부패의 사제(Cleric of Decay)

Description / Comments

Protag is in his late 20s tired from his work life and plays games on the side like any normal dude, but doesn’t have the energy left after a busy work day to actually put forth effort so he uses cheats to coast through and enjoy the games. However despite cheating he still enjoys playing as shit classes that require a ton of effort an grinding (???) and immediately after swapping to one of the shittiest/hardest classes in existence in a random game he was playing, he got transported into the world of that game as that shitty class.

I’ve been trying to think of how to describe this series and I feel like “arifureta but actually kino” is close enough; it is by far the chuuniest battle shounen in existence following the story of a dude that got sucked into a game world as an undead priest that wields a chainsaw for the sole purpose of having badass panels filled with gore, and ultimately involves battling against the gods since he’s somewhat of a morally grey antihero. The character writing is amazing with tons of deep and complex characters that don’t necessarily align with their factions, preconceptions, or even religion, and it feels like a really well thought out D&D or warhammer campaign overall. It handles both the comedy portions and the battle/serious portions very well with a nice balance to it. The protagonist has a clearly defined goal of finding his god’s relics to power her up again while travelling alongside her which gives a nice endgoal to drive the narrative along while also giving room to explore the world at large. It also doesn’t lean into it being a “game” or isekai/systems at all and it just feels like a normal fantasy work that (unfortunately) had to incorporate isekai nonsense to kind of shill it I guess? It truly has sovl.

The worldbuilding and overall lore of the world is insanely good, filled with a ton of unconventional characters and factions that feel fresh. The work is ultimately the chuuniest possible battle shounen imaginable and it is near perfect at being that. It balances out the fast pace action scenes with the slow ambience, and the Buglers of Repose are based as fuck.

I like it a lot. big fan. The art is great. The protag is great. The characters are great. Literally the only bad part is the intro doesn’t make too much sense but that’s so minor to the plot overall that it’s fine. The translation does have a few mistakes in a few chapters with duplicated bubbles or a weird typo here or there but was otherwise fine.