I especially like how the protagonist is genuinely intelligent; not Sherlock Holmes style where they have the ability to pluck facts from thin air but genuinely intelligent, the kind where you try your hardest to think your way through (and actually think, not just mentally ramble). Writing intelligent characters is hard, but this novel pulls it off, at the very least for the protagonist.

14 Likes · Like

drakensji

Status: c29

Jun 28, 2021

Fascinating dive into studying a world of magic with a system. An intelligent and logical main character, who still makes mistakes.

And probably the first time where the "medieval" world wasn't actually that far behind in terms of knowledge to the modern world

7 Likes · Like

melchi

Status: chapter 97

Dec 16, 2022

So made it to chapter 97 which means I like this one enough not to drop it. Lets start with the good. The #1 strength of this story is the world building. Like others have said, magic, the system and human society are closely linked. The author explores this quite well.

The bad: The story is really a slog at parts. The alone in the woods first arc is the worst example of this. Someone could read the first chapter and then skim the next ten and not miss much.

Fights: for some reason I really don't like how fights are done in this novel. They come across as confusing and have a inconsistent pacing. Some things are overexplained while at times after reading a bit I find myself wondering how things got here. Or I read something and think how is this happening? How stats, perks, and magic is a bit wishy washy. Can a person take a hit with a kinetic projectile from a character with X stats? How many direct hits can so and so take. There are no hit points or something like that so things are a bit weird. There are quite a bit of people that get one-shot but if someone can be one-shot or not is unclear as a reader. Can anyone be oneshot? Is this a world filled with glass cannons? Unclear

Also, character sheet bloat is a problem. Alice ends up with a huge character sheet as the story progresses. Many of the abilities barely ever get used. Why even award them if they are only going to be there for one page? The result tends to be bogging down the story with barely relevant stuff at times.

The biggest problem I would say is the old "Show, don't tell" saying. Alice spends way too much time in her own headspace. I get that she is a scientist and testing hypothesis, thinking of experiments is important. But the delivery is not very enjoyable. Suggestion: stop, (or at least cut back) with whole paragraphs of just Alice thinking to herself. If she would just voice her ideas to her friends it would be better IMO. Reading dialogue is easier than mental musing and can get the same message across.

5 Likes · Like

Krit

Status: c89

Oct 13, 2022

This story maybe little too slow for people who like fast pace story but after around 20 chaps the story become more and more fun it just feel like we are experimenting and discovering the system with the protaganist.

4 Likes · Like

nullspice

Status: chapter 86

Sep 18, 2022

This is the first litrpg I've read where I felt the litrpg aspect was integral to the story, rather than being some way of making writing progression easier. I've long wondered about whether I dislike litrpg as a genre-tag, but this story proved that notion false. There are a lot of good litrpgs out there that are good, without really owing much of their quality to their litrpg aspects, instead to their character dynamics. This story, however, has the concept as a core. Quite frankly, if you like litrpg progression, this story will probably be up your alley. The thing you might find off-putting is the fairly consistent perspective switches. Some of them have intrigue, but there are a lot where I wasn't particularly invested in the random new characters being introduced by the switch.

Overall, for people who enjoy stories about mana, this is a gem.

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Aiwesh

Status: chapter 158

Mar 18, 2024

All is fine in the world of Budding scientist for as long as reader doesn't mind putting themselves in a position where thinking logically is being viewed by author as a sin or anomaly (reason? logic? planning? are they tasty?). MC lives for today, disregarding her future and potential with every step. Get along for the ride as MC slowly changes from magic-lover to a computer nerd writing Linux, so to speak. Imagine starting reading about a world of swords and magic with sorcerer MC only to end up with a story about sysadmin doing maintenance duties on an old as life glitchy computer day in, day out. Nothing in between.

As always for a lirpg this one seems to have the same glaring problem of having answers to all questions (dealing with any and all problems/plots) through System rewards. Author choice of being lazy is being seen from the very first chapters. Remember what first passive abilities MC gained and how many times they were used 50-100-200 chapters after? Zero. Just another fix for a plotline author made in minutes. Nothing to see here, move along.

