Chương 1: Chapter 0: Before You Begin [Please Read This Before Starting Chapter 1]

WELCOME Before you begin reading, I wanted to set a few expectations about what kind of story this is and what you're getting into. If you want an MC who is reborn with the legendary special ability Ass-Blaster-9000, then spends the next hundred chapters blasting the asses of increasingly powerful enemies, this probably isn't the story for you. There's absolutely an audience for that story. I may even be part of it. This just isn't that story.

A SLOW-BURN PROGRESSION STORY When I describe Grub of the Ironfang as slow-burn progression, I mean it. Grub begins incredibly weak. He isn't secretly the strongest creature in the forest, he doesn't receive an immediately overpowered Class, and he doesn't discover a loophole that lets him gain fifty Levels while everyone else is asleep. He is small, poorly equipped, badly outmatched, and reborn into a world that is perfectly willing to kill him for being any of those things.

For a long time, he survives primarily through intelligence, preparation, practical knowledge, and his ability to understand the dangers and people around him. His personal power grows, but it grows slowly, and his side of the story remains relatively light on combat for the first hundred-plus chapters. There are battles, raids, dangerous creatures, and moments where survival comes down to violence.

The amount and scale of combat will increase over time, but fighting is not the constant engine driving Grub's progression, and his story will never become nothing more than a procession of stronger enemies waiting to be defeated. Much of his progression comes through the Ironfang themselves. Grub's Stats matter, but so do the lives he saves, the conditions he improves, the relationships he builds, the problems he helps solve, and the small ideas that gradually change what the tribe is capable of becoming.

Sometimes another point of Strength matters. Sometimes figuring out how to keep smoke from filling a cave matters more. The earliest struggles reflect that. Hunger, exposure, infection, predators, tribal violence, prejudice, cultural expectations, and the simple fact that being weak in the wrong place can get you killed are all very real threats. This is also not an instant technological-uplift story. Grub remembers what Gideon genuinely knew during his first life on Earth.

He does not remember the complete contents of Wikipedia, and he cannot recreate several thousand years of technological development because he once watched half a documentary about blacksmithing. He has useful knowledge. He also has gaps, makes mistakes, experiments, and frequently has to work with terrible materials and limited tools. The Ironfang also aren't empty-headed primitives waiting for a modern human to teach them how thinking works, either.

They possess their own knowledge, customs, instincts, and areas of expertise. Grub can introduce new ideas and offer a different perspective, but the tribe changes through cooperation rather than because one reincarnated human arrives and immediately becomes civilization's cheat code. If slow personal growth, survival, community-building, and watching small improvements compound over time sounds satisfying, you are probably in the right place.

If you are primarily looking for rapid power growth and constant combat, this story will probably test your patience. TWO FRIENDS, TWO STORIES The story begins with Gideon and Max before their deaths. Their lives on Earth are not just a disposable excuse to throw them through an isekai portal as quickly as possible. Their friendship, personalities, experiences, and the skills they developed before being reincarnated all influence who they become afterward.

That means the reincarnation doesn't happen on the first page. The opening takes roughly two and a half chapters to establish who they are and why their relationship matters. Readers who need the protagonist to wake up in Fantasyland before the end of Chapter 1 may find the beginning slower than expected. After their deaths, the story divides between them. There are two genuine protagonists, but Grub is the"main" main character.

Roughly 70–80% of the overall story follows him, the Ironfang tribe, and events within or surrounding the Northwild. Max receives substantially less page time, particularly early on, but his chapters are not disconnected interludes. This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. His storyline carries much of the wider-world context that Grub cannot see from inside the Northwild, and the contrast between their lives is a major part of the story.

Grub experiences the world from the side civilization calls monstrous. Max experiences it from within the walls, roads, laws, guilds, and institutions built to protect humans from those monsters. There is one other important expectation I want to make very clear: Grub and Max remain separated for a very long time. Do not begin the story expecting their storylines to converge after twenty chapters. Or fifty. Or even within the first few hundred.

Both of them need time to grow into their respective lives, form relationships, and become part of the worlds around them. Their stories remain connected in ways neither of them immediately understands, but those connections develop slowly. If you find yourself more interested in Grub than Max, you can technically skip Max's chapters and still understand Grub's immediate storyline. I strongly recommend that you don't.

You would lose Max's journey, his companions, much of the wider world, and a significant amount of context surrounding events that eventually matter beyond his own chapters. You would also be reading a somewhat different story. Without Max carrying much of the outward-moving plot, Grub's side alone leans considerably closer to survival and tribal-development slice-of-life. Max's chapters are therefore part of the intended story, even if Grub remains its primary focus.

