Aliandra Amariel loved magic, dedicating her academic years to the study of runes and spells, pushing the boundaries of mana's infinite possibilities. Like most Fae, her destiny seemed clear until that fateful day of her Class Trial, when the Blind Lich unleashed an undead apocalypse on her home, the fabled underground city of Dal’mohra, and triggered The Breaking – a cataclysm that forever reshaped the world.

Saved by her mother’s legendary time-stasis spell, Ali wakes thousands of years into a dark future. Everything she knew and loved is gone, buried under a mountain, transformed into a twisted dungeon by the malevolent will of the Lich.

Now, Ali must confront her deepest fears, mastering the arts of battling monsters and braving a town riddled with corruption. As the Lich's grand design shadows her every move, she scrambles to forge new friendships and unearth ancient knowledge in her fight for survival.

Why must she struggle? All she had ever wanted was to curl up in a comfy chair with a few thousand good books. But the immortal Lich is drawn to her unique magic, ever hungry for more power to fuel his cold-hearted ambitions.

How will she survive the giant target painted on her back as her advancement slowly reveals the horrifying truth of the Class she chose to save herself? Will she falter, forced into the eternal servitude of undeath, or will she rise against all odds and cast him down, ridding the world of his evil?

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Release Schedule: Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday.
This story is also available on RoyalRoad and Patreon.
Access +50 chapters on Patreon.
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What to expect:

- LitRPG elements cover classes, skills, monsters, enchantments, and items. Stat blocks appearing at the end of chapters are generally considered informational and can be skipped if desired.
- Multiple POVs as we follow Ali and her friends on their adventures.
- Heavy focus on Group and Raid dungeon combat inspired by games like WoW, PoE, and Diablo.
- Some profanity, lots of gore, a touch of humor
- No romance.
- This is not a traditional dungeon core story with a fixed consciousness plotting levels in a hole.

Genre

ActionAdventureFantasyLitRPG

Tags

Adventurers Books Bookworm Dragons Dungeon Master Dungeons Fantasy Creatures Fantasy World Female Protagonist Game Elements Guilds Level System Magic Monsters Multiple POV Non-human Protagonist RPG

Table of Contents 318

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Chapter 284: Return to the Mines (Part 2)23 hours ago
Chapter 283: Return to the Mines (Part 1)Jun 17, 2025
Chapter 282: CraftingJun 16, 2025
Chapter 281: A Little Alone TimeJun 15, 2025
Chapter 280: The Crafters’ ConundrumJun 15, 2025
Chapter 279: An Altercation at the GuildJun 14, 2025
Chapter 278: A Conversation with VivianJun 14, 2025
Chapter 277: The Pathfinder’s ReportJun 12, 2025
Chapter 276: Challenge ArenaJun 11, 2025
Chapter 275: A Sparring Match on the PlazaJun 10, 2025
Chapter 274: Perspectives (Part 3)Jun 9, 2025
Chapter 273: Perspectives (Part 2)Jun 8, 2025
Chapter 272: Perspectives (Part 1)Jun 8, 2025
Chapter 271.5: Aliandra – Status SheetJun 7, 2025
Chapter 271: Dungeon of KnowledgeJun 7, 2025

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New packbat

Status: chapter 276: challenge arena

Jun 11, 2025

Something people don't always appreciate about roleplaying games is that rules tell stories. The attribute system of Dungeons & Dragons tells a story of hulking warriors, sneaky thieves, cunning priests, knowledgeable spellcasters, and charming musicians. The stress system of Blades in the Dark tells the story of people under pressure, with not enough time to rest, trying not to crack under the strain. The aspect system of Fate tells a story of high-concept protagonists with clearly defined natures.

In Dungeon of Knowledge, the story creates the rules.

Wait, no, that's not quite right: each person's story creates the mechanics they then live.

You see this from Chapter 1 in the concept of a Class Trial: for someone to get the class they want (and this is a LitRPG, so your class has a great influence on your abilities going forward), they need to train - get experience - doing things that reflect the class they seek. Ideally, they should have been doing that for years beforehand, but certainly in that crucial period between unlocking a class slot and actually getting a class. It's not just classes, though. Over and over, characters get abilities to help them do what they have managed to do without having that ability - in just the first fifteen chapters, looking at the starting abilities of their classes:

Spoiler

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Aliandra Amariel, our first protagonist, began the story able to cast a couple small cantrips, and two of the spells she wins after she gets her class reflect the tricks she pulled with her rudimentary magic.
Malika spent almost a decade trapped in a cycle of violent exploitation without giving up on her hope of becoming a heroic martial artist, and gains an aptitude called Relentless that lets her keep fighting longer.
Calen, a studious archer with sharp senses and a Cartography skill, gets an Explorer skill which amplifies his ability to interpret and remember what he sees as he looks around.
Mato, the son of a berserker with his long history of getting into fights with bullies, gets an ability to steal damage from those around him to protect them and his own berserker ability.

