Other points:
- It was set in a war between orc-like evil guys vs humans
- Main character was a male warrior type who journeyed into enemy lands and ended up killing some of the big bosses(i think there was like over a dozen of them of different types).
- A female main-ish character was a demi-god who goes along in her own dimension for most of the story.
- Another character was a young mage-type who was in a town being besieged in one of his first few scenes.
- Enemy peon blood was referred to as ichor. I think it was green in color. And the main character would often be covered in it from killing enemy soldiers.
- There was a rank of enemy soldier that could shapeshift, but not perfectly. There was a scene where one character was washing off in the river in front of a young boy, which she ended up noticing was one of the shapeshifters and stabbed him with a sharp rock.
- One of the big-boss enemy guys had a mouth at his torso where he would munch on the little orc-like peons. The bosses typically ate the peons as food.

That's about all I can remember. Hopefully I didn't mix up stuff from other series into there. Haven't had any luck on Google so far. If anyone can help me figure out what the series is from the mish-mash of points above, you are awesome. Thanks

edit: asked my brother about it and he doesn't remember much about it either, but here's more about the chess game biting the finger when you made a mistake:
"our hero started to get the idea, but was actually his first time playing, and he began to realise after awhile that the strategy was to touch and lightly and quickly as possible"