Scoutside

Well. 1100 chapters in, and I felt like I should vent some of my frustrations and also afford a follow-up for people who felt like my previous comment was too unfair since it was made at 700 chapters of a 1500 chapter novel. Spoilers, obviously. Suffice to say, all of the complaints I had made previously -- rather than being worked on or addressed -- were turned up to 12. The harem aspect of the novel is basically non-existent. Even the one instance where he eventually marries his wives .. ? We get like 4 chapters of sweet interactions between him and the "the favorite" ones .. while literally 80% of the harem get a one sentence "He also spent time with them" follow-up. Felberta? She was the first woman in the harem, and his literal first wife? She has barely been mentioned in 700 chapters. She's still there, but just as a non-existent, non-vocal extra while Allura, Amara, Astaria, and Thyra get 95% of all speaking roles and interactions. The favoritism is insane. And let's not get into the power scaling. After all, almost 1200 chapters in, and the last 50 chapters have been him getting relentlessly tortured and beaten down during his "tRaInInG" by Vyriana. Who is Vyriana? Just the most overwhelmingly powerful character so far met by the MC and his wives. But is she THE most powerful? No. She can beat Nux and his wives while asleep, and they are centuries from catching up to her (if ever) but there are still characters she has met with in the novel that SHE has no chance against. So Nux, who is "striving to be the most powerful, so he can live peacefully" .. is literal galaxies away from even comparing to the actually strong people in this novel. Similarly to the former criticism, the author has "recent character favoritism" syndrome, and every time he introduces a new character (usually a female), he forgets the rest of the cast completely. If you want a perfect example of that, apparently he started writing a new PREQUEL to this novel before this one was even finished, and the entire world-building aspect of this novel has become nothing more than a stepping stone for the MC of the original novel who is apparently the most powerful person in all of existence or some shit. All of that to say: If you want a novel where the MC is anything more than "monstrous potential" that does anything of actual significance within 1200 chapters and is a massive romantic masochist who only pursues women who actively want nothing to do with him beyond the first handful of women, I would look elsewhere. This is filled with empty expressions of strength that mean absolutely nothing. Oh, he defeated the seven prodigal heroes of the World? That was built up to be INSANELY amazing and overpowered .. until one chapter later, when he was told that they were all actually trash and it meant nothing. That's the typical script of this novel, from start to finish. Proceed at your own discretion. I just needed a solid vent, and warning people who had better things to do seemed like a constructive way to handle it.

Here's what I'll say: If you're looking for a novel with an OP MC and a loving harem, you'll love half of this story. The author is obsessed with the concern that making Nux overpowered would kill the novel, apparently, so for 700 chapters you'll see people bragging about his insane potential and how big of a monster he is. But when it comes to actually being in a position of real power, he only achieves that goal for about 20 chapters before they dip out of their cliche backwoods continent backstory and get exposed to "tHe ReaL wOrLd" where they are insanely weak compared to everyone else around them. But don't worry, he immediately starts impressing people with all of his "potential" again. So he quickly rises up the ranks and becomes insanely powerful. Right before the rug gets swept out from under him (again) when he realizes he's actually super weak compared to everyone who has influence over whether or not he lives or dies. Again. And again. And again. The cyclical nature of that "balance" never leaves. Rather than write a story where his achievements matter, it's more important to have him constantly struggle to live up to a new goalpost that has miraculously been moved the moment he reaches it. Easier to write, I guess. But insanely frustrating. That said, the harem aspect of the story isn't half bad. Even if it falls by the wayside pretty severely halfway into the novel thanks to everything being about world building and politics and new inner dynamics. After all, that's what people who go into harem isekai novels want -- complexity of political landscape and world-shaking lore drops every other chapter. I guess.

