory in wanton destruction of the world or of people's goodness. Everyone here is broken, but many of them still care in their own way, and I love it. I love crying for how stupid, foolish, brave, and how much of a martyr Evantra is. She is surrounded by people just as determined to sacrifice for her as she is to sacrifice for them — which sometimes, is not much at all, and that's kind of the point? It is the actual point of magical girls done right from the beginning — those who are strong of soul and will, empowered to use them in direct and physical ways. There are no happy endings yet, but there is… a better one. Earned, never without cost. If you don't like that, this is not the story for you.Mechanically, it works. There's some formatting jank, but honestly never anything that broke immersion for me.So as is my tradition, recommendations! Recommended for anyone who loves to see good hearts bringing light into terrible situations, functional magitech, or manipulative, magnificent bastards done right.Avoid if you prefer overpowered MCs, powerful men exercising power, or the loving detail of someone's grisly death.
dangling_participlesRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Magical Girl Ghostslayer doesn't just have potential, it's already great! I'm a huge sucker for both the cyberpunk and dark magical girl genres and this fiction satisfies on a DEEP level. I'm not normally one to gush, but I'm probably going to, and I don't want to drop a giant wall of text, so let's get started.
Style: If there were a literary equivalent to Laminar Flow, this would be it. The prose just flows, it's not poetic or overly fancy, but every word keeps the momentum going, and your brain rolls with it like water following the path of least resistance. I never have to force myself to keep going, and it's exactly what I want from good cyberpunk.
Story: It's early yet, but the story is moving fast! One of my favorite characteristics of the cyberpunk style is that the author manages to say more with less. All the story elements are coming together, and so far, I love where it's going.
Grammar: Magical Girl Ghostslayer is impressively clean. Even with Emberhare’s blistering release pace, the editing holds strong, with only the occasional slip you'd expect from writing at warp speed.
Characters: The characters we've met so far are largely distinct and believable. Some of them are flawed but feel redeemable, while others seem too good to be true, and fill me with distrust. Emberhare isn't heavy-handed with telling you what to think about each character, but gives you plenty of details to come to your own conclusions, and the speculation in the comments shows that plenty of readers are engaging with the characters!
neal.mayneRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Fantastic so far. The story telling is great it pulls you in and makes you not want to put it down. The characters are amazingly well written deep and intriguing even the important side characters feel like they have there own personal stories and are not just bland npcs just there for the MC to use to further the plot.
GhostDetectiveRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Honestly this is an amazing story
It started slow and in the first chapters were not to my liking, even though of dropping it, but I'm glad I didn't. The story suddently starts getting better and better and more interensting by the chapter, the autor is amazing at writing characters that are incredible, interesting, complex and tridimensional, to the point that you end up falling in love with every single one, nobody really feels like an extra, plus the mysterious atmosphere of where the plot is going and what will happen to Evantra has me on the edge of my seat waiting for more chapters
The world is very unique I honestly have never read anything like it, and it feels really unique even among cyberpunk / future / distopian genre, it's obvious to everyone that reads it how much love is put into it
If I'd have to say anything negative it would be that the fight scenes are hard to follow sometimes, and even then I'm nitpicking, maybe something to improve but far from being a dealbraker or to leave a negative review
Overall an amazing book to pass the time with interesting plot some of the best character writting and development I have read on RR to the point it's clear that it's the authors strong point and focus when writting
IchorMortisRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
A new favourite I think. Great setting so far, cool world building, and a whole lot of stuff to explore. Should be a pretty wild ride.
Brings to mind aspects of worm, stray cat, magical girl gunslinger, maybe even Tokyo ghoul, but I wouldn't actually go so far as to say they are specifically alike at the point I have read to.
Stands on its own merits without the comparison, I only mention them as a flag to readers who might also enjoy this
Well written, clearly human authorship, which is good. Wish the author luck, success and health as they write, I would definitely enjoy seeing this one go all the way.
OakFlameRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This book promised a character-focused cyberpunk Litrpg reminiscent of MGG, and that is exactly what it's delivering. I can feel the care and thought that's gone into each character, from our mc to pretty much every side character that's been mentioned.I'm making this review fairly early in the book's development, as I want more people to check it out. So far, it is very worth reading and deserves more attention.Style: No complaints here. The prose flows nicely, and never disrupted my reading. The spacing makes it easy to read, and I found the descriptions to be just enough to give a good picture of the surroundings and character without bogging anything down.Story: So far, it's well paced. At the time of reviewing, there are only 11 chapters, but given the author's skill so far, I have faith that the story will continue to develop and will be paced well.Grammar: Well edited, with few or no mistakes.Characters: They all seem to be fleshed out and believable, even the seemingly minor side characters. If there is one thing I had to point out as a stand-out aspect of this book so far, it's the character introductions. In the span of a paragraph or two, I get such a feel for new characters that they hardly feel like side characters anymore. They all feel real, like they actually grew up in the setting that they're in, and can still support each other despite the darkness around them.The story is great, the setting is great, and the characters are amazing. Read this if you like MGG, or just good books in general.
QuickDucklingRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I initially read this fiction because I'd been enjoying the style of Magical Girl stories that RR has been producing recently. This one was popular, and the author was kind enough to agree to a shout-swap. So I figured, what the hell, why not give it a shot?Then I binged everything available in a single day.I'm a huge... Fan isn't the right word, but I feel strongly about Magical Girl Gunslinger. So when I realized this novel was going for a similar vibe, but wasn't going to do that thing that MGG does, where the story repeatedly drives a knife right into your feelings. I was ecstatic.First, a few things that I loved:The world feels incredibly lived in. Even if the slang is a little cringey to me (Which might just be a 'me' problem), I can look past that because every part of the world around the language feels like it was carefully constructed. You can see how culture is directly influenced by both the cyberpunk dystopian setting and the paranormal apocalypse.Speaking of the apocalypse, I think I love the theme of the whole thing. Various supernatural mythologies being real, but horrible, and invading Earth is really entertaining. Any story where angels are the bad guys is a good story in my book.The litrpg power system has incredible potential. If the author leverages the fact that 'bits of the monster's powers are integrated into the MC's powerset' aspect of the system properly, I think the story will probably have incredibly interesting fights. So far, we're still in the early stages, and the power-ups feel a little underwhelming. But that's better than the alternative, which is usually the issue in these 'power stealing' type stories.The 'Magical girl but kind of fucked up' is an archetype I don't think I've seen properly explored. Like we've seen magical girls with fucked up powersets, but never one that was completely on their own, in a world where magical familiars were literally rendered extinct.I also enjoy the corpo slander.A few things I had an issue wit