The Elemental Arena

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

*A Rational-Adjacent litRPG Survival Series.*

The time for the trials has come, pitting the mortal species of the galaxy against one another. By completing challenges, clearing dungeons, and defeating rival species, the players may forge themselves stronger and smarter. But only one species will be declared the winner.

Earth has finally qualified...

...and participation is mandatory.

A twenty-nine year old data entry clerk works together with a group of internationally diverse players to survive. Learning synergistic skills and using teamwork, can humanity achieve an upset? If they don't, their lives are forfeit.

Author's note: Chapters will be anywhere from 6k to 10k in words, varying based on the plot beats instead of specific word counts.

Realistic actions and teamwork will be important aspects of my story. I'm trying something a little different in writing a realism focused litRPG, hoping to capture the essence of how real people would react to their situation. People are complex and don't always get along. I don't recommend starting the series expecting wish fulfillment tropes just because it's tagged litRPG. It's a survival story with the game settings on Hell difficulty. The plot hasn't gotten there yet, but in the future of the series I want to recreate my nostalgia of forty person raids on Ragnaros, but with the high stakes of boss battles in Sword Art Online. I also love puzzle rooms so expect one of those each book.

Warnings: mild PG-rated language, graphic violence and gore, and graphic medical content.

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2019
Author: Gilgilad7

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.5/ 5.0
Followers: 1,154
Views: 226,059

Chapters(27 total)

Reviews

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

Community Reviews(10)

