A Villain’s Will to Survive

Damn it. I was really engrossed in the novel, but the more I read, the more I grew suspicious of certain repeated writing quirks. Checked the reviews, and it turns out it's the same person who wrote The Novel's Extra and Memoirs of the Returnee. It made so much sense, but it also made me curse out loud. If you're familiar with those novels, then you can pretty much perfectly predict how this novel will go. Endless, pointless melodrama, with a needlessly self-sacrificing protagonist that makes the world (and all the ... more>> heroines) hate him for no reason. And as always, the beginning is always so gripping before it descends into disinterest. Apart from the melodrama, I can tell you what to expect from this novel. A strong premise, that the author proceeds to throw in the garbage. After all, word count can't be taken away from their favourite story beats, can they? The protagonist will be mostly consumed by the character of Deculein. That modern style of talking you see in the sypnosis? It disappears after the first couple of beginning chapters, as the protagonist slowly becomes the person he transmigrated into. It's irritating to me, because having the protagonist see himself as Deculein first and Kim Woo-jin second kind of voids the purpose of having the transmigration in the first place. The intersection between Kim Woo-jin's mind battling the influence of Deculein's body (yet ultimately being one and the same person) in the beginning was much more interesting to me. With the way the author decided to execute things, he may as well have just started with a game character receiving foreign memories from another world, instead of the transmigration gimmick. The way power scaling is dealt with is a mess. The start is strong, as always. The protagonist comes up with a novel (in the world's context) way to fight, with a clear path to improvement and much room for horizontal growth/innovation. And then... the author loses all interest in detailing how the protagonist improves his own power. Nice. As you can expect from that, we as the readers never have any real grasp of how strong each character really is. We also have no idea about the actual systems behind how characters get stronger, apart from the introductory explanations in the beginning plus some hand-waving. It's so strange too, because the author clearly seemed to put plenty of effort into crafting the magic system, at least in the beginning. The world actually being a game? Irrelevant. The only game-like systems in the entire novel are the pointless quests that the protagonist receives, and his mana count. The latter is entirely unused in combat, by the way. Instead, replaced with countless "I overused my mana" at the end of every notable event. Yeah, right. The knowledge that came from being a game developer is also painfully underused. He knows the important story beats, and some minor details, sure, but he still knows far too little for the role he played. Given that he was given master level access, it should have been pretty damn significant. And given that he was skilled enough to change the models and character attributes, it's not like he was a high-level manager that wouldn't be aware of game details, either. He's also stated to have participated in testing multiple times. Despite all this, he still knows so little. Not even a single crumb about the backstory of the character that was modeled after him, or plenty of the heroines. Really? The execution also left much to be desired for. This novel really suffers from swapping perspectives and subplots way too often. Would it kill the author to take their time carefully describing their scenes, rather than glossing over details and leaving things to the reader's imagination? It's not like you can't do this. It just becomes a problem when it starts taking over the entire novel. Especially terrible for the action scenes. But hey, I guess it makes sense. Not like you could write any decent action with how poorly expanded the power systems of this novel were. And finally, the ultimate premise, the literal name of the novel? Guess what, the concept of "villain trying to survive" dies instantly too. It wasn't super strong even in the beginning, but completely abandoning it? Really? You can probably guess why all of this happens. Melodrama. This author only loves writing about this, and everything else is just an excuse to write more. It works well in the short run, because you're excited to see how the protagonist will deal with the tangled web of relations in the beginning. As the novel drags on though, you begin to realise that it was never the author's intention to begin with, to allow the knots to be unwound. Instead, they're merely interested in tangling the web further, to create more melodrama. And that's just boring and repetitive, at least to me. But hey, it's not all bad. Some people clearly like this kind of thing. Therefore... Overall, I would recommend reading at least the beginning of the novel, which was pretty great. However, if you've read the author's previous works, and know that you have no attachment to such melodrama, I would recommend dropping the novel as soon as you feel yourself losing interest. It won't get better. <<less

