
by The Walrus King
Volumes 1 to 4 of Tunnel Rat are Available on KU. Volume 5 will be coming out the end of 2026. (Which means the chapters in Volume 5 come off of RR sometime in the 4th quarter.)https://www.royalroad.com/amazon/B0D98TW5F2?maas=&ref=Milo lives in a steel cave within a man-made mountain of steel and concrete. He spends his days repairing the machinery that keeps the habitat livable and tinkering with the prosthetics that help his twisted body move about through the small tunnels and air shafts that are his world. He's as much a piece of discarded machinery as the equipment he keeps running. He likes to fix things, which is good because he sometimes breaks things. But lately, he's been getting bored, and for a super-genius, that's a bad thing. Luckily, the criminals he escaped from are back. Stealing everything from them will keep him busy, especially when he steals a new MK7 immersion pod used to enter the world of Genesis. Milo has always lived in the tunnels, and now he's a Tunnel Rat in looks, not just name. He wants to go deep into the world and find the ancient mysteries left by races that delved deep and stayed below.He'll find new mysteries to solve, new friends, things to fix, terrifying creatures to aggravate, and things to break. Hopefully, he fixes more than he breaks, or this new world might be in trouble. And thanks to the artist of that handsome rat for inspiration. Find more of her work here: https://www.deviantart.com/watch/memymine/deviations
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, 03:08 UTC
Entry forecast updated 9 Oct 2026, 03:08 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.
A confirmed Rising Stars eligibility removal excludes this story from the Shadow queue.
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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 150+ chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views over the recent window.