Corruption Wielder: A LitRPG Apocalypse Adventure

Corruption Wielder #1

by Aaron Shih

When the world ends, humanity must fight to survive—but where others struggle in fear, Will sees only an opportunity to thrive.

April 3rd, 3:46 AM. Planet Earth merges with the magical world of Arcadia, and a system gives humanity a 40 years of indentured servitude, or entering a tutorial as a user to fight against the chaos incursion.

Will doesn't hesitate—but the system thanks him for stepping into the fight by throwing him into an impossible tutorial. With little chance of survival, Will has a simple “Screw it. Might as well fight fire with fire."

[Corruption] has been chosen as primary attribute.

With a forbidden element, Will just might be able to stab his way out of the tutorial. But as he gains the powers of death and space as well, he realizes that his problems might not only lie in the monsters that now plague the world.

Will, now Earth's sole corruption wielder, finds danger at every corner. For anyone else, that could mean a quick and terrifying end. To him?

Maybe Will was meant for this world.

Perfect for fans of Defiance of the Fall, System Universe, and He Who Fights With Monsters—don't miss the start of the hit litRPG apocalypse series with a million views on Royal Road!

Genres: Fantasy, Audiobook, Science Fiction Fantasy, Science Fiction, Elves, Role Playing Games

625 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 21, 2024

About the author

Aaron Shih is a Chinese-American college student who is currently wondering why bios are supposed to be written in third person.

He writes progression fantasy and litRPG alongside everything that catches his fancy.

Reviews

[Jacob Proffitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a pretty straight-forward power fantasy System Apocalypse LitRPG with enough twists to keep it interesting.

Will is caught up in the apocalypse, but due to bad luck, finds himself in a crazy-hard tutorial. He approaches the problems he faces with a bit of ingenuity and a lot of determination and thus gets stronger. One problem he faces is that the place he is in is fully of "corruption"—a manifestation of chaos and the bad thing everybody in the universe is fighting to overcome. Gaining first a resistance then a power or two that utilize corruption to defeat enemies Will starts to occupy something of a gray space in the morality that the "system" uses. i.e. he's using the very element that defines "bad" for everyone else.

That moral ambiguity ramps up at class selection where Will becomes a Reaper and thus explicitly codes "evil" to system detection powers. I'll note that Will isn't actually evil and I didn't even find him morally ambiguous. Even when he makes his way back to humanity and takes out a group of humans holding territory at his prior university I found his actions both justified and, frankly, moral. Guys actively hunting others for fun (in the "kill them and leave their bodies in the woods" sense of hunting) need to be taken out and in an apocalypse where there's no higher authority leaving bad guys to do bad is way worse than taking actions to end their predation. Will worries a bit about if he's the bad guy, but frankly, I found that less convincing than usual given how despicable those guys were.

What made this story for me, in addition to liking Will, were the friends he makes along the way. He befriends an elf in the tutorial that he later reunites with, and hooks up with another friend from the before. I liked how Will and his friend worked to repair the broken bits of their friendship in the clarity of scarce resources and the need to fight the rampaging evil.

Anyway, the pace is good, the action tight, and I liked Will. And there's some fun humor along the way as well. In short, while there isn't anything ground-breaking on the LitRPG side, having a strong sense of character as well as great action sequences raises this above the rest. It's a solid five stars and I'm looking forward to more.

A note about Chaste: While the elves are very pretty and Will's elf friend is female, there aren't any shenanigans. There's barely time for that and they aren't really that kind of relationship. That makes this very chaste and I'm good with that.

[Clayton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Temu HWFWM

This entire story was just HWFWM if someone ordered it off Temu, cheaper in every way.

As I was reading I was originally going to give it 3 stars because I felt it wasn’t really good or bad; however, towards the end of the book I just felt it was getting bad. William, or should I say diet Jason, is such a blatant ripoff of Jason Asano that it is staggering. He tries to be witty and glib in the same way but fails miserably. The author just isn’t as funny so instead the character comes across as a twit or petulant child.

