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LevelUpShelf

Trope: getting stronger, no game layer needed

Progression fantasy series

Series
2
Complete
2
Audio
341 h 20 m

Progression fantasy is the wider shelf that LitRPG sits on. It has no Wikipedia article of its own; the LitRPG article covers it: "In progression fantasy stories, characters 'level up' through the world's magic system as they undergo a hero's journey. Unlike LitRPGs, their world need not have direct ties to games." The same article notes that LitRPG has been described "both as a sub-genre of progression fantasy and as its cousin."

In practice the label covers magic schools, martial cultivation, monster-hunting ranks and any story that keeps measuring how strong the hero is now against how strong he was. The measuring happens in the world, not on a character sheet, which is why Cradle and Mark of the Fool sit here without a LitRPG tag. Plenty of series wear both labels: on Royal Road, He Who Fights With Monsters, The Path of Ascension, Heretical Fishing and Mage Tank are tagged LitRPG and Progression.

Reddit splits the same readers into two communities, r/litrpg and r/ProgressionFantasy, and the same series turn up in both.

Finished

Complete series (2)

In progress

Still coming out (0)

Every Progression fantasy series here is complete.

Sources

How we checked this

Source: our own guides, quoted under each series; a series is listed only when a published guide says it in words, never from memory. Status, book count and audiobook hours come from each series' source table (publisher, Amazon and Audible pages), latest check .

This page joins search results once 6 series with a guide carry the tag and its introduction has at least 150 words.

Pick by more than one trope in What to read next, or see LitRPG, Cultivation.