Rhino8000Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Very interesting, definitely enjoying it. At first, I was hesitant because of the simplified stats and the ol’ faithful “abducted for a tournament”, but the author really made me feel for Nathan and how shitty his situation is. He just barely scrapes by at like every challenge in ver believable ways. Much respect, author.
BookgirlRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I love the world the author is creating. The story draws you in and I simultaneously want to take part in the competition and but also horrified by how poorly I would perform if I had been selected. The characters are developing nicely with distinctive voices and personalities. There is enough description to imagine them without having to wade through long paragraphs of description so it makes a good balance. I appreciate the lack of typos and the careful grammar. All in all I am excited to keep reading.
speenzaRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Smart implementation of a traditionally cliched and trite genre. Still fairly early in the story, but shows promise so far. The difficulty the players experience is very refreshing, in particular the interpersonal issues, though for now those are mostly just promises of future strife.
GreykoRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This story is one of the well-thought ones, since here you can find a system that allows for a lot of potential implementations, well-behaviored MC and steady flow of the story. There weren't any grammar mistakes that I could spot and characters feel pretty real.In my opinion, there's nothing obviously wrong with this story and you would probably enjoy it.
Markel1970A GamezRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
If I was in the situation as these characters I would be more focused on staying alive than sex.
Maybe I'm just weird but I would be more about living than sleeping around.
Tommyjl7Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
So far at chap 11 wonderful start the romantic character interaction does feel slightly cheesy and forced but everything else is pretty damn good is a bit dark and gorey too as a fair warning and so far seems like an intresting and somewhat unique litrpg concept
Axel1989Royal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
I'll start with the bad stuff, because I have to start somewhere, right?
The setting is as common as it can be without outright copying other people's works. Hunger Games meets LitRPG meets... Metal Gear Solid's nanomachines? Or maybe Generator Rex's? Anyway.
Nanomachines. They can do absolutely anything apparently, including magic. So, they're the driving force of this story. Something happens? Nanomachines. Sounds familiar? It is. Metal Gear Solid.
Earth and other aliens (which, at the time, wheren't really shown, beside ONE of the species) are thrown into a death match, where only one can survive. Sounds familiar? It is. Hunger Games.
And so on.
Some of the stuff that happens is pretty predictable, including the final so called plot twist revealing who's the mastermind of this whole setup. It was all pretty obvious. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, because it was only the logical solution to the various hints the author dropped throughout the whole book. So I guess the hints were too good maybe?
Anyway. Now the good stuff.
The story is good. I read this ages ago. As chapters were uploaded (and not yet edited, I should probably re-read everyhing once the editing is done). It must be almost an year. I come here from time to time to see if the second book's first chapter came out, because I want more. I want to see where the story goes, and how the author wants to resolve things. The plot is nothing to be spoken of in legends, but it is engaging.
The world building is literally Tygerion's doing, because he's built it. And he built it well. The RPG system though. It's nothing much. Just some RPG setting like any other. Multiple attributes, skills and the likes. Not bad, but not extraordinarily good either. It's ok.
The characters all have their own personalities, flaws and virtues. The author made a pretty good job there. They don't always go for the best possible solution to the problem, but they do try to think, and by that I mean that the author tries to make
DrAltRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
Humans are 'spirited away' in an apocalypse survivor scenario and land upon a giant artificial arena wilderness. The story focuses on abilities and group dynamics. Style-wise the author does a great job at giving the characters distinct identities and motivations but uses too much RPG-like descriptions in their frequent stat boxes. Characterization is well done.
I had this on 'Follow' for months and when it stopped updating, I moved it over to 'Read Later.' It's been a year. As a reader, while the author excelled at characterization, it meant they really got into writing the characters, as in multiple perspectives and redundant scenes. After a great beginning, the plot went into 'slog through' meandering mode instead of developing itself forward. The pacing tended to substitute skirmishes and battles for development and while the characters were growing, only so many 'toughen up survival style' scenes to write before you want something fresh.
Had no issue with grammar and found this a readable story that needed faster pacing and more plot. If it's ever picked up again or rewritten, I'd be interested in giving it another try. Leaving a review as thanks and encouragement to the author. I did enjoy this.
As a reader seeing this review though, I would not recommend starting here since the story isn't finished.
octonusRoyal Road
★★★ 3.0
Review written after reading 9 chapters.
The premise is decent, and the worldbuilding is ok, but the characters constant discussion of their stats really annoyed me. It felt less like reading a story, and more like a DM discussing a ruleset with his players, and giving examples of how things work.
I'm here to read a story, rather than get ideas for my next rpg setting. The next time I'm doing the latter, I might check this out again.
MyriddinRoyal Road
★★★ 2.5
I want to start by saying that this story has been vastly over rated, and if I had to say why its that the author labelled it 'rational' and the readers took that to mean 'dry' and ran with it.
The idea behind the story is certainly as unique as you can get in isekai/system apocalypse/team survival stories on this website, and it serves to provide a nice and interesting "hook" to grab a new reader's attention, unfortunately the narrative direction breaks down a bit there with some kind of confluence between evil aliens, xianxia cultivation ideas, and high tech magic.
Its an odd fusion, and aside from providing a rough framework for the 'game system' doesn't seem to matter much at all, a little dissappinting but whatever.
The style feels like trying to eat a pack of crackers and only getting an occasional sip of water. It's so damn dry. There's no real style here at all, and if you told me an accountant wrote it after a day of number crunching, I wouldn't be surprised. The jokes are stale by the second time, and attackmy sanity by the hundredth. We can only read about beavers/rats or taking too long to shit, so many times before our eyes roll right out of our heads.
The fights are good and flow nicely, but everything in between was a slog.
~
The characters. They're a diverse bunch, but they also feel like the most shallow caricatures imaginable. All characters are either great or shit, and there's no prize for guessing which of the 2 sides support our MC and oppose him, it's a shallow effort to try and make the MC feel more 'rational' by turning up the irrationality of everyone else around to 11. Except his friends of course.
I can help but think about when Ilya is burned by the fire obelisk and while she's screaming in pain in the river our MC is having a nice conversation with Lilly and can't help but forget about the woman screaming in pain next to him while having his ///rational\\\ discussion. It was ludicrous to read, and wasn't helped by Ilya then going crazy