The book is full of tropes. Of course there are the racist frat boys, the Asian mother joke, and more. Honestly this entire thing just gets worse the longer you read it.

If you want a good version of this story then read HWFWM.

[Joebot · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up to 4, because authors are cool

This is my second foray into LitRPG.

Another solid book one in this genre for me. I am, though, 2 for 2 on authors giving the main character a very edgy Class. This one sees our edgy main character, Will, take on the Reaper class and bear the mark of a strong and evil god. He is not a 'good guy'. Those neutral to evil alignments shine through here. I kind of want to read a LitRPG series where the MC is a less edgy Class: give me a badass Baker, Historian, or something along those lighter lines.

Earth being invaded by some super aliens seems to be a common thread in this genre, and I dig it. "Prove your worth as a planet by taking on these Class/Levels trials". Fun stuff. In this series, Earth is not the only world at stake. We see Elves from one of these other worlds; specifically one as a beloved side character and possible love interest. We also have a third intriguing character, an alien of a not-yet-identified-non-bipdeal race who served as the MC'a tutorial guide and appears to have a larger, impending role.

This was a fun book with a lot of fun elements that set up a lot of fun things. Not everything hit with me, but enough did to warrant reading book two

[Adam Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good time if you like an amoral MC

Will isn’t outright evil, but he’s definitely not sad about murder-hoboing his way through life after the apocalypse. So if you like an MC who doesn’t have a huge amount of moral fiber and a class that thrives on corruption and poisons/afflictions then this might be for you. Honestly it reminds me a bit of HWFWM mixed with Primal Hunter maybe? Lot of bad juju being inflicted and there’s gods choosing people as champions etc.

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can look past the childish world view, and I can look past the worn out tropes, but at least write characters that act consistently.

[Mafaz Kattih · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started off really enjoying this book but as it progressed I found my enjoyment deteriorating slowly. Many glaring problems that seemed to persist and made the experience worse. I think the most egregious of them all is the complexity of the system. What begin simply quickly transforms into a mess that is extremely difficult to keep track of without a spreadsheet. The main character gains skills and abilities throughout the entire book at an alarming pace and many seem to be thought of in the moment. The character's build itself while entertaining is not as well thought out as it initially seemed. Speaking of the main character, I enjoyed him at first but he quickly turned into another "wise-cracking, defy the rules/gods all consequences be damned" type which grew quite aggravating to read about. The side characters are 2 dimensional and almost seem to serve no purpose other than to make the main character look good. I also felt like many things were handwaved away or problems were solved with an ass-pull that came from nowhere. Towards the end I found myself just skimming to get it over with as I knew almost exactly what was going to happen. Overall disappointed in the book and will probably not continue with the series.

[Devan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was just ok. The magic system was what killed it for me. It was a mess. The title makes you think he focuses on corruption and that would be the ultimate direction his magic would take. While this is kinda true it is also completely wrong.

Everyone chooses 4 to 6 (I think?) elements to bind to. One for each attribute. Each attribute affects the direction the elements bound to it will manifest and each attribute can also hold X amount of bound skills. Lost yet? Basically the MC and everyone else have no focus and there isn’t any rhyme or reason to anything. It made it hard to enjoy the story and system when the author did such a bad job (IMO) with the it.

I honestly think it’s a 3* book but gave it 4* because the other aspects were fine.

[Nick Dillingham · Rating 2 out of 5]

A chore to finish

The Mc is an obvious knockoff of Jason Asano from"he who fights monster". Coupled with poorly copied powers stolen from the 4th Hokage.

The story is very badly paced. Horribly so to the point that the progression of the story doesn't make much sense.

All of the characters including the MC are 2 dimensional garbage. Because of the bad pacing it's even worse with no character development even possible and the Mc is just better and smarter than everyone for absolutely no reason.

Skip this

[robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

Was a worse version of “he who fights with monsters”.
Beginning/general plot is different but a lot of the story beats, the main character, the dialog, the abilities and the universe, are all just much worse versions of the aforementioned other series.

Suggest skipping.

