Crown of Velunde - [ West African Fantasy X Timeloop X LitRPG]

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

The King is dead.The Seven Great Houses gather to choose a successor, and Kayode Balógun is summoned to vote.Five hundred years ago, his blood crowned an Empire. Now he owns no land, commands no knights, and bears a Blight no Healer could cure, one that leaves him Classless. He is a Great Lord only in name.When the vote is called, the nobles see him as nothing more than a pawn to be used.Yet Kayode refuses to play their games.He refuses to vote.For that defiance, he is murdered.Kayode wakes at dawn—alive, unscarred—and bound to an ancient Class long believed lost to time:The Kingdom Maker, the world’s only S+ Class. Each death returns him to the same morning. His Class grants him a hundred lives.A hundred Loops.And he will live them all as no one’s pawn. What to expect:- A world shaped by West African–inspired characters, traditions, and dynasties.- Variance in Loop lengths and trajectories.- Character driven storytelling with deep world-building.- Political maneuvering, leverage, and plotting.- LitRPG and progression fantasy systems with steady, earned growth.- Lots, and lots of action! Schedule:Every Friday!

Information

Status: Ongoing
Year: 2026
Author: Of Rantings and Ramblings

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.0/ 5.0
Followers: 481
Views: 24,510

Chapters(26 total)

What readers say about Crown of Velunde - [ West African Fantasy X Timeloop X LitRPG]

“While this is a timeloop story and a LitRPG, the first chapter read more like a political thriller and Kingdom builder. The main character, Kayode, is a good plotter but to weak to be taken seriously. When he tries to leverage his position to make a deal…”
MegaduckRoyal Road5.0 / 5
“This only released a week or so ago, and so while I wouldn't usually review this early in the story, I'm going to drop one now. The writing is very good, from both a technical and dramatic sense. The character work is so far so good - I'm hoping Kay will be…”
NasreenRoyal Road5.0 / 5

Reviews

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Community Reviews(5)

MegaduckRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
While this is a timeloop story and a LitRPG, the first chapter read more like a political thriller and Kingdom builder. The main character, Kayode, is a good plotter but to weak to be taken seriously. When he tries to leverage his position to make a deal, the Duke realizes instantly that he will be dangerous in the future and decides to be genre savvy and kill him right there.
Fortunately for Kayode (And unfortunately for the Duke) the Duke is wrong genre savvy and when Kayode dies he gets 99 death loops to put things right.
Kayode is an interesting character. He’s weak as he doesn’t have a class in the system but the story quickly sets him up as a fast thinker, willing to do what is needed to get ahead, and is experienced in plotting.
Which is good because the rest of the high nobles characters are realistically terrible people and there is a lot of murder and intrigue going on. The world might not be grimdark but Kayode’s social set is definitely treading in that direction.
The first 6 chapters are the best part so far as Kayode has to carefully balance the different personalities and agenda’s together as everyone plots the upcoming civil war.
The next 6 chapters are when Kayode escapes and starts grinding his class and frankly this section is less interesting. Ultimately, its the same go-with-an-adventuring-party-and-kill-stuff-to-get-stronger that all LitRPG has. There are hints things will change once Kayode dies and loops again so we will see.
The setting is interesting, as the blurb states its West African–inspired, so not the Tolkin Fantasy England or Cultivator Fantasy China that are so often on Royal Road. The author states they are from Nigeria in one of the notes which means they are writing what they know and it shows. It feels different and a little unpredictable.
A solid start and worth tasting if you enjoy politics and kingdom building.
NasreenRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This only released a week or so ago, and so while I wouldn't usually review this early in the story, I'm going to drop one now.
The writing is very good, from both a technical and dramatic sense. The character work is so far so good - I'm hoping Kay will become a little smarter and become a better long term planner (he's fairly short-term reactionary right now) but where he's at is appropriate for his place in the wider story.
The combat is fine; I'm not terribly into combat as there's only so many ways an author can write "he slashed/stabbed/swung his sword at [monster] and used [spell X]" so that's a me problem and not a story problem. The class spells are interesting and I can't wait to get more into the West African mythology and world building. Right now, we've only gotten basically African names and styles of dress bit again, that's not a story problem, just a factor of how little we've seen of the world at this early stage.
Speaking, however, of African names.. author, if you plan to release this on Amazon, you might want to consider giving one if the dukes a name that doesn't start with O. To an audience not familiar with African names, it's easy to think of them as 'Duke O (because I can't mentally pronounce the full name)' and that's a (granted, small) problem when there's two "Duke O"s. It's not a problem at this point because they only have one brief scene together, but if they start sharing pages & chapters, It might become more confusing. Or! It could be good for us to throw off our eurocentric biases & get used to reading other cultures. But, FWIW, I'd make the same suggestion if an author had two dukes named Charles and Carston. They're just a little too similar & It can cause confusion in the long term.
Tangent aside, this is a good story with the potential of fresh mythology that you haven't read a million times already, in the familiarity of a System, class, elf-and-orc LitRPG. Give it a shot.
TeraSvRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This is a very solid time loop, showing of a very interesting world.
I really like just how outmatched Kayode is, how clear his deadline is, and how hard he has to work to get any meaningfull advantages during many of his loops.
A lot of the side characters get a punchy characterisation, but not enough time to really shine, but most of them should be reoccuring characters so there is a lot of time to dig deeper.
I always have a hard time saying anything about language and style if they aren't noticeably bad. I think there are almost no mistakes and the story is easy and enjoyable to read.
HiddenslothRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
This is a fairly generic time loop story of a privileged but scorned "loser" awakening a secret class and going on to kick butt. The background, however, is from a world where "Africa" conquered "Europe" and therefore the racial stereotypes are reversed in this particular case.
It's reasonably well written although some of the characters are perhaps just dropped in and yanked out too quickly.
Some of the wording had odd repetitions which will likely be worked out with more editing.
Interesting to see where this goes, thankyou.
Oh, the art of various characters at the end of chapters brings literally nothing to the story.
GopardRoyal Road
★★★★ 3.5
It Starts interesting certainly... The Setting also seems novel and nicely done. But the LitRPG parts just destroy the entirety of any suspense or narrative...
His class is literally not ONLY a Time loop... It also let's him just randomly earn "master proficiency" In for now basically every important skill he might have needed...
instead of maybe having Kayode LEARN OVER DECADES OF TIME LOOP. The story just hands him basically infinite Skills almost immediately...