Literature / An Outcast in Another World

Can't be worse than a camping trip, right?

Good luck.

- A crumpled note found inside the main character’s pocket.

An Outcast in Another World, also known as An Outcast in Another World (Is "Insanity" a Racial Trait?) outside of Kindle, is a Web Serial Novel written by Kamikaze Potato. It was first published online in 2021.

It follows the adventures of Rob, a college sophomore who is dragged to another world against his will due to preventing the same fate from befalling his friend. Upon waking up in an off-colored forest, he quickly discovers that his body is now governed by stats and skills akin to an RPG. While this revelation causes no end of existential pondering, he has no choice but to embrace the crazy; Leveling Up and increasing his strength is his only chance at surviving to see tomorrow.

The world is extremely dangerous, filled with mutated animals, hostile locals, and poisonous berries. Rob’s early tribulations largely focus around getting his footing and trying not to die, which transitions into a struggle to find a place in a world that rejects him at every turn. It’s a good thing for him that he’s too stubborn to give up.

While the series is a LitRPG, it focuses primarily on characterization and plot progression over text dumps of stats and skills. Characters are given unique personalities and motivations and don’t exist solely as accessories to Rob’s adventure. There’s also a lot of mysteries surrounding the nature of the world, including the eerie infection causing mutations in the local fauna, that only seems to be getting worse as time passes...

The series is currently available online. Book 1 has been completed, and is currently available on Amazon here.Book 2 has been completed and can be read here.

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An Outcast In Another World provides examples of:

• Aerith and Bob: Outside of Rob, the newcomer from Earth, all of the other characters in Elatra have fantasy-sounding names. Except for the myth of David and Goliath, which very suspiciously exists in Elatra as well, with the same names.
• Action Girl: All the female characters with Combat Classes, but Keira especially. She's very skilled due to her penchant for picking fights with monsters way more often than is safe, and because of her Rare Skill that essentially gives her spider senses. She’s one of the strongest members in the core cast despite her young age, and she’s only getting stronger.
• An Adventurer Is You: Everyone in Elatra gets stats, Levels, and a selection of Classes to pick. Whether or not they decide to go down the combat route is up to them.
• Always Chaotic Evil: The Infected and The Blight are clear examples. They post a contrast to the much more gray conflicts in the rest of Elatra's history.
• Apocalypse How: Elatra has been ravaged by a recent war that puts Earth’s World Wars to shame. This war was immediately followed up with a giant magical attack that struck at random across the continent and nearly ended civilization.
• Arc Words: The word ‘revelry’ keeps popping up in the narrative. Occasionally it’s stated in an innocent context, but most often it’s used in reference to or by villains of the story, such as The Blight, the voice of Leveling High, and the mysterious unnamed beings watching Rob’s journey for entertainment.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Many of the leaders are leaders due to how strong they are. Up to eleven with the Dragon Queen - many do not like her, but can do nothing about it since she is also literally the strongest person alive.
• Badass Boast:
  • Keira gets one during the defense of the Village. "Prepare yourself, Fallen Lord! I'll give you a death worthy of the stories they'll sing of me!"
  • Rob gets a much more unhinged one against the giant spider in the Dungeon. "CATCH THIS, YOU EIGHT-LEGGED BITCH! YOU EXPECTED A FAIR FIGHT? FUCK THAT! EAT FIREBOMBS, YOU AFFRONT TO ALL THAT'S GOOD AND HOLY! YOU SCARED ME SO MUCH THAT I'M YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE!"

• Battle in the Center of the Mind: How Rob interprets his own struggles to keep Leveling High in check. Whenever it attempts to overtly influence him, Rob’s struggles to resist its temptations are imagined as him physically assaulting the mental construct until it’s beaten into submission and quiets down.

• Berserk Button: Rob tries to let most things roll off his back (especially due to his precarious social situation). When someone claims that he hasn’t faced any hardships, he... loses his composure for a bit.

• BFS: Keira wields a massive greatsword to brutal effectiveness. She loves her choice of Class and weapon and gets touchy when people criticize it.

