Like the title says, I’ve really enjoyed the story so far. However, this book just like the last book has really ruined the power scaling. The author in my opinion made one of the big but common mistake that a lot of writers find themselves committing especially in litrpgs. Which is making the mc to strong to early. Once Anthony started launching black holes at enemies the story from that point only had a few ways to go in order to be coherent. Either you introduce new enemies that are way stronger to compensate or you change the very nature of the enemies as a whole. The author did neither but instead dedicated the last two books nerfing Anthony. The author was trying to do a course correction but ended up ruining the power scaling of their story. I also think the writer wanted to sanitized the violence when dealing with what the writer calls enlightened races. If this was book 1-3 loads of people would have died during the occupation of that underground city but the writer decided to put on the kids gloves. I was hoping that they would show the true consequences of what happens when you occupy a foreign city with the six year old throwing the rock. However, it was just used as a pay off to a joke. Which was disappointing. If we are to take the last two books seriously then Garralosh could have been defeated by 15 random stone men or 20 legionaires. Anthony barely defeated her last time and that’s when he was a tier lower,had weak allies and was many mutations weaker. Yet we are to believe that she was a terror on the lower floors for decades? If the legion or rock men were always this powerful then there is no way Garralosh wouldn’t have been defeated years ago. That’s how out of wack book 1-3 is from 4&5.
We also see this course correction when it pertains to Anthony’s gravity magic. The writer is desperate for us to forget how powerful those spells were. I literally rolled my eyes and stop listening multiple times when the writer kept pretending that the gravity bomb wouldn’t have gotten Anthony out of all his problems for the last two books. You can’t keep saying that an attack so powerful that it’s gravitational pull bends light itself isn’t killing everybody it’s launched at. If a black hole appeared in the middle of your army, even for 10 seconds, your dead along with anything within a km. The fact that the writer had only one person at most die from each bomb launched at a horde of soliders was absurd. Also, these fights are underground. So that means that the tunnel you’re in and any around the impact site is collapsed. That means you all will suffocate from the sudden lack of oxygen or that all your lungs would be pulled out your mouths from the sudden vaccum.Anthony was killing monsters by the hundreds using just gravity magic but it’s like the author is using every excuse to keep him from using it. Whether it’s emotional distress, sudden indecision, magic strain or pursuing other magic. All rang hollow for me because it’s obvious what the writer was doing. He created a one size fits all attack for his MC and wants to put it back in the box.
That being said, I enjoy the characters of this story.I think the ants are hilarious and their pursuits to solve the many problems of the colony is captivating. I enjoy the humans for the most as well, especially as antagonists. Their reasons for going against the colony makes sense from thier point of view. So overall, I like the direction the story is going. I just wish the writer just embrace that Anthony gravity magic is basically a supreme weapon and just works his story around that fact.