Nathan Attis wakes up with no idea where he is, how he got there, or why his memories of the last few days are gone. He’s more than a little perturbed to discover that he is dead, but it’s not the end of the world.
Due to him being in the army, he gets a 2nd chance at existence in a fantasy VR game called Adonis Rebirth. There, Nathan will get to live another life, one filled with heroic quests and epic adventures. A land packed with legend and glory, where anyone can be a hero.
But there’s a problem with his transition into the game. His consciousness isn’t loaded into a player character, but instead is transplanted into a beast who lives in the bowels of a mountain. Even worse, he finds out he is the end monster in a new limited-edition quest, where the 1st to complete it wins a unique prize.
Soon, hero players are going to come and kill him. He needs to find a way to survive the hero onslaught, all the while trying to discover how to reverse what happened to him. He needs allies, but it’s hard to make them when you look like Nosferatu's ugly brother. Nathan will have to master his skills and learn how to play as the monster - his 2nd life depends on it.
My Opinion: 243 pages, $0.99, Available on Kindle Unlimited
Nathan is a soldier that dies and has his mind uploaded into Adonis Rebirth. When he gets to the game world he finds himself not at the starter town but in a cave with a goblin minion that obeys his every order. Not only does he finds he can't leave the mountain but that instead he’s not a normal player but a monster. Turns out the game company made him the boss for a rare quest and now he has players coming to try and kill him.
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The premise, that a player is loaded not as a hero into a game but as the monster that everyone is trying to kill is neat. It sort of reminds me of the game Evolve with some dungeon creation aspects added in.
The first 40% of the story is just the main character (MC) slowly realizing that he’s a monster, not a player, and unlocking his monster powers and the aspects of dungeon building that he has access to. By the middle of the story once the orbs are revealed you realize he’s a dungeon master and can create minions, upgrade them, set traps, and upgrade himself by mining for orbs.
I liked the game mechanic that forced the MC to choose carefully what he was going to do because if he did monstrous things, he raised his insanity meter putting him that much closer to losing his mind and becoming a true monster. I also like the dungeon master aspects of the story, they were simple but helped give some depth and options to the MC on how he’d deal with the players trying to kill him. He could use traps instead of killing them directly.
Unfortunately, the end was a bit disappointing. It took the game mechanics that made it unique and sort of threw them away and then it leaves the reader on a cliff hanger. Online reviews include complaints about issues with formatting, and wasted story potential. I agree with the parts on wasted potential.
Score: 6 out of 10