New Cthonic
Self-Published
Community Rating
Description
There is a town in Pennsylvania like all others in Appalachia, where no one dreams of anything if they don't dream of leaving. Jobs are vanishing, people are depressed, and enormous superpowered predatory animals test the defenses weekly. But luckily for Dudlin, PA, a change is coming - Salem Cooper is about to die.
This is a story about a boy becoming a dungeon, and a dying town becoming a destination.
Information
- Status
- Hiatus
- Year
- 2025
- Author
- Spessgot
Royal Road Stats
- Rating
- 4.8/ 5.0
- Followers
- 460
- Views
- 41,834
Chapters(15 total)
Reviews
No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!
Community Reviews(4)
- Galaxy876Royal Road★★★★★ 5.0Are you tired of the same, regurgitated dungeon story? I AM. This is better than those, a story that truly lives between the perspectives of multiple characters and builds out an alternative Earth and history that we can sink our teeth into. The author whiffed a little with the dungeon creation, saying that their would be the normal RPG tables and number crunching for the MC to understand his new system, but thankfully Author-san immediately went organic with their storytelling and there hasn't been a single box or number to deal with. Author, you need to go back and change that page btw. I just know you're losing seasoned readers because of it.
As I was saying though, organic dungeon being operated in a world where magic and superheroes both exist because the magic creates the superheroes. Our dungeon MC is a victim to his own magic awakening, forcing him to adapt a form that best expresses his magic of creation, whereas someone else might get breeze magic and fly, as a completely unrelated example.
Not only that interesting landscape to navigate, but this is the first dungeon story I have ever read that truly gives back to the environment around it outside of pumping energy back into the atmosphere. I think the human-ness of our MC and his care for others truly gets showcased by how he tries to give back to his hometown and really just sold me on this story 100% - MianighRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0There’s so much good world building and character interaction going on. We’re not getting bogged down by stat sheets or game mechanics, and there is plenty of real story momentum. There are multiple perspectives so we don’t get stuck in a cave. At the same time, this is not your traditional fantasy world with goblins and elves, so there is a lot of diversity to explore in terms of what can happen.
The author writes really well and the pacing is good.
Highly recommended! - Sarloc GoodenoughRoyal Road★★★★★ 4.5First of all, Spessgot is an excellent author, as proven by his other novel Play Test (go read it if you haven't already), so the writing quality is stellar. The characters are all distinct and very human.
As for this story, I think he is still looking on how to articulate it. There is a lot of differents POV. We begin with the dungeon, but as of chapter 6.3 it's only 20% of the chapters. The first chapter contain "system" element but it doesn't appear anywhere else afterward. For now there was no horror or sexual content and no indication it's coming any time soon.
We are still being slowly and organicly introduced into the worldbuilding. The story takes place in an America with super heroes but only since a few years (decades ?) and with magical and hostile creatures in the wilderness. The technology is sf-level in some aspect despite the story being only 2007 in the timeline, but completely "normal" in other.
I'm definitely intrigued and I'm gonna follow this story, but it's clearly a work in progress/ writing experimentation. - XaliburRoyal Road★★★★★ 4.5Pretty solid so far. Chapters are a pretty nice length, and worldbuilding has effort put in. I would like more chapters with Salem's perspective, but it's still early. Maybe that's been planned.
A little sad that PA is now practically wilderness, but considering PennDOT is notoriously bad it doesn't surprise me too much.