The Ruby Magician

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Wyn Thatcher was out of options. His disgraceful and dying father accrued far too much debt a simple farmer could repay, and the only option left was to climb the magical tower known as Alistair. Harm and death was as likely as fame and fortune in the tower, but Wyn needed money and he needed it fast. His plan to rely on his experience as a soldier could only take him so far as magic, monsters, and unexpected obstacles are around every corner. His first challenge comes right out of the gates with his Ruby Magician class, which he quickly learns is not only looked down on but considered detrimental.

Wyn doesn’t care, though. He just needs to survive and climb for his family’s sake. Proving to others that it's the person and not the class will just be an added bonus.

What to expect:- Varied and plentiful loot.- Tower climbing. Lots of it.- A rational MC who, like most people, sometimes fails.- A party dynamic.

What you won’t find:- Harem- Sexual content- Time loops

Release Schedule:- Regular schedule will be Tuesday and Friday chapters. Chapters are about 3-3.5k words.- Book123complete! STORY IS COMPLETE!

Information

Status
Ongoing
Year
2023
Author
DRHudgins

Tags

LITRPGACTIONFANTASYADVENTUREMAGICGAMELITPROGRESSIONDUNGEON CRAWLER

Royal Road Stats

Rating
4.1/ 5.0
Followers
1,375
Views
475,598

Chapters(171 total)

Reviews

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

Community Reviews(10)

  • winnieandsherlockRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    Can not put it down. This book is very well written, creative, and descriptive with an intriguing and exciting plot. Absolutely love the characters and character development. Mark this author as a favorite if you enjoy danger and suspense in an excellent fantasy novel. I would recommend to everyone as a must read.
  • LitRPG AdventuresRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    This is a great start to a new story. You are immersed right away in the new world which is medieval in nature with magic and, obviously, the tower.
    Ardwyn (Wyn) is introduced right away as he enters the tower city. After a little world building he meets a character who will be instrumental in getting him started and learns of his new magical abilities. It's standard start of a series stuff and done well. It's not boring and you learn what you need to do. So, good job :)
    The style of the story is pretty standard for a fantasy story. The MC is pretty well informed on what he's getting into so there isn't a lot of questioning an self discovery. It makes it easy to understand without the confusion you sometimes get with stories where the MC is transported to a new real. Style score: 5 / 5
    The story is interesting and I look forward to seeing what kind of challenges Wyn and his team will face. They are starting on a standard "first quest" right now. Story score so far: 5 / 5.
    The grammar seems good. I'm far from an expert, but I do know what sounds right. I haven't noticed any issues so grammar seems to be good. Grammar score: 5 / 5
    I like the characters so far. I haven't gotten far enough to see a lot of development, yet, it's mostly just learning who the main character is to start with. Again, that's standard for the beginning of a story. I look forward to seeing Wyn learn and grow. Character score: 5 / 5
  • One Way JusticeRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    Very clean and good tower climbing story. Wyn is likeable and so you automatically root for success... I think the prose is very neat and well done, with proper paragraph breaks so it doesn't get too much to read in one block (somehow other tower climbers I've read recently cramp up the paragraphs idk). Nice progression overall, pacing hardly ever a problem!
  • TyZomboRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    Overall:
    Beginnings of a great Tower series. The world feels rich with so much to explore and Wyn is a great vehicle to do that from.
    Style:
    Beautiful, tight prose and great dialogue. Very well written all around which makes it a joy to read. Everything’s clear and well presented. I felt like I was right in the story.
    Story:
    Immediately puts you into the story, with the protagonist facing the start of his adventure in the form of a tower. Engaging right off the bat, once I started I wanted to know more about the world and see Wyn experience it. The emphasized danger of the tower and the implied hardship his class will bring him raise the stakes and excitement, and it delivers.
    Character:
    Wyn is a likable guy. If endeavoring to jump into danger for the sake of his family isn’t enough, he’s also got dealt the underdog card and is determined to excel in spite of it. A little too naïve and overconfident at the start but he’s a multidimensional character. The side characters have real personality to them too and make the world feel more real and fleshed out.
    Grammar:
    Grammar is perfect as far as I can tell. No complaints here.
  • BootsRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 4.5
    Solid start, if a bit slow to get moving.
    Grammar and Style
    There's not a whole lot to say about grammar. There's a few small errors here and there, but nothing to write home about.
    Style is generally clear, straightforward, and functional. The author does sometimes spend a bit too much time describing things that don't necessarily need it, or directing the reader's attention only to then describe them as unimportant. Eliminating these would go a long way to help things feel a bit snappier.
    Story
    The story so far is a fairly straightforward tower climb. There's magic, there's classes, and there's the lure of treasure. Solid premise with lots to work with. My only real complaint is how long it takes to get off the ground.
    The chapters themselves are fairly long, and it takes until chapter six to actually get to the tower. Then it takes until the end of chapter seven to actually enter the tower. Hopefully the pacing picks up moving forward.
    Character
    I think Wyn has a lot of potential. He's an ex soldier, and those experiences form both the basis of his advantages and challenges that he'll be taking into the tower with him. Good stuff.
    He's also not completely clueless. He's got some baseline familiarity with being a climber at the start of the book, which is something I'm always happy to see. I personally thing that "informed novices" are much better reader proxies than MCs who are completely ignorant when it comes to the world.
  • LurksalotRoyal Road
    ★★★★ 4.0
    I have overall enjoyed reading this story so far. If you like tower-climbing centric action, then I would recommend giving this a try.
    The story’s MC is competent and likeable from the get-go, without being unnecessarily overpowered. The cast of characters is nuanced and rarely feel one-dimensional (though there are outliers, but they get “fixed” as the story progresses). Style-wise, the combat scenes do begin to feel a bit repetitive in terms of how they are “resolved”. The combat isnt inherently bad, but the character cast and the world definitely carries a lot of the momentum.
    Now, my biggest nitpick - which honestly isnt that bad as long as you can look past it - is the execution of initial premise of the Ruby Magician class. White its percieved suboptimal nature comes up every so often, the class itself has almost zero actual implications for the MC and how he is able to strive in the tower and the surrounding world. Its partially explained by his background, but his military background would arguably give him an advantage regardless of his actual class. Dont expect the MC to be an underdog due to his class (though tier-differences is a different matter).
    That said, the story still hooked me in and I am still waiting for what more the author has to tell.
  • Dead_SlimeRoyal Road
    ★★★★ 3.5
    The Good:
    -It has some focus on mental health such as PTSD and represents it well. With it interfering with regular life.
    -Mc is interesting to listen to
