Is I Killed the Main Player Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Quick facts
Format	Webtoon, 128 chapters
Run	2023–present · ongoing
Community score	AniList 7.5 · MangaUpdates 7.3
Where to read	WEBTOON — official

Overview

Corin Loch is nobody — a background NPC in a game-world he happens to understand better than most of the actual players do. That knowledge turns to horror when he watches the game's designated "main player," Sihu, slaughter innocent NPCs and loot their bodies for gear, all while the system rewards him for it. When Sihu botches the final mission and dooms everyone, Corin is somehow thrown three years into the past. He knows exactly what's coming and exactly who's responsible — so this time, he's going to kill the main player himself and take the hero's role away from him before the slaughter can happen again.

It's a regression/do-over story built around flipping the "chosen one" premise on its head: the system's favorite is the villain, and the actual hero is someone the game never intended to matter.

What it does well

The hook is strong specifically because Corin isn't a player — he's an NPC who's spent his whole "life" watching the rules from the outside, and that gives him a different kind of knowledge than the usual overpowered-regressor lead. He's not relying on foreknowledge of his own past runs; he's relying on a working understanding of how the world itself is built, which makes his plans feel earned rather than just convenient.

Corin's characterization as someone genuinely kind and self-sacrificing, dropped into a story that punishes exactly those traits, gives the early chapters real tension — you're waiting to see how a good person survives a game that rewards Sihu's cruelty. The pacing toward Sihu's assassination moves briskly, and once Corin steps into a hero role of his own, the story opens up into a wider cast and a clearer stake: stopping the disaster he already watched happen once.

Where it falls short

The NPC-versus-player conceit is the whole hook, and once Corin succeeds and takes over the protagonist role, the story starts to lean on more familiar regression/power-fantasy beats — gathering allies, growing stronger, closing in on a final boss. If you came for the NPC's-eye-view of the system, later chapters read closer to a standard harem-action webtoon than the sharper premise the opening promises. The expanding cast of love interests gets more screen time than some readers will want relative to the plot, and a few side characters exist mainly to fill out that roster rather than carry their own arcs.

Verdict

The setup — an ignored background character killing the system's favorite and taking his story away from him — is a genuinely good twist on the regression genre, even if the story settles into more familiar harem-action territory once that twist pays off. Worth reading for the hook and the satisfying turnaround in the opening arcs; just adjust expectations once Corin's story becomes everyone else's story too.