“The Death of the Skeleton Swordsman: Dominating as a Cursed Saint” - Did I miss the first volume of this?

EXP Is Golden: Volume 1 - Great first volume. It’s at the core a kingdom-building and game character progression story. MC more or less stumbles into the role of the final boss but decides to embrace it completely. No altruistic saints cosplaying as “Evil™” is to be found here.

Babel, Vol. 2 - I really can’t follow MC here. She takes actions that are completely unfathomable. For example, trying to kill herself to win an argument. I wish I could make this up. It’s also made up of a lot of conflicts that could completely be averted if characters wouldn’t treat information as if it were a secret. A simple “Oh hey Mr. Employer, I’ve overheard two suspicious people in the courtyard and it seems they want to use some sort of item on you. They sounded as if they didn’t like you but they really were a fan of someone called “insert name here”. I don’t know more but I thought you might want to know…”. I wonder if this is its own thing or if this belongs to the “oblivious MC” trope. I mean looking at how stupidly oblivious MC is in general I feel it would fit at least. That all being said, there are some genuinely interesting concepts in this series. If those concepts were handled better (and MC were different) it could really be one of the stand-out titles—so much wasted potential.

Yeah, I thought that maybe there just weren’t any twists in the genres I read, but plot twists doesn’t seem to be something done in light novels.

Is this true for English?

Nah, that’s just what I’m going with. Sounds plausible enough, doesn’t it? ;)

As far as I remember collective nouns are based on an old book (15th or 16th century) and there are some funny ones in there. I’ll look it up and report later.

Edit: “The Book of Hawking, Hunting and Blasing of Arms” by Julia Berners published in England in 1486. It includes 165 collective nouns for groups of people and animals. I suppose the good gal was bored out of her mind and everyone just ran with it to humor her. And today we have have masterpieces like a “conspiracy of lemurs”, “tower of giraffes”, and “destruction of wild cats” (all real I swear).

NineSwords says so too.

I do not, but I agree. (That bit never gets old). They had such a great chemistry with Satou and I would have loved to see a. more of them and b. have them interact more with the other characters. But the door is open now for frequent visits.

(What would the correct world be for a group of gods/goddesses?)

Probably a “Morsel” of Goddesses. The term comes from the sound the group makes most prominently.

I believe you asked for fantasy with aliens, and that was the only one that came to mind. I agree that it’s not good. I have a bad conscience now that you had to read that because I wasn’t clearer. Sorry for the confusion.

So many new series this week.

Nia Liston: The Merciless Maiden Volume 4 - Full adventuring novel without any TV production. While not bad per se, it’s just that I have a lot of adventuring novels and 0 tv production novels…

Lucia and the Loom: Weaving Her Way to Happiness Volume 2 - Good heartwarming volume like the last one. I’m starting to enjoy the spinoff more than the main series.

Might I suggest Reincarnated with my Smartphone?

Okay, I got one. A single-volume horror story:

MC is an overworked office worker and moves into a “free” house in the country to get away from the stress of Tokyo city life. Winding down and adapting to the slow life in the countryside isn’t easy and unusual sounds and movements outside the room scare him at night. He befriends the locals, helps out an elderly couple tending to their vegetable garden, and gives a young kid who gets bullied at school some helpful words. But the country sounds at night still keep him from any relaxing sleep and the ghostly silhouettes he sees in looking at his house are getting more.

The people start to act strange around him and the elderly couple tells him that they are afraid for him and they make some vague comments about the woman who lived in this house before him. He can’t get that comment out of his mind, so he searches for what happened to the previous tenant. After some internet searching he gets in contact with a guy from a small occult magazine in the next larger town over. He tells him that that house is haunted and that the previous tenant saw ghosts as well and was found dead in her old school tatami bedroom. The official report said that the woman killed herself by inflicting several deep scratch wounds all over her body after a psychotic breakdown, but the occult guy says that it was the vengeful ghost of the original owners that built the house and lived their entire life in it before getting murdered in a random break in. He says that they and the previous tenant now haunt the house and gives MC copies of his occult magazine where he wrote articles about the house. MC reads them on his bus ride home and decides to grab his things and leave right away. But even for a seasoned overwork-veteran, the consecutive days of running on adrenalin without sleep catch up to him and he faints in his bedroom while packing his few belongings into a moving box.

He wakes from the sound of someone or something trying to get into his bedroom door which is blocked because he collapsed against it with his backpack. The first thing that he sees is the door being slowly pushed open now that he got up and isn’t leaning against it anymore. Then he realizes that all the color has gone from the world and that there is a constant eerie ringing sound that only gets overpowered by the screaming sounds of the thing that tries to get into the room.

