If it helps, DCC is supposed to be over the top and kind of cringe. The tag line "the apocalypse will be televised" isn't for nothing, the whole premise of the book is basically Alien Wipeout meets The Hunger Games. Or Twitch chat runs The Most Dangerous Game might also be apt. The dungeon is meant to be the biggest train wreck that the audience can't look away from.

Taking the five pages thing at face value, you would have quit before any of the litrpg elements, so it's kind of hard to recommend any "tricks". Especially not knowing what turned you off the book/ genre beyond just "cringe". I'm not trying to gatekeep, but if you put the book down within the first chapter, then it's probably not the book/ series for you (and that's okay!), as it goes on it just gets more... more off the rails absurd/ gratuitously violent/ chaotic. The point is spectacle; it's YouTube taken beyond its most logical extreme; Tolkien or Herbert it is not (and that's also okay).

That said, if you are looking to take another shot at the series, I might recommend the DCC audiobooks, if listening to books is your thing. The narrator (Jeff Hays) is phenomenal and the production is masterfully well done.

It loses its focus on the leveling system after the start. Just skim past those parts, they're not necessary to the story.