    -World building is decent with thought out reasoning for climbing the tower and the economic implication e.g. sponsorships
    -Interesting premise of making a under estimated class powerful
    The Bad:
    -Acting out of the premise is bad e.g. People call mc class bad but always have bad reasoning or none at all
    -Power scaling makes no sense with strong people becoming weak when it progresses the plot
    -Characters other than mc feel a bit bare bones sometimes
    Overall: I find the constant trashing of the class for barebones reasoning like specialisation better than diversification to be silly. And also very frustrating when it is repeated over and over that everything about mc’s class is bad. When the skills have obvious powerful application. E.g. Dyadcasting a powerful mana intensive spell to get a double nuclear option.
  • SunquillRoyal Road
    ★★★ 3.0
    Good:
    Main character with a strong military background was cool to see! I enjoyed seeing him whip other groups into shape
    Magic system is fun! The different types of mages are fascinating, and the way the tower works gives the story more variety
    I was invested in the main party's journey enough to allow me to look past all the bad for quite a while. If I'm going to drop a book, it usually happens within ten chapters or so, but this one makes me feel just a bit bad about putting down even now because I do want to see Wyn and his buddies improve.
    Bad:
    Interactions with minor antagonists makes me want to bash my head into a wall. The way they're written feels very ham-fisted, with the extremely forced prejudice against Red Mages. This wasn't too bad for me until we got the actual explanation of why Red Mages weren't popular anymore. I was expecting something big and was instead underwhelmed and frustrated.
    There are grammar issues that appear more frequently a dozen or so chapters in. Some words are completely ommitted in fairly important places, or even swapped around confusingly.
    I feel like I'm missing things? There are some scene transitions where I have to read over again and to see if I missed something. Ex: Wyn and his companions continue to floor 2 for the first time. He just walks right through the portal after they clear the room without saying anything. I don't think the companions they picked up were ever told they were planning on going to floor 2 that time? I had to infer that they were told and were just fine with it but I think that's something that should've been covered, even just briefly in a sentence or two.
    Overall, I think someone who's a less scrupulous reader could have a great time with this book. My suspension of disbelief unfortunately can't take it though, and I think there's a lot of room to improve! 3/5 stars from me
  • drefRoyal Road
    ★★★ 2.5
    STYLE SCORE: I'm not fluent in English so I read with a translator so it's not possible to have a perfect reading of the style and grammar, but I didn't like the delay in revealing certain information about the protagonist (which seems purposeful to me but doesn't add anything) nor the constant interrupting scenes for monologues or conversations that shouldn't be their focus at that moment.
    GRAMMAR SCORE: here it is even more difficult to judge because Google tends to correct grammatical errors or that in Portuguese it is an error but not in English, although I think that the lack of clarity in certain details could be a lack of grammatical command (as per example how many scrolls does he receive, and is it just 1? the first and then more tabs are added? or is it 4? so which of the scrolls do they receive the tower updates from?), or some parts that come out of the first person of the mc and a narration begins a bit out of context (I noticed this more strongly at the end of 22 and 23).
    However, the two above weren't what turned me off from the novel, it was the inconsistencies in the narratives of the characters and the world as a whole, the veterans don't act as they should with reactions and actions that don't make sense, the mc as a soldier shouldn't be reckless , indecisive, not having a sense of urgency and the main thing for me is the absurd lack of focus that is constant for the mc, he is in the middle of a fight where mistakes can be fatal and he is distracted, the "veterans" who accompany them in the The first challenge is so unprepared that they don't even carry a secondary weapon, especially considering their classes.
    It's not in any way illegible or terrible, I recommend you read up to 20 chapters or if what I've pointed out here doesn't bother you so much, it has a lot of potential, it'll stay on my list to wait for, if it lasts 100 chapters I'll read it again.
  • CroddwynRoyal Road
    ★ 1.0
    There might be a decent story here, but as it stands, the background is a stereotype badly expressed. I'll get to the motivation in a spoiler in a sec, but first off, this is not how PTSD works. You have to do better than "someone said this once and then died" if you want to make the hero lose all situational awareness just before being attacked. Also, why would you want to create a hero who proves he is exactly as incompetent as doubters suspect he'd be? Marcy, in particular, is a tower veteran who takes her role as guide seriously, so explain to me why she'd be giving him the time of day after he shows how badly he can mess up on his very first outing? Why would she respect him at all? Is he handsome? Is this a hormone thing? It certainly makes no rational sense for her to continue being all sympathetic and flirty.
    That's bad enough, but let's talk about the background we finally get exposited in Chapter 10.
    Seriously? Loan sharks gave his dad millions of dollars knowing he could never pay it back? In this world, loan sharks just like beating people up and are willing pony up millions of dollars to "justify" it? His dad is a farmer. What possible leverage would they want out of him that is worth loaning him the equivalent of 125 years of wages? Can you see a loan shark organization loaning a car mechanic something like $6 million. How does this make any kind of sense?
    And Wyn doesn't even like his dad! He's all "my sister might be in danger". Really? That's your take? Come on!!! That's just stupid times lame.
    Wanna know what would be better? I mean besides anything else? Sister has an amazing talent that will need tuition at a fancy school. Boom. Heck, combine them. Wyn shows up, leaves dad high and dry (he seemingly deserves it), and takes sister out to enroll in some amazing academy. Or maybe he just has to pay for whoever is hiding her from predatory loan sharks. That's still super dumb, but way better than Wyn leaving her in a place where she is in danger of b