• Big Damn Heroes: Rob and Orn’tol when rescuing the trainees during the Dungeon Crawl, then Rob and Keira when rescuing hundreds of civilians from a Lord of the Forest during the defense of the Village. Both instances of heroism give their poor reputations a much-needed booster shot in the arm.

• Blessed with Suck: All Humans possess the Fast Learner trait, which allows them to gain Levels much faster than any other race. When combined with Leveling High, though, each Level they gain drives them more and more insane. If they succumb to its effects, they turn into bloodthirsty murderers that revel in slaughtering everyone around them.

• Bookends:
  • The first and last chapters of Book 1 end with Rob's shirt having been destroyed.
  • In a less humorous example, the last chapter of Book 1 and first chapter of Book 2 exhibit funerals for those lost, complete with personalized eulogies.
  • The last chapter of Book 1 has the Village's Locus of Power being corrupted. The last chapter of Book 3 has the very same Locus of Power being cleansed of corruption.

• Bow and Sword in Accord: the rangers of the village, but Riardin in particular during his first encounter with Rob he initially uses his bow before switching to his swords, and he uses his bow - along with soul burn - against the Blight.

• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • Humans who succumb to Leveling High fall into this. Their bloodlust and desire for Levels becomes insatiable, and they lose any semblance of sanity they may have once had. The progression of the effect can be resisted through sheer force of will, but the stronger Leveling High becomes, the harder it gets to ignore its whispers in the back of your mind.
  • Melancholy Resistance skill does this to people who use it. The way Diplomacy describes it is like it removes everything that made Rob, Rob. And just about everyone has it.

• Brown Note: The Blight are described as causing a distinct feeling of unease in anyone who looks at them. The effect worsens when they get closer or touch their victim, assaulting the person’s mind just by proximity and repeatedly lowering their maximum health – permanently.

• Brutal Honesty: Elder Alessia when explaining to Rob that his aversion to killing people will get him killed. It’s even worse coming from her, as she’s someone who outwardly dislikes him, meaning that she wouldn’t be offering advice at all unless it was for a very important subject that he absolutely needed to know about.

• Cast from Hit Points: Rob eventually learns Flames of Vengeance skill, which surrounds him in cursed flames and costs HP to maintain.

• Chekhov's Skill: Every Skill that Rob learns eventually comes in handy, but the biggest example would be Arachnophobia, which gives him massive bonuses against spiders specifically. Guess what he ends up fighting later on?

• Chronic Hero Syndrome: For all of Rob’s internal claims that survival is his #1 priority, he’s extremely willing to risk his life to save people, ranging from his best friend, to acquaintances he’s known for two weeks, to people that until recently have openly despised him.

• Cliffhanger: Literally, one time, when Rob runs off a cliff and barely manages to climb back up before falling to his death. There's also plenty of the metaphorical kinds at the end of a good number of chapters. One example being people that will kill Rob if he's discovered suddenly visiting The Village for the first time.

• Collapsing Lair: One of the possible results of destroying a Dungeon Core. Standard practice is to take the Core outside of its Dungeon before shattering it; otherwise, you risk dying after the hard part of finding the Core was already accomplished.

• Combat Pragmatist: Rob fights enemies stronger than him for the majority of the series, and as a result, had adopted a willingness to do pretty much anything that will keep him alive. This includes sneak attacks, acting as a distraction so stronger people can sneak attack, acting aggressively evil to freak someone out, and throwing a bunch of magic grenades from a distance to end the fight before it begins.

• Crapsack World: Even excluding the people’s general hatred towards Humans, Elatra lost over 60% of its population in one decade due to The Scouring and The Cataclysm, and things aren’t getting any better. Especially not with the Blight at their doorstep.

• Cute Bruiser: Keira is relatively short, and like most Elves, has a slender frame. She also wields a greatsword almost as big as her, is extremely strong, and will destroy you if you're not careful.

• Dark Is Evil: Pops up often. Rob has a very literal fear of the dark due to being traumatized by his passage through the void, and as such he despises complete darkness. Additionally, the skies above the Blighted lands are unnaturally dark and signify that you really, really shouldn’t go there.

• Death Equals Redemption: Kenzotul tries to go this route, begging Rob to kill him so that he can end his suffering and atone for the crimes he committed during The Scouring. Rob refuses to follow through, telling Kenzotul that true redemption would come from living despite the pain and working to make the world a better place.

