Only Villains Do That

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

While waiting on an Akihabara train platform one day, ordinary high schooler Yoshi Shinonome was suddenly plucked from his normal life in Japan and whisked away by a beautiful goddess to Ephemera, a world of magic and adventure, to serve as her Hero and drive back the evil Dark Lord.

This is not his story.

Standing nearby at the moment Yoshi was isekai'd was a man named Seiji - a rude, cranky, misanthropic musician who was not at all pleased to find himself also snatched up and transported to Ephemera by the goddess's wicked sister, Virya. According to this self-proclaimed Goddess of Evil, the whole fantasy adventure thing was a game she and her sister played to stave off the boredom of immortality, and since the good goddess, Sanora, had picked her Hero...well, Virya needed a Dark Lord.

A grown man with his own career and ambitions, Seiji has no interest in playing. Unfortunately for him, the call to adventure was not a request. Now, he must conquer Ephemera and defeat the Hero...or Virya promises to make him beg for the release of death before granting it. Playing along for his own survival, Seiji nonetheless is under no illusions who his true enemy is, and it's not the naive young would-be Hero from his own world.

Placed in an impossible position, Seiji must make enough progress toward world domination to keep his sadistic patron goddess off his back, but not so much that he can't strike an accord with the forces of Good and convince the Hero Yoshi that it's the goddesses who are their mutual enemy. Forced to embrace Evil without beingtooevil, Seiji walks the razor's edge, building his forces and biding his time till he can get revenge on the goddesses and be free of them, his only certainty that he will not be getting out of this with his hands clean.

A Dark Lord's gotta do what a Dark Lord's gotta do.

Updates Tuesday and Friday.

Most Patreon tiers get to read one chapter in advance of the public release!

Information

Status: Ongoing
Year: 2021
Author: Webbonomicon

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.5/ 5.0
Followers: 6,241
Views: 1,982,041

Chapters(68 total)

Reviews

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Community Reviews(10)

