by Sir Kayaba
After his girlfriend cheats on him, eighteen-year-old Shun completely falls apart. He gains weight, skips university, lives on junk food, adult videos, games, and self-pity, and starts turning into exactly the kind of person he hates. Then he finds THE CRUCIBLE, an illegal full-dive VRMMO being sold for $99.99. Its promise is simple: every stat earned in-game carries over into real life. Shun starts as a Wretch, armed with a plain sword and assigned to Kagami Rei, a beautiful, sadistic Valkyrie who seems to take personal offence at how pathetic he is. Strength, endurance, intelligence, confidence, and appearance all have to be earned through brutal trials that can break players physically and mentally. And the stronger Shun becomes inside The Crucible, the less recognisable he becomes outside it. ... Release Schedule: Every Day, 23:00 (BST)
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 2 Oct 2026, 02:49 UTC
Entry forecast updated 2 Oct 2026, 02:49 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
10%
Two or more lists
6%
Likely threshold order: Comedy → Romance → Action → Fantasy → Adventure → Main.
Leading bundle: Comedy + Romance (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
#9765 of 12,412 · 9715 below RS #50
By genre
beats 85% of similar stories
not enough data yet
beats 76% of similar stories
Firing on all cylinders
Traffic and conversion are both strong for a story this size. Readers are finding it and sticking — if Rising Stars is the goal, this is the moment to push.
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.
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