• Defrosting Ice Queen: Elder Alessia and Alia both share elements of this. Each one hates Rob for being a Human – as many Elves do – due to the trauma incurred by The Scouring and The Cataclysm. As Rob repeatedly proves his strength of character, both start to warm up to him. Alessia even goes from telling Rob that his visage will always sicken her to sticking up for him when the Seneschal’s Elves come to take him.

• Despair Event Horizon: Multiple instances occur where Rob is close to suffering one of these. The closest happens when he encounters a wolf during a training excursion that triggers memories of his first day in Ixatan. Keira manages to calm him down through good ole’ fashioned friendship.

• Determinator: Almost every character in the cast of fits, but especially Rob due to his high HP that lets him take more punishment than anyone else. He’s been chomped, cut, stabbed, bashed, crushed, and de-limbed, and every time he gets up and keeps going. Notably, he still feels all the pain from these injuries as a normal person would. And that's just the physical pain - the mental suffering might be worse.

• Distracted by the Sexy: Elves are hot. Rob is well-aware that he’s a hormone-riddled college student with no romantic prospects in Elatra. At first.

• Doomed Hometown: Most of the people in the Village survive the invasion by the Infected, but the area is turned into a Blighted zone that will kill them if they stay in it any longer, forcing them to relocate.

• Dying Moment of Awesome: During the defense of the Village, Riardin mortally wounds the newly-formed Blight by detonating several crates of Firebombs under himself. The resulting explosion is strong enough to blow out the windows several streets over, and the sacrifice saved potentially thousands of lives.

• Elective Monarchy: Discussed and averted. Influence in Elatran politics, and the overall right to rule, is heavily influenced by combat prowess. People with high Levels naturally gravitate towards positions of power. This is partially cultural and partially pragmatic – people with high Levels are in charge because, when it comes down to it, people can’t actually stop them from doing what they want.

• Eldritch Abomination: The Blight, which warps reality by existing and transforms animals into horrible mutated abominations, and their method of passage into the world turns an area miles wide into a land that rejects life.

• Emotionless Girl: People unfamiliar with Zamira might interpret her as this. In truth, she’s as emotional as anyone, but her facial expressions are naturally subdued and subtle.

• Establishing Series Moment: The Village Elders voting on Rob’s fate sets the tone for much of the series going forward. It shows the reader that much of the story will be about overcoming societal exclusion.

• Everything Trying to Kill You: When Rob first arrived in Elatra, everything tried to kill him. The indigenous fauna tried, the food tried, diseases tried, and the native locals tried. Things have gotten better since then after he made allies, but most things are still trying to kill him.

• Evil Only Has to Win Once: If the Blight reaches a Locus of Power, it turns the surrounding area into a land that is uninhabitable and toxic. This is permanent, irreversible, and spread many miles out from the point of origin. Considering that the entire western edge of the continent was consigned to this fate and is now called The Deadlands, every failure to prevent this from happening is a loss that can never be undone.
  • Eventually, Rob gains the ability to cleanse corrupted Loci with Purge Corruption, Subverting the trope.

• Evil Tainted the Place: The Deadlands and any Blighted zones, where all life and matter quickly decays, and the air is toxic. No one can live in those areas, and the simple advice given to the main character when he asks about them is 'don't go there'.

• Face Your Fears: Early in the narrative, Rob faces two of his specific traumas one after another. His fear of darkness is tested when he plunges himself into pitch-black darkness in an attempt at shock therapy. Soon after, he is ambushed by a legion of hundreds of oversized spiders, which sends his Arachnophobe self – already stressed from everything else going on – into a blind panic.

• Fantastic Nuke: The Cataclysm was a magic spell that essentially launched hundreds of magical nukes across the continent. The results weren’t pretty.

• From Nobody to Nightmare: Rob starts out at Level 1 and almost dies to the first enemy he encounters. From them on, he gains strength at an alarming rate and is well on his way to becoming this for his enemies.

• Fictional Geneva Conventions: Averted. Rob notes that no analogue to the Geneva Convention exists in Elatra... which is part of the problem.