When the door finally opens he sees grotesque withered yokai monsters shuffling towards him. He grabs a rice cooker from the moving box and bashes the monster’s head in. The other monster gets visibly agitated but he manages to kill it as well. He doesn’t give a shit anymore about his belongings and just takes the meanest-looking kitchen knife he has and tries to flee the house. but outside is colorless as well and the ringing sound gets louder and more annoying in pitch. There are also more monsters in different variations. From slow ones who try to attack him from a distance to big and strong ones who rush into close quarters.

After much struggle and several fights against the yokai he manages to flee the village and makes it into the town where he gets in contact with the occult magazine guy and he is visibly disturbed by the story he hears. Together they go to the police and there he is arrested. The police find the residents of the small village all stabbed to death and MC gets locked away after being found guilty of mass murder. He is now waiting in a monochrome horror cell waiting for the day the monsters come for him to kill him. Still hearing that ringing sound until the day of his execution.

The twist is that at some point the reader realizes that something isn’t right and hopefully only at the end it becomes clear that the monsters were just in his imagination and he killed all the people he befriended. The second twist is that at the very end, it’s unclear if the haunted house made him have the psychotic breakdown or if it’s just a coincidence that both he and the former tenant had the same hallucinations. Maybe the last scene could be the house with now 4 ghostly figures behind the window looking towards a moving truck with a new tenant moving in.

I love their dynamic and hope to see more of them. :)

I wouldn’t be too surprised if Overlord weren’t at least an inspiration. Just by looking at the MC on the cover I get strong Albedo vibes from the horns and lower-back wings.

I wonder if this will be a strict game world or if there will be some isekai aspect to it.

Slow Life and Living with my Mistress for sure. The 3 new ones sound interesting as well. Goblin Maiden sounds like isekai Shrek from the synopsis. Monster Boy sounds generic but I’ll give the first volume a go. But EXP is Golden sounds really intriguing. Always a fan of evil MCs.

Isekai Tensei: Recruited to Another World Volume 8 - I can’t say much about this one. It exists I guess. It’s so perfectly midding that it blends into the background while reading it. And it’s not like there weren’t any opportunities for something interesting. MC is visiting the Beast Nation for the first time, but instead of some interesting world-building you get “Oh this is basically Japan so let’s buy some Soy sauce and Miso. Okay. Thanks. Byeeee”.

Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, Vol. 22 - Good volume. I love the two new characters and hope that they will join the party again asking (commanding) for tasty morsels. Karion says so as well.

Death March would be my #3 pick if I can’t get the old Tearmoon translator.

• Bookworm
• Cooking With Wild Game
• Tearmoon Empire (but with old translator)

Saving 80,000 - The 1 FUNA series I haven’t started yet

It’s even more ridiculous as FUNA’s usual antics. Imagine a MC that can freely hop between our and the isekai world. And by freely I mean freely. Including just grabbing a battalion of mercs with their armored vehicles to fight of a invasion of guys with bows and swords GATE style. Same humor and writing style as anything else FUNA so if you like their other stuff I recommend it.

Definitively, new Death March and 80k Gold. Babel maybe to see if MC gets better. Volume 1 had its strengths and wasn’t all bad.

I didn’t get any reading in during the weekend because of Metaphor:ReFantasio (such an incredible game with such a stupid name) but I sneaked in one and a half during the week.

A Livid Lady’s Guide to Getting Even: How I Crushed My Homeland with My Mighty Grimoires Volume 3 - I like the ruthless nature of MC but in this volume if thoroughly dislike the cheap “oh oh ho, you see in reality I have been 12 steps ahead of you all the time” type of writing to resolve conflicts with MC suddenly revealing that she knew everything all along. I also dislike casual torture and murder of little children just to establish that villains are evil. It’s unnecessary and makes me skip a handful of pages at a time.

Finding Avalon: The Quest of a Chaosbringer Volume 4 - I thought it would trend upwards with this series but instead it plummeted into sewer waste territory. Instead of following MC and furthering the main story, this volume doubled down on the side characters and their stupid class-ranking plot. Aww poor E-class gets bullied by everyone but with the power of friendship and perseverance, they will overcome the devious D-Class! It’s the same shit as in I’m a Spider so What? when the focus shifted away from Kumoko to the side characters. - Dropped.

So which side wins in the end? Going by those speeches I’m also on team Ariel.