Nah. Leaving this up, and only adding a comment to further clarify -- Every single one of my complaints got turned up to 11 within the next two hundred chapters. By 802 I literally *had* to quit because each chapter was leaving me with nothing but a sense of frustration and borderline anxiety at the pointless repitition. EIGHT HUNDRED chapters in, and this "Boundless, Limitless, Impossibly Gifted Prodigy Above Every Prodigy In The Universe" reached Half-King Rank, which is still several ranks away from the middle rank of his weaker wives. He only managed to accomplish that because he literally *called his mom* in the middle of his tribulation to have her fix it for him, because "It was too hard." He has accomplished literally nothing for himself in this novel, and everything has been done through either his maids, or his wives. The author keeps reminding you that Lith has never had to fight for his life a day in his life, and that he's "really starting to mature", but every time he is in danger, someone saves him. He also "finally comes around to being a vampire" around 700 chapters in, and why does he do that you may ask? Because he has firmly made up his mind to fall as deeply into debauchery as he can and sleep with any woman that catches his eyes, personal ethics be damned. And that's not including how he literally spends like one hundred chapters just randomly molesting the women around him in the middle of conversations. So every other sentence has to be a vivid description of the woman's genitals, because apparently that's overwhelmingly the most important part of this novel. Jesus. Save yourself the drama. Again. Unless you actually find that kind of thing fun to read. In which case .. I don't know. You do you, I guess.

Alright. This is the third novel I've ever taken the time to review, but hopefully people who are considering whether or not to read this come by here and see my assessment and have some help in figuring out whether or not this is their kind of bag. There are obvious spoilers, so if you don't want that, you shouldn't continue reading. I am 600 chapters in, and there are several hundred that I have not read, though I intend to do so. If at the end of those chapters I feel that this review was unjust, unfair, or incomplete -- I will edit it appropriately, or remove it entirely. The story starts off pretty amazingly. For people like me, who love OP MC's, this was a great thing. He had everything handed to him in the first few chapters and was set up for a golden road experience. Unfortunately, around one to two hundred chapters in, the quality in my opinion takes a turn for the worse. There are several contributing factors for this, but the major problem is a lack of actual follow through on any of the things that are set up. There are numerous examples of this in the novel, but the two most prominent ones are the Pet he gets in the beginning, and the Elven Continent arc. He gets an insanely rare wolf breed in the early chapters and it's set up to be his growing companion throughout his adventures, and then you never hear anything about it until five hundred chapters later when the author goes "Yeah, I changed my mind about that, so you won't see her again." The Elven Continent was set up to be this sprawling adventure arc where he would make insane amounts of money and grow independently alongside his best friends. Instead, he gets kidnapped by a friend of his mothers when he gets to the continent, gets tortured for a few days so she can "teach him a lesson in morality", then he goes to sleep for like a year, skipping everything that happened to his friends and their project. Why did he go to sleep, you ask? I am glad you inquired. Because despite being told he had literally limitless potential and the fact it took him like three hundred chapters to get out of the starter ranks of cultivation, he did so slightly faster than his friends and put too much strain on his body and was forced to NOT cultivate for one hundred years. ... So apparently being gifted in cultivation in this novel is a bit of a curse, because if you do it too well, you end up having to slack off while everyone else catches up to you. Admittedly, he'd still be one or two ranks above the norm by the time he can begin again, but that's still a weird choice to go with just because you didn't want to write about cultivation for a while. So yeah, narratively the author has some pretty severe attention spam problems. But beyond that, the most important characteristic is whether or not his fits your definition of a true harem or not, or what you consider acceptable in it. If you think of harem like I do, where there is a central figure managing multiple honest and open relationships with different people who are all dedicated to him and only have intimate moments with him, then this novel will frustrate you. The wives do in fact mess around with one another when he is not present, despite the fact the author repeatedly asserts that they are all straight as an arrow. That's .. not how heterosexuality works, but whatever. Similarly, the MC talks about his devotion to his wives and how he has no reason to seek anyone else out, but he ends up fingering his aunt within two chapters of meeting her because he doesn't want her to think of him as a baby. ... Yeah. Similarly, there is plenty of general smut that just has nothing to do with the MC. Other characters fucking random other characters, loads of Yuri-centric content in a novel that repeatedly asserts there are no gay or bisexual characters, etc. If this isn't up your alley, I'd dip. Obviously there are plenty of justifications that can (and I am sure will be) made regarding the things I've brought up, but it is an objective fact that they all occurred the way I've said, and if you're not interested in those qualifying reasons then I'd recommend you look elsewhere. But if you're into a novel that has plenty of violence, torture, hypocritical "anti-hero" worship, and open smut for the sake of smut while there is a shocking lack of Slice of Life in a novel *named* Slice of Life, then this is definitely for you. I will say, if there is truly one redeeming quality of this novel, it is in the characterization. All of the women are genuinely unique and appealing and have their own traits they lean into, and are not the copypasta cut-outs that a lot of harems rely on. Well, at least until Lucifer shows up. She's kind of the worst.

