We follow our MC Lugh Tuatha Dé, who on his previous life was the world's greatest assassin, until one day his own allies turn on him and kill him, betrayed by his own people Lugh reflects on his own life and how he spent it being tool to a organization just to be disposed by them, he wishes that he could redo his life, a life where he would work only for himself. And upon this Lugh gets summoned by a goddess who grants him his wish, but in turn he has to help her with a job, and this job is to assassinate a powerful hero, who will save the world by killing the demon lord but later will turn rogue and will be source of much destruction, pain and suffering.
So as for the things I like: It has a very strong premise, which I think are some very clever ideas, the first few chapters are really good, it's very similar to Mushoku tensei and we have this detailed world building involving the magic system that is really clever and honestly surprised me a lot, I also like how instead of a loser self insert op character we have an experienced dude that in his previous life had no compassion, he is not afraid of using his skills to manipulate the people around him, and despite being very powerful we see he growing his powers throughout each volume, there are battles he can't win and enemies he cannot defeat, he is overall just a very smart character that doesn't do many things that seem out of character or stupid. And the art was overall really good, its way superior then most manga art I've seen (as LN art should be).
For the things I didn't like would've been some of the pacing, things happen either really fast or really slow, it's not so much a inconvenience because the content is still interesting, and the author does he improve his writing with each volume, in volume 1 specifically we spend a lot of time setting up this whole second identity "Merchant life" thing, which is useful for the story but I feel like it wasted too much time there, outside that not much to complain, light novels are supposed to be easy to read and this one is. I'm not expecting the next Shakespeare here.
The characters are all pretty standard isekai characters, all the girl's fall in love with the MC but there is genuine reasons for that. But what interested me the most was the dark tone it had when explaining the backstory of one of the characters, I guess I should've expected that given the author. Some romance appears later on and is developed naturally, it's not really something that feels forced, I genuine like the relationship and chemistry the characters have.
The side characters all have their unique aspects, but I expect the story to develop them more in the future.
The battles that happen on this LN are interesting to say the least, I liked the battle between kid Lugh and his father when they were training, but the final battle of volume 1 was rather disappointing, it does show a new spell that is super powerful and amazing, however it ends very fast and they barely do any fighting, Lugh just talks to his opponent and AHA! I have outsmarted you this whole time. The final battle from the second volume was actually my favorite, Lugh goes all out but its not enough and it shows that even for him there are enemies he can't defeat. And on volume 3 he legit pulls up a railgun and destroys his enemy.
I have only read 3 volumes so far, and I can say it gets better with each volume, volume 3 specially had some great character development and world-building as well as introducing new characters and mysteries, I'm honestly surprised by this LN and really recommend it if you like isekai stories but is genuinely bored of all the self-insert op main character stories out there.
