Edit: Removed two stars because the author removed the story.

Review as of record 29/51

Xianxia Magic System:

Living beings automatically generate life-force ("Vim"). With access to the right techniques, this can be challenged into supernatural abilities or accumulated into gaining special abilities. Animals that accumulate enough "evolve" into bigger monsters. Cultivators go out in the endless wilderness and slay monsters to siphon their power, in turn getting better at fighting stronger enemies. Typical exponential growth mechanics.

Unusual elements: "Evolutions" from extra power are inherited. Humans don’t have a good evolution system, so most are still baseline and instead infuse their gathered vim into "Shapes", which are basically pokemon, including having distinct evolutions once they have gained enough exp/Vim through fights.

The exponential growth is stunted by clans/families hoarding "Patterns" which are essential to these shapes and requiring money for every single use, effectively keeping everyone else from advancing at any appreciable speed.

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Xianxia Setting:

Typical sparsely populated fantasy medievalism with treasure filled ruins and monsters all around. As is convention, the MC starts in a backwater region, the local Clan (noble house) is lording over the others etc etc. More European fantasy than Asian, though.

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Xianxia Protagonist:

Young isolated teenage male dreaming of becoming a great cultivator (=shaper) who wants to keep his head low, but doesn’t. The only noteworthy "aquaintances" are the one semi-friendly noble™ and the local barmaid/prostitute he cannot afford.

As is expected, he finds some legendary treasure which frees him from the clans, allowing him to begin his uncapped exponential growth. As is also a common trope, the treasure keeps ignoring how shapes/patterns were established to work to the point that I would not be surprised if the ship decided to talk or grow more elemental crystals one day.

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Beautiful Blue Haired Big Boobed Anime Legal Loli (Majory/BBHBBALL)

Physically, she is a bit over a meter tall, has boobs that are described as being ridiculous in size, but somehow not looking ridiculous on her and is of an undefined age. Also, she is the only one with blue hair (explained as her basically being a shiny version of dwarves, but with extra special power).

Mentally, she has the attention span of a gnat and emotes like a cartoon character. She goes from a desperate fight for her life, to wide-eyed amazed gushing, to sinking to the ground in despair once she is reminded by the MC that the bodies of her brothers still lie right beside her- to basically teleporting into an enthusiastic hug one after another, any new emotion completely replacing the last one. It literally seems as if she can only think about what is directly in front of her, with no thought or consideration to the past, future or anything outside her direct sight, be it her brothers or potential dangers the MC tries to remind her of. She is extremely enthusiastic about everything, and decides on things without any hesitation.

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Rating-wise, I’ll keep the 3 stars. It’s mostly generic and the anime tropes (including the MC being clueless about the BBHBBALL wanting bone him while it’s obvious to the reader) are not for me.

Old review in spoiler:

Spoiler : So far I have read until chapter 06 (dwarves), which felt so jarring I had to write this review and may or may not just drop the story outright. The beginning was interesting, if somewhat bland. Generic post-post-apocalyptic outpost in a fantasy setting. MC is introduced as a young ambitious treasure hunter who, surprise surprise, finds some legendary treasure to start of his adventure. Not much to go on that far. Decent worldbuilding so far, and good sprinkling in of a few background characters and worldbuilding. The first chink in the story is that the treasure soon reveals that it breaks a number of very basic rules about how "shapes" work, but nothing that could not be explained later. Chapter 6 starts fairly normal. While flying around, he found a band of dwarves ambushed by raiders and decides to intervene as the need to save lives trumps his need to keep his treasure hidden. There is a very specific point where everything changed: >"A few seconds later, the dwarf abruptly took of his leather helmet." Even while reading it, my first thought was why!?, why did the last remaining dwarf, in the middle of a tense standoff while wondering whether they were rescued or just seen as an easy target take off the helmet? Apparently it’s to show off her gender and allow the author to spend the next paragraph describing what an exotic beauty she is. You may guess what follows. The dwarf is instantly tranformed from badass fighter into a socially awkward young overly emotional anime-esque airhead who is in absolute awe of everything around the MC. He, of course, can immediately take charge around his newest follower. He reminds her that they are literally standing besides the unconscious bodies of her fallen comrades, whom he examines while she stands around awkwardly and awaits further instructions (or sits down in helpless despair as she cannot imagine how she could get them to the nearest town despite the flying ship right besides her). He immediately recognizes the specific poison used against them etc etc. It follows this pattern for a while. There is also a bit where the ship shape decides to break yet another rule of how shapes work by eating the girl’s cannon and she immediately decides she will now become part of the crew, without even being asked. Then he breaks character again to promise her "half share" which is not only absolutely ridiculous for a simple employee, but also goes directly against his prior decision that he specifically did not want to hire anyone because of the monetary cost.

(As an aside, no thought was spent on abandoning the other dwarves. Or did she want them to hire on, too? Actually, who are the other dwarves?)