Shovels In Spades

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

We all have dreams of becoming powerful, becoming the cool mage that rules the world, living as the dashing rogue who can steal a kingdom's entire royal treasury undetected, or perhaps, the valiant knight whose prowess on the battlefield is unmatched by all.

However, when the apocalypse strikes, you can only use what you have at your disposal, be that guns, baseball bats, your fists, or maybe, just maybe, a shovel.

One young man who goes by the name of Darenzo has just had his world altered into one that is now the focal point of some sort of experiment.

Just at the end of his shift at the skip site, a worldwide announcement was made, that not only changed Darenzo's life, but also the lives of all of the Earth's inhabitants.

Can Darenzo survive and thrive in this changed world? Or will his growing madness best him? The answers to these questions can only be revealed with time.

[Goal of 2 chapters per week, the only exceptions being announced breaks or emergencies]

(The new cover art is a courtesy of the very kind and talented ssddx and was designed using the fanart cover of cthulupillar as the base.)

This novel is a participant inThe Writer's Pledge

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2017
Author: Lone

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.3/ 5.0
Followers: 4,300
Views: 9,865,379

Chapters(399 total)

Reviews

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

Community Reviews(10)

CrusadorRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I love the story! Some of the characters are a bit forgettable, but the main ones are really fun. The grammar is good and gets fixed when it's wrong. The style is readable and easy to read. Love it! :D
sumdumbguyRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Just throwing my 2 cents into the mix.
This story has a lot going for it. I'll admit I also was very close to dropping it around three quarters through book 1, but not because the writing was bad, or the characters were two dimensional as many have claimed. If you can get through that, as I did, you will find a polished gem beneath the rough surface.
YourGodPenneRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
Great story that is really worth the read. There are little to no grammar errors in the later chapters. The characters that actually stick around and are relevant are quite fleshed out and detailed with actual wants. MC isnt just some robotic nutcase IE he actually does stuff for reasons and thinks things through, though that usually means who he needs to hit with his shovel. Hopefully the author picks this back up at some point, I would love to see a continuation of the story.
Jack BlankRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
You've managed to pull together a antipathic protagonist into someone who's still pretty apithetic but he does a lot of thinking before most of his actions and even before he speaks, with a ragtag group of survivors which he monitors and controls under the banner of his own morals and ethics.
If done the wrong way, he's a dictator, but at present he stands an idol to those he leads. And that's nice, personally I love the story. I'm just saying that regardless of whether or not things continue to go Daz's way -most of which he struggled for let me mention here- I will be looking forward to see how this story presses onwards.
You've got an amazing story here with vibrant characters and a world full of vitality. Please, make sure you've got everything written out somewhere so it doesn't spiral out of control and you leave us with another hiatus.
dachen11Royal Road
★★★★ 4.0
So the story is good. You got a protagonist that's seen some shit, that isn't too OP and is generally well liked by the readers.
But the problem is that it's kinda stagnating. This is a problem a lot of stories have, where the book was great in the beginning but now its kinda boring and you just don't want to read it anymore because there's too many characters that you can't remember and this one other novel that you just started is suddenly more interesting.
And then you finish that other novel and move on to another novel, procrastinating from reading this one.
And then when you finally make up your mind to read it you're like wtf is going on who is this.
This is what happened to me when I was reading That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime(LN). The names of the characters just blended together and so I just decided to read the manga. Also the translations on scribblehub were horrible.
But enough about that. Point is, the beginning of this story is great, but there aren't enough "big events" where the main character will struggle in. If he has some kind of countermeasure, that's great, but you need to surprise the readers every now and then because this is third-person, not first-person. Otherwise it gets to the point where the readers think that the main character will survive due to plot armor somehow like in the webtoon The Gamer. The author of that story keeps it interesting by purposely not telling the readers everything the mc can do but that's really the only reason why its still going.
There are cases where this does not work, like Solo Leveling, but in that case it was that the main character didn't struggle, the supporting characters did, and the author did surprise the readers every now and then.
So basically just make more "big events", and make it so that the mc isn't always protected by plot armor. Get into your head the concept that JacOnue, author of Old Man's Adventure, did. The story could just end right then and there any time, with Daz dying. D
Rey_Guerrero23Royal Road
★★★★ 4.0
I would very much like to point out that there have been many comments asking who in there right mind would do any of the things the MC has done. I bring this up because I wonder if anyone even actually bothers to fully read the first 15 chapters at all. The MC has very helpfully pointed out that he is not like other people. He talks to his pet Rock/bodyguard that he summons as if he could truly understand and talk back. He does the same with his weapon.
This young man is clearly unstable and has a warped personality. You can see it in the way he treats people. How he goes about "saving" people just to get their points. Everything he does is to satisfy his own needs while playing the hero to this group of people he saves along the way. He uses charm, deals, and a whole lot of word play to trick, cajole, or even force people to bend the knee as it were.
If you have ignored all of the comments he makes inside his own head during these moments then it's no wonder you still question why the MC does the things he does. I also saw the comments about the weapons and how MC says people should stick with the item they had in their hands when the world changed.
Reread the story from the beginning and pay attention to the prompts that the MC gets and you should be able to understand why the MC makes this suggestion. It's the same reason he stuck with his shovel this entire time. Also partially why his shovel has a name.
GREAT AND WACKY STORY
LysateRoyal Road
★★★ 3.0
Spoiler: Spoiler
we all love games and fantasy but for real if you in game and had free ss skill u see the b rank is already op would u spend it on inspection skill? ok let me rephrase this u r not in game this is real world u almost died u would 90% get a combat ss skill which should make u god level just by how good b stuff are right? and 10℅ idiots would choose other stuff so the mc seemed smart to put traps and acted very smart in the beginning then piss u off this is the start of a novel i really dont have to continue reading if it pisses me off
mdscorpazzRoyal Road
★★★ 3.0
World building is good, characters are decent.
MC makes little sense, is inconsistant and illogical with little justification. He starts as a normal guy with social issues who is a bit unstable due to the stressful situation. He makes some illogical and foolish decisions afterwich the author explains he was a meglomeniacal sociopath bent on world domination all along.
Could be fixed with a rewrite to make the character more consistent.
Z-BlinkRoyal Road
★★ 2.0
Because it's full of stat windows, the plot moves at snail's pace.
If I wanted to read game manual/log, I would.
Not today tho
issacweirdoRoyal Road
★ 0.5
If you've read litRPG where the MC has secure plot armor and is constantly lucky then you've read this. The characters are flat and dull, having a very basic sense of morality without delving too deeply into others' perspective. In particular the emotional depth of the MC...throwing some profanity around to illustrate someone is very angry is simply poor writing skills. The writer also tried to establish the MC as a badass waaay too early; this is especially apparent when he kills someone for the first time and a little before that when he tries to act all alpha-like when saving a group of people. Being emotionally detached and selfish doesn't make you cool or better than others, it just makes you a douche.
I don't feel a connection with any of the characters. Reading feels like a chore and it doesn't get better as it progresses (I stopped 20 chapters in and skipped to a few recent chapters; yup, it's still bad).