I swear, if I had to code for one more smiling farm boy destined to save the kingdom, I was going to uninstall my own brain., as if that's possible.
By the way, my name's Eric. I'm a Game developer. I do NPC designing and a Villain writer. The guy who gives digital characters their personalities, quest lines, tragic backstories, and sometimes… their doomed, two-line deaths.
Romantic, I know.
For the last five years, I'd been in charge of every non-player character in our company's mobile and PC titles. But no matter how cool I tried to make them, the pattern was always the same:
Humans are the heroes. Monsters are EXP. Villains exist to be farmed.
And honestly, I was tired of it. Tired of watching every goblin, ogre, kobold, or demon lord get slaughtered just for being "the bad guy." Tired of the bias. Tired of the predictability. Tired of the heroes with perfect jawlines who could do no wrong.
So one day, between my burn out and my eighth cup of coffee, I snapped.
"Screw it. Villains should fight back."
That was the spark. I pitched it half as a joke, testing the water to my manager. He give me an Okay. But once I started building it… something clicked. I made the protagonist a goblin, a small, angry, underestimated. My kind of guy.
Then I designed the sword and it's system. It was a cursed claymore, a villain's dream. A weapon I forged the code with every cheat, exploit, and hidden skill I'd ever discovered in any engine. I poured everything into it, lifesteal, mana sync, demonic growth trees, passive corruption, even an AI core nobody asked for.
It was perfect. A perfect villain's claymore.
The game developed fast. It felt like the code wanted to exist. When we launched the title under the name:
"Goblin's POV"
…it exploded.
Overnight, reviews flooded in. Gamers were obsessed. Streamers screamed. Cosplayers were making tiny goblin armor before the week even ended.
Sales surpassed every game in the company's history. The president called me into his office and personally handed me a bonus so fat I could've used it as a pillow. He talked about promoting me to Senior Developer with big office, big pay and big future.
For once, things were going right. That's what I thought, anyway.
That night, I left the office late and I was too excited, too tired, and thinking way too far ahead into the future.
I didn't even hear the footsteps behind me.
Suddenly, something sharp slid between my ribs, it was a cold, burning punch of metal..I froze. The pain was instant and blinding..I turned my head just enough to see a shadow.
And the last thought that flickered in my mind was painfully ironic:
"Please don't tell me I'm about to become one of my NPCs…"
And then darkness.
My thoughts felt like they were floating in soup as I clawed my way toward consciousness.
Am I… dead?
For a moment, I wondered if this was the afterlife. Maybe some cosmic loading screen. Maybe my brain is firing its last spark.
But then my vision, if you could even call it that, sharpened.
A ceiling came into view. It was made of wood and obviously a cheap. Someone had painted stars on it, poorly. My field of vision didn't move unless someone moved me.
Then a voice boomed right above me.
"Ugh, this dagger again? It won't sell even for one copper."
…Dagger?
Hold on.Hold on.
I tried to lift my hand. I didn't have a hand.
I tried to breathe. I didn't have lungs.
Panic crawled through me like an army of spiders.
No. No, no, no! Don't tell me-
The shopkeeper's massive, calloused fingers grabbed me grabbing the me that wasn't supposed to be me and held me up to the lantern light.
And there I saw it.
My reflection. I was short and slightly curved. I was a metal but covered in rust.
And there a tiny crack on the side.
I was a dagger, a small, rusty, pathetic dagger.
"…Huh?"
The only sound I made was the soft clink of metal as he tossed me back into the bargain bin like last week's trash.
No… this can't be right. I coded a legendary cursed claymore! A Villain's Blade! I should be the coolest weapon in the entire world!
Not… Not THIS.
I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE MAIN WEAPON! NOT A DISCOUNT THROWAWAY!
My dream if I got to reincarnated, my beautiful, dramatic dream of waking in another world as the ultimate hero, shattered so fast it might as well have been paper.
Instead, the universe reincarnated me as:
a rusted, unsellable, one-copper dagger.
Honestly, death was starting to feel kinder.