
by IsaacNew
Before the world ended, Damon spent a year bleeding in a locked room just to stop a stutter. He learned a hard truth in that isolation: pain doesn't last, but the monsters you build to survive it do. Now the world has ended, and he's still building monsters. Humanity is currently rotting inside the PATH—a sweltering, thirty-kilometer subterranean shithole of decaying subway lines and concrete crawlspaces smelling of stale grease and raw desperation. Above, the ultra-wealthy lounge in an open-air paradise across the harbor. Below, the cybernetic tyrant Boss Garrow enforces a brutal Daily Glitch tax, harvesting every scrap of mana and blood to keep his own decaying body immortal. If you fall short, you end up decorating the tunnel walls. Damon isn't a frontline powerhouse with a giant sword or flashy fireballs. He’s an unranked [Risk Arbitrator], a cold, manipulative strategist who weaponizes psychological leverage and emotional debt into spectral strings wrapped tightly around his enemies' throats. He doesn't fight by hitting harder; he fights by managing accounts, pulling strings, and orchestrating accidents in the dark. Riding shotgun in his skull is Harald Hardrada, an 11th-century Viking king who treats modern catastrophes like bad weather and paints the tunnels red whenever Damon's corporate diplomacy fails. Caught between a cybernetic tyrant who treats people like meat and pristine royals who treat them like math, Damon isn't trying to save the world. He's a man with a self-destructive streak of pure discipline, and he's going to lie, cheat, and leverage his way to the absolute top. 1 Chapter a day. Please leave feedback only way I can improve!
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 24 Oct 2026, 01:48 UTC
Entry forecast updated 24 Oct 2026, 01:48 UTC
Ranking model: rs-public-oracle-state-v1
Forecast model: rs-model-entry-v1
Chart history contains only this ranking model's runs; legacy points are not spliced in.
Not enough recent follower history to estimate a shadow rank yet.
beats 57% of similar stories
not enough data yet
needs about a week of observations
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 lifetime.