TL;DR, starts well, then meanders, loses its way and ends with two pretty bad arcs and no emotional closure. I was enjoying it quite a lot for the first third or so though. What do I mean by meandering ? For example, ironically considering the title, by roughly chapter 100 or so, 200 for sure, the villain is no longer trying to survive. More like trying to die dramatically. I don't know why, there is no good reason. I guess it is sexy or something ? In short, the story ... more>> really overdoes it on the tragic attractive self sacrificing type. This trope is applied like at least five times to the MC with at least five different women, and most aren't at all convincing. The translation is okay. Not great, not horrible. I think this story is more complex and layered than is common in the web novel genre, so even an okay translation is actually lacking. More details: The first third is like a Korean isekai Harry Potter in college only the MC is Snape, but Harry/Effrine and her friends are still characters with their own point of view. This is a great idea. It was fun. Then the plot goes somewhere completely different, and much worse. After the first third, most story arcs involve time travel/time loops/so on in the story, and I guess it is done alright, but time travel always makes it hard take anything seriously in a story. Oh, X died a thousand times... right... whatever. Oh, he did it again... right... sure hope he doesn't die again I guess, 2001st time is the charm as they say... Very spoilery complains from here on, I'm just going to ramble now so these thoughts don't make it hard for me to fall sleep, I can't imagine anyone would actually want to read this XD. Only if the story really annoyed you as well : Spoiler Character wise, his relationship with Yoo Ara is just weird. Why did they separate even though they were so madly in love ? It is never actually explained. Also their story ends nowhere. The whole point of Deculien is he would do anything to be with the one he loves as long as she is willing, only having two souls it became two people (though Yoo Ara is Yuli so arguably Deculien himself already loved two women including her). So when she confessed to him she was Yoo Ara in the lighthouse, he should have been willing to sacrifice all his other plans simply to make her happy by being with her, instead of hiding it from her. Even if the super genius somehow didn't get she actually loves him yet, when she directly confessed in the hut on his deathbed (death-chair?), considering they returned him to life, his new life should have been dedicated to returning to her. System or not system. This is a more reasonable conclusion to the story. Also, him allowing diary generated Julie to die doesn't make sense. Following his character he should have been willing to sacrifice everyone else just to make her a new doll, which really shouldn't be that hard considering he is such a genius. The fact he didn't fall in love with his students sort of makes sense actually. This is on them really. Stop whining, find another man, even if he is not quite as good looking. Sophien is just a mess and a horrible horrible person, yet I'm not sure why he didn't end up with her simply out of a sense of duty considering his character, he actively gave up on his real love interests and all other duties anyway. It seemed like the author was going for Sophien being made into a human for a bit, but that was a complete and total failure since she lost interest in the world once Deculien disappeared. I don't understand how Kerion didn't become the replacement love interest in that relationship and was instead killed off randomly in the most torturous and pointless way. Why ? Just bizarre. Who is he protecting the perfectly frozen area from ? Anything that approached would also freeze... even time was frozen. Then they resurrected him and Sophien to get ready to play Go semi-forever... O_o In fact, Kerion should have been the love interest from the start. A story where Deculien makes Sophien realize she loves Kerion would have been much better and more satisfying then the weird Go based relationship she has with Deculien. Now switching to the story, which is worse. I get the story isn't the focus in the genre, but come on. First of all, there is the Sophien is insane arc or Sophien starts the Demon Blood massacre arc, where she mu*ders presumably hundreds of thousands of Demon Bloods for no good reason, even though she is perfectly aware there is no good reason for this. This obviously makes her a hi*ler like figure and a self aware one. The fact Deculien's concentration camp never became a death camp doesn't change the fact there were several other active death camps. I don't understand how I'm supposed to ignore that later on. Why would I ? How am I supposed to sympathize ? Fine, she went insane because she regressed many times. That still doesn't excuse mu*dering hundreds of thousands if not millions of innocents. The fact Deculien helps in this makes him just as bad. Yes, he prevents the count from going even higher, but he also facilitates the whole process. It still makes him a mass mu*der of an incomprehensible degree. I'm not saying it is unreasonable for the character. The original Deculien, who considers all commoners tr*sh and only the Emperor as a superior being, would have sacrificed millions for the sake of the Emperor. The question is, as a reader how am I supposed to feel anything but disdain for these characters ? I now hope they do die a horrible death. No redemption is possible from killing so many people for no reason. None. The fact no one in story cares about this, including the Demon Bloods is insane to me and makes it impossible to take the story seriously. It isn't even like Deculien didn't plan to enter into conflict with Sophien