the space dogRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This story is really good I see a lot of complaints in other reviews I just finished the last chapter out so far(4.04) and I have no major problems is good it is interesting and more than that it's world building just makes sense. So just try it.
ps if the author reads this thanks for the reading it was good.
AgentSquishyRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Our cynical jerk of an MC is plucked from a train station and forced into the newest round of the goddesses’ game of Isekai Hero vs the Dark Lord, but he has no intention of playing the part of Dark Lord until he sees the horrible state of the world. When life is so terrible that decency is revolutionary, I guess it’s time to tear it all down.
I think the writing quality (not a super technical term) is very good here both in the grammar sense and the ability to capture humor, anger, and horror. I would hold this up as a personal favorite against mainline fantasy and science fiction, not just genre pieces.
For nitty-gritty details:
-The MC is an angry, cynical jerk with a flair for the dramatic and showboating and that really works for me as it’s done with humor and realistic levels of anger at how terrible people and the world can be. It includes actual character growth (and character trauma) which can sometimes be hard to find in this sub-genre. If you’ve ever found yourself thinking, “sure that joke was a jerk move, but I’m not evil” then I think this story will resonate with you.
-This has isekai style “cheat power” and OP potential granted to the MC, but with the caveat that it is intentionally made to require acquisition of power over time (infinite mana doesn’t mean much for conquest when all you’re doing is summoning slimes) so it’s a slow-burn weak to strong style.
-The magical system and the MC’s cheat power combine to make the future-casting part of my brain light up, it’s very easy to consider what powerful spells, artifacts, and abilities will be coming to our MC.
-There is what I would call “nation building” but the whole story tries to take a more realistic look at isekai tropes so to start off it’s more organization building than nation shaking.
-The series takes a lot of fun jabs at the tropes of the genre with an actual genre aware protagonist and an attempt to not miss glaring plot holes or reduce things to 2 dimensional portrayals. If you’ve ever
hakatri ginRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I love to read stories about quirky MCs done right, in here we have a character carefully picked for being an arrogant asshole who believes himself to be above everyone
If you had to live near him he would be absolutely insufferable, but positioned against a world full of brutish assholes and self righteous heroes we can actually root for him
The MC is half japanese and half american, which allows him to throw otaku culture and pop culture references with ease, and he is an interesting subversion of the regular isekai MC, in a sense he subverts the mold so much the mold becames whole again
He is not an otaku loser dreaming about becoming OP in another world... nope, he is stuck at a dead-end job and dreams about movig to murica to become a sucessful musician... so he is a retailer loser dreaming about becoming an OP musician in another country, and that is a completely different thing (or so he says)
He knows about videogames, pop culture and anime but constantly tells himself is just superficial knowledge that doesnt make him an otaku, nope, he just happened to absorb it by cultural osmosis via not being surrunded by otakus all the time, yep, he simply happened to stumble upon that knowledge, capisce?
He actually has a social life, he goes outside, he meets people... and so far there have been no mention of friends or family BUT HE IS NOT A LONER LOSER OK?
Instead of embracing the spirit of justice and good his mean spiritedness is the vehicle that can enable him to grow as a person, by helping him channel the assholeryness required to change the new world for the better, even if he has to crush them first
There is also the fact that if he manages to improve this world by taking it over, then it means he was right all along, his desire to fix the world pairs perfectly with his desire to validate himself as superior to everyone
Being an asshole is his method, and the world is so grimdark it works, the world building is prety nice too, with an angle of floating islan
ieP0oj3otiRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I really like this story. The main character is that perfect balance between annoying but still being fun to read about. It's not just him being beaten up by the world either, he just never seems to win for long.
Seiji is so full of himself, and knows it, and yet he still overestimates and underdelivers. But then he just plows ahead into the next thing. Reading his semi-informed Internet ramblings (explicitly called out as probably being wrong) is fun too. Watching him rant about random things is amusing too. His anger propels the story.
The worldbuilding is neat too. It's a pretty unique setup (details in spoiler). There is magic, but the interesting parts aren't the magic.
The setting is a world with magic, but no rigid system at all. The goddesses basically do whatever they want. Instead, the part I like most is the society. It's a pretty messed-up society, and there's a lot of it. Seeing it through Seiji's rage at everything is interesting. I've never seen a perspective like this one.
Seiji definitely goes off the deep end morally. I'm not sure where it's going, but redemption doesn't seem very likely. Some of his thoughts and actions get pretty dark, and show no signs of changing. It's interesting to read a well-written main character who is definitely slipping into darkness, but doing it gradually.
The side characters are close but not quite there. Webb does an amazing job at making characters real, but this story is focused on Seiji so only a few of them get enough time to be memorable, and none of them get enough time to really feel complete. They're all distinct and well-written though.
nokkoRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Only Villains Do That sets out to build an interesting fantasy world that exists only by the grace of bored godesses, and demonstrate exactly how awful life in that world would be. It achieves and exceeds that missive.
The nuts-and-bolts writing is a lot better than the standard for web fiction – some typos slip through, but it's always clear what the author means to say. Webb has a way with words. His scenes are vivid, his dialogue gives characters distinct voices, and the overall structure of the story only reinforces this good foundation. The story also keeps a good pace; it's easy for a reader to fall into a bit of a binge.
The main character is a Japanese-American misfit-misanthrope. He's snarky and a little bit mean, but isn't evil. (In fact, a lot of the story takes pains to point out that evil doesn't really exist, or if it does, it's usually a consequence of systems being what they are, not an inherent trait.) Seiji's disposition at being thrust into a fantasy world is decidedly negative. The people in the various groups that he ends up spending time with tend to offer contrasts to his harsh perspective that naturally develop the world. Dialogue in Villains is a pleasure to read, and most every character ends up well-developed.
Where other fantasy stories might mention a fact of the world like “Goblins live underground, apart from human society,” and let that thread hang loose, Villains investigates the reasons for the facts of the world and their consequences. The main driver of conflict in the story, from a very high-flying bird's eye view, is a divinely-placed class system within society. The story dives into misogyny and the mistreatment of sex workers in the city of Gwyllethean, the oppression of goblinkind by humans on the continent of Dount, and the consequences of humans' use of beastfolk tribes as a buffer between them and Dark Elves. These big stories are also given humanity by the characterization of the people who live them.
The protagonist can
oli0202Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
We follow a permanently irate person who believes the worst in people as he gets isekaid into a fantasy world as The Dark lord. He then tries to start an empire up very slowly, it is a fun story and the only real complaint I have is that his spells kind of sucked at the start and he gets too far with some shit-tier spells(combat-wise).
Side characters do die which I was very pleasantly surprised about, I do like that type of realism. The grammar seemed good to me but I am not a good person to judge it. A delightful book and I love the rants of the MC, it's just hilarious imagining this Dark Lord ranting about everything.
AaradurRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
THaving read the author's other work (the gods are bastards), I find that what Webb really excells in is writing characters that have actual flaws and their interpersonal connections and development. OVDT mainly focuses on Seiji and the development of his character, unlike the varied cast of TGAB. From the outset, Seiji is a bit of an asshole with an axe to grind with the flaws he sees in government, various institutions and society at large. So when the dark goddess kidnaps him to be her new dark lord against his will, she sends him to a nearly broken country ruled by an autocratic, ethnic caste system whose lower rungs in particular have little recourse against oppression and gives him the resources to start making changes...
Seiji is not by any means OP in this story, and the narrative includes a lot of social, economic and political debate - from the perspective of a charater who is deliberately written to be somewhat flawed. Generally, the story is an incredibly well written 'slide into darkness' faustian narrative; though Seiji never did have the chance to refuse Mephistopheles
AnotherRandomRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Really enjoying the story so far, there haven’t been any noticible grammar or spelling errors and the world building has been top notch, great work addressing how people would build on terrain like that and excellent portrayal of the cultural differences, it’s very well thought out and unique world. Doesn’t fall into the trap of having an intelligent MC constantly lording his smarts over other people (like in He who fights with Monsters). Excited to see where this goes
AtemRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Got this as audible and it was great. So coming to check outbook2. Good humour good mix of some culture without being jaring a consistent story and good characters. A fun story. I recommend this as a good story for driving as it's not to intense but also doesn't let it's lightness distract from it being an enjoyable listen
BuddyBeelzebubRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Characters are done well. World building is on point. Prose is great. Good humor too. Only problem is that the MC starts out feeling a bit one dimensional, but the nuance in his character definitely grows over time, especially in the most recent chapters.
I've been reading Webb's work (The Gods are Bastards) for roughly 5 years now, and as much as so love TGAB I think this story might be better. At the very least its far better than TGAB was this early in its run. Really amazing to see how much Webb has grown as a writer.
Let me hit that beat about how long I've been reading Webb's work one more time. TGAB was first released in 2014, and ran with a consistent update schedule for 5 years. Webb is new to RR, but he's one of the longest running and most accomplished web serial writers on the Internet, up there with wildbow. He's experienced in a way very few other authors on this site are, and that definitely shows in the quality of this work. Given my experience with TGAB I strongly suspect this story will only get better with time.