Not Really Fic Recs Alpha: Fics that make you go "hmm."

[classicdrogn]

Versatile Mage has many of the failings of serialized xianxia novels - questionable translation, never using one adjective where two will fit, taking 150 chapters (however short) to really hit its stride, a cultural background that considers several traits that read as negatives in the West to be virtues and make the main character hard to really like - but I have to give it props for one thing at least, and that's lampshading and averting the "girls in refrigerators" trope in the most literal way possible, with MC's ... um... I thought she was supposed to be his sister but there seems to be some less than chaste thoughts going on? Not in a "But Anon, that's my fetish!" kind of way but like the author just forgot she was a relative and started writing her as a haremette candidate, despite calling each other "Brother" and "Sister" in the dialogue right beside it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Details

Anyway, due to various circumstances she has to hide inside a supermarket freezer while MC is trying to force a power-up to be able to save her, as he worries about not making it in time and only finding her frozen body. (Several other characters have also been messily killed in the last few hours, some more developed than her as well, so it's at least nominally a plausible threat.) It's close, but he does manage, meaning they then only have to escape back out of a disaster movie grade hellscape city swarming with man-eating megafauna, while she can't walk more than five steps without getting exhausted due to some unclear chronic problem with her legs, and only having two shots left on his new super duper ultimate flaming fist finisher spinning power blast move with sparklies and extra cheese.