I'm pretty torn about this book honestly. It has both strong negatives and positives.

First of all, it follows the same setup as other dungeon cores. Human reborn as a dungeon core. Tiny assistant that knows more than the human. Growing village outside. Adventure party the dungeon core grows to like. Evil plot to destroy the dungeon. Which.. if you've read other dungeon cores? Why bother reading this at all?
I honestly don't think I can recommend it to anyone outside of cat lovers. If you love cats, that might be enough to endear this to you. But if not? Skip it.

There are positive sides, and differences to a typical dungeon core book.
Florence, the main characters, is an 80 year old human. Which.. is pretty rare if not entirely unheard of. Makes sense tho doesn't it? Why is it only scrappy young men being reborn into a fantasy realm? The bad side here is that human Florence is.. the most annoying character I've ever met. She's an old Karen, she's hateful, and judgeful, and god-spouting, old lady who yells at everyone and gossips while at the same time lording over everyone else how SHE doesn't do those things. The good news is that.. THAT Florence is only a chapter or three old before she changes.

And unlike other cores, Florence remembers her human life. And that assistant of hers? Well, first of all it's not a flirty relationship. Which almost every other dungeon core does. In fact, they don't even like eachother at the beginning. Florence ignores her assistant and her assistant's advice and does all the wrong things in creating her dungeon. They grow into friends, but it's more like siblings: You like eachother, but sometimes you bicker, and sometimes you just ignore them. And I really loved this relationship. It was refreshing, and will be one of the reasons I'll probably read the next book.

I however, loved the ending, and it was almost good enough to bump this up to 4 stars. I'll give the next book a try, it has potential. But so far it's just.. the typical story wearing a cash shop skin featuring cats and dogs.

Digby Graves was alive 800 years ago, and his memories leading up to how he ended up dying in a small boat to a zombie bite is hazy at best. So when some people find him frozen in the ice and transport him to an institute in Seattle, he's just as surprised as them to find that he has managed to spark the Zombie Apocalypse upon defrosting. And thus the story starts, Digby mastering his new skills, trying to survive in a city crawling with zombies and trying to balance his human morals with the cravings of his new zombie body.

He soon encounters some human in a drone that starts to act as his little guide in teaching him what all the weird new human inventions are. Which reminded me a little about the typical niche of dungeon cores and their assistant. But other than that I found the story rather refreshing.

The fact that a private company is dealing with this outbreak is suspicious, but what do I really know how America runs their armies or how unrealistic that actually is. But I liked the little twist that Digby wasn't that special after all, and several people had access to magic rings (and thus the litrpg system) like him!

I wasn't really sure how they could make this into a bigger story, I mean you're a zombie in an zombie apocalypse, just what is the end game here? A villain MC? I liked how they dealt with this. I liked that Digby wasn't good nor was he a villain. He got into this mess by being greedy (through the book he unlocks more and more memories on how he ended up in this mess), and now he just kinda wanna survive. He's.. what are they called? A reluctant hero? Yeah that.

I also like that the "bad guys" agenda wasn't fully revealed until the end. And while I consider said agenda a pretty common and cliché one, the first book was very much just scrambling to try to figure out wtf to do and the fact that there even WAS a bad guy to consider wasn't even revealed until way late in the book.

I also found it a pretty hilarious read. A time traveler from the past who doesn't know the least bit about technology and is going around afraid of being burned on the stake for witchcraft? He is fascinated by small changes just as much as the big ones. And I appreciated that.

+ Tons of skill gains
+ Interesting Path system
+ Skill build isn't locked or obvious, Randidly gets a little bit of everything
- Ridiculous name
- Emerald eyes mentioned about half a dozen times in the first 20%
- Not audiobook friendly at all

Randidly Ghosthound, of the emerald eyes, is stuck in a level 20 dungeon when the system hits earth. With no levels, and no skills, how exactly is he going to escape?

I loved this book, I especially loved the path system. Every time you gain a skill level, you gain an PP. PP is spent on a path. You choose a path, the first one is the newbie path which costs 7 points to complete. During the path, you unlock additional rewards like stat points and at the end you get a bonus. Sometimes a skill, which means MORE skills to level up, and more paths to unlock.

It ended up being skill and stat points galore and I loved every second of it.

The first 20% of the book is Randidly stuck in the dungeon, trying to survive, learning to be stronger, farming skills. It takes him 7 months to escape, and once he gets out he finds out that dungeons are time dilated. Meaning only a few hours have passed outside while he's spent the last 7 months power grinding. He then goes off to try to find, and rescue, his friends.

Here the story changes, a newbie village is built, and now we're building things, upgrading things, and defending it. But unlike other litrpgs, Randidly is not the one in charge, he doesn't want to be. So he's helping defend this village, and he might not take orders from anyone, but he's not meddling with the running of it. And I found that refreshing. You as the reader still get told a lot of it, but he's still off killing monsters and training to be stronger.

Another refreshing take was that Randidly had some insecurities, mostly revolving around being a burden (and thus wanting to become strong). But despite the fact he's OP as hell (currently atleast), these insecurities doesn't just vanish. Much like reality, they come back to haunt him in his weaker moments. Insecurities aren't realistic, and I liked that.

Annoyingly, and interestingly, some of Randidlys inner monologue was very realistic. He'd start thinking some bad stuff, and then go "no don't think about that" and move on. This was annoying because it was clear some drama had happened, and it was weighing heavy on him, but us as the reader don't get the full story until much later on. It's excellent writing imo, it gives a certain amount of intrigue while annoying the shit out of me at the same time.