• Firearms Are Revolutionary: Discussed, but averted. Rob wonders about how the introduction of firearms would shift the balance of power in Elatra. Then he remembers that he has no idea how to make them, and no access to the internet to research how.

• Foreshadowing: Plenty of this to go around. Notable examples including the cryptic note left in Rob’s pocket in Chapter 1, the hidden Skill on his Character Sheet that has yet to reveal itself, and the continued references to Earth culture that keeping popping up in a fantasy world that is supposedly separate from it.

• Game Changer: The Crystal Bearer class and, more specifically, Purge Corruption.

• Genocide Backfire: The Humans, facing extinction at the hands of the other races, give a final fuck-you to the world by sacrificing themselves to unleash The Cataclysm, which ravages the lands and almost ends civilization.

• Genocide Survivor: People in Elatra assume that Rob is a Human that somehow survived The Scouring and The Cataclysm. They’re rightfully confused when he tells them that he’s from another world.

• Genre Shift: A moderate one occurs early on. The first six chapters of the story are primarily about wilderness survival, with some rumbling and foreshadowing in the background. Once Rob meets the Elves, it becomes more about finding a place in a society that wants to kill him, uncovering the mysteries of the world, and dealing with psychological trauma – although the survival aspect still plays a large role in the narrative.

• Giant Spider: During a Dungeon Crawl, Rob is forced to fight a massive spider that’s continuously spawning smaller variants. As an Arachnophobe, he takes a savage glee in murdering it with excessive firepower.

• Glass Cannon: Malika is an exceptionally strong spellcaster for her age, but she hasn’t bothered boosting her HP or Stamina very much.

• Good All Along: The Elves of The Village slowly come to realize that Rob is not an evil Human hellbent on spilling Elven blood. Once they do, their preconceived notions flip very quickly.

• Good Parents: Rob and Zamira have kind, supportive parents. Considering that most other parents in the series are dead due to The Scouring and The Cataclysm, they're both very grateful for what they have.

• Hair-Trigger Explosive: Firebombs are to be handled with care. They’re powerful explosive that detonate when sufficient pressure is applied to them – which can be as light as someone throwing them across a room, or stabbing them with a knife.

• Half-Breed Discrimination: Due to society’s overall hatred of Humans, Elves in The Village with nonstandard Elven hair colors are considered to have Human blood in them, which is seen as a mark of shame. Interestingly, no instances are shown of this discrimination coming from external sources — Tarric himself is the only one who gets upset if people point out his hair color, even if they do so innocently.

• Half the Man He Used to Be: Happens to Rob after his second encounter with the Blight, as it literally bites him in half. He (barely) survives, but takes enough corruption damage to lose about 40% of his maximum health.

• Healing Factor: Rob’s extremely high health and possession of the Rare Skills ‘Regeneration’ and ‘Lifesurge’ make him a nightmare to put down. Two enemies he’s fought have been stunned as he shrugs off being stabbed through the heart and walking out of the epicenter of an explosion unphased thanks to Lifesurge rapidly patching up his injuries. And while he often ends fights without much health left, he Regenerates it back in short order, making him the core cast member most-suited for extended engagements.

• Harmful Healing: Healing magic and Skills such as Regeneration will leave a person exhausted and weak as a result. Overuse of these can cripple a person if they’re not careful; Riardin ends up temporarily confined to a wheelchair after being healed from a near-death experience, and he cites being healed too many times over the course of his life as the cause.

• Heads, Tails, Edge: Mysterious beings are shown watching the results of a coin flip to predict the odds of how an event will play out. The coin can be used to predict just about anything, but when they try to use it to predict Rob’s fate after the defense of the Village, the coin lands on its edge. One of the beings proceeds to blurt out: “What does that even mean?!”

• Healing Potion: Simply called ‘HP Potions’, they’re a staple of any Combat Class user in Elatra. Those who don’t keep them on hand tend to die, and every member of the cast has made liberal use of them when necessary – and needed Potions for themselves to stay alive.

• Heroic Sacrifice: Occurs during the defense of The Village, where numerous named characters die protecting civilians or each other. Those deaths have repercussions that last for the rest of the story.