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This is a LitRPG, obviously, and crashingly unsubtle about its CRPG and MMORPG influences - they talk freely about "tanking" and "pick up groups" and "kiting" and so on, despite living in a world with no connection to Earth - but those game-y elements aren't separate from the narrative elements. The characters are characters first, not speedrunners doing an ironman challenge, and they make decisions that reflect themselves... and their progression reflects themselves as well.

And it's also just a fun fantasy story. Some of the worldbuilding is a little underbaked (books are rare and expensive, yet literacy is widespread?), but the fight scenes are dramatic, the dramatic scenes are suspenseful, and the protagonists are heroes who save people. We're having a good time.

1 Likes · Like

New TumblingMice

Status: chapter 274: perspectives (part 3)

Jun 10, 2025

This story is pretty good. I'm a sucker for LitRPGs. If you are too, you'll probably have a good time. Solid fanfic fast food. That said, there are some major issues which hold it back from a 5. I'll try to avoid spoilers but there are by necessity some minor ones:

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The prose, while solid grammatically, is clumsy and would benefit from an editor. Name a writing sin, it's here in spades. Adverbs, redundancy, explaining the obvious, telling over showing. Real "I need to hit a target word count" energy. Get ready for a lot of sentences like:

"While the vests looked hideously stained with what was evidently real blood, even without leatherworking expertise, Ali could see how finely wrought the enchantments were, and how integral the 'decorative' coloring was to the proper functioning of the piece."

Which could be half as long, if not shorter:

"The vests oozed with blood—real blood—but even Ali's untrained eyes appreciated how that blood fuelled the potent enchantments woven into the leather."

This may sound like a nitpick, but it's the biggest problem for me. I increasingly just skim the story because so many sentences don't justify their word count.

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The main characters don't take the initiative. I can't remember the last time they did something for a reason other than someone asking them to. The text seems almost self-aware about this, such as when Ali constantly bemoans her lack of appropriate minions for a dungeon they're doing, yet makes no effort to find any—despite the dungeon in question being non-time-sensitive.

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There's a real lack of weight to events. You never get a sense that anyone who matters to you is in any real danger. When the main characters seem to be utterly flippant about a major assassination plot it's hard to fault them, because the assassin seems to respect that nobody you care about should die.

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Plot points are laid out to serve where the author wants the plot to go, with little regard for whether this makes sense at the time. Ali makes inexplicable grimoire decisions early on: it turns out this is because they'll be needed by the story dozens of chapters later. The crime lord in town has plot armour for no reason. Malika learns critical information about a villain early on and then forgets to mention it.

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Finally, a nitpick: the lack of romance in this story is very odd. I'm not saying we need slice-of-life date scenes, but there are IIRC two couples in the entire story, in both cases because they are the parents of key characters who need parents. In at least one case the parents are at least sort-of separated. I'm including even one-off characters here! Not only is this a completely bizarre departure from society, but despite this the author keeps including flirting for some reason. It's just strange.

3 Likes · Like

TheBlestKitten

Status: chapter 91

Jun 29, 2024

For those of you who like fantasy worlds and exploration that is just a little different than the normal LitRPG, characters worth investing in their growth and change, and an overall easy to read and descriptive style, Dungeon of Knowledge is well worth your time! This is such a beautifully crafted, edited, and polished story you have begun, and I cannot wait to watch the rest of this journey unfold. The numerous edit passes you did have really paid off; your work has become so much more descriptive and clean. The magic and colors and fantasy is exciting, but I love how right off the bat you have put magic in the mundane. Things we would experience here and now but just a little bit more special. You’ve done a really lovely job with that, and it really has helped to make this expanding fantasy world of yours to shine. Adding to that, you have immediately given us multiple characters to begin to invest in, both positively and negatively! Their struggles and perspectives are realistic enough to relate to and fantastical enough to be excited how they will navigate their journeys in a way we couldn’t in the real here and now. I truly cannot wait to see where you go from here, and will keep my notifications on. &Nbsp;Well done on a smashing start!

7 Likes · Like

Zagaroth

Status: chapter 54

Jul 27, 2024

I enjoyed burning my way through this story to catch up. This has been a fun read.

Style:

The LitRPG elements of this story are clean and easy to understand, and the numbers are generally not used much in combat outside of tracking hit points and magic points, usually after a section of combat has happened.

