The Statsguy's Mag

Views : 3.65million

Rating : 9.2(880)

Chapters : 847

Status : completed

Word count : 3.14million

Author : Angry Squirrel

author level : lv4

No of works : 2

Disscussion : 23075

Year started : 2014

Translated works : The Crazy Knight"s Age of the Universe

Genres : Action, Adventure, Comedy, Mature, Seinen, Xuanhuan

Tags : Appearance Different from Actual Age, Beautiful Female Lead, Betrayal, Clever Protagonist, Confident Protagonist, Cunning Protagonist, Demons, Depictions of Cruelty, Determined Protagonist, Elves, Enemies Become Allies, Engineer, Evil G.o.ds, Friendship, Game Elements, Genius Protagonist, Ghosts, G.o.dly Powers, G.o.ds, Handsome Male Lead, Hiding True Ident.i.ty, Humanoid Protagonist, Kingdom Building, Kingdoms, Lawyers, Loli, Love Interest Falls in Love First, Male Protagonist, Manipulative Characters, Necromancer, n.o.bles, Past Plays a Big Role, Politics, Quirky Characters, Reincarnated into Another World, Romantic Subplot, Royalty, Ruthless Protagonist, Schemes And Conspiracies, Seven Deadly Sins, Slaves, Strong Love Interests, Sword And Magic, Sword Wielder, System Administrator, Torture, Twisted Personality, Wars, Yandere

Popularity : Mildly popular in china

Last edited : 4/mar/2019

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Website : qidian international (webnovel.com)

Views : 7.4million

Rating : 4.5(393)

Chapters : 516

Rank : 57

Status : ongoing

Schedule : 5ch/week but translated at 3ch/week

Translator :

Editor :

Premium : Yes

Premium chapter : 72

Stones per chapter : 12-25 ss

Popularity : OK popular here

Last edited : 4/mar/2019

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Synopsis :

his is the story of a crazy lich who possesses an internal game system and brings catastrophe to the entire world.

"Let"s look at the daily quests today… it"s the d.a.m.ned choose one-of-two-options-type again. Destroy a town with a population of 30,000 people or above; reward: 10,000 evil points. Steal lollipops from 3 children; reward: 1 evil point. If neither of the quests is completed, then 2 points will be deducted."

"Tsk! You think I"m stupid? If I really destroyed a town, a crusade of Myth-ranked Holy Knights would definitely come hunting me down. Even if I earned the points, there wouldn"t be any life left in me to spend them. I better just go be a kindly lollipop bandit."

I"ve already had enough of being a notorious lich. Who says a lich can"t be a good person? I"m definitely going to beat this d.a.m.ned system and be an upright and dignified good man.

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POSITIVE REVIEW :

I"ve read the entire series in Chinese. The following review will give you a global picture of what"s ahead, without spoiling specific occurrences.

Spoiler

There"s a lot to say, so I"ll just focus on what really makes this stand out:

1. A solid and diversified world that resists easy, "one-size-fits-all" solutions:

- The world is full of characters more powerful than the MC, not to mention in the grand scheme of things, numbers do matter. In fact, many of the MC"s companions surpa.s.s him in their domain of competence. The MC can"t just beat up one person after the other.

- The world is quite advanced. In his first life, the MC tried to use his modern-day knowledge, only to realize that a. anything worth inventing had already been invented and b. the rest has better alternatives in this world.

- Complex and diversified societies. There are over a dozen socio-political models across races, with further fractioning into different factions/individuals with their own agendas as well as open or hidden alliances across factions. Also, it makes -sense- for things to be the way they are. This means MC can"t just replace everything with a modern-day social model and be done with it.

- A ruthless, profit-based underlying backbone. In a war for survival, anything goes if there"s profit involved, be it land, resources, power, belief or even souls. Allies will betray you if it"s in their interest to do so. Petty internal interests will block your allies" actions. Open lies will be propped up as the "truth" as long as it"s convenient. It"s not that "good people" don"t exist here, but profit moves the world.

However, the MC"s "system" has already revealed to him where all this is heading though: several waves of upcoming conflicts, each larger than the last, then boom, game over for everyone. With no easy solutions at hand, the MC is an ant trying to prevent a series of car crashes. This leads to...

2. The diversified plot writing

At first glance, the MC appears to be a silly, goofy, happy-go-lucky guy (skeleton). He even views his past revenge streak (where he nearly destroyed the world) as an "embarra.s.sing chuuni phase" (not often you see That sort of att.i.tude).

