No Strings Attached [Souls-like Fantasy]

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

The dragons are dead. Their colossal forms, once the lifeblood of an empire, now rot in the wastelands of a cursed continent. The people they empowered—humans made unnaturally strong by dragonkind's gifts—have been driven to madness by their absence. The land festers, shrouded in mystery, death, and a creeping decay that no living being dares approach.

Magus Montgomery Maldrak is no stranger to impossible odds. Driven by curiosity and a desperate need to save his daughter lost on the decaying continent of Draya Calyrex, he crafts a solution that skirts the very edge of life and death: puppet-automatons animated by necromantic sorcery. Through their lifeless eyes, Maldrak will walk the ruins of a dead empire, searching for the truth behind the plague, the madness, and the dragons' fall. Yet some truths are meant to stay buried—and some lands are better left forgotten.

What to expect:A post-apocalyptic worldMagic going wildPuppetsTranshumanismCute puppet girls?A boatload of Elden Ring and Bloodborne inspiredstuff.

Daily updates until chapter 40, after that... we'll see!

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2025
Author: RavensDagger

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.8/ 5.0
Followers: 1,955
Views: 259,004

Chapters(46 total)

Reviews

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

Community Reviews(8)

BenEngRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Ravens Dagger has shifted focus and has written a story that give the feel of play dark souls. The main characters explore a devastated land, while strengthen them self’s and fight the lands citizens driven mad. There is even a black smith who is still sane and trapped in his work shop if the homage was not clear enough. Time will tell if smith will provided the weapons seen in the cover art.
I look forward to seeing how the main characters grow and define themselves. With MCs that are literally just finding there voices Ravens dagger has down a good job of using and bucking tropes to quickly define there personalities and characters.
to those use to Ravensdaggers other works this is not as comedic or bombastic. I meant what I said the combat feels like stumbling around the start of Elden ring in the lands between. However there is still Ravens dagger familiar style, a group of main characters that explore and room for character growth.
All in all I am enjoying this and am looking forward to how the story and characters Grow.
200 words 200 words 200 words
Eclaire_de_LuneRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This story has a sharp tonal contrast to the author's usual fare, but still clearly reflects the voice and quality they've established. The one major distinction I noticed is beefier individual chapters, a very welcome improvement from the bite-size pieces of other stories.
The general quality is very welcome in the setting of a Soulslike, a genre that often translates poorly to the written form. Not the case here though, in with the nature of the cast allowing for the typical angst and struggle in these works to be implied, more muted; the pacing of the action benefits enormously. Emotional and narrative depth remains strong despite being so muted due to great contrast between foreground and background characters.
This all said at ch. 11, meaning there's plenty of time to change course, but given the author's track record I'm confident the trajectory of this story will be excellent. The setup promises not only typical RR powerscaling but emotional and character growth and realization to go hand in hand with that scaling.
I look forward to more!
Ekological ChimeraRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Despite the clear inspiration from Bloodborne and Elden Ring, the story itself and its concept are largely a breath of fresh air. It is a story that follows Magus Maldrak and his three puppets as the man seeks to uncover the truth of what transpired in his very-recently-destroyed home (home being an entire continent in this case). As a giant fan of the world building present in both Elden Ring and Bloodborne, I will admit to some bias.
Style: Stylistically, the story works well, despite it being something of a departure from RavensDagger's usual fare.
Story: Unfortunately, there aren't that many chapters out to judge this aspect well, but what is there is very fine indeed. The world-building is especially well done, and the choice to have the main character explore a very recently dead empire is inspired.
Characters: Maldrak is a fascinating character in his rareness - he is not some plucky youngling about to pluck his first excalibur from the stone. No, instead he is a middle-aged grandmaster, one with a burning need to find out the truth. The side-characters have not had that much time yet, but one can feel the life and personally radiating out of them when reading, waiting only for the story's focus to shift towards them.
The one thing that's both expected and slightly disappointing are the puppets, who, should the pattern in these first few chapters stay the same, shall be a large focus. They are, well, simple. I cannot in good conscience lower the rating for the category, as they are practically newborns, growing by the minute. This makes it a rather tricky proposition to rate this story's characters since it'll likely take quite a while for three of our major characters to grow into themselves. Having read Ravensdagger's other work, I doubt the five stars will be undeserved.
Grammar: Flawless as always.
Hiscore_TDLRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I'm not sure if this was even intentional on the author's part, but there's a thing I noticed: There's a Charlie's Angels setup going on here.