later, so why not start earlier ? Also, it doesn't seem like Sophien was strictly necessary in the game to win it. So Deculien made that choice, he picked the insane mu*der over her millions of victims. I even remember Quay saying that killing Sophien would be enough to defeat him, but then I guess the author backtracked on that with the whole comet/doll thingy. Second dumb arc, the last arc where Deculien decides to become a villain to unite the world. This is just clearly s*upid. First of all, the actual villain, Quay already exists and is known to all. So what is the point of having another sub-villain just under him ? You already have someone who actually wants to mu*der all of humanity, so why is there a need for someone to pretend ? Also, obviously it doesn't unite everyone because a significant portion followed the Altar of their own free will so even after Quay/Deculien are defeated you still have two conflicting parties, hence not everyone is united. It is even alluded to in the story with some Altar people surviving and continuing the fight. I don't get why Declien had to sacrifice himself for his magic to work. Why couldn't he just gather all his insanely powerful allies and have them supply the power for his magic ? Maybe he had to, but this wasn't explained in any way and so feels like a pointless sacrifice and a cheap way to fake drama. It bugs me Quay was basically a minor character defeated in like two paragraphs overshadowed by chapters on chapters of Deculien's unexplained sacrifice, making the sacrifice even less clear. The fact we were suddenly told the comet would have destroyed everything anyway makes Quay even more pointless. So he actually just acted to hasten the apocalypse ? Wouldn't this mean he actually wasn't trying to destroy the world, but save it a little differently since the deaths were inevitable anyway ? How would have Deculien/Epherine's plan worked if not for Julie randomly resurrecting from her diary memories and becoming extremely powerful? It couldn't have and no one planned for it to happen... Like was the original plan for Sylvia to keep everyone alive for 11, 000 years by herself ? O_O That sounds like a very bad plan. Basically Quay was trying to save humanity, but Deculien and friends lucked out and fell on a better plan. A better plan Quay apparently didn't even try to stop once he saw it was likely to work... [collapse] <<less

Maaan, I expected something good, since the author of this story also wrote "The Novel's Extra". I also expected some improvement and that he will learn from his previous mistakes, but sadly I see the pattern - very good at the beginning but turns bad later on. Where should I start my rant... The story starts with MC transmigrating into a game he was developing. Because he became the villain of said game, we have death variables that he has to avoid, there is also system and story missions. Everything is great at ... more>> that point, a few female characters and death variables are introduced. At the beginning the plot focuses on MC avoiding the death variables, which is fine. The problem is that in later chapters authors completely forgets about this concept or focuses too much on other drama and dumb stuff which makes the story a bit boring and confusing. The game elements barely appear anymore, the death variables concept almost completely disappeared and well all the interesting stuff that was running this story is not there anymore. The story starts to focus on the drama and "development" of the female characters (there is many of them). Sure, the development of characters is something natural in stories, but how should I say it, there is too much of it and there are too many female characters getting "the development". It's hard to describe how I feel about it, but in short - IT'S JUST SHIT. It's boring and dumb. Sometimes the decisions made by MC are questionable and don't make any sense, sometimes the behaviour of the female characters is also unnecesarily dumb and annoying, they also behave unnaturally. All the female characters are in the story only because "they are imoportant characters in the game and MC will need them to clear events in the game and the game itself." but bruuhhhhhh it's so badly done. In most of the events they were useless, f*cking useless, everything till now was cleared thanks to the MC. Maybe they played a part in clearing a few events, but damn it felt so f*cking forced. <<less

In brief: A story about a giga-chad frolicking through a field of flowers, trying to avoid choking on estrogen. The world building at the early stages of the novel is phenomenal. The MC developing his magic was interesting and engaging. The MC's reputation was in the gutter, and surely the struggle to build it back up was going to be equally thrilling. Unfortunately, it isn't long before the author completely loses interest in world building and reveals their true passion: Picking flowers. Meaningful female characters are plentiful in this novel. The MC ... more>> can't walk two steps without tripping over another new flower who abruptly steals the narrative focus so the author can smother readers with floral perfume. These flowers fall into two categories: Ones who come to admire the MC. And ones who fall in love with the MC. Of course, there may be others but don't worry they're already dead. Meanwhile, if a male character appears they are surely a trap, a barking flower guardian, or a bit villain to be smashed. Does it get better in later chapters? I have no idea. The smell was giving me a headache so I had to step off at chapter 81. <<less

