Red Maw Saga Book 1 Ash and Iron

Toru Nakajima never stood out except as a target. He got good grades,was quiet and polite but always got picked on. He was always too weak.. Too slow always the butt of every cruel joke that his classmates could conjure up. His mother was always working, and so was his older sister so his nights were spent doing homework, or losing himself in video games. “If only I could be like my knight character on this game.. Then I could show them whos boss.” Years of bullying carved the timid boy into something hollow. One rain-soaked night, his classmates' cruelty went too far. Kicked, stabbed, and left to die in an alley, Toru’s final breath carried only a whisper. “If only I could be strong enough to make them suffer.” When he opens his eyes again, it isn’t to sirens or heaven’s light It’s to the stench of blood, mud, and rot. He’s been reborn as a goblin, a runt, the weakest of monsters, in a brutal world where strength is survival and mercy is extinction. But something in Toru refuses to die. The instincts of a beast mix with the cunning of a man, and soon the goblin called Vris begins clawing his way upward. He learns. He kills. He evolves. And with every battle, the forest trembles a little more beneath his shadow. From prey to predator. From victim to ruler. This is the legend of Vris, the Goblin King of the Red Maw. — Description from novelcodex.org