
Tunnel Rat
by The Walrus King
Milo lives in a steel cave within a man-made mountain of steel and concrete. He spends his days repairing the machinery that keeps the habitat livable and tinkering with the prosthetics that help his twisted body move about through the small tunnels and air shafts that are his world. He's as much a piece of discarded machinery as the equipment he keeps running.
Given a chance at being someone different will he become a hero and live in the sunlight? The light beckons, but there are secrets buried in the ground. Ancient mysteries left by races that delved deep and stayed below. Maybe only a tunnel rat could find them?
And thanks to the artist of that handsome rat for inspiration. Find more of her work here: https://www.deviantart.com/watch/memymine/deviations
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In the name of science! magic! And CHEESE!
Reviewed at: Chapter 61: Polite Engineers Share
The following contains minor spoilers for the first few chapters.
Meet Milo, A an escaped child-sized E-slave/lab experiment living in a hole inside your neighbourhood arcology.
He is the sole reason the Arcology sewer system is not flooding your apartment with liquid shit, and the reason the edible foodcubes are still being shipped to you, and the reason you have water to drink, and why the lights are still on, and he is the reason those assholes from the arcology next door didn't set up an illegal slave driving cryptomine in your basement. You will not thank Milo, because you do not believe the story of the magical sewer gremlin is real, that is hearsay AND THAT IS VIDEO OF A RAT SWIMMING IN SHIT CARL! IT. IS. NOT. PROOF!
... Ahem. As I was saying, Milo might be in a teensy-tiny need of a day off, so what would be a better way to relax than that sweet-swanky-spankin' brand new revolutionary VRMMO made by the god-complex quantum super computer. The game supposedly even has a race that comes with a tail, like Milo!

What a story
Reviewed at: Chapter 35: Delivery Boy, part 2
I came here because of the rec of Wizard's Tower author's rec. Great story with a lot of world building. One of the only stories where the out of VR is as interesting as the in VR story. The author uses a random generator for the fights, so it stays fresh and interesting. The writing is great and the characters draw you in. I really like this story and will stay with it for the long haul.

Real life cyborg vent kid becomes in-game RatKin
Reviewed at: 50: The reward for a job well done...
The character Milo is great and fun to read. The story is well written with good grammar and no visible spelling mistakes.
The story itself is set in a scifi world of evil corpos. But people hav VR games to escape to. Milo is a fun little hero trying to keep things running in a world of corrupt corpos, at the same time trying to enjoy his new life in the VR world.
Fun read, hidden hero, scifi real world meets VR fantasy.

A Straightup Banger
Reviewed at: Chapter 73: It's the End of the World as we know it, and I feel fine.
After devouring the author's other fiction in 1 day, i got intrigued and stumbled upon this little gem here. Situated in the same game-world, it has a MC with a unique, but sad, background and really good world-building. The switches between real and virtual world are well-placed and not confusing. These chapters are like some good cheddar, you just can't get enough of it!

The Rat is King!
Reviewed at: Chapter 84: Snack Time
TLDR: Great storytelling, great characters, amazing worldbuilding. Written by someone with English as his native tongue, first draft, minor mistakes creep in but nothing immersion breaking.
I'm not a huge fan of VRMMO stories, unless they have real world implications. This story [and the author's other one] do. We have a cyberpunkish world, with organized crime, powerful corporations, cyberwear with significant drawbacks, huge differences between the rich and poor, and a massively powerful AI who has his own agenda. And that's with most of the story happening online.
The MC is no Mary Sue- he has setbacks, pain, and flaws. He's not a nice character, although he has done rather positive things for his hab. He is powerful ingame, but tends to defeat his major enemies through cleverness rather than through ingame skills.
Check it out!

Strong start, but beginning to develop some issues
Reviewed at: Chapter 164: When some idiot screws up your crafty plans....
This story starts extremely well. Both the real world and LitRPG aspects are very well done--it has me wanting to read more about both. We have a character who's doing interesting things in both, and both have their own plotlines.
However, I think the story may be suffering some of the same issues as Walrus's other work. I haven't read Butcher of Gadobhra, but the top review on that story echoes my sentiments here:
[T]he story goes from a well contained semi-slice of life story about this village and the contract worker inhabitants into a voluminous multicharacter smorgasbord of conflicting viewpoints and omniscient character hoppings that quickly leaves behind the compelling and somewhat charming pov's of our four protagonists in favor of trying to cram every possible strand of narrative into the same storyline.
We're seeing the same thing in the latest arc, unfortunately. Our interesting main character is being neglected for new characters. And while the new are all interesting on their own, there is way too much happening at the moment with viewpoints jumping everywhere.
Meanwhile, plotlines that had interesting movement with cliffhangers (like
or his "girlfriend"--who we haven't even seen in-game in probably 50 chapters) are growing cold.
I can't help but feel that the writeathon has hurt this story--sending Walrus off on tangents and not planning out resolutions with proper pacing.
This is still a very fun read--don't get me wrong. And it's something I'd suggest to anyone interested. The characters have an abundance of charm, despite the darker backdrop they're set in. Walrus does a great job of setting them up for us to root for. But since this last writeathon, a lot of plotlines have been left to go stale while the pacing and planning have been thrown off the rails.

Well written, yet could have been so much more.
Reviewed at: Chapter 55: Extra Clever Traps
Milo IRN was interesting concept and fun cyberpunk story in the making.
Milo in VR was boring same old.
Ended up skeeping VR, looking for the IRL parts, unfortunatelly theye were dimishing with time and after the ark of Kaminski finished, they disapeared completely.
Still high marks, as the story is cleanly (and well) written.

A nice take on the old trope
Reviewed at: Chapter 63: The calm before battle.
Milo is a very likeable antisocial character, he manages to be nice and to get along with people comically and almost accidentally.
I like that the game is an actual game with NPCs who are actually intelligent and don't know they are in a game rather than some random real world game power or teleport into a game world. The fact that Milo still lives in and cares about the real world is a big difference and makes the story feel more beliveable, it removes much of the suspension of disbelief that many books of this genre require.
The story is well written, doesn't feel rushed and although there are errors (many of which I should be reporting in the comments but I get too caught up in the story to do so, /sorry/) they don't detract overly from the reading experience. It even feels like there is an overarching plan for the plot, something which is refreshing in this genre where 800 chapter 2 million+ word behamoths just don't go anywhere.
Very worth the read.

Love the story
Reviewed at: Chapter 70: Like rats fleeing a sinking ship
Fantastic story of a Litrpg and a MC who is a techie gutter rat both in game and in real life and happy about it. A unique take on the series for me and I hope they continue to write it. I give it 5 stars because it is entertaining and his class and system is highly entertaining and story attention grabbing.

A very cool Writathon entry
Reviewed at: Chapter 15: Making new friends.
I'm really enjoying this so far. For a writathon entry the quality is awesome.
The world feels fully fleshed out and internally consistent. The pressures it places on the characters and their responses give the story a life of its own and a sense of depth. It feels almost like a machine, with the various parts working in sync with one another.
I enjoy the prose and the pacing of the story. King's style is a great fit for the style of story they are presenting. There is a great balance between action packed moments and periods of reflection.
The system is presented in a fresh way, which can be difficult given the prevalence of LITRPG books on Royal Road. Each skill is developed and logical ( if that can be used as a descriptor for a blending of fantasy and technology)
I’m not always sold on the decisions the characters make but that just shows the investment in them the writer has been able to develop.
There are some grammar issues which sneak through but given the lack of editing time involved in writing 55K words in a little over a month this is more than understandable.
I hope to see this story continue beyond the 5th.