[Jeffing · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tldr: there's a lot of good stuff and cool ideas in the book, and it's definitely worth checking out. I just felt the magic system was needlessly complicated to the point it made following the character's progression, build, and battles more difficult.

Strong start that quickly gets bogged down. There's a lot of cool ideas in the story, and I've read enough stories where the MC struggles over the need to kill in a system controlled world that I didn't mind Will barely hesitating (though I think he was mostly justified from the instances I remember, unless you set a hard rule to basically never kill, like in oathbound healer. If anything, I think the system's reaction was out of proportion, basically flagging him a monster after the guy's first PvP kill regardless of circumstances).
Anyways, I did like a lot of the story and it's definitely worth checking out, despite the rambling critique below. The one thing I can put my finger on that bugged me was the magic system. There's definitely some cool ideas and a lot of creativity with the abilities, but it's all waaay too confusing, well, some of it might have just been poorly explained but the actual abilities got so bogged down with conditional if/then/else descriptions that I'll never ever remember them and they never get explained again that it became meaningless. Even now, I'm like 95% finished and I barely know a few of them, I know he's fast, but is it a passive? or from the teleport ability? Or was teleporting just from that dagger in the beginning? I think he can create/summon that light saber sword that's better than anything he can buy. And he has an affliction transfer spell. I also didn't get why they had to attach... Was it affinities to stat categories? I also have no clue what his stats were, like power, soul?, and whatever else. I think they got mentioned early on by helper, but never again?
It's all just easy too needlessly complicated and didn't add anything to the story.
It'd probably be easier if I read instead of listened, but I don't really care 🤷‍♂️

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was okay

I tried to take it easy on the first book of any new story as in my experience the first entry can be shaky even from tried and true authors. I have been informed that giving any product on Amazon or Audible less than four stars severely damages the product so unless there's some lie or it's complete and total trash that really should be removed that kind of leaves you with five stars if you liked it and four stars if you didn't. I think the author is good writer and this story that he told was well done, but I didn't like it. The book was a recommendation based on another series that I had read. Our main character is thrown into an extreme tutorial. He is not the only one to face such a challenge but he is one of the few to have survived it. We've got the two separate worlds colliding and mashing into this new amalgamation of Earth. We have the races from the other world now living with the humans and not getting along. We have elves that are apparently at war with each other with one acting like the Borg and the other acting something like dark elves but with lots of clones. There's the normal human monsters running around. One of the standouts though was that the integration of the system gave people the opportunity to become slaves for 40 years or to take on the challenge of being integrated into the system for the purpose of fighting chaos. In order for the characters getting real power they need to like bend the knee or make some kind of a deal with one of the Gods. There's some hanky panky going on behind the scenes of the system. And the book kind of comes to a close with the start of a challenge for champions. Like I said it's not badly written and there are some things in there that at least I have not seen before, but it all seems to me rather simple and dark but not in a good way. As of the time of this review the sequels are already out, I believe a number of them including this has received the audio treatment, and the author states that he's got Advanced chapters up on patreon.

[Thorsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was okay, and the potential is there to get better but I don't think I'll be along for the ride.

I had a few problems, but the main issue was skill development. Others have mentioned that it's hard not to see that this book was inspired by He Who Fights With Monsters. Where that story has too many complex but cohesive skills, this book has too many skills that feel random and a little nonsensical and work mostly because the plot wills them to.

Having a skill that lets you destroy an item to give yourself a one-minute buff is inane unless you are in the unlikely position of carrying around crates of equipment. Having your first big weapon be a gun that fires random types of bullets is odd until you conveniently get a companion whose skill set revolves around affecting probabilities and can fire the one-in-a-thousand bullet at will. The weapon teleport is just convoluted. The entire Corruption element handling ends up feeling confusing and clumsy, like how he has resistance to Corruption but still carries stacks of Corruption on himself. Then, he transfers those stacks into his weapon, which can then be used to inflict them on an opponent. But his finisher scales with cleansing himself and allies of afflictions, which he doesn't have because he transfers them, so it just doesn't hang together well.

