
by mc.p.caesar
Don, an untested college student, finally lands the perfect date. During the date he gets pulled through a portal to another world, accidentally dragging her along with him. Is he there to be the chosen hero? No. He’s the blood sacrifice. Murdered to seal away a cosmic horror, Don meets the Soul Eater at the threshold of the afterlife and strikes a desperate deal to survive. Tricked, he wakes up having swapped souls with an innocent peasant farmer whose death now leaves behind his pregnant wife. A pregnant wife who must now rely on Don, trapped in her deceased husband’s body, to provide for her and survive the dangerous world. Filled with guilt and desperate to find his lost date, Don must navigate a brutal, gritty reality governed by a 2d6 tabletop system.Trying to get power to survive, he enters into a contract with an Infernal Daemon Toad Familiar. The choice forces his Archetype selection and gets him permanently stuck with the daemon familiar across all his future lives. He discovers the Daemon toad is the very jailer who was on watch when Soul Eater escaped to Don's crossroads to the afterlife. The soul eater being in Don's crossroads is the very reason he needed to be the sacrifice.Now a soul eater wants allied denizens of the Deeps to kill him over and over again all so he can swap his soul for more victims. Sending the victims' souls to Don's afterlife crossroads where the soul eater will consume them. A pantheon of Celestials that organized Don getting sacrificed are now attempting to get him to be the final soul eaten by the soul eater. Trapping the soul eater in Don's crossroads to the afterlife. Don's familiar, the former daemon jailer is motivated to have a vacation before the world ends. What to Expect: Soul Type: A slow progression to an Immortus Praetor power that always improves. Deaths: Soul swaps that restart the archetype to level 1. Not all numbers go up. Identity Issues: Don must live the life of the person he swapped with. Karmic Reincarnation: After the farmer, Don establishes moral criteria so he only steals the bodies of the guilty. Settlement Building: Transforming a vulnerable village into a fortified haven for refugees. Corruption Attribute: A constant mental battle to resist dark, intrusive urges. Gritty Combat: An attribute death spiral declines instead of a standard HP pool. Real Mechanics: Real 2d6 dice rolls are used to determine encounter outcomes. Table Top Inspirations: Worlds Without Number, Traveller and D&D. Disclaimer: None of the people or toads are about real people or toads. Any resemblance is purely accidental. Release Schedule Change: for July 2026 is Mondays and Wednesdays
No streak history
Rank updated 14 Aug 2026, 04:15 UTC
Entry forecast updated 14 Aug 2026, 04:15 UTC
Overall Rising Stars shadow rank
deep field · ~#2349 of 6,880 · 2299 below #50
By genre
beats 94% of similar stories
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Hidden gem — exposure is the bottleneck
Readers who find this story follow it at a high rate; there just aren't enough of them. In our cohort data, near-daily posting lifted the odds of reaching 25 followers from ~0% to 17% — more chapters, shoutout swaps and ads buy the eyeballs this conversion deserves.
At this conversion, the Comedy Rising Stars bar (≈2 new followers/day) costs about 182 views/day — the story currently gets ~24.
Benchmarks: 8,060 active Royal Road stories, percentiles within the 20–49 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views over the recent window.
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