OTHER POVS, INTERLUDES, AND STATUS UPDATES Grub and Max are not the only characters who occasionally receive point-of-view chapters. Important side characters sometimes take over when their perspective can show something Grub or Max cannot, whether that means seeing one of them from the outside, following the consequences of a decision, or witnessing events beyond their immediate reach. These chapters remain tied to one of the two central storylines rather than wandering off to follow unrelated characters.

There are also occasional scholarly Interludes written from the perspective of an in-world historian. These explore the wider world's kingdoms, peoples, cultures, religions, history, and conflicts. They are there for readers who enjoy deeper world-building, but they are supplementary. You can skip them without losing anything crucial to the main plot.

You may miss some broader context, but you will not discover three hundred chapters later that the answer to a major mystery was hidden inside a twelve-page lecture about regional grain tariffs. This is also, very definitely, a LitRPG. Levels, Stats, Skills, Spells, Classes, Perks, Achievements, and build decisions all matter, but I have tried to keep the larger Status sheets from clogging up regular chapters. Full character sheets generally appear in their own short Status Update subchapters.

If you enjoy comparing builds, following Skill growth, and studying every number, they are there for you. If your eyes glaze over when you see them, you can skip them. You will not need to memorize every side character's Stats before being allowed to understand the next fight. Normal System notifications, including Level-ups, Skill improvements, new abilities, and Achievements, still appear inside regular chapters when they matter. TONE The story can become dark.

It contains captivity, slavery, violence, prejudice, death, warfare, and people making difficult choices under circumstances where there is rarely a perfect answer. Injuries matter, and having access to a Status screen doesn't make the world safe. It is not, however, intended to be an endless misery parade. There is humor, friendship, loyalty, found family, community, and the satisfaction of watching vulnerable people slowly build something strong enough to endure.

The story is about survival, but survival means more than merely continuing to breathe. It is also about building a life worth surviving for. PACING AND CHAPTER LENGTH Full chapters in Grub of the Ironfang generally range from roughly 2, 000 to 5, 000 words, with the average currently sitting around 3, 500 words. I describe the story as slow-burn because character growth, relationships, progression, and larger developments are given room to breathe.

That does not mean my goal is for nothing to happen for twenty chapters at a time. Even when an individual arc is developing gradually, I want you to be able to look back after a week or two of releases and feel that the situation has meaningfully changed. Characters should have grown, relationships should have shifted, problems should have improved or worsened, or somebody should at least have created an entirely new problem while trying to solve the old one.

Slow-burn means the story takes its time where that time matters. It doesn't mean standing still. FOR RETURNING READERS Some of you may recognize this story from an earlier version published under the title Birth of Grub. This is not a light revision of that story. The pacing, structure, characterization, chapter organization, progression, and large portions of the actual material have been extensively rewritten.

The current version is substantially longer, slower, and much closer to the story I originally wanted to tell. If you read the old version, I strongly recommend starting again from Chapter 1 rather than trying to jump back in where you remember leaving off. A great deal has changed.

RELEASE SCHEDULE The initial release schedule will be: Ten chapters on Day 1 At least one full story chapter every day for the following ninety days A Monday-through-Friday schedule after the daily release period ends The first release each day is scheduled for 17: 12 CEST, or 8: 12 a. m. Pacific Time / 11: 12 a. m. Eastern Time. Whenever multiple chapters release on the same day, they will follow at ten-minute intervals.

Most importantly: Supplemental chapters, including scholarly Interludes, Status Updates, and other subchapters, will never replace that day's full story chapter. Max's sections can sometimes run for 5-15 chapters at a time, so I will occasionally use multiple-chapter days to move through those sections more quickly. The goal is for Grub's storyline to rarely disappear for longer than roughly three to five days rather than switching away from him for a week or two at a time.

I currently have more than 6 00, 000 words completed and waiting in the backlog, so the schedule is not dependent upon me finishing tomorrow's chapter fifteen minutes before it is supposed to go live. After the initial ninety-day period, releases will move to Monday through Friday for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, that gives you a clear idea of what you are getting into.

This is a slow story about weak people becoming stronger, isolated people finding places to belong, and two friends building lives on opposite sides of the world's oldest divide. There will be fighting. There will be magic. There will be numbers. There will also be a great deal of goblin cave maintenance. Welcome to Grub of the Ironfang.