The Story of an Exploration Hero Who Has Worked His Way up From Common People

Fun and incredibly charming! Fan service is strong early, but replaced more and more by story as it goes along. The title and description are misleading; it’s the story of a low level adventurer who finds super rare summoning talismans in the dungeon. He then makes a very OP party while slowly improving himself. The guild liason who cares about him kept advising him to party with someone stronger to level himself up, but he always refused, being unwilling to form relationships, which is all kinds of meta.

There are lots of comments about this being a loli fantasy. First, there is no sense in which these characters can be understood as children, so they aren’t lolis. Second, it’s explained (poorly) that the size of their bodies reflects their level and available power. Third, lolis are female children in whom an adult has taken a sexual interest, not small adults.

Unfortunately, casual use has been blurring this line, especially in Japan, and especially around the fashion known as “Gothic Lolita”. When you use this term wrongly, you are helping pedophiles justify their gross desires! Please be clear that actual Lolita Complex is a horrible desire to do things to children that should never be allowed, not a preference for women with small bodies.

Also unfortunate, the author is also using loli casually, and helping to blur the line. He clearly is hoping to slyly appeal to the loli fetish and even makes jokes about the subject. If you got grossed out by the author flirting with the suggestion of child sex, you’re not completely wrong. But these characters are not lolis and the MC is not a lolicon.

With that cleared up, I recommend this enthusiastically.