After being betrayed and cursed by an extremely rare spell, Oren, a powerful and influential player, finds himself as a 1st level Goblin!
Without even a fraction of his previous power, he vows to pull through and have revenge on those who betrayed him.
His thorough knowledge of the game's world and his unique ability to immerse himself entirely are his only advantages.
But first, he must figure out how to survive long enough playing what is basically a low-level fodder monster!
My Opinion: 862 pages, $3.99, Not Available on Kindle Unlimited
First written and published on the royal road over several years.
The novel already has over 100 reviews most of which are 5 stars.
New Era Online, NEO, is a full immersion virtual reality game. Oren Berman, an intelligent player got lucky early on in the game's release and discovered a new discipline, Mana Manipulation. Because of the way the game is setup, he has exclusive rights to it unless he chooses to teach it to others. Teaches others for real money. Makes $10K/month income. Quits normal job.
He even forms a guild based on this school of magic. He’s betrayed by student with scroll that kills the MC character and resets him as a level 1 monster in a far away place in the game.
Oren wakes up as goblin. Using his understanding of mana manipulation he get access to magic and explores caverns only to discover them already occupied by a goblin tribe.
Now he has to not only convince this tribe to accept him as one of their own but formulate some plan to get his revenge on the people that betrayed him.
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This is a great story. You’ll love it if you like community building or town building stories.
The first 27% of the story is about Oren, the main character (MC), getting trapped as a goblin. Him figuring out that the goblins he’s been killing his entire gaming career, actually have culture and a tribal society that he can use to grow in power and get his revenge on those that wronged him. He does a bunch of quests that reveal how being a monster is different than being a player and there’s a storyline about how the game company can’t just save him.
--Slight Spoilers--
From about the 27-82% mark of the story, it’s really all about community and town building. The MC founds his own goblin village and there’s a bunch of new game mechanics that revolve around spawning new goblins, building structures, and balancing village resources to accomplish goals. It’s all very interesting if you like games like Civilization, Warcraft, Starcraft, or Total War.
There still personal power development for the main character and some combat scenes and an external threat from some hobgoblin tribes but for the most part in this section it’s about town building stuff.
At about the 82% mark, the story shifts away from town building and there’s a more standard narrative as the MC tries to save someone he’s come to care about and has to face off against the big bad villain.
I had a great time reading this story but I’m also a big fan of those resource management civilization games. If those kinds of games don’t appeal to you, you’ll find the entire middle section of this story boring. There are tons of details about development trees and pages and pages of descriptions of building functions, specializations for goblins, class development, resource requirements, and more.
Score: 8 out of 10.