How I Became King By Eating Monsters #1

Author:

Daken

Illustrator:

Shiba

Original Name:

When the Monster Meat I Ate Led Me to the Throne – モンスターの肉を食っていたら王位に就いた件

Rating:
Genre:,,
Tropes:,,,,,,,,,,,,
Trigger Warnings:,,,

Queer Rep:

Disability Rep:


Eat Or Die!

The first prince of the kingdom of Farune, Mars, is only twelve years old, yet he lives in fear of assassination. In order to avoid the deadly poison in nearly all of his meals, he slips out of the castle into the nearby monster-infested forest, where, battling monsters and his own hunger, he has to hunt for his meals in order to stave off starvation. Then, one night, as he’s searching for his next bite of monster meat, a red-haired woman shouldering a greatsword appears before him and says to him, “You have promise. Become my apprentice.” How is he supposed to tell her that this must be some sort of mistake? But there’s a secret that only she knows, and that he’s stumbled eating monsters makes you stronger! With her training and his newfound power, Mars will finally overcome all those pesky assassination attempts. However, that doesn’t end things; no, it’s only the beginning of a nationwide—even continent-spanning—series of wars and plots with him right in the middle!

At the very end, the author noted how he had written this as as “fun” series, one where he can relax and not have to think as hard. That said, while posting it online, he found that it didn’t really get any response at all. The lack of response made him lose interest in the series and he ended it early… and then his next series was a hit.

Which brought this one back up into the limelight for a while.

I like it because it’s straightforward and I enjoy the accidentally-in-charge trope that pretty much rules here. Mars is just trying to fucking live his life when he runs into some weirdo in the woods that decides to take him on as an apprentice when she finds out he’s been eating monster meat to survive the endless poisoning attempts on his young life. Training is basically fighting a musclehead goddess who feeds him raw meat, poisons him, and throws weights on him to force him to train constantly. It works. He just becomes powerful not through any desire to be powerful but more in the spirit of: I don’t want my teacher to kick my ass when she gets back.

There’s no harem— the fiancee he was arranged to marry is not an overly effeminate figure hellbent on fucking him, though she has a bit of the yandere air with the magic she cast on him when they were children (she can share his sense of sight, which she basically watched for entertainment and then to get hints on how to develop her skills). There are other women about, but they have motives far and away from Mars.

The followers are basically everybody. It all happens by accident. The Hundred follow him because he’s strong and they copied his methods. The entire government was reduced to basically a handful of people who were suddenly given free reign to reform the system and supply the people with welfare and education. He accidentally boosted the economy by having an arena built for the Hundred. His knucklehead followers were so mad for monsters and training that they more or less exterminated the beasts that terrorized the common folks. His wife took control of the Mages and made it absolutely insane through reducing ethical concerns (not a good change but it has brought more mages in…).

And because this guy can’t say no once the ball is rolling, he just sort of manages by trying to pass the buck onto someone who would be better at it, which means he’s accidentally fantastic at delegating. He accidentally overthrew the entire kingdom. He accidentally overthrew another country, which started a war with another country, which they won because his people got overenthusiastic about beating the shit out of the other people.

It’s just a comedy of errors. No one really listens to him and out of their enormous respect, always assume he’s plotting something beyond their grasp. He just doesn’t talk much and is a generally friendly guy… just trying to get by. All he wants is a nice meal.

There’s only a fun, junk-food sort of intake on this one. You aren’t reading it for depth or symbolism or anything. It’s just a chill read and rather funny. I found myself thinking more than once, “Man, can’t he just have ONE good meal? How come no one has parasites from all this raw monster meat???”

Welcome to the Menagerie.

Here is where M logs their media activity. Partly because Goodreads is forgettable and keeping physical logs is harder. Sometimes M writes a lot. Sometimes M doesn’t write enough. It doesn’t matter. This is just a for-fun little blog so that M can remember what they thought about whatever they watched or read or played or. Whatever.


What is M?

I read. Voraciously. I have subscriptions to those book things on digital retailers. I consume books at nearly all hours. The hours I don’t spend reading? I’m writing. I’m drawing. I have a problem. I have a problem in that I love to read things that are in the same vein repeatedly. Book journals don’t work and as much as I text my friends screenshots of book passages, it doesn’t scratch the itch. Now I’m going to be doing… tiny… tiny book reports.


Truck-Kun Kill Count:


Books & Light Novels Read in 2025: 9/100
9%
Comics Read in 2025: 13/100
13%
Physical Owned Books Read: 398/662
60%


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