38 Chapters of prologue.
38 Chapters.
Almost the entire trial read is prologue, where the MC wastes time, causes trouble, gets enemies, and leaves a trail of bodies because he couldn't just get on with it. He's a regressor, he knows this world, he should know better. Instead he walks around like a naive child doing anything except what he's best at, and what would at least prevent a lot of problems.
Maybe the author was trying to do something new, where instead of a regressor MC wanting nothing more than to use their prior knowledge to go HAM on the world, we get this guy who wants nothing to do with it and thinks he can get other people into all the dirty business and stay squeaky clean in safety outside.
None of that works and we're stuck with an ineffectual MC who ends up going into the Tower anyway because of guilt over the fact that he got a bunch of people killed because he was screwing around. After 38 chapters.
So we're likely stuck with the same emo edgelord that we'd have gotten anyway without wasting the first 38 chapters and had just got on with it from the start without the attempt at doing something different, just to be different.
I know, I know, we all want to see new things being tried. New ways to tell a story that isn't just the same ole copy/paste. Which is fine, when it works. When the author can stick with it and not fall right back into the same ruts that were carved out in other, better stories before.
And I kinda wish the author had stuck with it. Instead of going all crazy and killing off a bunch of people in a school just for motivation to get the MC to go into the Tower, just like we all knew he would, the MC could have shown better sense and not wasted so much time. Then his "friend" (in quotations because that guy is the closest thing the MC has to one, even if the author can't be bothered to give him a name) might not have been seconds away from dying, resulting in the MC having to do an a$$pull to get a pill to save him. Or the guards, teachers, and students in his school might not have been slaughtered.
If I had to guess the author probably realized the slow, fumbling start wasn't doing any favors, readership-wise, and finally decided to get on with it. And from the looks of it, this will become another forgettable story about a regressor who uses the knowledge from their previous life to excel.
Surprisingly this story might actually get picked from the Trial Read though, but I imagine that's less due to its quality, and more to do with the low bar set this week, and the fact every story in this batch has low numbers.
