Reincarnated as a Castle - (LitRPG, Kingdom Building, Progression)

Bluebery’s Note:

The beginning of this story might feel a little slow and lacking in action, since this is the part where the MC has to slowly figure out how his System works and explore all of his skills. There’s also an initial period where he doesn’t have much to do because, well... he’s a castle. He doesn’t have arms or legs, so there’s only so much he can actually do!

But the pacing will pick up later, once he gets his first citizens and can finally send them out to gather resources, fight monsters, explore the world, and evolve.

The world is going to be big, with plenty of fantasy elements, magical races, monsters, and all sorts of interesting things waiting to be discovered.

So, I hope you guys can be a little patient and give this story some time to develop.

For those who enjoy LitRPG with a bit of kingdom building and monster evolution, welcome to Reincarnated as a Castle!

-xXx-

It was a quiet Sunday morning.

As a newbie webnovel author, I was diligently doing ”research” for my writing job.

Or at least, that was what I told myself.

In reality, my so-called research involved lying flat on my unmade bed like a beached whale while binge-watching the latest isekai anime from sunrise to sunrise. A half-empty bucket of chicken nuggets sat beside me, while my laptop balanced precariously on my knees, its fan whirring loudly in protest.

Honestly, life felt strangely peaceful.

At least, it did as long as I avoided thinking about the ten-thousand-word deadline hanging over my head.

Then, a sharp notification sound cut through the room.

DING!

My phone.

I rolled onto my side with all the grace of a dying walrus and lazily reached for it. I fully expected my editor to be calling, screaming at me with her shrewish voice and demanding to know why my lazy ass was still horizontal instead of chained to the keyboard.

But... surprisingly, it wasn’t that.

The message glowing on my screen was something entirely different.

[User ”Mister X” has rewarded your novel with 1,000 Luxury Castles — worth 5,000,000 Coins!]

I froze mid-chew.

Huh...?

Five million... WHAT?!

...

Yep.

Believe it or not, that was the exact moment I died.

Some lunatic had just thrown thousands of dollars at my trashy yuri catgirl smut novel! I was so overwhelmed with joy that, before I could even think about spending a single cent, I choked on a goddamn chicken nugget.

...And died.

Honestly, it was a pretty pathetic way to go.

Thankfully, death wasn’t the end.

After the darkness swallowed everything, I woke up once again, only to discover that I had been reincarnated into another world.

But I wasn’t reborn as a human, a mighty hero, or even some overpowered monster.

Instead, I became...

A castle.

A damn castle sitting in the middle of a wild forest.

****

It took me nearly half an hour to calm down from my initial panic.

”Haha... Oh... Oh, the irony!!!”

I had spent years roasting those brain-rot webnovel authors online. You know the ones, churning out the same tired isekai trash where the protagonist gets yeeted into a fantasy world as some random object.

Reincarnated as a slime? A spider? A sword? Honestly, those were the top-tier ones.

But then came the real trash.

Reincarnated as an apple? As a hot spring where hot mommies and little sisters could soak? Or, God help us, the absolute degenerate who reincarnated as a freaking condom!

Seriously?! What the hell were those authors smoking?

But now...

Here I was.

And guess who wasn’t laughing anymore?

Me.

Because I had become a castle.

A massive, immobile pile of stone and brick, squatting in the middle of a small forest clearing like some giant paperweight.

Just me, a bunch of trees, and a whole lot of existential dread.

Although calling myself a castle was technically correct, it was also a bit of an exaggeration. In truth, I was more like a mini castle.

My main structure covered only around 200 square meters of land and stood approximately twelve meters tall, with two floors above ground and a single basement below.

Four smaller towers stood at each corner of the castle, each topped with a pale blue, cone-shaped roof. Surrounding the main structure was a weed-choked courtyard covering more than 500 square meters, enclosed by four stone walls roughly five meters high. At the front stood a heavy iron portcullis gate.

And... that was it.

There were no deep moats, no towering spires reaching into the clouds, and certainly no grand halls worthy of an ancient lord.

It was simply a bare and rather plain little castle.

Quite pathetic, really.

Still, now that I had become a castle, I quickly discovered that there were a few things I could and could not do.

For one thing, I was no longer human, which meant I no longer had arms or legs.

I could not move my body at all. I simply stood there in my stone form, completely rooted to the ground.

And without a mouth or a stomach, I obviously could not eat.

Fortunately, castles did not get hungry anyway.

But then came the strangest part.

Even though I had no eyes, I could still see.

It was almost like having dozens of CCTV cameras installed throughout my body. Somehow, I even possessed two completely different forms of vision.

The first was my external vision, which gave me a broad, bird’s-eye view of the land surrounding my castle.

Beyond the castle walls stretched a wide grass field. Farther beyond that was a dark, overgrown coniferous forest filled with towering trees and tangled bushes.

To the north and northeast, I could faintly make out the silhouette of a distant mountain range, its highest peaks covered in snow.

To the south, there were a few smaller mountains as well.

That aside, I also had a second type of vision: Internal vision.

With it, I could see every room inside my castle with perfect clarity.

As I looked around, however, every room was completely empty. There was not even a single piece of furniture. It was as though someone had built the entire castle and then simply abandoned it.

Still, having so many points of view at once was rather overwhelming.

It felt as though dozens of different images had been shoved directly into my consciousness all at the same time. If I had still possessed a human brain, it probably would have fried within seconds.

Fortunately, I no longer had a brain.

So, not even the slightest headache.

Haha! Perks of being a castle!

Surprisingly, I adapted to these strange forms of vision rather quickly.

Within a few minutes, I had learned how to focus on individual areas, shift my attention between different rooms, and switch between my various views with relative ease.

And lastly...

Like many isekai protagonists, I also had a system.

Whenever I called for it, a transparent blue screen materialized within my mind’s eye.

****

Magic Castle System

Castle Rank: 1

Population: 1 (Just me)

Points: 0

Skills:

- Door Manipulation

- Lighting Manipulation

- Self-Repair

- Inventory

- Item Sell

Shop:

- Castle Shop (Requires 10 Points to Unlock)