![Diver John: Dying for Views [Stubbing Sept 30th]](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.royalroadcdn.com%2Fpublic%2Fcovers-large%2Fdiver-john-dying-for-views-aaaaskn1uxk.jpg%3Ftime%3D1786704316&w=640&q=75)
by Azure Lotus Scholar
The end of the world will be televised. John O'Donnell was an engineer, mid-shift, when the Tutorial Dungeon swallowed the planet. Nine in ten humans are already dead. The rest got a System, a tutorial, and a show: the apocalypse airs nightly on the official broadcast, hosted by an elf in a tuxedo, with a twelve-foot skeleton general on commentary. His Undead Empire is what waits for humanity when the tutorial ends. The show has one rule: if you're entertaining, you're surviving. John has a different rule: stay boring. Keep his coworkers breathing. Then John gets the opportunity of a lifetime: an SSS-Rank Skill from his entrance test. Even basic C-Rank Skills blow people to pieces or hand out superhuman strength. His does neither. It's a Perception Skill. John uses it anyway: to dig up the Tutorial's secrets, to grow stronger, to pick murderers out of a crowd — and, most of all, to fight the Undead and uncover hidden treasures. The audience notices. If you give an SSS-Rank Perception Skill to an engineer, expect him to get smart with it. What to expect: - A smart, methodical MC- Streaming features, lots of achievements, loot chests- An incredibly strong SSS-Rank Perception Skill used to outthink the Tutorial, the Undead, and malicious divers- A reality-show apocalypse - A crew of ordinary coworkers, not a lone wolf (no coworker drama)- Unfair enemies meet an unfair Skill and get frustrated Inspired by Dungeon Crawler Carl, Primal Hunter, and Defiance of the Fall.
#11
9/22/2026
Peak #50
0d
#10
9/22/2026
Peak #50
0d
#9
9/21/2026
Peak #49
0d
#8
8/27/2026
Peak #23
21d
#7
8/27/2026
Peak #21
22d
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 2 Oct 2026, 04:09 UTC
Entry forecast updated 2 Oct 2026, 04:09 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
8%
Two or more lists
4%
Likely threshold order: Action → Adventure → Fantasy → Main.
Leading bundle: Adventure + Action + Fantasy (3%).
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
#457 of 12,414 · 407 below RS #50
By genre
beats 99% of similar stories
beats 14% of similar stories
beats 1% of similar stories
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.
Benchmarks: 8,060 active Royal Road stories, percentiles within the 5–9 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views lifetime.
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