Jeez, I feel terrible to have to rate this so low but you have to believe me, this is so f*cking disappointing. It is just such a treat for 100 chapters then it feels like someone else entirely started writing this story. I couldn't believe it at first, thought it might be the translators but the translator didn't change. It just became absolute garbage. They stop the descriptive writing that made the first 100 chapters so good, they throw in one questionable turn in the plot and I think "OK, they can ... more>> come back from this it's fine." Then another out of character turn in the plot. And another. And another. And is this winding down towards the ending already? No way, this is just all developing so quickly! They threw like 6 different character dramas and misunderstandings in haphazardly at once! And NONE OF THEM MAKE SENSE OR SEEM TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT ANY OF THE PREVIOUSLY ESTABLISHED CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT?! WHY?! I THOUGHT WE GOT PAST THOSE ISSUES! And the whole magic system falls apart into a completely incomprehensible mess just to try and make the MC more powerful/cool and just so smart and amazing at the same time. And are all of these female characters romantic interests now? What is even happening anymore!? Just save yourself the pain and rampant feelings of betrayal and don't read this. I've never felt so disappointed in my life. Everything was honestly fine until around chapter 100. Better than fine. The character interactions and drama felt well thought out and they made sense! The misunderstandings (although I'm not a big fan of them) felt like they served a purpose and needed to exist to progress the character relationships. And then just so suddenly the story completely falls apart. I'm not angry anymore. Just... depressed and sad, wishing things could have been different. Dropped. <<less

This novel is actualy quite good. Has steady build-up, interesting circumstances of the MC and how he evades his deathflags. But at some point you can see its flaws and once you saw them, then novel becomes irritating. My english skills is not so good to convey my thoughts perfectly but I will try and list some of the things that, IMO, is deagging it down. Active Translations. That is purely my dislike towards this site for a number of reasons, but I strongly believe that if novel goes there - it's worst thing that can happen for readers. Heroines. Or side-characters in general, since basicaly all of them are females, and if there are males, they are just decorations for MC to flex on them. Each heroine hes her defining traits. Spoiler Such as Vengeance of Euphrene, Genius of Silvia (And then Vengeance, we will comeback to this), Regression for Sophiene, Forced marriage for Julie and so on and so forth for basicaly any female that you can point in the novel. The only exception would be Allen, but it's not authors win, but cause she is a double-agent, and this adds a little depth to her. [collapse] These traits ARE ONLY things that defines character. Nothing else. You could trow in some things like Euphrenes love for meat or Sophienes cat but this is it. They are empty. And 90% of the time they either griefing for their complicated life, angry at the MC or admiring him. They are just the highlighters for the MC's image and tools for the plot progression. Their lives are tied to the MC and without him, they are just nothing. Empty shells. Even if author TELLING us that they are OP and everything, I couldn't see it. Too much of events. At some point, i'd say, after the first "school year", amount of events grows in progression. Information trown at reader like every chapter and at some point I thought "WTF is going on". Actualy, seems like I'm not the only one, cause Author lost it's grip on the events and his desire to trow as much women at MC as possible backlashed and now we stuck in the loop of MC running around all his womens, while looking ice-cold and cool, just for them to have like half-a-chapter of screen-time, and boom, event complete, go rest, I have to go to next girl. Spoiler The whole sequence of events around his sister/Euphreme/Silvia/Sophiene around chap 110 is hella hilarious, at this point they all look like poorly written idiots with too much trauma to handle. [collapse] MC's attitude. Even tho author tries to mask it with merge of 2 characters (Transmigrator and Deculein), his attitude if facepalm-inducing from the beginning and it grows worse in the long run. Author desires a edgy, cool, tragic character, but fails miserably and in the end he looks like a freaking ret*rd. Game-world, that supposed to create problems for MC is actualy incredibly forgiving. MC creates problems by himself for either no apparent reason, either poorly explained reason that looks as idiotic as it can. MC not revealing truth to heroines, that he should have revealed, just because it would have resolved ties that connected them and, subsequently, resolved couple of problems. But no, we don't want this. We want his girls to have love/hate relationships with MC, with lots of angst and shit. This infuriating method of author is killed Euphrene and Silvia's characters for me. All in all, when I started to write this review I gave it 3/5, but now ill give 1/5. Because I hate AT and because Author killed this novel by himself. Feel free to downvote or point out mistakes, cause I'm well aware of amount od unncesessary salt in this review.