I tried. I really did. The novel was going so well, for so long. And then it came. Over 500 chapters in, and despite the "Don't worry, guys! There is no yuri here!" warning in the beginning of the captions, they introduce the character of Claire, who shits all over that. Not only is she romantically involved in a *clearly* non-platonic way with the Mermaid Princess that Lucien is actively trying to romance, but the Mermaid Princess herself is also interested in her in the same way. So despite the "Don't worry, guys! NOOOO YURI!" comment, the Author had the great idea over 500 chapters in to be like, "Weeeeeell. I mean. A little yuri. Why not. Surely people didn't actually rely on the things I said at the beginning of the novel to know whether or not there would be things they didn't want to read in it. I mean, why would they? It makes perfect sense that if I say one thing, I might clearly and inexplicably change my mind 500 chapters into it. They should expect that."

"This isn't NTR because I said it isn't NTR." This right here is a dead giveaway when an author has no clue what differentiates a harem from a polyamorous relationship. One has all roads romantically leading to and from the MC, and the other is a tangled and inner-connected weave of relationships independent of any singular focus. So if this is a "harem", but the women all sleep with each other and love one another, then it's NTR. If it's not NTR, and the MC is aware of their actions and fine with it, then it's not a harem, it's polyamory. Pretty basic equation, regardless of how adamantly you want it to be something else.

This is a place-holder review, frankly. As of now, it's a decent novel with a relatively well written format and enjoyable premise. But there are some major narrative "ticks" and flaws that I need to address. Keep in mind that I have only read up to chapter 80, but this is enough for form an initial impression and have the questions that I have. One, this character eats a lot. I mean, constantly. It will be mentioned at least two to five times a chapter what he is eating and when he is doing so and where he gets the food from. I realize some people like the immersion of experiencing these kinds of events with the character to add an element of reality to it, but there is a reason authors don't describe every single time a character goes to the bathroom either. Certain actions and activities are so bland and monotonous and repetitive that having to read it chapter after chapter is grating. It comes across as a transparent Word Count filler, and should be avoided. Hopefully this eases up in future chapters. Two, at what point will this character stop getting the shit kicked out of him by every major conflict he comes across? He can effortlessly slaughter hundreds of nameless mook goblins, but the Goblin King basically pushes his shit in. And that's the motiff of every fight he gets into -- he slaughters countless little dudes and basic monsters, then gets steamrolled by the equivalent of the leader. He's been brutally knocked unconscious and left for dead a half dozen times at this point, and it's boring to read. You constantly remind people of how his stats are growing at an insanely rapid pace, and he just SPRINTS through the levels, but nothing actually changes with him. He gets new evolutions, that then do not lead to any advantages in the fights he gets into beyond new ways to describe eviscerating more weak mass cannon fodder. But he has not fought and won against a single major enemy yet. It's just .. depressing. I realize not every author wants to make their MC OP right out the gate, but if he doesn't get some wins under his belt, it stops being realistic and starts being downright pathetic. Also, the harem aspect of things. He has ONE girl he is even remotely interested in, and we're nearing 100 chapters in. There was the dark elf chick as well, but she's off doing God knows what, and he has been around her for a grand total of about 6 hours at this point. If you're going to go this slowly on the topic of romance, it's often times better not include it at all -- people like me, who start reading because of the Harem tag, are going to be disappointed when we realize that it's a shoddily thrown together addition with no real work being done on that front. Regardless, as I said, this is a placeholder. I fully intend to finish what has been released, because outside of those complaints, it's an enjoyable dig. If the things that I mentioned improved in the content that I haven't been able to check out yet, I'm happy to delete this rating and replace it with something more appropriate to the quality at that time.

Let's add in this *amazing* bit of writing the Author decided to throw at us to really make us hate the MC to our very, absolute core (massive spoiler) .. .. halfway into the novel, he finally gets a sizeable power upgrade after "training for an infinite amount of time" basically in a pocket dimension. All for the sake of a single fight he was actively engaging in, in the real world. He was trained, and drilled, and tutored by five overwhelmingly powerful entities SPECIFICALLY on how he was to defeat his enemy. And after he comes back to reality .. after all of that training .. the FIRST thing he does, is fucks it up and does the one thing they told him not to do. This is not an exaggeration, it's *literally* what was written in the novel. So his enemy escapes. Why? Because the author wanted to keep him alive, so he made the MC braindead and incompetent. You'd think that would be the worst part, right? Nah. Apparently the author unlocked Deus Ex BS Tier, because he revealed that the new fighting style our braindead protagonist uses instantly burns ALL of his good karma to fight these enemies, which leaves him with such negative karma that the author can justify doing things like summoning impossible large God Sharks to maul his harem and swallow the MC whole directly after he fucked up the fight with the Big Bad. Hey, it's KaRmA, RiGHt?

