Etherious: Fresh Beginnings

The System's Descent: Etherious, Book 1

De: Em Es

Narrado por: Todd Haberkorn

When you've hit rock bottom, the only direction to go is up.

Getting hit by a truck didn't Isekai Arthur Ward, but he did wake up in a world forever changed.

When Earth evolves, passing a threshold few even knew existed, humanity is whisked away by the Grand System to engage in an educational Tutorial to bring them up to speed, the introduction of the new energy source that has been made available: Ether.

Arthur Ward is left behind, bleeding out on the sidewalk.

The world has evolved, upgraded, and mankind must change with it in order to survive. Animals have become deadly monsters that prowl the streets, dimensional incursions are a constant threat, and Arthur is forced to adapt or die.

With new rules to live by and a path to redemption before him, Arthur now has a way to right his wrongs. At least he thinks so. After all, nothing is quite impossible when you can rewrite reality itself.

The path to power, however, is a slippery slope. Achieving his goals will test Arthur in ways he'd never expected.

This is the first book in a LitRPG fantasy series with 800,000 views on Royal Road. Perfect for fans of Defiance of the Fall, The Primal Hunter, and Road to Mastery!

Expect an MC with multiple magic affinities, Muay Thai, a combination of human progression mixed with monster core consumption, title collection, and no harem.

©2025 Em Es (P)2025 Podium Audio

Very entertaining

I thoroughly enjoy the book. It’s a well played story. However, it has a bit of new flavor. Tim V

decent premise, decent acting, decent overall.

The premise of the story is not bad at all, with the system and characters. The author does tend to be overly redundant with initial descriptions (I believe at one point they spent 4 minutes describing how scared the main character was in one paragraph). The voice actor is pretty good except for female voices, he made a university student woman sound like a middle school girl with the high pitched whining. That part gets annoying quick. I'll update when finished with book

Overall a good book and

It’s a good book and I’m excited for the next one. The MC is a good balance between special boy and average Jo. It is a little heavy on the stats but not by too much and the narrator pronounces whilst weird. Overall a good book well worth reading.

A good new twist on litrpg stories

Overall was great. Only tell issue was the portrayal of the one voice the narrator portrayed that I struggled to move past. It’s the little things.

Starts out OK, then slows down

The writing is bland and verbose, and there's too much internal monologuing by the main character. People interact in unrealistic ways because the plot demands it, which makes it impossible to view any of the characters as actual people that the reader can care about.

The first half of the book is OK as the MC figures out how to survive, but once the population returns, he stops progressing for no good reason. Pretty boring from then on.

Over explaining

The plot works, but I found myself getting frustrated with the constant over explaining and repetitive circular inner monologues. 1 adjective is never enough.