Defiance of the Fall

Set in a Western setting and with a system, it’d be easy to wonder why this book is on this list, but don’t be fooled by its appearances; this story has all the basics of cultivation inside it; it’s simply hidden at first.

This book takes place in a subgenre of books that are commonly referred to as System Apocalypses or LitRPG Apocalypses, where a system arrives on Earth, giving people gamified abilities and bringing monsters that cause an apocalypse to happen.

This one, though, takes place in what is effectively a broad cultivation multiverse and expands what the genre… show more.

Defiance of the Fall started as a web series and has some of the classic hallmarks of such… brief chapters ending in cliffhangers and a need to always recap what’s just happened.

Worse, the prose starts out very rough, though it improves with each successive book in the series.

So, why did I include it? Because it distills progression fantasy down to its purest form, to what some readers summarize as “Numbers go brrrr.”

In other words, there is always action and advancement happening. The dopamine hits for the reader never stop, and the main character, Zac, doesn’t either.

If… show more.