Deadworld Isekai is a story about a gardener who arrives on an utterly dead planet, and tries to survive with the help of a LitRPG system.
Too bad the system wants him dead, too.
The first three books are completed and available on Royal Road (here
). The author has stated that the series could be considered complete, but there may or may not be further volumes after a hiatus.
Tropes
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: Matt's shovel, after gaining an edge of next-generation Nullsteel, can cut through almost anything like air.
- Affably Evil: Leel is polite, friendly, talkative, and entirely willing to murder innocent people in exchange for good rewards from the System.
- Always Chaotic Evil: The demons are spawned, not born, and have no real interests beyond a) their own survival, b) killing and eating humans. Justified since they're not a natural species; they were artificially created to serve the demon lord.
- Apocalypse How: The titular Deadworld suffered a Class 6 catastrophe before Matt's arrival. It's described in the story blurb as "a sterilized, featureless wasteland" and further described in Chapter 3:Somehow, all life on Gaia was eliminated. All of it. Fish? Birds? Gone. All the bacteria is dead. It's debatable whether or not viruses are alive, but they are gone too. But not you, somehow. You live on. The system isn't supposed to ask you questions, but if it could, they'd try to figure out how you somehow survived.
- An Arm and a Leg: The Vitality stat provides a remarkable Healing Factor that can close wounds and erase scratches and bruises. However, it won't regrow a severed foot, just stop the bleeding and seal off the stump. Fortunately, the full heal at the end of a dungeon can fix that, though Matt first has to live that long.
- Attack Backfire: The rules of the System require rewards proportional to effort and achievement. So every time the System makes an unsuccessful attempt to kill Matt, by sending challenges that should be too much for him, it then has to handsomely reward him for his success. To add injury to insult, each attempt costs the System part of its energy supply, which is very limited due to Gaia being dead.
- Attack Reflector: Gaian nullsteel resists mana, to the point where it can bounce spells back to the sender — which is normally impossible. As a bonus, spells designed to explode on impact will not trigger upon hitting it.
- Leel assumed that he wouldn't need any defences against magic when fighting Matt, and is astounded to have his own spells sent back at him by a shovel.
- Matt also deflects a demonic artillery barrage, using their own bombs to take out their fliers.
- Bad Boss: Matt compares the System's attitude to a manager he once had named Janice, who routinely made serious mistakes and then blamed her subordinates for them, until finally she used the wrong person as The Scapegoat. Everyone else submitted a litany of complaints about her worst offences, then resigned in protest.Matt: She was really bad at her job. She'd forget things. She'd mess stuff up and pretend like the rest of the team had messed it up. She told us to do our work in ways that set us up for failure, and then be surprised when we failed. Half the work at that job was cleaning up messes she had made while she pretended that she wasn't the one who made them.
- Balance Between Good and Evil: The System deliberately maintains a balance so as to keep nations leashed and controllable. Any time that one side appears to be gaining the upper hand and might end the perpetual war, they'll find that their enemies have new boons of some sort that keep the fighting going. Matt is a Spanner in the Works of this process, both on Gaia, where he's the hero and the world dictator, then later on Ra'zor, where he might actually beat the demon king permanently — which is a big part of why the System wants him dead.
- Big Eater: Derek's class is fueled by gluttony, giving him temporary buffs according to the quantity and quality of what he eats. Too bad he has to fight Matt on a world with no food supply.
- Bringing Back Proof: Derek is a little disappointed that it's not possible to bring back proof of the tower kill to be paid the bounty on demons, but Brennan and Artemis promise to vouch for it.Artemis: In these kinds of circumstances, a commander’s estimate can usually stand in for proof.
- Cannibalism Superpower: [Palate of the Conqueror] allows Matt to take on traits of species he eats some of, like toughened skin from a giant snake, although he can only hold a limited number of traits at once.
- Character Development: Derek is a brash teenager with a desire to be a hero, but a greatly inflated idea of his own capability and importance. Getting beaten to death with Matt's shovel, then dropped back on Ra'zor with his class and levels and skills stripped away, gives him a taste of humility, and he starts to properly put the work in to become genuinely strong instead of flashy. When he encounters Matt again, instead of leaping into a fight like the previous time, he's the first to exhort his companions to slow down and talk things out.
- Didn't See That Coming: The System is thoroughly annoyed that Matt somehow managed to find a plant that would naturally produce enough mana for him to survive.System: There was nothing left of this planet. I checked.
- Double-Edged Buff: Chapter 45 has the Berserker Rage skill that gives a buff, then applies a debuff later:Berserker rage taps into your body's natural fat and glycogen stores, turning them into an especially pure form of quick-burning energy that provides a huge buff to all stats. This absurdly large enhancement comes with only one major drawback, a similarly massive debuff when the skill ends.
Temporary buff: +100% to all physical stats. +100% physical damage resistance, +100 HP regen rate, unlimited STAM pool, +1 level to active sword skill, restoration of highest food-related buff held during the last 10-day period, and movement speed over any solid terrain is doubled.
