
by BrianKelvin
Survive the semester. Grind the game. Beat the system. Dr. Brian Kelvin’s life is chaos. He can’t even get through his own graduation without cracking his head on a metal rail. After his fall, a bizarre AI seizes control of Brian’s world, turning everything into a mess of notifications, stat blocks, and useless skills. With two dogs, no friends, and more debts than he can count, Brian will have to face the challenges of academic life one RPG quest at a time. New faculty orientation at a sketchy New Mexico university? +10 Experience. The torments of HR? +10% Exhaustion. Department meeting? -5 HP. Meanwhile, his new VR game is getting weirder by the day. His starter dungeon is filled with crazed clockwork animals, dead cultists, the Glasskeeper, and a rat-goddess ready to kill everyone in her path. When the game starts to bleed into reality, Brian will have to gather a party of heroes, including the Clockmaker and several of his most bored students, to take down the Idol of Ninkilim and save Shadyside. Fortunately, he has just the overpowered class for it: the Augur, capable of bending the gameworld to his will. Warrior by night, hapless professor by day, Brian’s got to survive it all: mad colleagues, shellfish monsters, student loans, ancient gods, crazy streamers, and cosmic horrors. Semester’s Fall delivers a mix of real-world satire and classic dungeon delving, complete with two hostile AIs and two competing RPG systems. What to expect: - 50% LitRPG dungeon crawling - 50% slice-of-life academic satire with LitRPG stats - SplitRPG format: real world and video game, with two systems and two AIs that bleed into each other as the series unfolds - Weak-to-strong character progression - Dog companions - Content warnings: video game violence, cosmic horror, academic lunacy, no explicit sex / no harem New chapters published every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 9 Oct 2026, 11:38 UTC
Entry forecast updated 9 Oct 2026, 11:38 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.
Not enough recent follower history to estimate a shadow rank yet.
beats 18% of similar stories
not enough data yet
beats 46% of similar stories
Mid-pack, room on both levers
Traffic and conversion both sit mid-field for a story this size. Growth here compounds from consistency: steady cadence feeds traffic, and a sharper hook lifts what each view is worth.
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.