Be prepared to read, no, to swim through an ocean of a truly obscene amount of plot armor (and be a-ok with it), describing why time and time again our protagonist—Mary Sue— reached new level of OP, doing the bare minimum if not outright making the wrong choices:

Spoiler

like skipping zoom/microscope perk, when mc' biggest strength is her eye powers; One would think that prioritizing boosting everything-eyes related should be #1 obvious choice in most cases. But alas... this particular MC is... unique.

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Try really hard not to spontaneously combust from never ending irritaton as MC tries and fails at prioritization all the damn time. New adventure every day. What, to-do lists? Never heard of them! The world is ending, but Im gonna spend 2 weeks learning etiquette, because Im smart! 150 INT to the win! IQ minus 200, though.

Here're some more little things that irritated the hell out off me before I dropped this litrpg-junk by chapter 160~ish in much more detail. Enjoy!

Spoiler

Plot armor galore throughout the whole novel: (perks where MC choices dont matter, she does not grow as a person, surviving (and learning) through fallouts after making bad desicions/choices-at-level-ups, 'cause author will fix every single poorly taken perk as the story goes into a completely unrecognizable OP ones (this has been explained as simply fem lead having more support from the System than it gives to everyone else, for no good reason other than been an outworlder) with no logic involved as to how or why perks suddenly upgraded to OP ones, in most if not all cases. 1+1 doesnt = 2, but a million because laziness strikes again.

Random perks always being merged into OP perks, even when one of the merged perks in question of the pairing was utter trash or was nothing similar to resulting composit perk after merging. Secondly, merging always makes end result 1 tier higher. 1 trash perk t1 + 1 another utter trash unrelated perk t1 = somehow always ends as OP perk tier2 that has nothing to do with one or both previous perks, but is always amazingly good. What fortune.

Fem lead's unique class exists sorely for enabling even more plot armor whenever events progress towards a harder problem, or when a more difficult opponent shows up than MC can possibly defeat on her own. Rather than using 'Earth' knowledge to weasel her way around difficulties or other methods, what say you, instead, MC gets freebies like OP rewards from the completion of the simplest achievements that no one but her accomplished, just because she has a unique class. Those free rewards play significant role towards victory or loss when events unravel.

MC, for whatever baffling reason, starts her adventure with a balooned out of proportion INT stat as a reward for doing nothing but going to school for half a decade, taking some basic lessons in robotics (may as well call it building LEGO figurines) and... and nothing! there's no 'and'. That's it. Author didnt bother presenting MC as a one of a kind genious or at the least very bright and capable woman. We just have to decide what 150 int means to us on our own. Yet, the way she operates draws a different picture. Her real INT may as well be sitting at a rather low 70 ish~ attribute points than whatever tripple digits joke is written in her char sheet, apparently mostly for laughs and giggles. Maybe there's even some hidden curse of mental impairment on top of that. Just to explain some of her stranger actions (like the way she doesnt even try to give a fast but super important Achievement-to-see-system-mana to her fellow immortal / sensei. It costs her literally nothing, no more than 1 hr of sitting in the mana void room, while her sensei repeats a few questions (in a pattern of her girlfriend before) every now and then for an hour. The world is literally goes to sh*t in the background, yet MC doesnt share what really matters for survival at large with ppl who isnt a weak small girl in a world full of assassins. Same problem with her inability to see reason in making a request (she never did) to get rare if not ALL enchant-capable materials in the world for her dream-enchant perk. Her sugar-daddy is obviously capable enough to provide all of this snd more, so that MC could have skyrocketed her enchanter class leveling superfast in her dreams while sleeping, researching new tools for her needs, but no. No such thing ever happened. And this is a problem with OP powers. Author, when u write such abilities, at least use them to a point, rather then immidiately shelving them in the background to grow dust.)

By now, I have completely given up expecting MC taking Magic learning perk boosting her Dreamwalker perk that, by the way, has like limitless mana to experiment, enabling just as much more possibilities for her to grow as magic researcher inside a dream in a relatively safe environment with no self-harm at the very least. On another case just her time-magic mana/ability/perk alone could have prolly produce 50% dream-time speed up evolving 8hrs of sleep into pseudo 12 hrs of scienc-y boosted study time.