Temporary Debuff: -20% to all physical stats, -40% damage resistance, HP regen rate set to 0, STAM bar emptied, and STAM regen rate set to 0 - Evil Overlord: Having full authority over a planet lets you claim and control territory and gain bonuses from it. It's the kind of power that the System is supposed to give to villains, with different powers being given to heroes, thus keeping them in a balanced stalemate. The Gaian System instance never intended for Matt, as a reincarnator, to gain that kind of authority, but it's not especially bothered so long as he's about to starve in a desert. Once there's a real prospect of him surviving to use that authority, however, it freaks out.
- Exact Words: The quest description given to Asadel is entirely accurate, and equally misleading. It's true that the entire world of Gaia is "under the control of a single power", that he has "the power to command every thinking being that walks the surface of the planet", that he roams where he wants, does what he wants, and that he kills any life not under his control. Asadel, of course, sees this and thinks he's dealing with a tyrant, when in fact Matt is simply a lone Survivor.
- Extreme Omnivore: The "Eat Anything!" skill allows Matt to ignore mild food spoilage and even some poisons, and get more nutrition from what he eats. He levels it up by eating things that any normal person would think he shouldn't, like strips of meat from a dungeon monster so tough he needs a sharp knife and several minutes to cut them. He even manages to draw a small amount of nourishment from the illusory berries in a dungeon.
- Feed It a Bomb: The only way Matt is able to penetrate the demon lord's many defences is to throw "Pocket Sand" at him — made from one of the demon lord's own bombs, ground up into powder. Since the bomb can only be set off by intent, which can't be intent to harm the demon lord, the defences don't see it as a threat, and the "sand" gets into his mouth, without him knowing what he just swallowed. Then he later chooses to set off the bombs that he knows Matt stole.
- Gold–Silver–Copper Standard: Ra'zor uses disks of gold, silver, and copper as currency.Given that the copper was shiny instead of the blue-green oxidization he’d expect from the actual metal, he assumed some substitutions had been made in terms of actual material. It didn’t matter. Trope satisfaction was trope satisfaction.
- Gone Horribly Right: A plant that is nutritionally complete and can adapt to any growing conditions? Great! Even if it has no soil, or is in extreme situations like a volcano, it will draw on whatever sources of energy and biomass are available to grow and grow. And grow some more, and more, and more, adapting to resist anything used to stop it...
- Grey Goo: The Scourge was a System generated plant that could adapt to any possible environment. It was originally offered as a gift meant to be useful, but it disrupted the ecological balance that the Gaians had spent millennia cultivating, took over everywhere, and apparently consumed everything until there was literally nothing left alive.
- Heal Thyself: Repair stones can instantly repair a certain amount of damage to any nonliving object. Matt collects hundreds of them to help fix the Museum, although it's only a partial job. And then he finishes it off with a Single-Structure Repair Token.
- Healing Factor: The VIT (vitality) stat allows rapid recovery, especially when resting. With high enough VIT, wounds, bruises, and even broken bones, will heal in hours to days.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: When Matt jokes that he's mentally renaming his system guardian, she freaks out, because he can actually do that, but only once, and if he'd been the least bit serious, she'd be The Guardian of Edible Property. Upon learning this, Matt promptly names her Lucy.
- Hoist With His Own Petard: The demons take massive casualties from their city-killing bombs being prematurely detonated. Ultimately, it's one of those bombs that takes down the demon lord, who was the one responsible for actually making them.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: The blacksmith normally spars against Derek with an iron bar. When Derek develops enough to actually start winning, the blacksmith drops the weapon and reveals that his class is actually for unarmed combat; he was using a weapon in order to deliberately weaken himself.
- Impossibly Delicious Food: For some reason, everyone on Ra'zor can make ridiculously good soup. Matt's eating skill further enhances its flavor, to the point where he's actually knocked unconscious by it.He was, for a moment, aware of the fact that he was tasting something impossibly good, something that was remarkable beyond comprehension.
- The Key Is Behind the Lock: Matt's dowsing rod tells him that there's some kind of treasure nearby, so he starts digging for it with his multi-tool, but it's deeper than he expected, and takes hours to reach. Once he's tired, sore, and very bored, the treasure turns out to be a shovel. Both he and his guardian can't help but laugh. It's a very good shovel, though.
- Keystone Army: The demons were all created through the skills of the Demon Lord, and his death results in them all collapsing and shrivelling away.
- Killer Gorilla: The Gaian Great Plains Ape is big enough to be seen clearly from most of a mile away, tough enough to shrug off every sharp object Matt owns simultaneously, tireless enough to sprint non-stop for days, has intelligence comparable to a human, and won't stop until it catches its prey.System: You've done pretty well with fast monsters, big monsters, and smart monsters. Let's see how you do with something that's all three.
