Born A Monster, Author's Disclaimer

First, thank you for considering reading my webnovel, Born A Monster.

Let me go over what this novel is and more importantly, isn't, so that you don't read partway through and then go away disappointed.

The origin story and Servant of the Axe are about a young, growing hero, coming to realize the harsh reality into which he has been born.  If you want a competent hero, you want the later books, The Crafter and Sheng Ishiko (by Ping).

Although this is a story about a world where people grow with their System abilities, it is not an Isekai novel.  The closest I come to this is Terran Diaspora, when the main character finally leaves the reality of his birth to explore new horizons.

In any event, this isn't a story where the main character is the only one with a System, something that propels him to world dominance.  In fact, his System actually imposes limits upon him, eventually becoming something he has to fix and remake.  His System is not sentient, or intuitive, and it runs by its own rules, which don't often have his best interests in mind.  Because he is a shape-changer, his System also adapts, often trying to reflect the world as he perceives it.

Growth in ALL of these novels is SLOW.  If you want your hero to gain something every ten chapters, where he's throwing thunderbolts at the gods, then this isn't the series you want to read.  Likewise, the character sometimes loses momentum as the events of the story don't go his way.  Athal is, as closely as I can make it, a living world, and it does NOT revolve around the main character.

Many of the characters are NOT human, to include the main character.  Please do not mistake them as humans who just have different bodies.  Although NOT a cultural anthropologist, I have started from a set of core beliefs for each race, some of which are alien to humanity.

Also, although he has some higher cerebral functions, the main character does not start as a full mental and emotional adult.  Again, read The Crafter and later if that is something you require of your main character.

Example:  The character Kismet was not made from people, but from four cats.  I added energy and optimism, and then took the Mwarri race, giving them linguistic skills and the sincere belief that they were members of civilization.  So, you will see behaviors that SEEM human, and then she will act in an entirely inhuman way (such as hitting the main character in the eye to relieve her irritation and then not understanding why he thinks of it as a hostile action later).

Although this is a fantasy setting, containing goblins and kobolds, orcs and dragons, elves and dwarves and countless other species, I do not "copy paste" from Tolkien.  So if you expect to just know that "she's an elf", and think you can understand that character's outlook and motivation, you are in for a surprise.  I've tried to make that a pleasant, natural-seeming surprise, but just know that if you enter the novel with expectations of generic fantasy that you may be disappointed with what you actually find.

The main character chooses a bizarre appearance (shown now on the cover art), and often suffers from it.  Humans, in particular, think of him as not-an-actual-person.  So, he doesn't gain any great status and certainly not the harem that main characters of other web novels gain. 

I have tried, at every juncture, to give each named character two positive and two negative traits.  So if you're looking for a novel where there are clearly defined good and evil, this is probably not the best web novel for you.

But enough with the warnings, let's get to what's good.  Why would you WANT to read this series?

The main character, and outlooks of the people he encounters, are believable within the context of the series.  Each character, however narrow minded (and there are a LOT of those), is not just a one-outlook, flat personality.  I have tried to assign positive and negative traits based upon the sort of personality that would choose to grow into the person they are when they are first encountered.

Although not a character itself, I have tried to detail and develop the world, independent of the main character's actions.  Although he has an effect, his is not the only effect, and the world does not revolve around him and his perceptions or desires.

As the world has no refrigeration or magical equivalent, nor many other modern conveniences, I've tried to keep that in mind, with different foods being available in different seasons.  I don't dwell on what the world doesn't have, mainly because as someone born into that world, the main character wouldn't find that as something missing or lacking.  It's just part of the world.

Magic, although easy to use at the simplest level, is not a passive force.  It has its own momentum, its own idea of how the world should change in its presence.  This isn't a world where wizards fly above the masses, hurling destructive fireballs around with wild abandon.  Mages will use their magic with subtlety, and not at all when that option is available to them.  Magic is DANGEROUS, and not just to those angering the magic user.

I'm sure I'll think of other things to add to the disclaimer later, but based on the comments I've gotten from readers so far, these are the major expectation versus reality.  So if this work is too far off from what you want to read, go find that series and read the hell out of it.

If you aren't driven away by the above, then please, read on.  This may be the original work you've been looking for.