I applaud the author for trying something different; however, I don't feel it's been well realized. The story reads like a draft, reflected in the lack of editing and proofreading.

[David Phipps · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book in a fantasy LitRPG series with system apocalypse set on Earth.  Will is a college student at the time of the system apocalypse and he gets pulled into a difficult tutorial dungeon while also getting a rare corruption affinity.  I like system apocalypse stories where the protagonist rebels against the powers that be like the system itself or gods.

I felt like the progression system was lacking some clarity.  The idea of being able to slot items into different stats which would give you a different skill is interesting but it was not easy to keep track of what Will's skills were over the course of the book. And the leveling system was a little strange.

My biggest complaint is more of a personal preference but I felt like there was too much snark and sarcasm from multiple characters.  It seemed like the three main "good" characters in this book all had the same sense of humor.  I also dislike when the protagonist makes too many Earth-culture references in his conversations with beings that aren't from Earth.

The book ended in a good spot that makes you want to immediately continue to the next book which is what I will be doing.  I like this series so far but we'll see if some of my concerns get any better.

[Luis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable but has few issues

The story is overall enjoyable, following William as he adapts and grows into the system. He has, as the name of the story implies, a corruption build. It's basically the strongest debuff possible with a guaranteed death if the enemy can't cleanse it

So far so good, but there are issues. For one, the wording of his skills and the way he uses them, specifically the ones that state that they cleanse all afflictions, don't make sense. That's the main one as it's a core part of his build and is used a lot.

The second issue is much harder to put into words. Will is powerful but he feels weak for most of the story. He is almost consistent fighting beings above his rank but even then it feels like Will is being purposely nerfed. Corruption is op but it's honestly barely a threat to anyone Will fights, his skills are all over the place and he honestly sucks at using them. He has a skill called chaos transfer (one of his first skills) that allows him to transfer afflictions. Any gamer knows how op that is yet Will almost never uses it.

[Leslie Baptiste · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of threads, but a good book have to see how it develops.

Interesting story, enjoy the main character, not up to the level of Zachary, Atwood or Derek Hunt, but the character is OK. My only complaint is that the character went through a extreme difficulty tutorial, and the character should’ve come out at a higher level, maybe bronze eight or nine to put him ahead of other characters around him. In my opinion, his level was very weak for all the trauma trial and tribulation he went through. I enjoyed the rest of the characters in the story, especially his sidekick the elf, hope they stay together in future books will read the next book when it comes out.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not amazing but decent

First I'll say this book borrows from He Who Fights With Monsters, another series in this genre. The magic system is very similar with minor differences. The protagonist uses afflictions. He gets tortured by a god. A few other minor things.

Overall, I enjoyed reading it. I didn't find myself skipping too many things. Will isn't insufferable and he's not an immediate Gary Sue. The only major issue was minor. The author loves his "going to have to's" when a needed or must would sound better.

Decent execution without any cringe moments when the protagonist tries to be edgy.

[RealF0x · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars out of 5

Thsi is a fairly standard and dare I say cliche Litrpg and doent do anything new , although is not at all a bad book I would say it was an okay story . Will the main pratoginist sometimes may look like an asshole and is not too likable.
the truly great part about this was the pacing it didnt took forever just for the Tutorial part to get over and the story as a whole moves forward fairky fast
all in all I wouldnt say it is the best of litrpg or even one of the better ones howvere if u want to read this genre and have nothing too read give this one a try

[Josiah Ploeger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it

Loved the book. Author does a great job balancing action, character development, and moving the plot forward. I appreciate when series don’t take multiple books just to get through an introductory stage of a character’s journey. Only thing I felt was a bit unnecessary was the repeated full skill descriptions when a character would use a skill. Maybe just plop in the relevant excerpt of the skill if there is concern us readers won’t remember them. Not a huge deal though as you can page right past them to keep the flow going.

[Lukas Lovas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've decided to read on after finishing the first book, though I have to admit...it rubs me the wrong way that this is basically a shirtaloon knockoff with a copy of the system and partially, the writing style, the main character who has gone the same direction class/wise and immitates the devil-may-care attitude, but only comes off as arrogant and a bit of a bully. The human bad guys were a caricature and not much more...but overall, I do actually want to know what happens next, so...we'll see.