Started out good but then got way too messy. What do I mean by this? The author got so many concurrent plot running that having to keep track of them is a chore. It also jumps in between plot points at very abrupt moment. Like when action in plot A is heating up, jumps to plot B. It just takes the wind out of all that buildup for plot A and worse, plot B is way more uninteresting than plot A so I skimmed plot B to get to plot ... more>> A. Worse, the author keeps introducing new characters, new scenarios when old ones haven't finished yet. So it's a ball of confusion. There are some character buildings, but because the author introduce so many new characters and plot points, only a few of them stand out. Other characters that felt central is just left undeveloped. The MC started out promising but ends up being this perfect Korean MC which feels more like a machine than man. Worse than that, everything seems to go his way. Oh something unexpected about to happen and the MC could be in trouble? Nope, he makes a random comment that somehow magically fit into the scenario and saves him. The MC is a villain and has done terrible things? The MC just needs to channel his real life backstory (before he got s**ked into this game) and somehow it just fit magically with game's story so the side characters that he wronged forgave him. It just feels very convenient. Cherry on top, I felt that this novel was a bit familiar so I looked up the author and it's the same author that wrote The Novel's Extra,... Yeah so expect a flaccid ending. <<less

At first, this novel is great and quite different. The first half is really intriguing and immersive, I enjoyed reading his effort and trials to tidy up the mess left by the previous deculein. This is just my opinion but I hate silent and cold MC, I think they're just boring and such a lazy writing. That's why it's a huge positive for me when he started roast people left and right, Fighting hostility with more hostility, now that's what I call a real human. He also doesn't change his ... more>> personalities overnight although forced (bet he will turn into complete pushover if not for the personality lock) and he at least try interact with his surrounding and not just being a passive b*tch. Even so, the story still manages to progress in captivating way and able to keep the reader's interest. However, it started to smell like something I absolutely loath, yeah it's the unbearably s*upid stench of TNE's drama. Just like in brainless shoujo novel, author started to make the MC dysfunctional to milk as much misunderstanding drama as possible. For transmigration story, it's very important to inherit the memories so that he can prepare and react accordingly when the previous body's past karma happen. However, author decided to makes MC not inherit deculein's memories for some reason, while probably it's just to make it easier for him to makes more misunderstanding bullshit. Author also turn the MC into a ret*rd that couldn't talk normally so the shitty drama can last for a long time. Even the building for his favorite love-hate drama is very forced and dumb as f*ck that I lost all hope for this novel immediately. Spoiler This author loves to create love-hate dramas, but he is absolutely suck at them. If you read his novel before you would know that he always make MC "forced" to kill the FL's family to make some drama. In this story, MC is the reason why both our super genius debudantes lost their parents, first one lost her father and the other lost her mother. He should be called "The Orphan Maker" or "Family Destroyer" or "The Parent Hunter" at this point. When he start doing something new, it comes out even dumber than the previous one. The recent example is the drama in Julie's story, which is also the most infuriating. Why the f*ck does she will not be cured unless she hate the MC?? Just because she reconciled with MC her growth became stale?? So MC need to let go of her and make her hate him so that she can do some love-hate drama and rise into the most prominent figure in the world with the power of drama?? Maybe author failed his middle school so I will tell you this, intelligent beings cure illness by using MEDICINE not by doing some f*cking DRAMA. [collapse] Technically, skilled author would use side characters to complement and make up for MC's flaw to make balance and synergy in the story. However, in this story MC just have so much cheat that he is certainly "perfect" which is also very common in KR novels. It's also what I don't like in KR novel, they always make MC as OP as possible that every side character is only there to make MC look even more amazing. This story is the perfect example, since MC in this story is superman from the start, author doesn't need to make great supporting characters and could focus on making some soap opera drama for the plot. Spoiler well, just look at these abilities : man of wealth : the ability to know anything that would make money. He used it at an auction to buy hidden treasures and resell them. The auction in the story is kind of incompetent tho since they didn't appraise their item before auctioning them off. It's not like MC is the only one that knows their worth as some dude at some tower also able to appraise them. Understanding : This is his most OP skill and the cheapest, unoriginal, and laziest cheat ever exist. It gives MC the ability to understand anything and everything. I should have dropped this novel after knowing this cheat. iron man body : I don't even know why he need this. Some willpower abilities that is so OP that reduces his mana consumption in the future city about 99%. some unknown bullsh*t that appear suddenly like the demon hunting buff from his bloodline. I predict that there will be more later. Now he have money making skill, hyper galaxy brain, superman body, and ultra willpower. What else is he lacking? [collapse] The amount of harem candidates that are introduced in the story is just pure comedic. Nobody that have important place in this novel is a man, except the MC of course. All male cast in this story would disappear into oblivion after showed up in few sentences and reappear when plot need them as fewer lines in the story. It could be said that every important roles in the story like king, best mercenary, strongest wizard, most talented student, sibling, rival professor, surviving villain, assistant, etc. All of them are women just so MC could be surrounded by women. Spoiler Later in the story, there is a boy who used to try copy ephrene paper and joined deculein as his pupil. To be honest, knowing this author I was quite shocked that he would bring a dude to the future-past seminar arc along with his harem gang. But of course this author never disappoint me, apparently the boy's role in that arc was just to greet future MC and then faint till the end of the arc. This author really ruthless towards male character, I even felt sorry for the dude. [collapse] <<less