• High Fantasy: Checks many of the boxes for this genre. Has a non-Earth setting, standard fantasy races, magic, an epic scope, and a great evil.

• He Who Fights Monsters: A very real fear of Rob, and any Human in Elatra. The more a Human fights and grows stronger, the more Leveling High overtakes their sanity. When this is taken to its grim conclusion, a person loses themselves to bloodlust and starts killing everything and anyone around them. It’s happened many, many times before.

• Inhumanly Beautiful Race: Rob is continually annoyed by how cover-model-worthy every single Elf he meets is. The Elves themselves don’t seem to notice, and have no trouble calling members of their own race ugly. They also don’t seem to think Rob is unattractive, despite him being only slightly-above-average in appearance by Human standards. Rob can’t understand their standards in the slightest.

• I'm Not a Hero, I'm...…: Rob tries to downplay his own heroic accomplishments sometimes. No one ever lets him.

• In-Series Nickname: Rob keeps calling his group of friends ‘Rob’s Rangers’, mostly because he thinks it’s funny. This sparks a legitimate debate among the group about what to call themselves when their team becomes more solidified. They settle on Riardin’s Rangers, discarding the nickname and adopting an official name.

• Interface Screw: The system cannot deal with The Blight correctly, with its description being gibberish.

• Jerkass Gods: Let's just say the gods of Elatra are more concerned about their boredom than anything else. For example, Leveling High is their doing.

• Kangaroo Court: The meeting with the Elders to decide if Rob is allowed to join The Village or be executed is close to this. Rob has committed no outward crime outside of existing, and the Elders’ votes are made almost entirely on emotional factors rather than logical or fair ones.

• Kill All Humans: A massive war between all the nations in Elatra snowballs into this for numerous reasons. This is an example where the trope succeeds, as the Humans lose the war, get pushed to the brink by the rest of the races in Elatra, and decide they'd rather take vengeance on everyone else then fade into the night. They proceed to sacrifice every remaining Human to fire a massive magic spell called The Cataclysm which nearly ends civilization.

• Kuudere: Zamira is borderline expressionless, but sweet in her words and actions. It can take some time for people to understand her facial expressions, but once they do, it's easy to recognize that she's someone who cares about her friends and loved ones.

• Laser-Guided Karma: Elder Cesario betrays Rob and The Village by revealing Rob’s existence to the world at large. He gets eaten by monsters not long after.

• Leave No Survivors: The Dragon Queen wants to kill all humans out of anger and grief for when they murdered her family. The Elven Seneschal wants to prevent The Cataclysm from ever happening again. Many other people are just grief-stricken and need an outlet for their sorrow.

• Light Is Good: A more literal example. His trip through the void has traumatized Rob, and complete darkness freaks him out. Mentally speaking, natural light is his friend and ally. Dungeon entrances are also pitch-black to signify how dangerous they are.
• Living Legend: Rob starts to become one after standing up to The Blight and surviving. People that shunned him before even start to respect and/or suck up to him, which - while an objective improvement to his previous situation - leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

• Matriarchy: Dragonkin territory is ruled with an iron claw by the Dragon Queen. The world of Elatra is a borderline example of this, as while each race and nation is ruled by one of their own, none of them can truly go against the Dragon Queen if she puts her foot down due to how monstrously strong she is.

• Medieval Stasis: Elatra has been stuck in a medieval swords-and-sorcery setting for tens of thousands of years.

• Mind Probe: A Mind Mage is used to threaten a prisoner who refuses to give up vital information about the location and capabilities of the main character. While the mind probe isn’t actually carried out, the fact that refusing to spill the beans will only result in the Mind Mage extracting the information anyway – using methods that may result in brain damage – causes the prisoner to fess up.

• Misfit Mobilization Moment: The core cast coming together to form Riardin’s Rangers in defiance of the shit hand that life has dealt them.

• Mordor: The Deadlands. One phrase of advice is given: don’t go there. They’re later revealed to be Blighted zones, where all life and matter quickly decays, and the air is toxic.

• Named by Democracy: The Village was formed by disparate communities ravaged by The Cataclysm coming together. They couldn’t collectively decide what to name their new village, so everyone just kept calling it The Village, and the name stuck.