Why then MC continues to be an irredeemable moron is beyond me. Again: she has access to ALL the enchanting material in the world via her sugar daddy's unfathomable pockets to permamently boost Dreamwalking enchanting ability, yet did she ask him for any herself? No. She did not. Because reasons.

Next. Early in the story and throughout it MC skips every single perk related to food and mana recovery (in a big way, not passive), but the very first one about not eating poison. Which has been utterly useless for most of the novel, but prologue. MC isnt a noble, nor does she travels outside comfy city walls. Yet she is already starting to become an extreme workaholic all day long no chill, no fun, no nothing (read dump idiot whos gonna have a heart attack soon), who doesnt even sleep nowadays when the world is ending and her efficiency is kinda important, you know? Why not, if nothing else, take a few perks to remove food consumption all together = no more food poisoning AND frees up 2 hrs /day by swapping perks to photosintesis and merging it with meditation or something, so she could gain some freetime to unwind, rather than eating commoner's food in a dirty dingy tavern? Instead MC wastes Dreamwalking scienc-y boosted hrs reading novels. Strange decision. Even for 16 yr old. I question her sanity. Working all day with no rest is bad for u. Eating did not translate into rest and having fun last time I checked.

No char development whatsoever. Although not much time has passed in the story up until now for a good amount of char dev. It is simply a much more visible problem when MC doesnt do very well with logic in her daily live, especially when it matters for her to have any mid-term and long-term plans (they are nonexistant, if u were wondering) : not a single time MC had any intention asking friendly/allied immortals for some help in the developing of a pre-planned compound-perk-build out of her group of classes, not even a little min-maxing or stat/class-grows perks were involved at any level-ups unless they happen to give her above 50% boost per perk. Most of the time it's just her taking whatever best fits to answer a current problem, then repeat; Everything else is being magically fixed through a unique class, perks closely related to this very unique class and achievements' rewards most of which are, u guessed it, related to her unique class).

Finally, and this is just my opinion, - lots of problems with this story overall could have been fixed if some changes were to be implemented sooner (in the story) than later:

Move big character sheets into google drive (cloud), rather than flooding chapters with math and repeated gamelit terminology at every corner. No one cares reading about 1K words of status screen all the time. And those that do care, prolly wont mind checking every now and then provided urls to google drive at the bottom of the chapters by themselves. This story devolved into telling reader mostly about theory crafting of what if and what could be gained in the near future, plus spamming game info dumps everywhere, rather than telling a story. Ive found myself skipping any status screen info dumps for the last 70 chapters.
lv25 pre-class cap >> lv100 main class cap >> post-class lv25?? Does that mean evolved main class is lv25 hard cap? or is there something after lv25 immortal, I am confused-- all of this seems highly convoluted. Why not simply set 100 lv. hard cap for each type of class stage. For example: 100+100 lvls of main class (pre-class evolves into main at 100, then main evolves into immortall path at 100) gets a person to the start of immortal path, only opening its doors left, whereas 100+100+100 is immortal class cap. Simple, right? 400 for demigods. 500 -- gods. 600 -- world destroyers (janitors) etc. Make every 25 levels twice hard and call it a day.
New skill / perk every 25 levels rather than every 5. At this stage (chapter 158) this novel is flooded with miriad of numbers, old useless perks no one cares about or remembers anything anymore without checking out huge status screen info dumps. Too much skills, too much perks. Why do this? This doesnt make sense.
Showing any potential 'choices' to reader at perks selection is, by far, the most glaringly obvious mistake. There were dozens of times where MC took absolutely useless subpar perk in the spur of a moment (again, in my opinion), rather than taking a decent longterm alternative (zoom, microscope, dream magic research with limitless mana, any mana type identification, etc), which I know of only because I have been informed about that potential choice before hand. The only thing showing choices does for me is making me irritated in most cases. I would rather not know that MC is a mentally challenged person in such a story where she plays the role of a scientist. Not a madman.
Not once female lead tried to change any perk through Church. I still remember there was a perk to boost magic by 20% that MC ignored for some trash perk, or that food poisoning perk that MC could do without. This wouldnt be a problem if not for perk molding system at 50+ and 75+ levels. Fem lead never tried to build a custom build for herself at any given time or ask anyone for suggestions, it's like she is absolutely sure she can do no wrong. Disgusting.
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3 Likes · Like

Afewconcepts65

Status: chapter 73

Jun 19, 2022

I feel like this story is a sort of critique of the iseaki genre, or at least certain aspects of iseaki. Iseaki has a tendency to imply that the protagonist's old world is superior to the fantasy one. Sure the protagonist's old life tends to be bland or terrible, but when they're sent to the alternate world their knowledge from their old world tends to set them above the residents of the fantasy one. They can decimate large armies and swarms of monsters with their recreated guns or abuse their knowledge of physics with magic. They recreate conveniences of our modern world in a very technologically struggling world and get praised for it.

