I checked out this web novel after reading the webtoon purely out of curiosity, as many people say this is one of the best Korean web novels.
I could see how a few webtoon were heavily inspired by this. The Red Zone and Orange Zone is basically Doom Breaker, since the MC has a Dragon Reinforcement skill that he can't use properly while trying to kill 5 calamities that are trying to destroy the word. In the Orange Zone he receives a Body Enhancement Surgery so he can use properly this skill. This plot is extremely similar to Doom Breaker, a popular webtoon released in 2021.
The whole story is exactly like Leveling Up with the Gods, which is clearly a cheap copy of this. The way the zones work is very similar to "Tutorial is Too Hard", a popular Tower webtoon. The tutorial in the beginning, how the fairies work, the MC's personality and even the main villain probably were a great inspiration for ORV, which also is considered one of the best web novels.
I could mention more examples, but this is enough to explain I can see how this novel really impacted the Korea in a way.
About the story itself, I have to say this is quite generic. It's exactly like most regressors stories, where the MC regresses, monopolizes all the good items and strong people and becomes a hero, or a legend. There are tons of these nowadays, but this wasn't the case in 2015, which explains the good reviews of 9 years ago.
I'll now mention what bothered during my reading.
0 - Side Stories
Just saying in case some people don't know, but the author finished this story in 2017, but released 44 Side Stories chapters between 2023 and 2024.
1 - Game System
The game system works in a way that you can only max out the runes in the zone you're in. If you're in the Red Zone, you can only max out your runes to Red 99,9% (or 0.01% of the next rune), which is terrible. This is basically a cultivation manhua system (Xianxia). No matter how much the MC get stronger in a zone, his power will eventually change to being the top-1 in a zone to be a mid/high player in the next zone. So, every single time he has to fight with random and greedy bastards in the beginning of a zone, which makes 50% of the chapters generic and boring. Also, it prevents the MC of being in a group, as the side characters can't be in the same pace as the MC, making it basically a "Solo Leveling" story.
2. Bland characters
In the beginning, there's a greedy bastard who was originally one of MC's friends before the otherworld. I don't his name, but he was a blond guy in the webtoon. He was always complaining and being an annoying guy because he thinks he should have all the power, the best girls and all the runes and skills. I didn't understand why the author would introduce such a characters in the beginning of the story, but after reading the whole novel, this is basically the most standart character in the novel. Basically, 95% of the characters in this web novel are like that blond guy. Just as annoying, greedy and petty as he is. Although I think this is how most people would act in that situation, It's terrible as a reading, since every character other than the MC is just a third-rate villain who thinks the same way.
What about the side characters in the MC's side? Basically strong girls, or third-rate villains who were forced to become good guys. Since the MC is always alone, there's basically a small development for one or two side characters during their zone, and then these characters will be forgotten because one of them have to stay there to keep that zone under control, which made the story less enjoyable for me, since what's left is the MC monopolizing items and saving the world.
You could think this will change eventually, but nope. Even in the last 20 chapters there'll be greedy bastards acting as third-rate villains and the MC doing everything alone because the side characters are useless and have been forgotten. He often has to forcefully control people, which makes it clear how bad and repetitive are the characters in the story.
3 - MC's personality and not killing
At first I thought the MC acted appropriately for his age, since he has 100+ years, but I changed my mind quickly. He basically has no personality and is just a machine working for the humanity (aka. greedy bastards who tries to kill the MC all the time) while monopolizing all the good items and skills. This is not a spoiler or something, just how I felt during my read. The MC is too neutral, he doesn't feel like a real person.
A clear example was how he refuses to killing the third-rate villains because they'll be useful in the Abyss later on and because he has to preserve his image as a good guy to lead the humanity. This makes some sense, but it's totally stupid when the guys you didn't kill keep getting in your way and you'll eventually have to deal with them again or kill them. It was totally annoying during my read, and it must be even more annoying for the current webtoons readers, where stories with psycopaths MCs like Myst, Might, Mayhem and Nano Machine are popular. MC only changes a little this during the Orange Zone, so it took like 150 chapters.
Also, this is a big spoiler, but I really disliked what author did during
the end of S1 and during S2. The MC being manipulated to act as robot by his friends and save as many humans as possible so he can accomplish his mission makes some sense, but the author failed to demonstrate his changes after he resolved this mental issue. The MC basically does the same thing he was doing before. Also, I really disliked how the author made the MC lose his memory and becoming more selfish in the last chapters. Poor writing. I'll talk about it later, but overall the MC is a potato that chuckles and fight. I don't really like him.
