The Discarded

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

The Umbrae Lunae existed before man, beautiful abominations birthed in the nightmares of mad gods. They wait for humanity to misstep, for the angels to look away. For the moment when they can cloak the world in moon shadows once again.

But even horrors have children. Even nightmares must feed. One child, unlike the others, finds his way to a school for young abominations. Will he be a sheep cast before the wolves, or a terror that wears the skin of wool to entice the wolf close?

The flesh of his body was his only coin, strips cut to pay debts that never ended. Everyone has scars, stories in a life led, lessons learned, and licks taken. Luminous bodies touched by darkness. There are a cursed few that are the opposite, black shadows consumed by scars, twisted minds devoured by diseased hungers, bodies tortured misshapen works of gouged flesh, silver lines of blade thin cuts, ragged tears of teeth and glass. For them, the scars are marks of homecoming, the mangled wasteland the only place they feel at peace.

Hell is a place. It's made of concrete, steel and glass. It's the sounds of starving kids crying themselves to sleep, huddling into small balls as creepers come and take their due of innocence and tender meat. It's eating rotten food and carrying ticks in your hair. It’s having no one and nothing while surrounded by everything. It's the life of a street kid. What abomination was birthed in the corrupt womb of man’s cast-off shit?

Pretty people don't know the power of ugly. They can't see the strength in a broken soul or the power in a calloused heart. Those secrets are for the discarded alone. Only the broken understand the grace of darkness. The blessed folds that hide scars and tears, the protection of its concealing umbra.

E-Begging: Character Sheets, Racial Character Classes, of both side characters, villains, and main characters as well as short stories can be found on my Patreon. Eldrik Lewis

This story is cross-posted to Scribble Hub. Same cover and synopsis.

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2021
Author: JustAskin

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.3/ 5.0
Followers: 185
Views: 213,787

Reviews

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

Community Reviews(9)