This story takes this idea of bringing over knowledge of our world to dominate on its head. It says that thinking your high-school physics puts you above everyone else in this alternate world is the peak of arrogance. From what we've seen so far this new world works completely differently. Its alien and weird to us. The people have a completely different perspective. To really sell how out of her depth the protagonist is, the story starts off as a wilderness survival story like hatchet. It's a really unique take on the genre.

This kind of story basically lives and dies on its world building and so far I think its been doing a great job. The world almost entirely revolves around the system and mana. The monsters have been pretty unique, although we've only seen a few and the magic is very interesting and unique. All these things have obscured rules that pique the readers' interest and make one want to continue reading to learn more.

Overall I'd highly recommend at least giving this story a try, however I have a few warnings. The story spends a lot of its time in the protagonist's head. Personally I really like this (in this story at least) because the whole point of the story is to try and understand the world, but others may find it boring or feel not a lot is happening each chapter. Also the protagonist's actions can sometimes feel frustrating this is a bit of a spoiler but an example is...

Spoiler

there is a point when leveling up where you litterally become immortal. At one point the protagonist meets an immortal and when talking to them doesn't even think to try and ask them if they might be willing to participate in an experiment or to. Like they're doing experiments on what happens when residents enter a place with no mana and you don't even consider what would happen if a being made completely of mana went into the room?

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Otherwise very good story

3 Likes · Like

SolitaireGothLich

Status: capítulo 67

May 14, 2022

EPIC

2 Likes · Like

darkpikacha

Status: chapter 58

Feb 22, 2022

Rating - Overall a great readThe pacing of Alice is nice and comfortable. Something I do like about it. She is completely logical and uses fair reasoning when making her decisions. Which is part of the charm of the novel. Also the story feels very concrete and sturdy. All of the characters feel logical and self aware of Alice as well.

Spoiler

I really do like how Alice questions the system itself and gets rewarded for it. I rarely see that in other Litrpgs.

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2 Likes · Like

Jemini

Status: chapter 161

Apr 10, 2024

I mean, where do I even start with this series? I read through this author's other series, Markets and Multiverses, and I thought that was good. But this one, Budding Scientist, it's on a whole other level of amazing!

It's a rationalist litRPG. By rationalist, that means that every part of it is explained in detail. The existence of "the system" is justified, quite thoroughly and believably, as a an answer to a harmful and life-threatening substance in the air known as "mana, " turning it from a deadly poison to a boon that helps people get stronger. And we spend this entire series watching as our protagonist learns things about the system that is quite distressingly on the verge of breaking down.

And even that convenient timing is rationally explained, because the gradual breakdown of the system is actually what weakened the dimensional barrier enough to pull her to this other world.

The threats that our cast has to deal with are colossal to such an extent that the author really does not have to fall back on the tired old tropes of needlessly hostile ass-hole government forces or nobles. And so, they don't. The incredible threat posed by monsters of the wilderness, other nations, and the increasing deadliness of mana as the system that once protected humanity is breaking down in stages are plenty to deal with and drive the story, making the situation seem hopeless enough, that we can completely do away with the typical shallow interactions that we see in some other series. Our protagonist is actually smart, and does smart things. The people around our protagonist are also smart and rational, and extremely capable. Everyone acts in the best interest of both themselves and also those around them, because the thing that allows you to live and do well is when the others around you are also surviving and doing well, especially when faced off against such massive threats.

This whole thing is just a massive breath of fresh air in a world that is burdened down by other series full of shallow tropes. I would recommend everyone give this a read. The 1st book is taken down for an Amazon deal, but this is one series I would absolutely 100% recommend you do buy the 1st book so you can read through this fantastic series.

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