But the story increasingly reveals that he is, in fact, a ruthless manipulator. Faced with a world where the strong oppress the weak and where his own country was destroyed by war, betrayal, and lies propped up as truth, the MC decided to become more ruthless, more cunning, more underhanded than his opponents, and does not hesitate to resort to experimentation/dissections, scams, stealing, threats, betrayal, blackmail, negative propaganda, a.s.sa.s.sinations and conspiracies.

- Lack power? Okay, he"s slowly building up his power the normal way. His "creations" are far from normal however.

- Lack people for your new system? Shamelessly poach the followers of other religions.

- Lack technology? Steal it. And steal the researchers. Then sell the resulting technology back to the country you stole it from.

- A group of internal decision-makers are giving you a hard time? What, just find a reason to kill them.

- The decision-makers of allies X are taking their time? lol, drag the trouble straight to their doors, see whether they"ll drag-out their decision-making process then.

- Want to stop the successive waves of conflicts which will end in the destruction of the world? Change some of the opposing factions from within from the grounds-up. Form alliances (willing or forced) where you can. Beat up immediate threats, then forcefully integrate them. Identify sub-factions within opposing factions, make deals, then let them handle the rest of their side. Ignore factions that either don"t need help or don"t benefit the cause. Having thus preserved Eich"s forces as much as possible, force them all to face the real threats.

- Reputation in the drains? Apparently being notorious is convenient too!

What"s interesting in all this is that the MC is actually an idealist, who wants to save the world and make it a better place. He just refuses to do it alone. He knows that the means he"s chosen are despicable, and he fully expects to be punished for it, this last point being something he"s completely serious about.

In parallel, he "sows seeds" for a better future:

- He releases the information he has about the future in steps.

- He sets up new systems of beliefs or new mechanisms that will either protect the weak, gradually erode the problematic Church of Light, or simply coerce third parties into fighting the just fight thanks to pure incentives.

- He accelerates technology/magic advances. Sometimes, this is by sharing the fruits of his own research. At other times, it"s by setting up new bases of development: he uses the system to identify key researchers, points them in the right direction, gives additional ideas based on real-world technology trends, provides them unconditional resources (often knocked from ally countries), then lets them do their thing.

- He sets up all sorts of nations and alliances. The world is full of old foxes, some of whom oppose his plans, but also some who, once they are convinced that their interests are aligned, make even bigger contributions to the MC"s plans than the MC himself.

The MC never copy/pastes knowledge from our world, instead everything is custom-made for Eich. The result is the foundations of a veritable series of social, technological and political revolutions, except once he"s painstakingly set up the foundations... he lets go.

The MC doesn"t want to become a hegemon himself, he wants his creations to grow on their own (only giving advice from time to time), even if he isn"t sure whether the "seeds" will grow, or how exactly they"d develop. However, this enables his systems to truly become independent forces, and for his subordinates/allies to truly mature as leaders, some even walking further than the MC on the paths the MC had set up. This is his answer to changing the flow of "history."

Even with all this, there"s still more to the plot: the MC also goes on quests to further his own power, or has to partic.i.p.ate personally in wars. His opponents are often quite cunning too: the MC"s many back-up plans often prove to be necessary when a whole string of troubles and opportunities pile in at the first signs of war. The story also often goes in-depth into the worldbuilding or the situation of individual characters. All this makes for a very diversified story that never becomes repet.i.tive.

3. Daring, weird characters designs

That all sounds quite dark so far, right? It is, but the story is also quite hilarious. The author cheerfully deconstructs and reconstruct your usual fantasy stereotypes, leaving you laughing at the worldbuilding (holy knights are poor blokes who can"t get a girlfriend because they"re broke, magicians in their tower are basically geeky shut-ins, that powerful ancient undead dragon is still alive because he"s an expert at shamelessly sucking up to whoever is most powerful at the moment), not to mention the characters themselves are so boldly weird themselves that you"ll soon find your standards for what"s acceptable falling lower and lower (when there"s a "Beifeng" standard, everything else seems so tame!) The MC laments at the fact that there are no normal people around him, blatantly ignoring the fact that he"s quite abnormal himself.

The story is cheerfully narrated through the POV of the MC, who is in constant comedic skits with the "System" and later with his "pet" Harloys. And there"s always something to whine about, since the MC happens to be a walking magnet for bad luck (broke/virgin/huge bounty on his head) and weird people. The MC himself is full of antics, whether he"s laughing gleefully at the misery of others, conducting experiments with the enthusiasm of a mad scientist, shamelessly running away from opponents stronger than him ("Shame? What"s that? Can you eat it?") or diligently avoiding paperwork. His companions, in turn, feel a mix of respect and "want to beat him up" towards him, and although he can"t lie, he"ll frequently mislead allies and opponents alike with half-truths.

