Web Fiction

Full Web Fiction List

Vainqueur the Dragon

Chrysalis

Florida Man's General Store in Cultivation World

Beware of Chicken

Overgeared

Everybody Loves Large Chests

The Legendary Mechanic

Lord of Mysteries

Reverend Insanity

The Primal Hunter

The Perfect Run

Epilogue by Etzoli

Worm

Bringing The Farm To Live In Another World

If You’re Armed and at the Glenmont Metro, Please Shoot Me

Gemstone Goblins

The Iron Teeth: A Goblin's Tale

The Many Lives of Cadence Lee

Super Minion by Gogglesbear

Snow by jule009

Radioactive Evolution by Richard Hummel (Balr0g)

DISCLAIMER:

Anything that I write here is concentrated on web novels, so when I say "mature," one may argue that literary fiction is much more "mature" given their realism and character studies and psychological realism, but those are a completely different subject altogether.
"Objectively" describing everything (limitation of scope) that a novel does well is not my intention. I aim only to describe my interpretation of its impression, impact, or effect in a way that, I feel, captures a good enough sum or whole ("gestalt" if you need a fancy one-word term).

Vainqueur the Dragon (by Maxime J. Durand, Void Herald)

The story started off very quietly, not really having much to say, but even throughout the story, it maintained a particular pace.

Chrysalis (by RinoZ)

I stopped at Chapter 771.

The story started off immediately rushing into the vicinity, with all of the mobs and monsters already at the go, with nothing more to add but that, since it just kept up that pace, even as introduced more complexity as the story unfolded. It kept up a brisk pace, even as it took lateral detours here and there with the stone people. However, I have yet to read beyond that point. But the story as far as I've seen provides a predictable LItRPG experience that aims to avoid the complexity of other stories with more complex protagonists and side characters. It is very much VS Code with an ant-flavored monster-flavored skin or theme.

Florida Man's General Store in Cultivation World (by DamnPlotArmor)

This story started off without much. It was explosive, but not necessarily anything strange if taken on its own. If comparing it to the title and book cover, it makes sense to be surprised, but taking it as it is, it is just a normal sci-fi scenario. It felt almost unneeded and frivolous, and I did not really think anything of it. I think it distracted for a bit, and it added to the entire cultivation part of the story with the older man being stronger than everyone else because of the powers he got from that sci-fi background of being an immortal living in that radioactive waste for innumerable millennia. So it is essential to the story. It is just that it happens in such a way that you almost forget that the entire story revolves around this overpowered dude whose entire theme is being a radioactive immortal monster now transported into this cultivation world. The ironic story continues very conventionally, and it certainly captures more because of the titles of its chapters, which are fashioned after news headlines with a funny twist given the nature of the story—comedic pastiche of an extreme sci-fi protagonist background, modern news headlines for chapter titles, and an ironic treatment of cultivation tropes through the conventional formula of the overpowered protagonist.

Beware of Chicken (by Casualfarmer)

I stopped at Volume 2, Chapter 18.

The story started off without too much of a hassle, and it continues without too much of a hassle, gliding smoothly throughout the conflicts, keeping an omniscient perspective that prevented the story from feeling tense or in any shape or manner reliant on sudden inciting incidents happening. It was a slice of life, perfectly placed in a cultivation world, with a typical town-like treatment of its world building, with the liveliness and all. A nice much romantic and mature alternative of Isekai Nonbiri Nouka, but without the godliness and more of the town-village tight-knit community vibe, though heavily focused on the protagonist and the female lead. The story goes on from there, and I am unaware of any significant developments, since I stopped reading at an earlier point of the story, around the first arcs.

Overgeared (by Park Saenal)

The story was little bothered with going above and beyond with its setting, world-building, characterization, and LitRPG mechanics. It just grabbed what was available and reader-expected and did it in a much more narratively satisfting and compact way, with much less time spent on loitering around details, plot points, or parts that would otherwise feel excessive if forced. It dodged all the risks of having a large cast of characters, because it stayed strongly focused on everything falling into pieces, maing sure that nothing felt too personal or deeply held. This kept the pace for more than 800 chapters, but I stopped around that time, as it went on for hundreds of chapters more. So I am unaware of any changes in the plot since then. There is little else to note besides its success at doing justice to a well-tested formula.

