Read History
2026 | Score: 3
Three may even be generous. The writing was slightly better than some web serial litRPG, but there were dumb mistakes like just calling a character the wrong name. Not technically a litRPG, just progression, but the author wrote like it was a video game, including stuff like enemies having set attack patterns, being able to teleport to differently themed areas, boss monsters, etc. The world, characters, and most importantly magic system just were not interesting, which is the most important part of a progression book. But the Seahawks won the superbowl so everything is ok.
Format: Audible
Days: 8
Date: 2/1/2026 -> 2/9/2026
Summary
The Return of the Runebound Professor
Actus
Return of the Runebound Professor #1
Noah Vines was a college music professor on Earth who died of disease. The afterlife was him waiting in a super long time for a unspecified very, very long period (important). He reaches the front of the line and meets the goddess Renewal, who says he will be reborn in a higher plane with no memories from his Earth life. He is upset, but then a shadow being attacks the lines of people and renewal, and Noah falls into the well of life or something. He is about to lose his memories and be reborn when the shadow dude does something to him or he gets hit by an attack or something and instead he keeps his memories and his soul is sent floating about. He eventually is floating by an injured dude he sees die and then is sucked into his body. The body belonged to someone named Magus Vermil, but Noah knows nothing about his new past or where he is, but he instinctively can do magic.
Noah gets killed by a monkey. Then is reborn in a fresh version of Magus Vermils body. This happens a few times. He learns how to fight. He is wandering around in the woods, and figures out this gourd / potion thing Vermil was carrying is where he will “respawn”. He gets rescued and brought to the school Armitage, where he is a teacher. A bad, scummy, low rank teacher. Their are ranks based on how powerful your runes are and he is rank 1, the bottom. But since he was a good boy on Earth he wants to teach his students, Isabel and Todd, how magic works and learn from them. Somehow he teaches them stuff despite knowing genuinely nothing, then he discovers a teleporter that can shoot him anywhere and recall his body in 24 hours. SO he goes back to the forest to kill more monkeys.
He starts to befriend a fellow teacher, Magus Moxie, who hated the old version of him. But he needs help figuring out how life works here. He eventually takes Isabel and Todd to fight monkeys, since there final exam is fighting a monkey. They meet a skinwalker who absorbed one of Noah’s old bodies. This is tricky, but he pretends it is his clone he knew about. He befriends the skinwalker who takes on the form of a young woman named Lee, and offers to help him teach his students hand to hand combat.
Noah has won Moxie over by now, and her and her student Emily start to tag along as they learn and go fight monkeys. Moxie has learned that Noah is not the original Vermil in spirit but he never tells her everything, and Lee knows he can not die since again she ate his body. Things are going well, but important fact: Noah is a member of the Linwick noble family, very powerful people. His twin brother Braeden, a 7 foot behemoth shows up and tries to talk about family business. Noah is also under suspicion since he killed the Hellreaver Ape, a big boss monster and is in trouble because it was not supposed to die. He gets Braeden drunk and learns he (Vermil) was supposed to summon a demon. He then realizes Lee is a demon, but Lee tells him she is a normal one, and the one that Vermil summoned is stronger and escaped somewhere. Noah decides to go to the Linwick estate to learn more. He decides his students and Moxie and Emily and Lee will all come so they go on a merry adventure across dangerous countryside, with Edward and Alan, an annoying rich snobby student and teacher they beat in the exam. Ends the book with them reaching the estate.