- Laugh Themselves Sick:
- Matt mentions that he has to fight a Bonecat, and his guardian falls on the ground rolling around and laughing so hard that she takes a minute to calm down even after he commands her to.
- Watching Matt try to fight against ricocheting flash turtles makes his guardian laugh so hard she almost wets herself — even though she doesn't have a corporeal body.Lucy: Thooomp thoomp thoomp thoomp ping! Matt… you just… please fight another turtle. Please.
- Matt is worried for a moment that she's actually hurt when he hears her gasping and choking, but eventually realises that she's just laughing too hard to breathe at the sight of an invading wizard caught in a pitfall trap.
- Lightning Bruiser: The Bonecat is the size of a boulder, tough enough to shrug off everything Matt's non-combat class can hit it with, strong enough to uproot trees, claws the size of Matt's arm, and faster than him even with his enhanced Dexterity. Only the fact that it's less good at turning corners, and doesn't like to enter the ocean, lets him survive for any length of time.Guardian: This is the absolute worst thing you could have come up against at this level.
- Loophole Abuse: The System has to keep its own rules, but it does what it can to work around them in its efforts to kill Matt. For example, it's not allowed to change his dungeon difficulty settings against his expressed will — but if he hasn't explicitly forbidden any changes (and didn't realise he could), well then...
- Mama Bear: When Matt starts killing young Clownrats, their mother is furious, and once she finds him, she goes berserk.The dungeon has been scanning records of your home planet to better serve you, and can compare this to a mother experiencing a burst of adrenaline and suddenly being able to lift an entire car off her child. It’s not a good situation for you, but honestly, you were kind of asking for it.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Killing your minions for failure means that if they know they're doomed, they might just lash out in revenge. The Ra'zor System instance, upon Matt's victory, knows that the main System will kill it, and spitefully gives Matt every reward it can manage, including an untraceable trip back to Gaia, just to cause the main System a headache.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Matt's reward for killing a Killer Gorilla is a beehive full of inch-high flying monkeys. It's called an Ape-iary. Somehow, the monkeys actually manage to pollinate plants and produce honey.
- Moral Myopia: As far as the System is concerned, Matt is being an unreasonable pain in the neck. Nevermind that it was the System who promised him a paradise and then dropped him in a tremendous wasteland. Or that the reason it wants him dead is simply because he intends to use the assets given to him to fix the place up to what it should have been all along. Or that it only tried negotiating with him after bending every rule it could reach to kill him, and its offer would have shafted the one person who has kept Matt company and helped him out. Nope, as far as the System is concerned, it's all Matt's fault.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: When Matt forces the Gaian system instance into an Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object situation, the dungeon system struggles to describe what just happened in human terms, before comparing it to someone getting beaten to within an inch of their life.
- Poor Communication Kills: Brennan's party and Matt almost kill each other on their first meeting, until everyone manages to calm down and talk things out.
- Price on Their Head:
- The System offers lucrative rewards on quests to kill Matt and destroy his works. It ends badly for the two who try it, though.
- The church of Ra'zor has standard bounties for killing demons and wrecking their equipment. Artemis freaks out when she realizes how much Matt will be owed for destroying an army almost singlehandedly.
- Shout-Out: The "Pocket Sand" name for the A Handful for an Eye skill is a King of the Hill reference.
- A Taste of Power: When Matt chooses his class, he immediately qualifies for a long string of achievements related to being the only survivor on the planet (one achievement for being the only survivor in the district, another for the continent, one for the entire world, another for the only mammal, the only animal, the only species of any kind...). For just a moment, his stats are all in the thousands. Then the final achievement takes all the bonuses and instead consolidates them into "increased authority over planet Gaia," which has no immediately visible effect.For a moment, his muscle had grown. Not gradually, but with the speed of a gunshot. He was a chiseled roman god. He could lift mountains, move faster than lightning, and felt invincible. He was smarter and more knowing as well. He stood in a barren landscape, filled with almost unlimited knowledge and power. It wasn’t an illusion; he knew down to his bones that this was real.
He tensed his muscles and pointed a finger at the stone, ready to issue a word of command, to drive his will into the very workings of the thing until it erupted in the torrent of water he desired.
And then, just before he spoke, all that strength was gone. He was just Matt again. His muscles deflated like a popped balloon, and he was left standing in the middle of a nothing landscape, pointing his finger at a rock like an insane person. - Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object: Matt receives a token that can force the System to enchant an object. When it becomes clear that he will never be able to survive while the System instance exists, he uses the token to enchant his shovel — which is made of magic-proof nullsteel and is thus practically untouchable by the System. The result is that the System instance is drained of all its remaining resources and dies shortly afterward.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The System creates sapient artificial "guardians" to instruct and assist people who have been reincarnated. The guardians don't get any say in the matter, and the System has the power to override their will and force them to obey if it chooses. Matt's guardian, who is thoroughly put out by being dropped on a dead world, is even less happy that Matt can force her to help him, but the System doesn't really give her any rights.
