Return of the Runebound Professor

Return of the Runebound Professor

by Actus

Lives are a currency, and Noah Vines is rich.

Reincarnated into the body of a poisoned magic school professor, Noah is given more than just a second chance at life. Every time he dies, his body reforms. With infinite variations of runic magic to discover and with death as a painful soul wound rather than a final end, Noah finally has a chance to wander the lands of the living once again. 

And this time, he plans to get strong enough to make sure that he never has to wait around in the afterlife again. 

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Author
Actus

Actus

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2nd Anniversary
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Reviews
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zaifyr
Overall
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Story
Grammar
Character

There are no pirates (but still good)

Reviewed at: Chapter 7: Fun

Excellent worldbuilding, interesting characters, solid magic system! Noah reappears next to a magic gourd every time he dies. It's a very fun way of giving your intelligent character a way to screw up without abruptly ending the story.

With each consecutive chapter I've been more an more intrigued by... well a lot of stuff.

I can see an engrossing style take shape in these few chapters. The MC has to deal with lost memories and is forced to navigate the tricky situation with wit. This lack of knowledge, and the multitude of challenges that could appear at any moment (including what caused the original professor's death - poison from a trusted source), creates a high amount of tension for the audience. It certainly makes me interested to see more. 

If you like his other work, or just like a good fantasy story, then give this one a read. You won't regret it.

But there are still no pirates, yarr matey.

Why are there no priates? This is an Actus novel, I was promissed pirates!

(To be clear there are NO pirates in the book. This meme is about Advent of Eternity, a different Actus book, which had surprise pirates. This one has NO pirates.)

Style, Story, Grammer and Characters are good as well 

ExplorerOfWorlds
Overall

So, I've been reading all available chapters on Patreon and can confidently say: If you like his other work, or just like a good fantasy story, then give this one a read. You won't regret it.

And now to fill the nonsensical word requirement for reviews: word word word word

Profeta Saru
Overall

Ch 18 -Rather interesting, with a lot of potential

Reviewed at: Chapter 19: Schooled

Rather samall for me to give an indepth review, but with what there is I can make a few conjectures.

The MC is a guy that dead, waits in line meets goddess, someone interferes cause of possible unrequireted love, MC instead of having his memories purged gets to keep them. Gets the corpse of a dead guy that is a complete asshole, with so many enemies that it is easier to  count people that don't hate him, pretty cliched about MC has modern knowledge so he is not allienated to the way of thought of the natives.

Also he is a teacher, though the OG was a creep, may god not rest his soul, and at the start he has only two student who actually come to his class, though that will probably change as they get more results.

MC in past life was a music teacher, with a lot of students who actually liked him, and prayed for him.

Pretty well structured from an amatuers point of view. Character seem to actually have lifes outside of MCs interference.

Paladin_war
Overall

This is an interesting story I read the first 10 chapters and I am looking forward to more. The main character is interesting and his navigation of the new world is fun as well as how he deals with the other people in his new world. It is looking to be as good as the author's other story. 

Blackbird0
Overall

Noah is dropped into the body of an absolute scumbag - but at least he's immortal! While puzzling out the mystery surrounding the old body owner's murder, Noah is delving into the mystery of magic and his own strange reincarnation. All of this is served with a slice of humour.

It was a great start, it really drew me in. The author has clearly invested a lot of time and effort into writing and editing, and there's nothing I could point out that is bad. I'm looking forward to more!

Knox
Overall

Really enjoying the story

Reviewed at: Chapter 17: Somethings

I'm really enjoying the story. The main character finds himself in a very negative situation that is not of his doing. There is a sense of mistery about what really happened, and who is pulling the strings. I'm looking forward to finding out what the mistery is, who is lurking in the shadows, and to watch Noah get swole.

Floccinaucinihilipilification
Overall

This is an excellent story that develops the MC very well in the first few chapters, and establishes his position in the world fairly well. Without beng too overt about it, the author gives you a huge info dump and sets out some problems for the MC to overcome. Without revealing too much, the MC's previous body had some very bad habits that lead to interesting character development among himself and the surrounding characters.