ELLC (by Exterminatus, Neven Iliev)

Story starts off very unconventional right off the bat. This is not just ironic in a ha-ha way. This involves a woman doing something explicit in a dungeon and getting brutally eliminated, a budding young adventurer getting destroyed, friends part of a party getting routed, and survivors dealing with trauma only to get narratively laughed out with a sudden and brutal post-survival death. The protagonist, a chest mimic, is not humanly malicious, but it facilitates all the horridness of the story. The fact that it literally eats (starting with the legs) the succubus innumerable times throughout the beginning and the fact that the succubus second protagonist turns into a maiden to entrap adventurers ("bandits") are not just tone-setting. It completely destroys everything. You're left with the question, "What is this author even?" It is transgressive to a Marquis de Sade degree, but it draws also from anime categories such as futa. Even with all this, the story somehow manages to combine all that with a level-100-max LitRPG system that offers compelling abilities distributed across all kinds of characters, many of which feel as though they should be in a very different story. Thus, it compartmentalizes itself very effectively. However, but this system is drarfed by its skillful management of its ambitious cast of characters, world building, and overarching events, which constitute the basis for the effectiveness of the system in the first place. Classes such as Artificers are more than just classes, and titles such as "Spymaster" carry great weight throughout the story. The protagonist's brutal actions form the brunt of the train of events, with Fizzy, one major character, becoming a part of the group traumatically due to Boxxy's (the protagonist) willingness to enact the most horrible actions consistently throughout the story, with evolving callousness and taboo, as seen in her decision to become an unfeeling golem to free herself from the torture of being in her own body post–event. The transgressiveness is symbiotic with its thrillingly and irreverently streamlined plot, highly developed world-building, distinct characterization, and compelling conflicts, inciting incidents, antagonists, character-narrative arcs. The story takes the Overpowered Protagonist, fantasizes about the most trangressive outcomes through an uncaring to-do protagonist, brutalizes the conventional wish fulfillment and escapism, and deforms all of it, turning it evil, all while synthesizing a world, characters, plot-narrative-character arcs, events, and places that do justice to the LitRPG fantasy medium. Essentially, it is a formula executed well, but complicated by a theme that damns it, even while maintaining the getting-stronger-and-stronger formula all throughout up to the end. For comparison, it captures Ozark's irreverence to life with its "random," narratively flippant, and sudden deaths, but it does it in a way that breaks all the taboos, taking irreverence to an extreme level.

The Legendary Mechanic (by Qi Peijia)

It has a perfect start for readers who want that "secret" feeling and are familiar with video games and scenarios or fantasies of a player pretending to be an NPC. Beyond that, it does not take any significant turn that separates it from other stories, capturing a premise and a formula effectively, scaling it much farther (from what appears to be modern-day gun-toting VRMMO setting, up to space) than other stories. The consistent players who believe that he is an NPC are the reason the story has remained rewarding for hundreds of chapters, even during times where they are absent because of the excitement that builds up and explodes when he finally establishes the space-themed Black Star Army (ascension from the earthly Black Star Mercenary Group).

Lord of the Mysteries (by Cuttlefish That Loves Diving)

Steampunk, Cthulu-supernatural, invention of bikes and evil gods. Need I say anymore? Clowns and pirates, becoming a god, Fortune-Teller.

The story involves a very large world, and it goes through the lens of Klein Moretti, who will be a big player, so anything that he does will end up impacting the world around him. This isn't that strange for any story like this; however, the way that this is done prevents it from feeling like he is simply just there to win, given that he starts off very small and has to hide the fact that he is actually very weak. But he becomes stronger over time through this approach, using this new "fog" ability to guide him toward expansion, even in the sneakiest ways, in ways that make you giddy with excitement at how carefully crafted his house of cards is and how delicious it'll be to see that house of cards transform into an impenetrable immortal brutalist structure later on. But first, it starts with the daily life of Volume 1. And it gets faster and faster that keeping up will incentivize you to invest more time binging than pausing, insomuch that you will wish it took a break every once in a while. But that isn't a weakness at all. By the time you're finished, you might be exhausted at chapter 800 or so, but it'll be worth having seen such an elaborate scheme.

