Stands Alone

For six years, Owen streamed Old School RuneScape to a few thousand strangers a night. His Hardcore Ironman, Stands Alone, was maxed and had never died. Careful planning was his whole brand. Then he crossed a road reading chat. He wakes on a riverbank below Lumbridge Castle, in the body of Tam Fallow, a farmhand who has just drowned saving a little boy. He has one hitpoint. And Lumbridge isn't a castle and a few houses any more. It's a real town, full of real people, and when they die, they don't come back. Neither will he. He brings everything he knows about the game: every quest, every monster, every shortcut. He brings the game's skills too, and he can level them in months where everyone else needs a lifetime. He also brings the rules of an ultimate ironman, which he never chose. No bank. Nothing given, nothing lent. When the farmer wraps his own coat around Tam's shoulders, it slides off into the mud, and a message only he can see appears: Stands Alone is an Ironman. He stands alone. In the game, these people were NPCs with three lines of dialogue. Here, they pulled him out of the river. He knows how every quest is supposed to go. Now he's going to find out how they go when they're real. What to expect - You don't need to have played. Every game term is explained the first time it matters. If you have played, you'll catch the details: examine texts, quest scrolls, and level-ups in the game's own words. - LitRPG, Old School style. Skills level by doing: chopping, fishing, smithing, fighting. There are level-ups and XP drops, but no walls of stats. - Ultimate ironman rules. No bank, 28 squares, and nothing anyone gives him stays in his hands. What he carries, and what he leaves behind, is half the game. - One life. As far as he knows, death is death. - Quests go off-script. He knows every solution, but the people are real, and some of the game's quests hand power to villains. He looks for a better way. - Funny, until it isn't. A sarcastic hero who jokes when he's scared, in a world that plays it straight. Fights on the page, a slow romance, no sex, and no swearing written out. - A new chapter every day, about 2,700 words each. How this is written: I plan the story (the world, the people, every arc and chapter) and direct the writing. An AI model drafts the chapters to my plans and notes. I read them and have them revised until they're right. That's why it carries the AI-Generated tag. Created using intellectual property belonging to Jagex Limited under the terms of Jagex's Fan Content Policy. This content is not endorsed by or affiliated with Jagex. — Description from novelcodex.orgFull novel: Stands Alone — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