All in all, a solid story with a decent premise and fewer bad parts.

Jimenezphire
Overall

A rather Tarnished way of magic

Reviewed at: Chapter 13: Sunder
TL;DR: Excellent worldbuilding, interesting characters, solid magic system, and go read EB too! Noah reappears next to a magic gourd every time he dies, much like a Tarnished revives at his Site of Grace. It's a very fun way of giving your intelligent character a way to screw up without abruptly ending the story.
 
Written much like his previous work, "My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror," Actus has a comprehensive, evocative writing style. However, I've noticed a repetitive habit when it comes to descriptors, so the grammar suffers just enough to be slightly inconvenient. The Story isn't what I expected from the blurb. If you can imagine reincarnating into the body of the super-magic-academy's least-liked teacher, all whilst having to learn magic yourself, then you have a good idea of the struggles so far. Noah, the protagonist, used to be a music teacher on earth. It isn't the worst character concept on paper, but Actus has quickly made him a great one. With magic being restrictive in it's gain, but limitless in it's potential power, the only real thing Noah has going for him is Sunder. Metal as hell. He can't quite use it, but Damien Vale couldn't quite throw a punch, either.
 
Overall, I would recommend this to anyone who likes to see how a protagonist gets their power to Anime levels of ridiculous, starting with a humble wind cutter. Actus is really good at making power scaling in literature look easy, and I expect good things from this. In my eyes, it's potential is even higher, even if it's only because of how good Eldritch Bestie is, so go read that too!
 
Edit: I, to my shock, found out that RR reveiw system is kinda wonky. For the sake of promoting this story, I re-did the score to be higher.
Monus
Overall
Style
Story
Grammar
Character

Apologies for the terrible pun, though I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I do mean what I said in the title though. There is really a lot of potential available here.

I wasn't quite sold in the first two chapters and would have maybe even stopped reading if I hadn't put the first five chapters in my text-to-speech app. I guess they are a bit standard (which isn't a bad thing, but I wasn't in the mood for that).

But with each consecutive chapter I've been more an more intrigued by... well a lot of stuff. Without wanting to go into much more spoilers than what the first five or so chapters tell us, I'll try to explain what and why I like it.

First, we have the "Reincarnated as a Villain*ess" vibes (talking about the trope, not the story), which I usually enjoy. From having to figure out what sort of trouble the MC is in, to trying to build up a better reputation.

--- Spoilers over---

 

The magic is really fun too. Though if you are looking for GameLit aspects, you are probably going to have to wait for a while - as there is nothing along those lines to be found yet.

 

 

More detailed analytics:

Grammar & Style: Works well. (Full marks)

Story: Mostly still in the wings. Though we've seen some glances of what might be relevant in the final arcs. It mostly seems to be a more character-driven story from what we can tell. Odds are high that we are going to have at least one or two school arcs early on which I like as well. Though this time from a

teachers POV. Bonus Points: A teacher who has barely any clue what's going on

--- Spoilers --- over

 

There's also some political stuff growing in the background which is bound to be fun.

Characters: Are well established so far and have solid foundations that can very well expand to some pretty good characters in due time.

EmergencyComplaints
Overall
Style
Story
Grammar
Character

Our protagonist has been isekaied into someone else's body, and he'd rather nobody find out he's not the original owner. Of course, that means he's going to have to figure out a lot of stuff real quick. It doesn't help that the previous owner wasn't well-loved by his colleages.

There is so much mystery packed into this story, and I am here for it. What was the deal with the original owner? What's up with this magic system? Some other questions that I'm not going to spoil here.

The prose is solid, the grammar basically perfect. The story itself is engaging and my only complaint is that there's not enough of it to binge yet. Given the author's promised update schedule, I feel like anyone reading this review in a month or two won't be able to make that complaint.

My biggest gripe is ultimately a small nit-pick. Other characters seem far too accepting of the protagonist's lack of knowledge on, well... everything. The in-story excuse used to justify it is not, in my mind, solid enough to protect him from the consequences of his questions. But maybe we'll see the fall out of that and I'll be back updating this to a 5-star across the board review. Time will tell.