My Assassin Build Got Nerfed Again
(2026)(The first book in the Patched for Balance series)
A novel by Saeri Doan
Rook Calder finally has a shot at becoming a licensed Assassin. Then the System notices how he fights.
Rook has knives, terrible professional instincts, a Charisma score of zero, and an inconvenient talent for finding interactions the Common System would rather pretend do not exist.
During his final Assassin practical, a broken rule turns a controlled exam lethal—and drops him beside Kae Foxfire, a sharp-tongued kitsune courier with spring-loaded boots, lethal route instincts, and absolutely no patience for his mouth.
Rook survives.
He even passes.
The next morning, the System publishes a global hotfix with his name attached to it.
Now every clever workaround risks another correction. Faulted constructs, corrupted permissions, class expectations, public patches, and increasingly aggressive balance rules spread through the city. Worse, the System keeps confusing what people can do with what they should be forced to do.
Rook's answer is a growing party of fiercely capable women who refuse to become clean archetypes: a courier, a shield-bearing responder, a patchsmith, a jurist, a cartographer, a medic—and one badly behaved Assassin who keeps discovering that found family is harder to optimize than combat.
Between boss fights, busted mechanics, guild disasters, romantic tension, recovery nights, whiskey, and System notices that really should stop taking things personally, Rook and his companions must prove that a broken build can still be the right build when real people are the ones using it.
Perfect for readers who want cozy progression fantasy, crunchy LitRPG mechanics, adult harem romance, found-family banter, unconventional builds, rule-based boss fights, and a hero who defeats systems by understanding them better than the System does.
Genre: GameLit
Rook has knives, terrible professional instincts, a Charisma score of zero, and an inconvenient talent for finding interactions the Common System would rather pretend do not exist.
During his final Assassin practical, a broken rule turns a controlled exam lethal—and drops him beside Kae Foxfire, a sharp-tongued kitsune courier with spring-loaded boots, lethal route instincts, and absolutely no patience for his mouth.
Rook survives.
He even passes.
The next morning, the System publishes a global hotfix with his name attached to it.
Now every clever workaround risks another correction. Faulted constructs, corrupted permissions, class expectations, public patches, and increasingly aggressive balance rules spread through the city. Worse, the System keeps confusing what people can do with what they should be forced to do.
Rook's answer is a growing party of fiercely capable women who refuse to become clean archetypes: a courier, a shield-bearing responder, a patchsmith, a jurist, a cartographer, a medic—and one badly behaved Assassin who keeps discovering that found family is harder to optimize than combat.
Between boss fights, busted mechanics, guild disasters, romantic tension, recovery nights, whiskey, and System notices that really should stop taking things personally, Rook and his companions must prove that a broken build can still be the right build when real people are the ones using it.
Perfect for readers who want cozy progression fantasy, crunchy LitRPG mechanics, adult harem romance, found-family banter, unconventional builds, rule-based boss fights, and a hero who defeats systems by understanding them better than the System does.
Genre: GameLit
Used availability for Saeri Doan's My Assassin Build Got Nerfed Again