Ortus

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

This is the old version of this story and the equivalent of a first draft; rough, and unfinished.

I have improved essentially everything in this story and have begun publishing the series onAmazon. If the premise or first chapters sound interesting, please check it out!

A woman wakes up in a forest, naked, alone, and injured. All she has is a mysterious, black dagger stuck in her abdomen.

And then, blue floating boxes appear, granting her life-altering, magical power. A strange, white monster with no eyes stalks out of a black stone tower, partially buried in the ground. A pure-white, fog-like substance fills it, poisonous to touch.

What is all this? Forgotten civilisations and alien creatures?

But first, baby steps. She doesn't have food, shelter, or even clothes yet. She must use her wits, knowledge, and maths to survive.

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2021
Author: Anno

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.3/ 5.0
Followers: 1,541
Views: 834,671

Reviews

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

Community Reviews(10)

GuthanRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
5/5. I've had fun reading this. I don't really care about much else.
The plot is the only tedious part. Being on an island is sorta boring after 80 chapters. MC doesn't always make the best decisions, although I can confidently say no one ever actually does.
Side characters are lefie, guard captain chick, and everyone else. That's about all you need to know about the side cast. They don't really exist.
vasusRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Ortus is a story about a woman who awakens in a strange world with a dagger stabbed through her and strange blue boxes in her vision. You will get to follow Riza’s tale as she stumbles from one danger into the next, learns about the world and the people around her and reaches staggering levels of power by utilizing her knowledge and skills in theorycrafting and math. It’s serious, engaging, filled with details and really something that you should not miss out on.
Style:
The dialogue is believable and the environments are described well enough to be easily visualized both in and outside of the tense combat scenes. The author consistently mentions details about the setting that make you want to piece together what’s really going on. The emotions of the characters are visible, pacing is consistent and I haven’t noticed any words being overused.
Grammar:
You may notice some typos but they are few and far between.
Story:
For the first half of what’s written so far, Riza generally goes with the flow as she’s taken from place to place by the locals who are not sure what to make of her, while she in turn is trying to figure out how things work, what to be wary of, why the world is the way it is and what her place in it should be. I don’t think it’s certain what the story as a whole is shaping up to be, but with the protagonist reaching a serious power level in recent chapters and possibly being hunted by some powerful groups, it seems that the stakes are about to get much bigger.
Characters:
The story follows Riza, a resourceful and intelligent woman who is steadfast in the face of danger. It doesn’t take her long to get into the groove of things after being thrown into a fantasy world, she takes her situation seriously and makes reasonable choices. Later on she is joined by Lefie, an adorable younger sidekick who adds some much needed joy to the protagonist’s generally bleak circumstances. A lot of the interactions between these two consist of theorycrafting and strategizi
PhiFellRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
TL;DR: solid, 5/5 mathy litrpg, if the synopsis interests you at all you should read it
Caveat: 5/5 doesn't mean "perfect" it just means "good, nothing broke my immersion, I'm excited for more" because nothing is perfect and this story is as good as other stories that get rated 5/5
So to start with, I think this is overall a big improvement from the original (and it's longer too!)
The characters are interesting, the world is cool, and the writing is solid.
This is in the category of MC-does-math-to-optimize-build, so if you like other stories like that, you'll probably like this.
Characters: reasonably complex and drew me in. The character's motivations tend to make sense, no one is cartoonishly evil or nauseatingly good IMO.
Story: Some intrigue, some action, some introspection, but this is primarily a litrpg power fantasy. The other aspects are done well, but the litrpg is central enough that if you don't like litrpgs, this is likely not for you.
Style: good - if this was a published hardback, I'd expect another editing pass, but this is better than most of the stuff that makes it onto kindle these days. It rarely has any prose that really impresses me, but it manages not to break immersion, which is plenty good for this genre.
Grammar: not quite free of mistakes, but not many. It's possible the few there are have been fixed, but I really enjoy this story so I tend to read chapters the moment they get uploaded. The errors I've seen are nothing egregious or immersion breaking, for example: the most recent chapter had an "it's" instead of "its" as well as "We make it." Instead of "We'll make it." The chapters are are longish so that's not many errors for a chapter of that size (and based on my recollection, that's an error heavy chapter.
ZarcoRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Very interesting book, with well thought out world building. It stars off very slow, the MC progresses very slowly but then skyrockets at late chapters. All I have to say, is I love me some necromancer stories, and this absolutely fulfills the requirements. Also, it has so many numbers, it could compete with Delve
RonDuneRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
A well-written, compelling isekai-litRPG in a unique backdrop. Our MC is very nicely characterized, both her strengths and her weakness (mostly her social-anxiety) remain believable throughout. The side characters have their own goals and wishes and retain their agency, depsite some being literal thralls.
I know people have compared this to Delve, and while there is some superficial similarity (the stat-blocks, heavy focus on min-maxing maths), I think Ortus is somewhat superior. The setting and world-building, especially, is far better and the MC has an actual personality.
ArusalanRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Love the story. It picks up really well, and the system is quite interesting. The character development is also good.
I'm excited to learn more about the world itself.
Unlike many of the stories on this site, the character isn't a paragon of human virtue either. She has deep flaws that make her very interesting and is quite unlike most protagonists in this genre.
OhaRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
So, I have read the original, so Im a bit biased to the plot of the original, but nonetheless I cracked this out in an afternoon and decided to leave a review for a tiny lil boost.
Style.
Read the Original, enjoy the whole concept and enviroment, but I cant say its overwhelmingly originally, When dealing with style I often dont look directly at it. What the style is doesnt change how well its been executed, and this ones been dealt with like most standard LITRPG stories, if not slightly above average.
Grammar.
Not much to say, didnt see any issues but as evident from my copious amounts of needless commas, Im not the best one to ask. Case in point the run on sentence.
Story Score.
Almost perfect, sorta brought down by the character but what can you do, its consistently high quality so if you can make it past the character then you wolnt have any sudden drops.
Character.
Bad start, character is dumb as a rock compared to the original, but about halfway through, ~7ish I think? she gets better, not perfect, but better. If you can get to that point where she actually catches her stride then its mostly smooth sailing except for a minor screwup that was edited out in chapter 13 shortly after writing this. I get the feeling Author realized it was weird after the comments criticized it and went back to fix it. So author listens atleast!
I dont want to say much about the plot or the story because my standards are low, and thats generally up to the individual, but if you have time, Id recommend you read it once it gets atlest ~30 chapters. A good buffer to get past the starting foibles and begins getting wind behind its sails.
EamondRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
even if there was nothing else even remotely redeemable about this story, i would still love it for deftly sidestepping my most hated of isekai tropes on this website, where the foreign-ness of a whole ass new fantasy world is utterly dropped 10 chapters in the moment the mc finds a vaguely sympathetic character and the setting and attitudes of characters become indistinguishable from modern day earth, or the author cranks up the grimdark absurdity to such retarded levels that even 40K writers are cringing.
Riza doesn't speak the language, understand the culture,like most of the people, or get what the fuck the big deal about learning healing and life drain skills is. this won't change quickly, and due to an extended dungeon delve, she'll be much more capable of dealing with the world on her own terms when she gets the hell out of the totally not-remnants of an earth level technological society buried underneath all the medieval nonsense.
style: the writing itself doesn't stand out for specific styles of prose or turns of phrase, but it's interesting and the lack of anachronisms and references to modern pop culture my medieval peasents is refreshing.
Grammar: not muchto say, typos are few and syntax is correct.
story: i love the story, the premise the world is based on and the opportunity for growth (as we've only seen a very tiny fraction of a single area, much less other "provinces" or countries) is great, and Riza's ongoing commitment to undersatnding the system, the world around her, and the (to me) mindboggling amounts of math needed to optimize her and any friends chances of survival are consistnely compelling.
Chartacters: Nobody seems one note or too tropey, Riza seems like a grounded and realistic character, and the cast of supporting characters are all believable and interesting especially in how they give context to the world by differing from riza. also Lefie is adorable.
side note the author's listened to some pretty strong fan feedback and not only t
MecanimusRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
This is a well-designed, smart 'dungeon crawler' following an unnamed (at first) woman through hostile environment. The strong points are the theory crafting and amazing world-building.
Style: The first few chapters have some purple prose but they are being edited and I highly recommend readers to go through them while they are being worked on. Otherwise, it is flowing and functional, though nothing extraordinary. It helps the reader focus on what really matter: the action and theory crafting.
Grammar score: Quite a few it's / its mixes which always sets me off but otherwise I didn't notice typos.
Story score: The strong point of this tale: the world building is excellent, and the author manages a very convincing introduction to another culture. The main interest is the work on skills which really reminds me of Delve, but to the contrary to delve the story actually progresses instead of losing itself in meaningless side action.
Character score: the weakest link, alas, and it relates to the MC. I find that she lacks consistency and feels at times more like a placeholder rather than a real person with a past, clear motivation, quirks etc... Other secondary characters do have a personality but it is often barebone and remains mostly unexplored. It's not too bad though, there are no obvious nonsensical or contrived actions like in some other stories. It did not really remove my enjoyment.
All in all I'd highly recommend it for people who enjoy the systeamtic approach to character building and as someone who does not enjoy that, I still had a good time reading.
Aki-chiRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
While the start is nothing too impressive, it is a good story in that it manages to build over that and make it so you don't just overlook people or events due to the power creep of bigger and bigger numbers. Much like a xianxia, you can practically see the incoming bigger scale that will make the protagonist see more chalenges, but at the same time they don't feel forced, while the journey to changes and motivation are properly flashed out, so i would certainly recomend this novel even if you find yourself unable to remenber all the multipliers and get lost in the numbers.