System Warrior

A LitRPG Progression Fantasy

By: Shane Hammond

Narrated by: Christopher Harbour, Mandy McCullough

Length: 16 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

Survive the apocalypse, conquer in the arena, and become the ultimate gladiator.

My life took a turn I never expected on the day the world ended. Suddenly forced to fight in a bloody arena by a faceless System, I find the only way to survive is to win. I’m told that ten victories in the arena will give me my freedom, but if I’m going to get there, I’ll need a crack team of hardened allies to fight with me.

What I got instead was a bratty college girl with a jealousy streak, a momma’s boy roommate who now inhabits the body of a piglet, and a devastatingly gorgeous teacher whose sword is as sharp as her tongue. If we could learn to work together, we might just win this thing—and even take the time to rescue an innocent blonde from my past.

But the sands of the arena are treacherous and unforgiving. And even though my legendary warlord subclass comes with mysterious benefits in the bedroom and the arena, our new overlords would love nothing more than to see us ground into dust.

I’m told the System rewards bravery. Guess it’s time to find out.

©2024 Shane Hammond (P)2024 Royal Guard Publishing LLC

Awesome ❣️

Added info from the first time i read on Kindle.
And the additional information and story line really add a lot. I like it even better.
Questions were answered that I didn't even know I had.
A portal HaremLit treasure!
I am super excited for book 2.
I'm giving this book 9 out of 5 stars.

Awesome series

It is a very fresh take on the genre, I am excited to see how the series develops. The performance is very well done aswell.

Gladiator Harem

Well I picked this book rather quickly due to work constraints. So I got a basic litrpg but I should have looked at the cover art more. So it's a basic harem story and litrpg. Narration was good!

New Journey

Fantasy and Apocalyptic Harem and much more!! One of the best audiobooks of the year!

It was a great story and the voice actors were awesome

I love the book Hope it continues can’t wait for the second loved everything about it.

a great first book

Great story and excellent characters that you will really enjoy. Excellent suspense and action and plenty of humor and romance. I cannot wait to read the next book in this series!

Gem of a Book

Amazing the VA's on point writing is excellent fast paced with fun banter recommend this book for people who love gladiators and litrpg

5 stars

🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞I hope there are more books to come in this series! The MC is great along with a really good supporting cast! The story is captivating! The narrators also do a good job of bringing the story to life! Great job Shane Hammond!

Not bad

This wasn’t bad but not perfect. What I thought was lame was when the mc found a power he could use when his girls were in danger but when they were in the arena he choked and watched them get hurt. I had to drop a star simply for that

DNF...I tried, but just can't...

I'm mostly writing this as a warning to others who aren't as lenient as the majority in this genre's reader base. If you're far more lenient than I am, your mileage will go way further than mine or others who are like me did. Let me get to my reasons.

First, minor spoiler warning as some examples will be used from the story.

Second, I know these stories aren't supposed to be super serious dramatic stuff on par with the likes of big names like Tolkien and others, but you still expect a little bit more effort and thought put into them. I realize the vast majority of the reader base, as I said, are far more lenient for whatever their individual reasons but what immediately started taking me out of the story was the lack of believability in character behavior. Case and point, the world, for the most part, pretty much ends around everyone, MC is in one moment sitting on his couch with his roommate best friend playing video games and the next moment he's in a dungeon cell. There's no believable reaction to any of this, he just moves on. While I consider myself, due to my military training, to be someone that is highly adaptable to bad situations, I would still have a reaction to the end of the world. Full stop. This goes on and MC and best friend are cracking jokes almost immediately throughout the initial situation. Best friend is the worse of all in my opinion because he's been changed from human to a little animal-like creature and he just takes it in stride. There's no trauma, no grief, no nothing that you'd expect normal human beings to exhibit when they meet with something not only fantastical but extreme. This lack of any type of human behavior goes on even when they discover nearly everyone they knew, to include another best friend, is dead. Nope....his hot sister is still alive so let's jump to that and we need to go save her.

When MC meets another hot girl in a lineup where they're getting picked by monstrous looking beings, MC can only target lock on the human looking hot female that's picking from the lineup. MC and we'll call her Spear Girl starts to engage in conversation as if they were in line waiting for movie tickets - flirting, joking, playful banter, the whole nine. Mind you these people just had the world as far as they know it end, found out most of the people they knew save them are either dead or enslaved by alien overlords, and that they will be picked to fight to the death in an alien gladiator arena. Yet, they're joking, laughing, flirting, talking like none of this is reality and MC is ogling the, let's call her Ms. Dominatrix simply because she looks good. I'll also remind you that most of the people picking the humans to fight and die look like monsters or demons. Barely a reaction to any of this.

Then comes the everything-comes-easy plot armor for MC. I fully admit I DNF, it's in the title. I didn't even get to double digit chapters. I just couldn't keep going. MC, who I remind you before all this was a person sitting on his couch with his best friend playing video games. He was a college student or just out of college young adult. No mention of being a middle aged melee practitioner like being in active in HEMA or anything like that. He of course gets a unique class....go figure...a class that supposedly puts a target on his back to the degree that MC is forced to fight a gigantic minotaur like monster. He's pretty much outclassed at his level in this fight but through the mighty pen of the godauthor (plot armor) MC, who has no training fighting with a sword (or spear) or fighting in general as far as we knew, he defeats the monster that everyone else said was a death sentence for him, with style! Are you serious? I might have been less annoyed if the author just let MC fight another human like the others rather than go into this semi-epic fight with this gigantic monster and have MC fight with such expertise I kept rolling my eyes at the unbelievability.

From there, I just couldn't. MC turns into the usual HaremLit or Progression Fantsy LitRPG OPMC with OPMC syndrome. Gets arrogant, never wants to be taught anything, yes, even by Mrs. Dominatrix, demands things, etc. Starts acting like he owns the place all because he defeated one gigantic minotaur monster when Mrs. Dominatrix tells him that he's not the hottest thing on the block. But of course she's being semi-flirtatious because it's MC.

What also annoyed me is...and this is the last thing, I swear...but the humans each managed to get a weapon during their semi-dungeon crawl to the aforementioned gladiator draft lineup. Spear Girl got well...a spear. MC got a rusty sword. During the "epic fight" with the minotaur monster he breaks his sword. What I'm getting at is that each of these people had ONE WEAPON to fight with to protect themselves in their upcoming match up that they had to win in order to survive and go on to training. MC sat there and watched several on his team get killed. Yet during his match he steals Spear Girl's spear to fight the minotaur monster, breaks it, and can't figure out why, although she barely managed to survive her match with a dagger she borrowed from someone else...he can't understand why she's a bit peeved at him and showing it in actions and words. No, he calls her childish and entitled...WTF man. You took her only weapon. Even when he finds out that she trained in a spear before the semi-apocalypse, he's still acting like she shouldn't be mad that he stole her weapon and almost got her killed. I get that he needed a weapon to help him fight the minotaur monster...I really do...but at least have some self-awareness that in doing what you did, you also put her in danger. Up where I left off, the jerk didn't even offer what amounted to a sincere apology....

It was at the point where he was demanding Mrs. Dominatrix put herself in jeopardy to save dead bestie's sister from another, what we'll call team leader no matter what. I guess because he now had a goal to save someone, he was promising to behave and stop acting like an arrogant idiot...but by then my annoyance levels were too high and I tapped out.

Your mileage may vary.