One middle-aged fancy guy repeatedly sends three ladies out on missions. That's Charlie's Angels. Amirite?
Anyway, that's totally irrelevant to the rest of this review.
BEWARE: I do not attempt to keep this review spoiler-free. I'm probably not spoiling anything major, but you are nonetheless forewarned. Particularly when I get to the characters, I'm actually talking about their traits and what I think of them.
I decided to drop a detailed review here because the categories, grammar aside, are all things I wanted to talk about anyway. So let's go!
STYLE:
Firstly, this entire story is thus far written in third person. It seems largely limited third person, with occasional forays into third person omniscient perspective.
This is an interesting one. Some effort has been made to give a certain Victorian-era travelogue feeling to everything about this story, starting from the date and location given at the beginning of each chapter.
The phrasing used, especially in dialogue, has an intentional, old-timey Bri'ish'ness about it. There are allusions to social strata and what I would consider antiquated worldviews, as well, that color the setting with this sense of being... low-fidelity sepia-toned. If you've watched Carnival Row, or were paying attention to the parts of Pirates of the Caribbean that happen in civilized places, you probably get what I'm saying here.
In any case, it's interesting. I like it a lot, personally, but I will say that this may be more difficult reading than a lot of Royal Road fare for these reasons.
In the portions of the story where the girls are making landfall and exploring, things are weird. That's where you get those souls-like feelings, the creepiness that feels like it's going to cling if you touch it. Those chapters, so far, are my absolute favorite, especially for style. The tone change rizzed me u
JannyRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
A litrpg that’s very light on the numbers. A great start with an interesting premise and some great possibilities for characters. Starts off with characters having zero strength and little personality and is already starting to ramp up.Really looking forward to seeing the story develop. If you like Ravensdagger’s other works you will probably enjoy this one too.
SargasreqRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
It's a weird story, with tons of worldbuilding. And I love it. The characters are fleshed out, the adventures the dolls live are quite nice and overall it's refreshing.
It's bleak as in everything is horrible. Yet, there is fun moments and it's pleasant to read. I highly recommand it.
The character cast is quite varied, the protagonists are of course the most fleshed out, but overall we understand everyone's character without issue.
Story so far is intriguing, it looks like a mix of a lot or stuff, what's incredible for me is how fleshed out the world feel. I do not know anything about this universe and I'm not sure I read something else from this author, but piece by piece it works out, and that is very enjoyable.
The style is maybe a bit off-puting with a lot or focus change mid discussion, but overall it's nice, a lot of description and it works.
I saw nothing special grammar wise but i'm not a native speaker so there's that.
If you like obscure settings and a slow pace, this is a very good read. The protagonists are not overpowered at all and they face mostly things around their level.
ThistlemanRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
** I am updating this review as of chapter 12
So I am thoroughly enjoying this story! The setting and the energy are phenomenal!
To be honest, I kinda scoffed when I saw the claim on the title. I read the prologue fueled by doubt, and I loved every last word of it.
The inspiration is legit, the world-building is legit, and it took my imagination away to a dark and brooding world where life and death twist together like just another tuesday.
It took a few chapters to reach the first piece of real action, although I hardly noticed it as each chapter leading up to it felt natural and added to the questions and mystery of what brought a mighty land, ruled by dragons, to fall. Once I got there, we even got our classic souls-like introduction. The enemies felt like they had the classic gait and mannerisms of the lost, wandering souls.
The action scenes flowed smoothly, and the vibes rolled well there. We even soon got hints of the first nasty boss fight to come, and I am looking forward to it. I am expecting(and hoping for) a few deaths on the first boss, and can't wait to see it in action. After all, this is a souls book haha
Anyways, seems I've mostly mixed story and style together already in my earlier gushing, so I'll just jump to my remaining two fields.
Grammar: 4.5/5, it is very well written. There are a couple small typos and mistakes in each chapter, but it would take a fairly sharp eye to catch them. Especially while immersed in the story.
Characters: 5/5, I am getting a fantastic feel of a varied cast. From our adorable puppets, each getting their first steps into the world and developing their own personalities and speech patterns, to the rough talk of the swordsmen to the scholastic preaching of the mages.
This is an excellently crafted story, and I do recommend you give it a try!
regaRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
It's always impressive how wildly different ravensDaggers books are. This one is no exception. An interesting, very dark souls world, with an immediately explained essence system and puppet MC. The writing and grammar is always amazing with any mistakes few and far between.
I'm enjoying this immensely so far. And I'm very excited to see where it goes!