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"You need to get stronger, Ward. Whatever it takes."
Captain Valera Dent

Reidon Ward has been looked down on his entire life. His parents abandoned him at birth due to his rare bone disease, and while government-provided health care has let him survive, he is still scrawny, weak, and covered in scars from his many surgeries. But there is one solution: A Combat Assistance Device, one of the near-miraculous devices that grow with the user and are used to fight the alien Archons. One of the first benefits of a CAD is genetic correction, so if he earns a CAD, his disease will be a thing of the past.

He manages to earn a CAD, but there's a catch—his CAD is bottom of the barrel in every single respect, providing no benefit whatsoever beyond the health upgrades. His stats are as low as they will go.

Except in Growth, the hardest stat to improve, and the one most indicative of future potential. That one is maxed out.

So begins the tale of the Stormweaver, the man who starts from nothing and will become a god.

  • Iron Prince (October 2020)
  • Fire and Song (October 2023)


This book provides examples of:

  • All the Other Reindeer:
    • Half the students at Galens (and a small but noticeable number of the instructors) hate Rei for "dragging everyone else down" (which doesn't even make sense, since no one actually has to help him) and constantly tell him he doesn't belong. When he starts catching up, they still yell at him for not belonging, but at this point it's clearly out of fear.
    • Near the end, it's pointed out that the school has been divided in half: The ones who hated Rei from the start (and thus have to keep hating him to cover their fear) and the ones who were nice from the start (or at least not assholes). Several people jump the line and start hating him when he starts surpassing them, but not many. Logan Grant is one of the few who jumps the other way, finally admitting that Rei does have what it takes.
  • Animesque: This is Progression Fantasy, and the genre itself takes a lot from JRPGs and Isekai.
  • Bullying a Dragon: Several superior officers who know exactly how much potential Rei has decide to constantly antagonize him. Dyrk Reese claims that they can't let Rei turn into a monster. Colonel Guest and Captain Dent are exasperated that these idiots are doing more to turn him into a monster than anything else.
    Dent: You know your biggest mistake, Reese? You forgot that he's just a kid. At the end of the day, he's still just a kid.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Rei is known for being a very tricky and annoying fighter to deal with. In his first fight with Aria, he blinds her with a thrown hat and then tricks her with a discarded cloak. Notably, this is the reason Logan Grant hates him (rather than his low stats like everyone else), believing he's just a coward who will get people killed on the front line.
  • Covered in Scars: Rei has had weekly surgeries for most of his life in order to keep ahead of his disease. While the surgeries are covered under universal health care, fixing the scars is technically an elective procedure, and Rei has never had the money to spare.
  • Crazy Enough to Work: How Rei beats Logan Grant. He lets Logan chop into him with his axe in order to get him to lower his guard and allow Rei to use his ability and sword to cut off Logan's hands. Then he had to hold the axe in place to avoid bleeding out, while simultaneously fending off Grant's attempts to kick him to death long enough for *Grant* to bleed out.
  • Designer Baby: It's common practice to modify embryos for cosmetic purposes. Because of this, nearly everyone in Rei's generation is excessively attractive, most of them having impossible hair or eye colors—from the merely improbable like Aria's extremely striking green eyes and red hair to the literally impossible like Grant's red-black eyes. As Viv notes, even Rei is an example, though he didn't get to take advantage of most of the modifications because his disease messed with everything.
  • Deus est Machina: The Massive Intellect Networked Database, or MIND, is an AI designed to govern humanity. Its interference is normally invisible, but very much present, and many people swear in "the MIND's name."
  • Hypocrite:
    • Many of the cadets hate Rei for being a weakling in one of the top combat schools. But they only get violent about it when he starts catching up.
    • Major Dyrk Reese repeatedly yells at Rei for... basically anything he can think of. Including, on multiple occasions, yelling at him for something that someone else did first.
  • Leaked Experience: In the second book, the team realizes that Rei's S-ranked growth appears to be helping his teammates as well. Catcher and then Cashe develop rare abilities, and Aria evolves advanced armor at an improbable rank. And then, at the very end, Viv develops a user-unique ability.
