![Marek's Awakening, Volume 1 of 13 [A soft litRPG sci-fantasy escape run]](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.royalroadcdn.com%2Fpublic%2Fcovers-large%2F161670-mareks-awakening.jpg%3Ftime%3D1779519959&w=640&q=75)
by CorinneKohake
A progression sci-fi fantasy series about survival, found family, dungeon worlds, freedom fighters rebelling against the corrupt, and a man trying to help society build itself a better version. (Volume 1 completed and follows our MC as he escapes off world.) Marek Rynn is dying when he accepts an offer from a corporate medical program promising a treatment he could never afford. Instead of a cure, he wakes inside a secured research facility where patients are now property, consent exists only on forged paper, and survival depends on remaining useful. The experimental nanites placed in Marek’s body were never meant to save him as the false treatment promised. They were designed to sustain him long enough for the Helix Corporation to study the results and further their own agendas. But the nanites are doing something no previous trial subject has survived: adapting and integrating to him and his system interface. Then the impossible begins. Tools move without being touched and others emotions and thoughts become more discernible. As Marek’s nanite integration advances, he becomes far more than a successful test subject. He becomes proof that one of the most valuable technologies in the frontier can permanently bond with a human host. Every biomedical corporation, research program, and industrial power willing to buy human lives would kill to possess him. Escaping the facility is only the beginning. To get off the planet, Marek must cross failing outer world infrastructure, corporate security, and terrain shaped by the now dead dungeon world. Along the way, he finds allies among the same people the facility exploited, discarded, or underestimated. Together, they might just be stubborn enough to survive. But the Helix Corporation knows what Marek is worth, and it has no intention of letting its most valuable asset disappear. Marek has spent his life reading broken infrastructure and finding a way to fix, patch or simply go through them. Now he must help keep his new allies alive, escape the planet now hunting them, and reach a horizon where ownership laws and recovery teams can’t follow. A place where they might stop running. A place they might someday make safe.
#3
7/3/2026
Peak #48
1d
#2
6/16/2026
Peak #25
17d
#1
4/30/2026
Peak #7
47d
Rank updated 14 Aug 2026, 04:15 UTC
Entry forecast updated 14 Aug 2026, 04:15 UTC
Overall Rising Stars shadow rank
deep field · ~#5518 of 6,880 · 5468 below #50
By genre
beats 80% of similar stories
beats 56% of similar stories
beats 75% of similar stories
Firing on all cylinders
Traffic and conversion are both strong for a story this size. Readers are finding it and sticking — if Rising Stars is the goal, this is the moment to push.
At this conversion, the Sci-fi Rising Stars bar (≈1 new followers/day) costs about 369 views/day — the story currently gets ~325.
Benchmarks: 8,060 active Royal Road stories, percentiles within the 50–149 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views over the recent window.