Reverend Insanity (by Gu Zhen Ren)

This reminds me so much of League of Legends (not the pro player team fighting, but the solo queue satisfaction of being a better laner or jungler than your enemy counterpart and "outplaying" them by being more decisive, knowledgeable, and just plain inventive) given how inventive the protagonist is portrayed, even if we don't necessarily know everything that is happening. The way he catches people off guard and just absolutely demolishes them. And typical arrogant young master style, you get the satisfaction of seeing the towering ambitious old guards and new guards all around him be absolutely whipped to submission, and the best part? The protagonist doesn't take pleasure from what he does in a villainous way. He doesn't cackle or laugh manically. Instead, he is the calm power fantasy on steroids, but with that inventive "OH YEAH!" outplay.

The Primal Hunter (by Zogarth)

Given that I only read the first 100 chapters, my review is for that.

This is the story you'll want if you're into protagonists that are disturbingly prepared for a post-apocalypse event, one who is immediately ready to kill multiple people with a blade without feeling guilt or anything. And this is an office worker! So while this is genre fiction, I treated it more like literature and enjoyed the mix of both psychological strangeness and the typical progression fantasy. The power fantasy aspect was visible, but much of it was grinding, even if there were multiple occasions of killing off multiple enemies. However, I didn't feel that these were necessarily inventive, just more so resourceful. His social show-off parts didn't really feel like power fantasy. These elements made it feel satisfying because it was both a strangely combat-calm and -competent protagonist given his background and someone who was not necessarily power fantasy in the sense of being crazy-inventive and knowledgeable, but resourceful in a way that felt grounded (not necessarily realistically) and almost self-aware, given how normal people were around him and how normal he was. He did not feel like a Gary Stu at all, and that was why I enjoyed the character. If Reverend Insanity is pure inventive outplay power fantasy which makes given his centuries-old background, then The Primal Hunter is a grounded resourceful guy who grinds and has moments of significant executional non-inventive resourceful competence and whose personality and psychological response is abnormal, which makes for an interesting plot-oriented LitRPG story with what feels like an underlying self-aware grounded character study despite the abnormality.

The Perfect Run (by Maxime J. Durand, Void Herald)

Given that I did not finish this novel, I can only speak for the first 28 chapters. I would very much call this novel genre fiction, even if one might say that the structure, character interactions, and overarching threads leaned toward the complex. I think it is the well-executed polished fleshed-out concept.

Super Minion (by Gogglesbear)

Similar to the Perfect Run, it is a well-executed polished fleshed-out concept, even if it uses defamiliarization since it doesn't use it in a necessarily surprising or nonsequitur way, given that the protagonist is a kind of robot or AI.

Epilogue (by Etzoli)

This is YA interpersonal "drama" psychological realism mixed with the hellfire of a high fantasy "iceberg" evocation. It is powerful because it mixes Wattpad's strengths with a very fantastical high concept (friends isekai'd and suddenly back home in their child bodies as if only a second has passed when decades[?] have passed in the fantasy world, with dysfunctional family back home, alienation, imminent warning signs of trauma and PTSD, and real-world institutions breaking in, in the suffocating panic) and does not compromise on this very psychologically intense synthesis. It is a whole idea.

Worm (by Wildbow)

This combines Wattpad's strengths (interpersonal realism) with the following:

very fleshed out high concepts (superpowers)
a very committed every-nook-and-cranny kind of world-building (even if only by evocation and gloriously powerful theatrical structure and scene-setting)
the cinema in richly coordinated and multiplayer feats of action, bitter, suppressed, unaddressed interpersonal altercations, and strikingly staged revelation events
the dirtiness and grittiness of grounded 'teenage dirtbag' internal monologue that, as a whole, evolves into the highly developed high concept and spurs self-actualizing bursts within it

Bringing the Farm to Live In Another World (by Ming Yu)

I believe this is good not because it is "high literature" or "well-executed genre fiction," but because it does one thing and does it again and again with enough quality to keep a feeling of endlessness similar to sitcoms. Even if it is fantasy and does involve all kinds of abilities and such, it feels like a bubble-world you can read forever, like a children's book that never "matures".