• Near-Villain Victory: During the defense of the Village, The Blight achieves its goals and is seconds away from beginning a massive slaughter. It’s only stopped at the last second by a Heroic Sacrifice and excessive explosions.

• Never Found the Body: In preparation for the invasion by the Infected, Elder Cesario leaves the Village to request aid from Reviton City. Only his horse returns, riderless and carrying a bloodied note of Cesario describing how he’s succumbing to his wounds and has failed in his mission.

• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Zigzagged. Rob can somewhat invoke this trope if he increases stats mid-battle, but results aren’t guaranteed, and he’s never granted Skills out of nowhere to bail him out of a bad situation.

• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: The Scouring and The Cataclysm fundamentally changed Elatra’s culture and geography. Everyone agrees that it was for the worse.

• Off with His Head!: How Rob kills his first two people. He looks away from the second one, but that doesn't help his mental state much.

• Older Than They Look: Non-Humans age more slowly the longer they live. Orn’tol has the appearance of a 15-year old, but his actual age is 34. Elven adults can be centuries old.

• Outside-Context Problem: Rob, to some degree. He's from another world, his existence was entirely unexpected, and he brings new ideas and a new perspective. To a larger degree, The Blight are Eldritch Abominations that Elatra is unequipped to deal with.

• People of Hair Color: Unless they have Human ancestors, the color of the Elves’ hair in The Village are almost uniformly silver. Having non-silver hair color, such as Tarric's brown, is indicative of possessing Human ancestors. As Humans are despised in Elatra, this is not seen as a good thing.

• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Malika is a small Elf girl who is 13 years old when adjusted to Human years. She’s also a magical wunderkind who learns spells at an alarming rate, was killing monsters before she even got a Class, and when she finally did accept a Class, she was able to choose the immensely powerul Archmage Class, the only one that’s existed for hundreds of years.
• Power High: Leveling High is an affliction that affects only Humans. When they Level up, their brains are magically drugged to want to Level more, which involves more killing, which creates an awful feedback loop. Eventually, the High becomes so powerful that it overtakes their personality and turns them into crazed murderers. It's also eventually revealed that the gods intentionally instilled Leveling High into humans, with there being at least one human not affected by it, because a god screwed the "add Leveling High" part up.
• Power Levels: Levels provide a clear indicator of this – sort of. The difference can easily be made up by creativity or expertise honed by experience and training. Natural aptitude can also warp the balance of power between people of similar Levels, as some people gain free stat points for accomplishing noteworthy goals.

• Prestige Class: The Awakened classes, which are significantly powerful than normal ones. The Dragon Queen was already a One Woman Army, before her class awakened - afterwards, she literally became World's Best Warrior. Book 3 brings two revelations regarding Awakened classes - first, Rob gets the ability to induce Class Awakening at will (though only 8 times a year), second was that not even gods know where the Awakened classes come from.
  • Humorously, Berserker's Awakened version is named BERSERKER.

• Psychic Powers: Two variants have been shown so far. Elder Alessia specializes in telekinesis, which allows her to fling people around, fly by moving her own body through the air, and contort people with enough force to break their limbs at 90-degree angles. A Mind Mage is also shown whose presence is used as a torture threat; if the prisoner refuses to give up information, the Mind Mage will find it anyway, potentially doing permanent brain damage in the process.

• Pyrrhic Victory: The Village is successfully defended from its invasion by the Infected... in the sense that not everyone died. In the process, several thousand people did in fact die, including many named characters. Additionally, the Locus of Power was destroyed, dooming the area to become a Blighted zone and forcing the survivors to abandon their homes and relocate.

• Rays from Heaven: The Cataclysm has been described as rays of light falling from the sky. In a much more severe variation of this trope, the rays of light ravaged the lands and heralded a near-apocalypse. Flashbacks from people who lived through it show that they basically viewed it as the equivalent of a magical nuclear bombardment.

