
by maxwellauthor
Darin Harswood was supposed to log into a game. Instead, he died… and woke up inside it. Now trapped in a very real version of a fantasy world he barely got to play, Darin finds himself stuck with the one class he didn’t choose: Cleric. No respec. No reroll. And worst of all? He can’t level up. While everyone else climbs the System ladder—gaining power, skills, and status—Darin remains stubbornly, infuriatingly stuck at Level 1. But the System isn’t ignoring him. It’s… misbehaving. His spells don’t just heal—they change things. Gear improves beyond its limits. Magic twists in ways it shouldn’t. And sometimes, when he tries to fix something… it gets worse. Joined by the sharp-tongued and questionably reliable Callum, Darin stumbles into problems far bigger than broken gear and bad luck. Strange distortions ripple through the land. Creatures behave unpredictably. Magic itself seems to be… unraveling. And beneath it all, something ancient is waking. It remembers a world before the System. A world without levels. Without limits. A world that was never meant to be contained. As factions begin to move in the shadows and the ground itself shifts beneath his feet, Darin is forced to confront a terrifying possibility: What if the System isn’t broken? What if it was never meant to last? For more information on LitRPG books and stories check out the LitRPG Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPGGroup AND LitRPG Legion at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/litrpglegion As well as LitRPG Books at: https://m.facebook.com/groups/LitRPG.books/?ref=share&mibextid=I6gGtw
#8
7/7/2026
Peak #50
0d
#7
7/7/2026
Peak #50
0d
#6
7/6/2026
Peak #48
0d
#5
7/5/2026
Peak #48
0d
#4
7/5/2026
Peak #48
0d
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 2 Oct 2026, 05:38 UTC
Entry forecast updated 2 Oct 2026, 05:38 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.
Coupled 14-day outlook
rs-joint-entry-copula-v1
Any eligible RS entry
2%
Two or more lists
1%
Likely threshold order: Comedy → Action → Fantasy → Adventure → Main.
Leading bundle: Comedy (1%).
Estimated from one fitted shared story path; category probabilities are not multiplied as if lists were independent.
Separate entry forecast; this probability does not enter the ranking score.
Overall Rising Stars Shadow RS rank
#10337 of 12,147 · 10287 below RS #50
By genre
beats 2% of similar stories
beats 69% of similar stories
beats 76% of similar stories
Readers arrive, few stick
Traffic is strong, but conversion trails comparable stories. The usual suspects are the blurb, the cover and the opening chapters — fixing the hook multiplies everything the existing traffic brings.
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.