Next life (Web novel/Light Novel)

Traditional Chinese Book Version photos taken by my phone. I ordered 2 different JP titles from Japan (hopefully they are a great read.) which will be coming later at the end of the month. I'll take some of the pictures when they come in to the respective titles.

Spoiler for Picture 1:

Spoiler for Picture 2:

Personal opinion: Pretty good start for the light novel to me, but I found out quickly this series gets ripped apart by JP netizens in the later volumes for being a "wtf where is foreshadowing? this is confusing!" and "wtf characters what are you doing? did you just step into a trap with no planning?" as well as various complaints about Gary Stu saving the day with his invincible one button win magic.



Not sure about webnovel version, but from little I have read so far, the webnovel version is VERY different compared to the light novel, at least for the start of the series.



http://ift.tt/1uwf0lZ

Spoiler for Lightnovel volume 1 summary spoilers:

I think the MC's name is Yamagata Takashi (山田隆司, could be wrong abt romanji though), while his game name is Marius=Toban (マリウス＝トゥーバン).



Let me start by saying the light novel and webnovel version is significantly different (at least the start of it, not sure about later volumes).



For the light novel version, Takashi has a little more in-depth talk with his friend during a mountain accident of sorts (they got trapped or something and dying of cold). Takashi happily talks about MMORPG to his friend but ultimately dies.



When he wakes up, he finds himself in a surreal place (a forest), finding only his bare-bones MMORPG equipment on himself (which incidentally is high level equipment).



He's a magician class who's capable of using Grade 1 magic (If I didn't read wrongly, grade 14 is the weakest magic while grade 1 is the highest), and after testing out several magic spells (almost overpowering levels), he starts to walk around and meets Annett アネット.



At this point I am reminded a bit of Spice and Wolf's atmosphere. Takashi is unable to communicate with Annett, but after some hand gesturing and stuff, they sort of settled down into acquaintance mode. Not yet friends but not distant enough to be strangers.



It gets a little more intriguing with the introduction of a half-beast pig-faced man(orc?) and half beast dog-faced man (kobold?) coming into the picture. Since Takashi is in a MMORPG mind state (duh these are monsters) attacks them with debilitation thunder! magic which stuns them, but Annett prevents him from doing any further damage.



He soon realizes that the three are friends and refrains from attacking anymore, which appears to be a pretty intriguing start. Bookmeter and Amazon's rating for book 1 is pretty good too.



So Takashi lived with them for about 2 months, picking up the world's language and becoming friends with them. This doesn't last too long as they are soldiers after the girl, although they don't really know the exact reason. They are soon surrounded by the soldiers without them realizing.



Orc-dude suddenly says the only way to save Takashi is to pretend they are the bad guys and holds a weapon over him when they get cornered by the soldiers. Orc-dude threatens the soldiers that he's holding a mage (highly prized) and says "If you want him to live, you better let us go!".



Soldier-commander (thereafter SC) agrees, Takashi and the rest get a headstart to escape. Soldier-commander and the soldiers starts chasing after them, but Takashi casts [Flare] and [Thunder!] acting like a clumsy mage, which hits all the soldiers.



SC asks Takashi to stop firing magic and asks for his name. Takashi hesitates for a while and uses his in-game name Marius. SC brings Takashi to the duke, and after some condescending treatment, is asked to challenge the duke's top mage to prove himself as a worthy mage.



MC obviously wins easily, using a grade 14 magic spell to beat a grade 7 magic spell with just pure power.



He continues to stay with the duke until the mastermind shows up, who happens to be a lower class demon (who has a lot of people under her control) after Annett for her powers to control creatures and intends to serve her to her demon boss.



MC does try to use his wit but doesn't outsmart the demon, and ends up choking the demon by removing the air (or something) after a magic fight.



That's about it for volume 1.

Next life (Web novel/Light Novel)