• Red Eyes, Take Warning: The Infected have glowing red eyes which brighten when they come across an enemy – which is anything that breathes – or when the Infection spreads further in their bodies. Considering their horribly mutated forms, it’s by far the least-horrifying thing about them.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: Rob and Orn’tol’s Dungeon Crawl to rescue the rest of the trainees involves murdering hundreds of enemies, most of them with fire, and killing the last and final one with two arrows piercing through its eyes and out the other end. Rob and Keira’s rescue of the civilians during the defense of the Village involves taking on a giant monster significantly stronger than them – and beating it into a bloody pulp.

• RPG Mechanics 'Verse: Elatra functions under these rules. A world with stats, Levels, Skills, and a system is all its inhabitants have ever known. Rob thinks it’s weird as fuck, and while he’s willing to work within the system to keep himself alive, he doesn’t like how it feels like it’s disconnecting him from his sense of self and who he used to be. And late in Book 3 it is revealed that the Jerkass Gods are trying to turn Earth into one, with, so far, only one success.

• Scarily Competent Tracker: The Rangers of Ixatan forest tend to fall under this umbrella. Aside from the decades and centuries of expertise they’ve gained from navigating through the dense and unforgiving surrounding forest the Village, they prioritize putting stat points into Perception, which gives them Skills such as Hunting and Foraging that further increase their capabilities. If someone or something is out in the woods, they’ll find it.

• Self-Deprecation: Rob occasionally makes jokes of this nature, although mostly internally. Alternate perspectives have shown that other people think more highly of Rob than he thinks of himself. They're quick to shoot down his self-deprecation when he verbalizes it externally.

• Sharing a Body: Rob’s Diplomacy Skill eventually gains self-awareness. It possesses no body of its own and is forced to live inside a person’s head, which it’s surprisingly chill about, all things considered. The fact that it’s outwardly helpful and strikes up a quick friendship with its ‘host’ helps ease the transition for both of them.

• Shirtless Scene: Rob’s shirt gets destroyed in the beginning and ending chapters of Book 1. In the latter instance, he ends up unwittingly giving some fanservice to women who were passing by. He doesn’t particularly mind.

• Shout-Out: Plenty of them. Rob makes them to keep himself amused, and to remind himself of the world he was kidnapped from.

• Slain in Their Sleep: A young Elven boy attempts this on Rob out a misplaced desire for revenge. It fails miserably as Rob saw this trope coming and stayed awake in case of any would-be assassins. He proceeds to send the boy back home with a few admonishments and a bruised ego.

• Soul Power: Soul Burn is a spell that drains a user’s life essence in return for massively increased power. It’s effective, but the user is doomed the second they use the Skill even once.

• Sphere of Destruction: Firebombs are potent explosives, but their strength is mostly centered on the direct point of impact. Enemies and objects on the outer perimeter of the blast will receive some damage, but that’s about it. The only collateral damage from a titanic explosion made by three crates of Firebombs exploding at once, strong enough to mortally wound an Eldritch Abomination, were the nearby windows shattering from the shockwave.

• Standard Fantasy Races: Elves, Dwarves, Dragonkin, Merfolk, and Harpies live in Elatra. And Humans... well, not anymore.

• Suicide by Cop: Kenzotul, an Elf wracked by grief due to his part in The Scouring, offers his life to Rob as atonement, and puts him on the spot by doing so in broad daylight. Rob denies him, telling him that living his life to atone for his crimes would mean more.

• Talking Is a Free Action: Averted. The only times that people are able to talk in the middle of a fight is during brief lulls where enemies are sizing each other up.

• The Dead Have Names: The dead are never forgotten. Multiple funerals are held throughout the story, dead friends are referenced as consistent sources of grief, and Riardin’s Rangers are named as such to honor the fallen.

• The Famine: The spread of the Infection cuts The Village off from its primary food source. They’ll starve if they don’t fix the problem as soon as possible.

• The Horde: The Infection turns the animals of Ixatan Forest into thousands of mutated, mindless beasts hellbent on killing everyone. They're later revealed not to be quite so mindless. Humans are somewhat seen as this by the other races of Elatra, as they gain strength quickly and reproduce at a significantly faster rate.

• The Purge: Elatra’s giant war between all nations eventually becomes The Scouring as both The Humans and the Allied Forces commit too many atrocities against each other for either side to back down. The Humans lose, although they go out with a cataclysmic bang.