Man, I *really* wanted to make this novel One Star after getting to chapter 178 .. but I just can't bring myself to lie about the writing quality or stability of updates section of the review. There will be major spoilers throughout this review, so read it at your own peril. I had previously ranted endlessly about the drawbacks I had seen in this novel early on, but stipulated that I had high hopes they were flaws set up intentionally to allow character growth. Allow me to summarize some key points: Under no circumstances should you read this novel if you want to enjoy a bit of escapism and watch an MC in a slice of life get to enjoy a lovey-dovey harem with monster girls. He barely spends any time with his harem, and when he does, he has been "intimate" with them a grand total of once by chapter 178. And he's only been that close with one of them. Outside of that, the only time he's been "intimate" with anyone was when he was attacked by a woman who he was forced to contract with, and fixed the problem of her insubordination by immediately drugging and raping her. So that's cool, I guess. Yay for ethical MCs. Beyond that, he is being controlled and guided by forces outside of his control, so when he tried to make a decision on his own and kill a HUGE ENEMY that tried to murder him and everyone he cares about, some cosmic force (not joking) will abduct him, threaten him with overwhelming power, command him to behave a certain way, and kick him back to reality. That's not including that the first tournament he joins, he *loses* (sO uNIqUE), or how every fight he gets into is always with The Most Powerful Enemy In The Universe apparently, some random, different, overwhelming foe that is literally legendary and shows up randomly to beat him half to death (or all the way.) And that's not mentioning how the first woman he falls in love with *dies* like seven chapters later. Or how the people around him manipulate and threaten him into accepting positions and responsibilities he actively hates and is trying to avoid. In summary, his life is hot garbage. Once again, if you like watching an MC get horribly railroaded by forces beyond his control, get endlessly abused by the worst luck possible, be pulled into "calamity after calamity" with *zero* time in between, die repeatedly because he's always some combination of Overwhelmingly Weak or arrogantly letting his guard down, not getting to expand or spend time with his actual harem (who he constantly sends away to train rather than using the minimal time they are around each other and not in a crisis to enjoy the benefits of an actual *harem*) ... hey, maybe this is for you. Go for it.

Massive spoilers ahead, but this is my update to the review at 125 chapters into this novel, so almost half of it's current release of chapters: One, the author clearly hates his own MC. He fell in love with a woman who then IMMEDIATELY died and he was unable to do anything to stop it or fix it. He joined a tournament originally to come out as the star newbie trainer, and lost (although the author would likely defend it as 'WELL, HE DIDN'T HAVE NO GOOD PETS YET.' Yeah, that's why it would have been impressive for him to win. Winning after you have the strongest tames would have been lame as hell.) He finally got a single sizeable power-up, and then immediately forgot everything about the event that made him stronger, keeping him super weak but with "better reflexes" apparently. This upgrade came at the cost of the MC literally dying millions of times. He later remembered SOME of that training he did during the upgrade, but all of the things he remembered are forsaken techniques that basically kill him to use them, so -- useless, by and large, except in cases where he'd die if he didn't use them anyway. And these situations happen on a chapter to chapter basis, since the MC has the worst luck I've read about in months. He gets manipulated and threatened into accepting a position in a family he had no interest in, and then immediately gets challenged to a duel to the death by an enemy of another family. Then, when he wins (because he used a technique that shaved time off of his own life), a God Tamer for the family walks in and tells him that since he won he can ask anything he wants, as long as he doesn't want the life of the person who just tried to kill him. That would have been bad enough, but she then denies his NEXT request. Eventually they settle on being servants, but she still threatens to castrate him if anything happens to them, so now he just has the extra responsibility of protecting a few hateful women who actively hate him and will make his life worse. Now you may ask yourself, "If this novel isn't for you, why would you keep reading it?" Well, I have run out of other things to read, so why not. I am honestly curious just how deeply the author intends to torture his own character before it's all said and done. I am assuming he has done so because he, like certain other authors, is *terrified* of writing an MC who actually becomes overpowered regardless of the circumstances, but he's erred on the side of just kicking the shit out of his own character for 125 chapters basically.