After conquering all of Hesse, creating a devilish new dungeon, and establishing himself as the villain that everyone loves to hate, Lucas decides to continue his quest to create new content by taking over as a dungeon master on the mainland.
Unlike the dominant force on the island he left behind, however, the once-mighty Imperium only controls a single capital city in a rapidly shrinking territory, leaving a group of scheming nobles to bicker among themselves and fight over scraps of land. Seen as an upstart and rabble-rouser, Lucas is instantly shunned and must struggle to find somewhere to begin building his new base. Now, after declaring himself the enemy of every man in the city, and with every player in the region hunting his head to claim the bounty placed there, Lucas has to decide which allies he can trust as he fights to stay alive long enough to establish a new lair and gain a foothold in a hostile land.
Introducing new monsters, a curious new group member, and flashy new spells, this Gamelit LitRPG adventure follows Lucas as he writes his own story as the greatest villain the game world has ever known.
My Opinion: 373 pages, $3.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
Full disclosure: I did some minor beta reading for this novel. I purchased a copy when it became available.
The tone of the story is definitely less emotional than book 1, but it makes up for that by upping the villain stuff big time. The main character really leans into doing the bold villainous actions that readers may empathize with like calling out people for their fake good actions, battling smug jerk players, and foiling the plans of no good NPCs with even more devious plans of his own. But the MC goes beyond that playing the role of a villain to continue to draw in more players to this game even getting a little gruesome and cruel. The MC also starts to pull together a harem of attentive ladies as part of his villain persona, though there’s no graphic sex in the story. It was really funny to see the MC ‘steal’ a player’s female NPC companion cause the player was being a total jerk.
The custom game mechanics are still on par with book 1 and there are several new classes and abilities that I personally thought were very cool, if a little OP. There’s also more dungeon building and monster taming. The MC’s group leaves newb island for the larger world and has to use some intelligent combinations of game mechanics and abilities to fight the superior forces arrayed against them. Which I thought was well done.
Overall, a good story that leans a lot more heavily on the Villain part of the Heroic Villain series title this book.
Score: 7.6 out of 10