[James Riley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good, but...

I actually quite enjoyed this book. It is pretty standard LitRPG, but it is well worth the read.

Two small caveats. One, the MC is pretty hard to root for. He is kind of a generic MC that is a bit overly snarky at times. Two, the author injects his politics into this book. Some instances are pretty subtle, others... well, not so much. It just can get annoying.

Recommended, but with caveats.

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

To have a hit in the LitRPG writing world, you need an MC that is able to stand out or a magic system that’s unexpected. This has neither. Affliction style fighters that are corrupted or use a banned element are VERY common since He Who Fights With Monsters came out. I’m not saying a book can’t be inspired by others, but to stand out, you need something new to say in this space if you’re gonna start with these used styles. Nothing new was said.

On top of all of this, the repeated skill details were annoying. Every fight had at least 1-2 attacks explained despite having just been outlined in the previous fight. If readers today can’t keep a characters few abilities straight between chapters, then we are all doomed.

I’m going to give book 2 a chance because I’ve noticed these types of books sometimes take a little while to get good. Who knows… maybe book 2 will surprise me.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started reading on kindle but then early on changed for the audiobook version. The story got me hooked. Its really refreshing to have me want to punch elves for being so completely jerks and not viewed as perfect beings. I enjoyed the depth of each characters and the magic system.

That said, the audiobook had so many tiny mistakes, my goodness. Whoever edited it was either rushed or... Well. It was still a very enjoyable experience.

[Jerzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chaotic action, complicated skill system.
In every fight, the same skill descriptions are repeated dozens or even hundreds of times so that you don't get confused about what they do.
It doesn't feel like the hero's decisions have a significant impact on his development.
The post-apocalyptic world and the behavior of the gods seem to be a caricature of something, but it's impossible to determine what.

[Randy Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was just Ok

I’m really not sure about this series. There was something about it that I really didn’t like overall it was an OK story. in fact, there were many elements in this story that I have liked in other series like it. But for some reason, it comes across feeling a bit hollow. My overall opinion is to try it yourself and be your own judge.

[Tom Petersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

HWFWM much?

This is a perfectly fine book. Nothing special but entertaining enough that I don't regret the time I spent reading it.
In a lot of ways this is an homage to HWFWM, the MC (powers) and some of the fights especially
3+stars, so round up to 4. Certainly not bad enough to complain about, but also not good enough to read the next in the series. Tom out

[Starr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok I like the mc but the author kinda ruined this book for me making the system overly complicated and confusing 😕. Really unnecessary 😑 so much going on color levels ( bronze-emperor),gems, shards,credits,elements,affinities,tablets,skills are all over the place 😢 RIDICULOUS the story and plot were great but to much system confusion 😕 really took away from the story DNF

[Joel Benedict Mandaya · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rewrite and mashup on popular LitRPGs. The system from He Who Fights With Monsters, the MC archetype and the Gods of Primal Hunter, and the heresy plot of Unbound. It is a coherrent book so not that dissapointing. The plot flows well but it does not bring anything new. It is a junkfood book. Fun read and forgettable.

[That Guy · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's just so bad

I think the story is supposed to be funny, but it just comes off as cringe. It's like an 80 year old and a child worked together to take a crack at litrpg. Also, what's with the horrible narration of the system. Why would an advanced anything sound like a busted machine voice from an 80's scifi? Even the built in TTS on my phone sounds more believable.

[Chance · Rating 4 out of 5]

more like corruption sponge

Guy gets thrown into tutorial

Guy gets slapped with taboo element

Guy pis@##s off racist elf’s

Guy tells everyone to move aside or die

Now read the story

[Andrew Riley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read

Saw this after your post on FB and thought I'd give it a read. While not the best book I've read recently it's still a great read, my biggest fault with it was the tutorial chapters seem to drag compared to the rest of the book. Looking forward to reading more.