  • Magikarp Power: All of Rei's stats start at the literal lowest they can go, no improvement over the human baseline... except for Growth, which starts at S. Growth is the hardest stat to raise and the most important; even a low A-rank in any stat at CAD assignment is extremely rare, and S-rank has never happened in the entire history of CADs. Everyone who finds out about it warns him to be very, very careful about who he tells, and the basic book description says that he will one day become a god.
  • Meaningful Name: Both parts of Rei's name qualify as this. "Reidon" is described as a variant of the Japanese lightning god Raiden, and he'll eventually become known as Stormweaver. And in the setting, the surname "Ward" has largely been co-opted by the government to designate orphans who are wards of the state.
  • Morph Weapon: The Arsenal Shift ability, a rare (and extremely desirable) ability that is somewhat more common in A-type CA Ds like Rei, Valera Dent and The Lasher’s, grants the user the ability to change their weapon into a different one, usually with a few available varieties. Rei thinks that he’s developed it while training with Christopher. Instead, he develops Type Shift, a unique ability that does the exact same thing but on the scale of his entire CAD instead of just its weapons.
  • Nepotism:
    • Cashe accuses Rei of this, that some well-off family refused to accept an F-ranked son and got him shoved into one of the best combat schools. Several weeks later, once she realizes that she accused an orphan of using his family connections, she is mortified.
    • On the other hand, Aria is the niece of the academy's commanding officer. While she did genuinely earn everything on her own, she is still getting special one-on-one time with him on a regular basis. When Rei is brigged and she realizes that Reese will never give him permission for a sparring partner (which will set his training back), she goes over his head to get permission from her uncle.
    • In the second book, Kamiya Haruto puts the entire economic future of his megacorp in danger to get Rei under his protection. While Rei will doubtless be extremely profitable for the company, there is no question that Haruto just wants to keep his grandson safe. At the very end of the book, Rei agrees to the deal shortly before the company was about to make what would doubtless have been a disastrous deal with their competitor to get him on side.
  • Red Baron: Pretty much universal among SCT combatants, where it's called a "field name".
  • RPG Mechanics 'Verse: Has all the elements of one.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: According to an epigraph, the MIND's influence means that wealth is far less important than it used to be; now what matters is social capital and family connections. Even then, it's limited. Notably, while Aria and Viv both come from well-off families, their actual money is never mentioned, just their connections.
  • Single-Stroke Battle: Rei vs Warren in the first round of the loser's bracket. Rei reads her opening move, dodges it, and uses his Wolverine Claws to slice open her femoral artery, leading to the fastest win of the tournament.
  • Spoiler Cover: You'd be forgiven if, after reading through almost the entire book, you thought this was a case of Covers Always Lie. It's not.
  • The Squad:
    • The best first-years are permitted to assemble squads of cadets to train together and fight team battles. It's not uncommon for them to stick together for the rest of their careers, either in SCTs or in actual combat. Aria, of course, ends up a squadleader, and chooses Rei, Viv, Catcher, Cashe, and Logan.
    • In the second book, something is introduced that fans have been asking for since the SCTs were first founded: Team names. Aria's team is assigned the name Firesong.
  • Tournament Arc:
    • The last third of the first novel depicts the Intra-School tournament, which determines which students will represent Galens in the Sectional tournament.
    • Most of the second book is about Sectionals. There are three separate competitions, split by year: Individual duels, team battles, and wargames. Firesong gets ganged up on in the wargames, though despite all three other teams rushing them in the semi-finals they still make a good showing. In team battles, they eliminate the enemy team in fifteen seconds despite being a man down. And in the individual matches Aria and Rei face off, Rei is about to strike the final blow... until the arena is hacked and Rei is nearly killed by S-ranked dueling projections.
  • Training from Hell:
    • Rei spends nearly 16 hours training non-stop against Christopher "Lasher" Lennon, the school's Ace. He "dies" 20 times in about 4 hours. It's worth it in the end.
    • In the second book, Viv slowly becomes obsessed with not being left behind, and talks Dent into giving her unfettered access to a training field for a week. She ends up fighting S-ranked projections over and over. The book ends with her CAD evolving and granting her a user-unique ability: Endwalker.
  • Whip Sword: The Lasher's A-type weapons are long chainblade whips, giving him unmatched range and control.


Alternative Title(s): Iron Prince

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