But don"t get me wrong, even though the MC scams his companions, he is also extremely generous, and his allies always do end up profiting much more than they lose thanks to the enormous amount of work he puts in. Told through his POV, the story alternates between a mix of humor and epic, with you occasionally realizing what the heck it is you"re reading and mourning for your falling morale standards. After all, according to the MC, people who are insane don"t realize that they are insane, and the MC has very much become insane.

Now for the negative points:

- There are a few plot points which... developed differently from what I expected. In particular, it feels like Karwenz just pops up every several hundred chapters just to make things more difficult for the MC, which is frustrating to read (I"m quite satisfied with the conclusion though). There are a few other plot points like that: the conclusion is a rare non-rushed conclusion (for a Chinese novel) that ties up all the elements that need to be tied up, but there are a few points you wished you could see more of. Maybe they"ll get addressed in the sequel.

- There are a few points where I lacked confidence in the direction of the story. It did always pick back up however. Some readers have also noted the huge amount of info dump. There were a few moments where they did feel annoying to me, but that"s usually when they occur at particularly tense moments. Overall, I"ve found them entertaining, not to mention crucial to understanding the plot of the story. I like this a lot more than when authors gloss over something and expect us to accept it "just because."

- The romance feels like it"s incomplete. Again, perhaps this will be addressed in the sequel, but if feels like there"s a lack of closure on the MC"s side.

- The story is not particularly "politically correct" and makes fun of just about everything, which may make some readers uncomfortable. To such readers, I recommend taking a step back and noting that just about all the characters in the series are weirdoes, but that specifically in this story, such weirdness doesn"t matter (unless you"re at Beifeng level) : no matter what your personal preferences are, you can still be a high-ranking, respected and contributing member of society, not to mention kick a.s.s.

Despite the weaknesses, the sheer scale of the characters, worldbuilding and plot that the story offers makes it one of the most incredible things I"ve read so far. Even though I had marathoned through 800+ chapters while setting aside most of the other stories I was reading, I, for one, jumped into the sequel right after.

- Mizura (NU)

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CRITICAL REVIEW :

This is a very deceptive and weird novel, but let me try to sum up the premise: The protagonist, Roland, is a lich in an underground city-state. He was a reincarnator from modern earth with a system that issued him heroic quests for great rewards, but because of betrayals he lost his country, which led him into a nihilistic spiral that had him end up where he is at the beginning of the story: a weakened undead caster surrounded by crazy characters and even his system became a snarky a.s.s that revels in his suffering. However, once the plot kicks in, it turns out this is but a small setback on his grand plan to reincarnate once again and fix the world before it starts its descent towards destruction via an apocalyptic war between the forces of Order and Chaos.

Now, what I wrote there is mildly spoilerous, but I had to say it because the actual story has an absolutely horrible pacing, and so I have to rea.s.sure you that yes, there is an actual plot here. h.e.l.l, it is actually one of the best written, most detailed and well-thought-out plots I have read outside of some western doorstopper fantasy cla.s.sics. The characters are all interesting, the protagonist"s plans are truly ingenious and make sense in context, the action is nail-biting and the world-building is positively suberb. So, why am I only giving it 3 stars?

Well, first off, the comedy is G.o.d awful. It is the worst kind of screeching, low-brow otaku humor you would see in some bottom-of-the-barrel isekai stories that fail to take themselves seriously in any way. However, what makes these parts truly inexcusable is just how much they wreck the pacing and the tone of the story. We have truly powerfully written moments, like Roland invoking The Infallible Diffindor for the first time, or him returning to his ruined country hundreds of years after his first death and the people cheering for the heroes that are his undead companions, or h.e.l.l, even just a simple chapter that does nothing but quietly explains the tragic backstory of the batsh*t crazy witch Amelia and suddenly turns her from an annoying one-note extra to an actually interesting potential love interest... and then these amazing well-written chapters are often followed by the town security chasing down a bunch of naked druids, or Roland getting verbally and physically abused by his love interests, or a omnis*xual half-dragon f**king a sand-worm from Dune, or a bunch of horndog characters trying to gather p.o.r.no magazines, and so on and so forth. Most egregious are the chapters that are dedicated to the female characters casually abusing Roland to the point of cold-blooded torture, but more often than not it is entirely played off as funny, a double-standard in comedy that really needs to die.

So yeah, is this story good? Well, half of it is b.l.o.o.d.y genius, while the other half is some of the most grating low-brow c.r.a.p I have read in a while. Add those together, and it kinda adds up to "okay". Overall I recommend reading it just for those truly breathtaking moments, and skimming all the bad comedy parts.

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In my library : Yes