• The Unpronounceable: Most Elves have fairly simple names, with the exception of one Elder. Rob refers to him as ‘Elder Beardo’ because he can’t keep track of the man’s ‘six-syllable fantasy-world monstrosity of a name’.

• The Virus: The Infection. Only affects animals, and horribly mutates them. The longer an animal has been affected, the worse, the mutations get, to the point where they become borderline Eldritch abominations.

• There Are No Therapists: Rob explicitly notes that Elatra doesn’t have therapists. He even checks if there’s a Utility Class of that name – no dice.

• This Is Reality: Rob initially has trouble accepting that a world of RPG mechanics, strange monsters, oddly-colored foliage, and fantasy races is something that makes any sort of sense. He’s forced to accept it very quickly when he almost dies three times in three days.

• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Sort of. Rob throws his sword, but the hilt hits the enemy instead of the blade. It does its job of distracting his enemy, though, so in the end everything works out.

• Took a Level in Badass: Rob starts at the bottom of the totem pole. Through repeated combat, dangerous situations, and the Human racial trait of Fast Learner, he quickly becomes a legitimate threat. Orn'tol and Malika are lesser examples; they started at a higher baseline than Rob, but they're still young and growing much stronger than a standard person of their age would be.

• Training the Gift of Magic: Magic requires not only an innate spark of potential to utilize, but takes years of rigorous study to use effectively. Unless you’re an Archmage.

• Trapped in Another World: Rob really wants to go back to Earth. Elatra is extremely hostile and not a nice place to live, especially for a Human. As of now, he hasn’t made any progress, and none of his allies are aware of a way to send him back, as his appearance in Elatra is unprecedented.

• Trauma Conga Line: Happens to basically everyone, but Rob especially. Their determination in the face of tragedy is a main tenet of the story.

• Tsundere: Alia slowly transforms into this after she mellows out. She definitely remains on the prickly side, though.

• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: The wolves that gave Rob so much trouble in the early chapters no longer pose any threat to him once he Levels up more and gets sufficient combat experience.

• Walking Wasteland: The Blight, as Eldritch Abominations, fit this bill. They warp reality by existing and their method of passage into the world turns an area miles wide into a land that rejects life. Additionally, proximity to a person corrupts that person's body, permanently reducing their maximum health.

• We ARE Struggling Together: It takes a while for Rob to convince the Elves that he’s on their side, but once he does, they put a lot of faith in him as an ally.

• What You Are in the Dark: Rob has an option to kill a helpless enemy who tried to kill him. Doing so would grant him quite a few Levels and dramatically increase his strength. He declines, as he’s worried about losing his sense of self, not wanting to let the new world he's in change him. This ends up being the correct choice for many reasons.

• White-Haired Pretty Girl: Basically every female Elf falls into this category. The Elves of The Village almost all have white or silver hair, and Rob notes that they're all attractive no matter what their age is.

• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Humans gain Levels much more quickly thanks to Fast Learner. Every time they level up, the euphoria of Leveling High makes them a little more aggressive and bloodthirsty.

• World's Best Warrior: The Dragon Queen is so strong that her whims shift international policy, as very few are able or willing to tell her no. The leader of the Elves admits that every leader of every race attacking at once might not be enough to beat her.

• Wound That Will Not Heal: Rob’s encounter with The Blight leaves him with a permanent reduction to his max health. It’s not a large reduction, and on the surface isn’t a major issue, but the fact that the effect is called ‘Corruption’ worries him, and no one has any idea of how to reverse the effect.
  • Meanwhile, his next encounter shears off more than 40% of his maximum health.
  • Eventually Rob gains the ability to cleanse the Corruption out of people, restoring the missing health.

• Yandere: Keira has elements of this. As the story progresses, she both becomes more protective or her friends (and seems to be developing feelings for some of them) and grows more violent. This culminates in her threatening a prisoner of war with horrible torture if he hurts the people she cares about.

• Your Normal Is Our Taboo: Violence and killing is somewhat normalized in Elatra, at least compared to Earth. Due to the RPG Mechanics the world is governed by, power is gained through killing, and that's trickled down to society at large. It takes Rob a while to come to grips with this.

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