The city’s last survivors need a leader. Unfortunately, they’ve got Santi.
The System burned the world. Santi is trying to build it back - one crumbling brick at a time.
Homebase was supposed to be temporary. Now it’s the only thing standing between a thousand survivors and the wild chaos outside the walls. Santi didn’t ask to lead -but he’s the only one strong enough to keep them alive.
Rival factions, monster nests, and roving horrors test the barricades daily. Trust is slipping, power is shifting, and even within the camp, survival means picking sides.
Worse, Santi knows the timeline’s starting to twist. The System isn’t behaving like it did before. The Apostates are quiet -too quiet- and every choice he makes ripples outward in ways he can’t predict.
But there’s no time to hesitate.
Because somewhere out there, Santi’s family is still alive - and the window to find them is closing fast.
Forge the stronghold. Survive the schemes. And never forget - the monsters aren’t all outside the walls.
This book is a good example of LitRPG. The stats are important and their use shows through the action rather than just being numbers without meaning. The system information is present without being overwhelming.
The action sequences are good and well-described, which is a saving grace as most characters seem fairly flat and two-dimensional. That said, we see enough to know the author can write interesting characters, but the main character starts out in a position where he simply lacks time (and motivation) to form those bonds. Thankfully, that seems to change as the book progresses, leaving me hopeful for more character development in future books.
Well-written and well-paced, this is an excellent start to a series.
The story is fun enough, whole LITRPG regressor and apocalypse by the system thing. With the add flavor of him not being the only one sent back unlike most of these regressor stories where only one person is sent back with future knowledge. Seeing how all that can change events making it so they cant take advantage of unique opportunities as much it is a good blend of not OP knowledge but still with more advantage than most.
Now for the negative. First the MC is a coward. He doesn't act like it sure but he is. He picks mage the first time because he was afraid to fight. That's normal and all that. Yet he has some sort of mental block to keep focused on mage this time too. Even though he has a stat advantage, due to titles, to make him a deadly hybrid melee mage combatant he sticks with mage. Seeming to want to ignore the physical and just do magical, making him less than he could be. He even skips over rarer classes that are hybrids to stick with pure mage. Since the title of the series is 'Return of the Wind Mage' I don't know if he'll ever get over this and seems a complete waste. Like he can't see that all the time he's fighting up front and he IS A FRONTLINER. not a backliner mage. Even way later in the series he is still like this, saying one thing and doing another. It just comes off as him being scared and mental block to commit to being a melee fighter with magic.
Now, for the second negative aspect for me. He is lazy. He talks a big game about how once he gets back it will be 24 hour training and fighting, leveling and growing. How he'll take every advantage he can and future opportunity. Yet...he doesn't. Besides the very first rift in the start of this book. He does nothing. No future knowledge events he goes to do to get rewards. No big titles, No 24 hour training. In fact he falls behind most people. This guy with future knowledge should be double everyone's level at least but he's usually behind in levels of average people. Instead of going out to fight solo and gain levels, he takes nap. He cooks. He hangs out with friends. He knows what's coming and he even swore he'd be leveling and fighting '24 hours a day' as he put it. Yet he barely ever fights and only when with his team. For all his big talk about how this time it would be different. He doesn't really do anything big to change it. Everything that happens is really stuff that would have happened naturally by others leading. People surviving, people banding to make a community, some dying, some rising. Nothing special. Yes maybe in this one town a few hundred more survive because of him, but nothing that would change the world. No huge big changes that his future knowledge made possible. No big titles or feats, no super rare or legendary classes. No unique items that were found in the future that he gets to first. No secret realms that only he knows about or high level rifts that had great rewards that he got to first. Nothing By book 3 there is literally nothing that puts him apart from everyone else and thanks to him always going pure mage and basic clasess, he didn't even use his future knowledge to get a better start.
Honestly at that point, it really makes one wonder why the author even made this a regressor story if not going to take advantage of it.It seems it's more a way to have the MC have goals instead of stumbling around in the dark and finding out things than any real advantage. Just a way to make the story easier to write.
As i already readother, better series in the genre, i found the book underwhelming
DNF at 60%
The plot is a mix of Terminator's plot and the Russian rift stories (Hunter's code., Dark healer etc) . Just weaker and more juvenile.
The enemy uses time travel to wipe out the saviours of mankind and the MC follows to prevent them from doing so..
Sadly, the protagonist uses his superior knowledge only at the start and the story focuses on the students survival, which is rather boring and trivial. Neither the protagonist nor his skills made the story more compelling. At 60% of the book i was so bored that I stopped reading..
This is a fast moving, action packed, time regression story. The next book in the series is in my library and I am going to start reading at 2 a.m.. Worth it!