Honestly, if you're a fan of So I'm a Spider, So What, you need to read this story now.

Please go read it if you haven't. Go on, get.

There are spoilers ahead, I'm serious.

The Skeleton Soldier Failed to Protect the Dungeon is, if you'll pardon the mild pun, revivifying, to say the least. It takes several unique genre conventions (monster protagonist, video game mechanics, time-loops, adventure fantasy subversion, etc.), weaves them together, and has an absolute romp with them. I was so enraptured by this story that I power-binged through it to catch up within a handful of days.

The protagonist's relationships with each of the characters, every time he meets them in a different life, are enthralling. They evolve further and further, shattering expectations that they'd reset with the premise's promise of time-loop grinding. And, honestly, they have to be at least this good because the protagonist's care and love are the core motivation for why he seeks to get stronger, for why he's chosen to game the system as much as he does/did/will do throughout the story. At this point in reading (I'm up to Chapter 146), my favorite is the protagonist's dynamic with Isaac. It holds the most twists and turns, though honestly, our skeleton and Isaac's relationship is emblematic of the story's character dynamics. But, frankly, it would be misleading if I did not say why the relationship between our skeleton and Isaac is so rewarding: it would not be this rewarding to see the promise of Isaac and our skeleton getting to a true friendship if it wasn't for the narrative groundwork put in by our skeleton learning about and befriending Lena, someone the status system warned would betray and backstab him if she saw the opportunity. Like real-life relationships, each character dynamic bleeds into the others.

Each character appears to be a fantasy archetype, only for later runs through everything to reveal more at play. With every character introduced. You'll read a story that the skeleton is being told in a natural conversation, thinking that it's just lore because it's presented like plain quest text in an RPG. Several chapters later, the main character of that story will be here in the flesh, snarking, and just all-in-all living their best life.

My only critiques with this story's characters are in a character that hasn't been fleshed out to the extent of the others yet. However, she warrants a warning to anyone sensitive to this kind of character (though, frankly, if she does get explored and fleshed out to the extent of other characters as well as the story giving other trans-coded characters to balance out her portrayal, then I will be editing this review to curb some of my criticism).

Laura is a hard character to really read. This story has had villains be flamboyant and over-the-top before: Isaac is our huge exhibit A for that right there, and he even gets a pseudo redemption arc up until he gets a full-blown savior's sacrifice (we've yet to see the ultimate pay-off of that sacrifice and how it affects the story going forward, so I'm hesitant to call it a redemption arc). But Laura has yet to be treated with the same sort of framing as Isaac.

Her design has no real inherent flaws with it (placed within the spoiler bubble below), but the writing around her is just...hard to digest? You can see the drag queen inspiration very clearly, but the writing very much pulls away from that.

Spoiler, click to view

I don't know if the way characters treat her is because the people in the medieval fantasy setting don't know how to handle transition or if the framing overall is going to be Like This™, but every time Laura is either referenced by her chosen pronouns or feminine title earlier on, there are air quotes around them. The last chapter I've read even goes so far as to deadname her. She uses feminine-coded actions to get in people's spaces and threaten them with her power and just the feminine actions. I understand that she's a villain, and if she were designed in a more "passing" body type, I wouldn't even blink at this because it'd be very normal to see a Femme Fatale. I've been expecting a Femme Fatale since Lena's timeline got shifted drastically. But the way Laura is treated from a Watsonian angle leaves this sort of pit of anxiety in my gut. That this story, which has thus far handled everything with care and respect without downplaying any of the weight of the plot, will fumble this.

I want to be wrong because, as obvious from above, I am very much into everything else this story has been putting down. Maybe if there were other characters who didn't have their gender nonconformity framed as predatory, Laura wouldn't make me feel anxious like this.