Kicking the Bucket Talent Shop.

A Live Again and Die Again Cultivation LitRPG

By: Zachary Aaron Karpel

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

This is the 3rd Edition release with an even further extended lore glossary along with the new 3rd person rewrite!

Did I seriously just get isekai'd?!

Is that a snake?!

I'm a baby again?!

Wait what, I have no talent at all for cultivation?!

No talent for martial arts?!

No talent for art?!

No talent for anything at all?!

[For surviving 10 years in the Heaven Spark Continent of the Red Dragon Plane, you gain....

Wait WHAT?!

How many times will Spiritward have to die before being able to live a full life?

In the vast, unforgiving and infinite expanse of the Red Dragon Plane, talent is everything. It dictates your worth, your potential, your very survival.

Spiritward, His original name forgotten, is thrust into a brutal world of cultivation without an ounce of knowledge of the genre.

He is born with a crippling disadvantage.

He has no talent.

Discarded by clans, forced to claw his way through the slums, he witnesses the cruelty of a world that values power above all else. He experiences agonizing loss and endless failure.

He has one tool, however.

The Mists.

A system that grants outsiders the ability to retain their memories across lifetimes and purchase powerful talents with points earned through struggles and achievements is granted to him as one of many who can use The Mists upon their death.

Death, for him, is not an end, but a stepping stone.

Across multiple lives, he is forced to confront his lacking understanding of the world in a world where knowledge is hoarded by organizations called sects and the clans that are forced to support them only get a piddling portion.

His original plan to dismantle the clan system, to create a world where compassion triumphs over power will span countless lifetimes.

But how many lifetimes will it take to fix this utterly broken world?

Even then, there might even be something wrong deep within his soul...

Some oddities present

The majority of the book is written in 3rd person- indeed, “now in 3rd person!” Was a selling point on the book’s Amazon page. However, there are sections of the book that are in 1st person, and, even more confusingly, there was one chapter in 2nd person (so ‘you walk up to the counter and order as you look out the windows at the strange sky’).
I know how tenses can slip around when writing, but 2nd person is very rarely used, I can’t imagine that the author wouldn’t notice while doing the rewrite. Unfortunately, this leads me to believe that AI (LLM) was used in at least the rewrite of the book.

Live full lives

The mc doesn’t die that often, which is good considering he basically becomes a completely new person in a new location each time he dies. It is unlikely in any soon lives he will become strong enough to be able to go back to any of the locations he previously was at, and even then it might not be worth it since they wouldn’t recognize the new him. Plus the reasons for his deaths were sadly at least emotionally impactful on those around him for most of them.

Solidly Mediocre

I really liked the core mechanic of the story but it moved just slow enough to not be able to hold my attention. By the end I was at 3x speed.

Good listen ☺️ despite the Virtual Voice 👍

I have listened to almost 2,000 litrpg book and it is hard to stand out in the genre but this book definitely stands out in a good way. I think it would have been a 10 in it wasn't for the AI narrator but it was free so no complaints here. 🥳