I Wrote Worst Smut on Royal Road [LitRPG?/RoyalRoad Meta Parody]

He spent ten years writing a masterpiece. He spent one night writing garbage. Guess which one has hit Rising Stars on RR? Max Rourke's ten-year tactical fantasy epic has three followers, one of which is a bot. So one night, on his third beer, he wrote four thousand words of the stupidest LitRPG smut he could imagine and published it under a burner account out of spite. It hit Rising Stars by morning. The Long Retreat: Book One of Kelvath has a fully conjugated constructed language. It has a magic system with genuine thermodynamic constraints. It has a slow-burn romance that does not so much as hold hands until chapter forty, an outline running past chapter two hundred, and a dedicated spreadsheet for grain requisitions. But after six weeks on Royal Road it has three followers and one of them a bot that also follows four hundred series about dragon husbandry. It also has a rating. 0.5 stars. So one night, three beers deep and watching a woman two tables over giggle helplessly at something, Max opens a blank document and writes the worst thing he has ever written on purpose.  He wakes up at **#39 on Rising Stars**, with twenty-two reviews, several of them essays, and a Patreon figure he cannot make himself say out loud. And all of it happens at his corner table at The Daily Grind, in front of an audience he did not ask for: What to expect - Comedy first.  - Excerpts from the world's worst LitRPG, quoted at length and against the author's will. - A stat-block magic system played completely straight by a man who hates it. - Slow-burn romance that is not slow and not burned. - Numbers going up. Dignity going down. Both tracked meticulously. What this isn't - Not a wish-fulfilment success story. Sadly. - Not actual smut.  This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, and events are purely imaginary, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead - or anyone wandering around on Royal Road - is purely coincidental.