4 - Repetitive plot and bad pace
Basically, the whole story after Red Zone is like a David and Goliath situation. The MC enters in a zone where some type of calamity is happening. Since he came from future, he has the solution for it and knows that it'll save a lot of people, but he just charges alone to accomplish his mission, while fighting greedy humans who didn't want the change. He'll beat the calamity and the bad humans eventually, but he'll find some kind of hidden boss, or even 2 hidden bosses, and fight it so he can monopolize even more OP skills and do more things alone. Also, the problem and solution of every world is extremely similar. Even though you'll think in the beginning that's a great plot, you'll get tired of seeing the same thing every time.
When the MC arrives in the mid zones, he'll fight Clementine's underling, which makes this even more repetitive, since these bastards are just a strong version of the third-rate villains who are always making the story dragging a lot.
Also, because of these hidden bosses and missions, every zone takes like 50 chapters, which is too much IMO. It should be 25 at best. The Green Zone takes more than 100 chapters and it was from there the story really became a more tiresome reading. This is even worse if you consider how the author handles the whole Abyss.
In the first chapters, I was really trying to pay attention, but after reach around half the chapters, I understoond I have to ignore half the contente because it was just filler anyway. You can clearly see what's important and what's not in this story, and sadly, only a small part is important.
5 - Bad Translation and Poor writing
Sigh, i'm not really fluent, but I could see the translation was pretty rough in the beginning, probably around the first 130 chapters, and in the final chapters too.
I had some problems in the site where I was reading as well, since everytime the author would reveal something new it would be "the ." The translators probably used some kind of special character in the original site that wasn't copied when they moved the text for other sites, so it happened all the time during the explanation moments and it really annoyed me.
Also, there's something strange in this author's writing. In the beginning, he keeps skipping important moments, like the hidde dungeon, or the fight with Akuma. That's why it was really hard to hook me, since everything was so superficial and random.
The vocabulary was poor too. I didn't like how every characters just uses "b*tch", "bug", "insect" as a insult, or how every time the author wants to mention something big it will be "several football fields" or something like that. You can clearly see the skills issues during the read.
6 - Low tension
This one will be fast. Although the MC is alwways fighting hidden bosses and stronger people, the author doesn't know how to build up tension. The MC is not really struggling. He never says something is dangerous, but that is "troublesome". Even the deaths in this story make it feel like it wasn't really necessary for those characters to die. This is also because of poor writing, and it's a typical problem of regression stories.
7 - Zones, 7 skills, Spoilers, Overall opinion, plot-holes, ending
This would be my original comment, but I didn't want to make a whole spoiler tag comment, so I wrote a few things without big spoilers (except in that part about the MC's personality).
So, I don't know if it's the translation or because I read the first 80 chapters of the webtoon first than reread the web novel, but I think the tutorial and Red Zone were really boring parts of this web novel. I liked how the MC start to bring changes in the red zone doing the impossible, but that's it. The calamity fish was somewhat okay, but everything else feels like filler.
I truly liked Orange Zone, where there was some kind of curse affecting gigant beats where a smart race lived along dinosaurs. The worldbuilding was interesting, MC develops a little and gets tricked by the future self of someone else, making a conflict where none of them are wrong. The Orange zone was great, the best arc of this web novel IMO.
Yellow Zone was just like The Promised Neverland. Humans are being used as food by superior species and there are even farm of humans. I don't really like this arc, because they focused too much in the superior species when they're clearly just some randoms compared to monsters of the Abyss. Also, that's when the Clementine's guys starts to appear and when I started to realize the "hidden occurrences" were similar. I didn't really like how this zone ended. Also, I remembre there was a girl with a "interesting skill" in this arc, but author totally forgot about her.
Green Zone. I disliked how the "race" in this zone couldn't be killed, which makes most this arc tedious. The villains were just generic characters shouting "jackpot". The idea wasn't bad. The players were considered bug players in a virtual reality game, and the original players from that world could kill the bug players (MC and other humans) to receive strong items with a 100% drop chance. Sadly, game system stories and virtual reality stories are also very common nowadays, so I don't think this has the same impact as before. At least for me, it was just a decent arc. Because the author introduces the concept of "Transcendence" here, it drags too much. Instead of 50 chapters, it took 80 or 85 chapters. Also, the MC being forced to sleep for 2 years when making all his enemies stronger is just a stupid plot done by author. Making the MC the only "True Transcendent" was a bad choice, since this really can't justify he open the abyss partiarly when he's trying to save the humanity. Yeah, I understand the humanity would need the Transcendence power to fight proper when the Abyss opens, but it's a conflicting plot I really don't think it makes much sense. He wanting to become a Demon King to save the humanity really re ORV again. Also, wasting more 30 chapters in Green Zone after waking up really proves how bad is the pace in the story. Kiriel was a interesting character, but she is just a plot device to explain the MC what he lost when he was asleep for 2 years.