If You’re Armed and at the Glenmont Metro, Please Shoot Me (by sarcasonomicon)

Captures an impossible immortal loneliness, stillness, and agony in a compelling way. Having been made on 2019, its entire getup not only captures r/nosleep but strongly influences it.

Gemstone Goblins (by HyperAlphaKing)

It captures the you-got-what-you-paid-for light novel experience. I consider it good because it did what it wanted to do simply, and it did it well. I do not compare it to Re:Monster.

The Iron Teeth: A Goblin's Tale (by ClearMadness, Scott Straughan)

Goblin-integrated-into-human-group "ranked games" power fantasy done well. It doesn't do anything too strange (no backflips!), so don't expect to remember it beyond a few hype "the genius play—a perfect use of fog of war!" moments.

The Many Lives of Cadence Lee (by vladerag)

This captures well the feeling of being in multiple worlds all at once and yet being nowhere. That aimless state. Ultimately forgettale, but it accomplished a heavy task. So if it was not for the fact that writing this is hard, it wouldn't be at the top of the charts on Royalroad. Nevertheless, that is its strength. It is a 10/10 in that sense.

"The catch? Any world she is born into, she can never return to. She has infinite lives, but only one life for each."

Snow (by jule009)

I only read the first few chapters back in 2019, yet I recall this novel so well. It accomplished a very strong atmosphere in very simple words. The peak of evocation.

Radioactive Evolution (by Richard Hummel, Balr0g)

I added this not because it was good necessarily, but because I thought it was interesting, at least in the first few chapters, enough that I commented even if I never comment.

Never Die Twice (by Maxime J. Durand, Void Herald)

Similar to Lord of the Mysteries, Never Die Twice involves some level of sneakiness, and the protagonist is straight evil. 41 chapters of this.

Jackal Among Snakes (by Nemorosus)

I loved the "witty" internal monologue, dialogue, and interactions. And it is full of that. It captures the feeling of a story that feels very engaging and lived-in because the protagonist themselves are so "considered" about it all.

Tower of Somnus (by Cocop, Cale Plamann)

I stopped reading at chapter 10.

I thought that it was compelling in terms of evoked worldbuilding, but I wasn't convinced by the story, characters, and stakes beyond chapter 10.

Azarinth Healer (by Rhaegar)

I stopped reading at chapter 50.

I enjoyed the evoked world-building and thought it was very grounded and felt vast and untapped. But it ended up just being a lot of LitRPG grinding, which I did not care for. The short interactions were interesting, but felt like a summary.

Salvos (by MelasDelta)

I stopped reading at chapter 29.

I thought that it was entertaining and engaging for the time, but I stopped. I lost interest when I learned that it did not evolve as a story much from the early chapters (characterization and, by extension, narrative beats and path of engagement and interest, etc.).

Sunflower : [A sunflower based litRPG] (by Razzmatazz)

Interesting stylized use of tables.

Doom Guy Isekai (by Angry Spider)

Fun cool kinetic action that did not overstay its welcome.

Mother of Learning (by nobody103)

I stopped reading at chapter 52.

Compelling series of events that never lets out and keeps you guessing when it comes to the micro, not necessarily the macro, but how the prose, interactions, dialogue, and small details form the overarching events.

Speedrunning the Multiverse (by adastra339)

I stopped reading at chapter 15.

Very propulsive and is for those who want a protagonist who just keeps moving even while maintaining a sense of an evoked vast world and in a way very much unlike Azarinth Healer.

An Outcast In Another World (Subtitle: Is 'Insanity' A Racial Trait?) (by KamikazePotato)

I stopped at chapter 29.

I found this compelling because of how interesting the premise was and how it carried it through for the initial chapters. Once again: strongly evoked vast world even from a very limited slice.

Mark of the Fool (by J.M. Clarke, U Juggernaut)

I stopped at chapter 37.

Compelling series of events centered in an academy, at least for the scope that I read.

RE: Monarch (by Eligos)

I read this only until chapter 35.

Compelling series of events centered on a noble, at least for the scope that I read.