Villains aren’t born, they’re made.
Witt was an ordinary NPC—a non-player character in a video game. As a kobold skald, he sang songs to empower heroes before they entered the local dungeons.
Every day was a fresh start. Every day Witt woke with no memory of his previous encounters with all those so-called heroes. And every day he forgot the countless beatings and deaths he took at the hands of the murder hobos he valiantly buffed.
But when all of those memories suddenly come flooding back, he only wants one thing:
My Opinion: 175 pages, $2.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
When a Kobold has had enough
I’ll be honest, the cover art for this novel does not convey the coolness of the story. It starts out with an NPC kobold that buffs adventurers before they go into a dungeon. Only this kobold is abused by jerks fairly regularly and one day he remembers everything that had happened to him. Stuff that’s normally wiped from his mind by the game. That’s when the kobold goes on a rampage and is determined to kill all the players that have abused him and the other kobolds. It’s an interesting story about an NPC becoming aware and becoming a villain, at least from the perspective of the players.
On the RPG side of things, the story is a bit light here. Part of that is that the beginning of story has the MC unaware of what has happened to him in the past so it has a real fantasy vibe. After about the 15% mark, when the MC awakens, he also gets access to his character sheet, stats, class skills, etc. He also gets the ability to gain XP and levels if he hunts monsters or players. The combo of Bard + Barbarian = Skald is a neat variation on the bard class and I liked that the MC had some fighting capacity that paired with bard buffs worked really well. The villainy game mechanics were also a nice addition to the story.
Overall, it’s a shorter story but it’s interesting and I liked it.
Score: 7.5 out of 10