Blue Zone. Bad. Just like Green Zone, the enemies couldn't die, since they were robots. The whole plot is shit and it took way too long to move to next zone. I guess this is the zone where most people would drop the story. That's how bad it is. Even the race in this zone is boring. This is the worst zone by far in the story. 50 chapters in this zone was outrage.
Indigo Zone. It had a interesting plot of war between 2 kingdoms, but what made this arc bad was author's choice of making the MC sign a contract with demons (which is also a strange skill) to forget all his memories in the exchange of power. This was absolutely terrible, specially if you consider the MC wasn't weak, and if he was weak compared to others, it was just because he made everyone a transcendent. What about Mihee? That stupid girl just was making things worse for the MC when he was doing everything alone. Sangjin having to die because he has some part of his soul corrupted was some strong bullshit. Why would he have that? They didn't explain anything. All that while the MC's personality changed to something more selfish. It was a stupid contract, why would the MC even use that skill? Sigh, this arc really made me mad. The writing here hit rock bottom. For me the rating was around 3/10 story already. The only good thing here was the Clementine's guys going up and not being in this zone.
Violet Zone. The last zone. They didn't focus on any race here in the beginning, it was more about Clementine and MC's old friends. Sigh, from here, I just wanted to end this story. Again, more third-rate villains and fighting, while the same plot about a race trying to take the bodies of people to become the perfect/stronger race/saving their race, etc. Everything was really generic, but I was extremely disappointed how the MC was doing everything alone again. Even Keldian, Eres and Kangtae were just side characters. Sigh. The last 13 chapters or so were interesting. We finally find out what are the objetives of Clementine (and i'm not spoiling this btw, but I can see how ORV was partly inspired by this as well). The whole part about the MC receiving a skill who would use all his soul doesn't make sense. Why would he accept this? What about that Mad Demon skill that forced him going berserk? Why would he use that when he's a regressor? Sigh, you can clearly see the author changed his original ideia about his skills while rushing the story. In the Green Zone, MC mentioned he should take a detection skill and a movement skill, then he suddenly receives 3 randoms skills just because. And one of these skills is a suicide skill, so what's the point of accepting it when you need using the skill to making it evolve? Sigh, it's stupid, for real, even if you need a skill strong enough to feel. MC was smart in the beginning, but the rushed story destroyed this part of him. I understand he needs skills strong enough to destroy a world, and because he opened the Abyss partially, he didn't have many options and time, but this is like a chain event of stupid mistakes.
What about Sangjin? He was the best side character. I really liked how he died, sadly he having that thing in his soul didn't make much sense for me. I also didn't get how Taehee could put part of her soul there when he had part of MC's soul. It didn't make sense. So, the reveal of Clementine's plans somewhat makes all the effort the MC put in alone saving the humanity seem like something that could be achieved as a group, so I didn't really like this part, even though I think it was a good plot-twist.
Overall, I liked the last 13 chapters. This story is really better when the MC didn't need to fight to save the humanity and was just pissed. Even though he was saving the humanity again fighting a whole species alone. Then he became an angel and fought all the stronger species of the Abyss alone for 1000 years, all that so his name wouldn't even be known by the humans because "they depended too much on him" lol. Great way of thanking this guy for saving your ***.
The author skipping the Abyss to focus in the repetitive plots of the zones was stupid. It's like focusing in the tutorial instead of the real thing. I guess everyone reading this expected to see more about the Abyss. I was also disappointed about how humanity dealt with the Abyss without Hansoo. And how Hansoo doesn't have a single dialogue with his old friends. Author tries to explain this, and it makes sense, but it's still disappointed, and I think he could've chosen a better option. Also, author totally forgot about Mihee and Sofia and just mentioned their names in the last chapters lol. Overall, a repetitive and tiresome story of a regressor saving humanity. I liked the ending, but I can't say it was a good ending, since the author skipped interesting stuff in the last chapters.
It was a decent to good worldbuilding, even though it's not to my liking since it's a bunch of diferente worlds, and not a single word. Bland/shallow side characters. Bad third-rate villains. A MC without a personality. A boring game system. Poor writing... I can't rate a story like this well. Even though I liked part of S1, it was just a decent story for me until then, but I hated S2, so it's overall a bad story for me. I don't know what author did in the side stories, since it's not translated, but I don't think it's enough to change my ratings. 4.2/10
8 - TL;DR
Good points:
Bad points:
- Poor writing
- Bad translation
- MC's personality
- Bland side characters
- Bland villains
- Game System
