The Laboratory
Skyler Grant
Emma is an artificial intelligence with a love of science, insults, and devilish traps. When her systems are booted up she finds herself in control of a long-abandoned facility in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The world is filled with dangerous threats granted great powers by the same cataclysm that befell the world. Emma must balance safety with the desire for test subjects as she brings herself back fully online and stakes out a place in this new world. From underground laboratory to airship, city districts, metropolis, province, nation, planet, star system and galactic rebellion, Emma's progression is measured in upgrades, stolen powers, and SCIENCE.
Progression: Post-apocalyptic LitRPG progression with explicit upgrade ladder. Core mechanic is Emma the AI's facility-core progression: quantified advancement through system upgrades, stolen superpowers via experiments on powered foes, and territorial expansion tiers. Each volume represents a distinct rank gate: Laboratory (underground facility reactivation), Airship (mobile core transfer and scavenging), District (control of one city district vs enhanced rival heads), Metropolis (full city command and resource upgrades), Province (Scholarium heights and reality-weapon research), Nation (restored Earth empire and power abuse temptations), Planet (burned atmosphere, solar-system colonization), System (galactic society junior member, Scythe conflict, SCIENCE), Stellar Rebellion (rewrite reality, destroy universe). Description emphasizes 'More upgrades, more insults, more SCIENCE' and 'perform experiments to gain some bit of their power' and 'upgrade abilities' as central engine, validated by Goodreads genres LitRPG/Science Fiction/Post Apocalyptic/Artificial Intelligence. Advancement is not metaphorical: hierarchical tiers from facility boot-up to galactic council confrontation with continuous power theft and system upgrades.
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