While the numbers are part of the narrative, they are not simple Level X+1 beats Level X-1 every time. But the larger the gap the harder the difference is to overcome, until it is impossible.

Story:

The full depth of the story has yet to be showcased, but this is early days still. We have a main antagonist, a few tiers of lesser antagonists, and a plethora of threats and dangers. A group is coming together with disparate skills and personalities, and they are slowly learning to trust each other and to expand their skills.

Grammar:

Clean and clear, full marks. I suspect his editor has helped here, but that's why we all love having editors, it makes our work better. :)

Character:

We have a nicely sized main cast with rich personalities who complement and contrast with each other. All of them are set up to have an interesting arc of personal growth and development, some of which has already been shown to us.

I can't say more than that without risking spoilers. So I ask that you trust my judgment that character growth is being earned, often the very hard way.

6 Likes · Like

deimosdemands

Status: chapter 168: protégé

Dec 10, 2024

Reviewed at c168. Cleanly and skillfully written. Engaging, logically consistent and well-balanced. Character motivations make sense and their actions have meaningful consequences. Tropes are cleverly intertwined. World-building is creative and organic, with a nice blend of show and tell. I thought the presentation of different perspectives was particularly well-done, with the somewhat gruesome reality of 'tanking' being one example to watch out for.

RPG elements drive the story (and vice versa) in a way that makes sense. Giant statblocks are provided when relevant at chapter endings, so us numbers nerds can get all the details but everyone else's reading experience flows smoothly. Much more concise reminders appear at convenient points. People often make suboptimal choices, but it's always clearly their well-established personality shining through and not author railroading for the sake of plot.

My main disappointment is there's not another few hundred chapters to binge. Frankly I can't believe there's only three reviews at this point, but at least we all seem to agree so far: this story is exceptional.

4 Likes · Like

Himms

Status: c220

May 30, 2025

Really great stuff. You can clearly see the influence of Diablo. When author is describing few creatures and their attack pattern.

3 Likes · Like

Ndhak

Status: c20

May 2, 2025

At first glance, Dungeon of Knowledge seems like a standard dungeon-crawler, but it gradually reveals itself to be something more layered. The concept of blending intellectual discovery with typical RPG mechanics feels fresh—especially in a genre that often prioritizes brute force over insight.

What stands out is the way the dungeon itself becomes a character—mysterious, ever-changing, and laced with purpose. The pacing leans contemplative, occasionally breaking away from action to dwell on philosophical or strategic musings, which may not suit every reader but certainly deepens the atmosphere.

The protagonist doesn't follow the usual overpowered arc. Their growth feels earned, shaped by cleverness rather than strength, which adds to the story's charm. If you're tired of dungeons that feel like checklists of tropes, this one offers a quieter, more cerebral twist on the formula.

3 Likes · Like

KanaSuzuki

Status: chapter 235: does it have fire?

Apr 28, 2025

This novel is a masterclass in storytelling, showcasing craftsmanship and creativity of extraordinary caliber. The richly woven narrative features a diverse cast of meticulously developed characters, each evolving organically through the course of the story. Plot progression, worldbuilding, and character decisions intertwine flawlessly, creating a seamless and immersive experience that never feels contrived. The pacing is deftly controlled, allowing for profound character growth while maintaining narrative momentum.

One of the standout elements is the innovative skill system, which is brilliantly conceptualized and integrated into the story without ever resorting to dry exposition. Every ability and plot twist serves a purpose, contributing meaningfully to the overarching tale. The prose flows effortlessly, balancing complexity and clarity in a way that highlights the author’s exceptional command of language.

Timewalk has crafted nothing short of a literary gem—a work that captivates, inspires, and lingers in the mind long after the final page. This is storytelling at its finest, a gift to readers who cherish depth, originality, and artistry.

3 Likes · Like

Aswellll

Status: chapter 18: fire in the darkness

Jun 6, 2025

I don’t think the story is bad—it’s well-written and the characterization is solid—but I just can’t read it because of repeated usage of the words “tank” and “tanking”.

The story is set in a fantasy world, yet the term is used exactly as in video games and MMOs to describe a character who draws enemy attention and absorbs damage. While the concept generally fits, the gaming slang is very specific to online culture and jarring when used casually in the story.

This usage breaks immersion for me because it feels like borrowed modern day jargon rather than something natural to the setting. Since the term appears multiple times per chapter, it becomes repeatedly distracting and pulls me out of the story every time it shows up.

In short, the idea of a character who “tanks” works, but using that exact word with its strong video game associations ultimately made me drop the story due to how continuously immersion breaking it’s usage was. For reference, in chapter 16 the word was used 5 times.

2 Likes · Like