Shiro JtxRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
It is a great story, well written and its characters are coherent, the biggest problem I saw at the beginning is that the descriptions were long but in later chapters it was reduced, leaving it in a very nice way of writing and with a different charm, so others is a story that at times dry my throat in the most emotional moments in addition to seeing the development of relationships where you will see the characters make very human mistakes, adolescent problems as well as the consequences of these.
Bossbeast302Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This book was spectacular!!! The prose is a little wordy but after you acclimate it directly adds to the world building and helps place you within the world of the umbrae luminae. The mc isn't a dumb pushover and the relationships such as they are, are stark with realism. This isn't your logan jacobs harem this is an adult harem novel. This book makes you consider the consequences of your own actions and contemplate your life. It's rare a book can do that without sounding preachy. The discarded never turns into a soapbox but it makes you think. That's a valuable gift. The characters come to life and make their own decisions not always good ones but realistic ones. Im so excited to see where the rest of the story goes!!!! The main characters choices have direct consequences and even after he is beaten down he just gets back up again. Part of this is because he has nothing to lose he isn’t willing to give another part of his decisions is based on the fact that he’s whip smart with a talent for seeing the significance of a situation and has an unhealthy dose of cynicism from living on the streets. This book doesn’t turn a man from the streets into a lothario genius it presents him mostly honestly with a heart that gives even when he gets nothing but pain in turn.
X_holicRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
The style is interesting and flashes out the dystopian and unnatural settings the action takes place in.
It's really at a pro level ,vast superior to what you usually encounter in fiction.
The characters & plot are A grade and beyound with the MC growing on you and beeing relatable,truthful to himself and his concept.
The FMCs and other cast is as well detailed and even more intriguing the more you advance,they are complex in their own right and really well fleshed out,acting in their own interests snd with their own goals as every human/sentient being does IRL.
It's as much about the harshness of life in your everyday life ,but now you have a few extra levels of fantasy in the mix.
I recomand giving this a try if everything you read up till now is the same kind of trope you had enough of(OP MC that is brainded,girls flocking to him by default,no development or intersting character dynamics,lack of spine in a lot of characters,etc.).
GoldeNeedleRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This will be a light review.
This story is about a damaged boy, Cesare, whose last hope is the school named Primrose. He discovers it's a school for monsters (the story has a fancy latin-sounding term for them, and plenty more where that comes from, but I'll let you discover that). Cesare, at the point of the story where I am, is only a human. He is weaker than all of them, and in this school, as long as it's not death, might makes right. Fortunately for Cesare, he is a badass, and a mastermind. He is a schemer, using every underhanded tactic in the book. And yet, he suffers. He has thrown away everything, and yet he craves the warmth of other people, love, friendship, knowing he will be betrayed. And betrayed he is, at every turn.
He values his friends more than they value him. It's a beautiful, and tragic story of a wreck of a young man, trying to find his place in the world.
My words can't really encapsulate everything that this story tells, not even close. Before I end this review, let me tell you, this author has one heck of a pen. The dialogues are as sharp as the claws and blades of the students. Words hurt, people clash. Sometimes, I think it's a bit of a rap battle between the characters.
Give it a shot!
WFSmedleyRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I'm mostly writing this as I think this could use more ratings/reviews.
I've read hundreds of stories from this site and am currently enjoying this one and hope it continues like this ...though as of yet there are no signs of this being litRPG. Maybe that will come in a later chaper.
So far it's a street kid who somehow ended up at a school for monsters and is trying to survive.
Mocking BirdRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Found and read book 1 on amazon overnight. This was a phenomenal read, and it's a crying shame the author hasn't gotten much traction.
This book isn't your standard power fantasy haram, with an OP MC, and love interests who fall in love at first sight. This book is the opposite, the MC is a homeless human vagrant, in a world of monsters and lurking legends. He's poor, ugly, and alone, with his only redeeming qualities being his sense of loyalty and ingenuity.
The love interests are well writen, they aren't sex objects who follow our MC blindly. They use him, and largely consider him a stepping stone. This changes over the course of the story, yet simultaneously remaining true. The MC considers himself to be broken, as a vagramt with no family or home he's largely unseen and ridiculed. He's poor and human, and on the bottom of the food chain, yet his stubborn streak makes him someone you'd be willing to root for.
Most stories with the harem tag follow the same formula, an overpowered character, who's charisma, wealth, and power attract those around him. He's often seen as the hero or underdog, with love interests who seem interested from the start. This book has the opposite. Each of the three main love interests considered the MC to be trash at first glance, they're flawed selfish characters, with their own unique identities and personalities.
AltheaDionaRoyal Road
★★★★ 3.5
After binge-reading this work for the last few hours, i have decided to leave a review for the newcomers who will definitely need the heads up. Also, i was motivated to write this because of the other review which does not do the story justice.
Grammar:
I would say, it has above average grammar compared to most works here. There are few punctuations or small errors here and there, long sentences that seem awkward but nothing too jarring.
style:
It is a hit or miss honestly. Luckily it was a hit for me at the beginning, but after reading 22 chapters, i started skimming long paragraphs that just described the same thing as before but in a more 'flowery' manner. The author likes to play with their words a lot, to the point where everything needs to sound like it has two or three more deep meanings, when they're just talking about banal things. It's nice and funny at first, but gets old quick.
story:
First of all, the mood of the story is quite somber and overly sexual. I personally hate that much sex content in my novels, and i'm not talking about sex scenes 'cause i haven't seen any so far (chp 22) BUT holy shit... You can't read one chapter without finding the author describing a woman's ass or how big her tits are.
It was a bit understandable at first, as the story revolves around teenagers, but when the adults only think about sex too... it just ruins all the potential i feel like the story had. MINOR SPOILER: there are also mentions of sexual acts between a 15 year old kid and a thousand year old being so if that makes you as uncomfortable as it made me then just skip this story.
Another point, the promise of an underdog fighting injustice in a school for monster elite is a misleading blurb. The chapters are extremely long so the first 22 felt like 50 in any normal RR novel, and yet we don't see an inclination of MC's 'true' powers. He's a human with mad chemistry knowledge not an abomination or whtv was said about him (not yet as for chp 22, that might change) Ma
Gold AegisRoyal Road
★★★ 3.0
"Purple prose is a style of writing characterized by overly flowery language that tends to draw attention to itself, and away from the story being told. Its typical features include excessive adjectives, exaggerated metaphors, multisyllabic words, long sentences, and elaborate descriptions of a character’s inner thoughts and feelings."
This is my only real criticism of the story so far, but it's a fairly big one. The wording in this story is dense, to the point where it's often difficult to tell what the fuck is going on, or what something actually looks like.
Translating the words to English in my head as I go, I'm really liking it so far. Hopefully the author calms down a bit as the book goes on.
Edit: bumping my score up to a 4. I still think the descriptive language is overdone but I'm 40 chapters in now and extremely invested.
Edit again, going back down to 3. The prose is easier to get through when you read it in one huge binge but it's been wearing on me as I keep up with the regular chapter releases. Every chapter could be half the size and deliver the same amount of information.
JustSomePugRoyal Road
★★ 2.0
The Style is a great aspect to the book, it's unique and does set a tone that could equally break the story for you or make it. Which hopefully is a saving grace for you, because this story needs a lot of good will just for you to slug through the toicx self pity mess that is this world and its characters.
The story, oh boy, I ain't even going to lie to you it's bad, beyond bad. It has some promise a interesting world and a great set up for a under dog type main character. Using his wits and intelligence to make up for his many short comings in this dangerous world. This ultimately flops badly. The world is filled with these promises of adventure and a bigger world out there. No let's completely forces on a school that has a bunch holy and higher than you, personalities its boring there is never anything going on there us promise of things moving around in the back round but almost nothing happens. A world with much promise ultimately being a letdown because the Author wants to make his main character always lose is frustrating as hell.
I'm going to skim over grammar because the reality is the grammar is not the issue in this book it's in fact great.
Now let's get to the worse aspect of the story I have a lot of opinions on our cast especially the main character. Let's start with our MC he's weak that's fine, he broken that's fine. What is not fine is him just sitting there and taking it beyond belief. Lost after lost then followed up by a you guessed it another lost is frustrating beyond belief. He's yet to receive any type of significant victory. You sometimes sit there reading this story and say I'm rooting for this guy? Why he's a loser he's weak in every single aspect. With the amount of times he let's people walk all over him I'm convinced he likes it. Allow me to give you a example of how the MC really takes some emotional damage at some point one of his main love interests is dating a side character and the MC manages to stop and eavesdrop on the conversati