Arthur Stone

You are no one. Level zero. Empty of mind and memory. Even your past has been stripped from your brain by the inscrutable System. A long, difficult road lies between you and remembering any part of who you are. A road punctuated with one death after another....

Welcome to the challenge. You're an absolute nobody here—nothing, a zero, a useless lump of meat filled with bones. You're but a delicious morsel for your antagonists and those who got lucky at the start. The only goal you can have is to kick the bucket as soon as possible....

The Grove is a perilous wound on the face of the planet, home to the most fearsome creatures in all of Rock. Death himself has trod these paths, leaving in his wake freakish mutants who still bear within themselves a piece of his morbid nature....

No empty child has ever reached a year of age, yet I am now 13. It has been a long and miserable 13 years, where the best I can manage to do is walk with difficulty. Sometimes, I cannot even manage that....

A wilderness so bare, the sight of a cactus is cause for rejoicing. A place where each step is a challenge to stay alive, a growing summons to howl in pain or perish from thirst....

The Continent is full of all kinds of places, and in some, fear rules every corner. Approaching the worst of these places is beyond the stomachs of most men and women. Entering and crossing them? Even fewer would dare that....

At first, stories of Cheater caused nothing but laughter and rolled eyes. As the months went on, however, the tales became more terrific - and more terrifying. Now, Cheater the Lovestruck Loser has become Cheater the Lucky Legend....

So you want a brilliant cut for your rough diamond? In that case, you should get on with the cutting! That’s how I found myself looking for a suitable lapidarist. Since I was anything but your run-of-the-mill little rock, the master crafter also had to be special....

I had a plan; a good one that I thought through really well. But it only took a single cunning dwarf accompanied by two goons to force me into acting earlier than I’d planned to....

For two years, I have been thinking of this place and how to get here. Every step in my grand masterplan was but a waystation en route to the main prize: the door. And what a special door it is! Behind it lies what will not only make me strong, but put me at the very top of this world....

The history of our world tends to move along a shallow spiral - when completing a turn, you end up mighty close to where you started. The history of Second World, in contrast....

Cheater now has a straightforward goal, or so it seems to him. To everyone else, his endeavor sounds suicidal for a high-level veteran, never mind a newcomer whose intellect is still shackled by the System....

Something quite odd is happening in Second World - the planet's foremost MMORPG. Something that's causing alliances to be broken, and friendships, forgotten....

Some fall prey to those holding a gun for the first time. Others cannot be defeated even by the most experienced shooters in the world, unless their luck comes to save the day. Cheater’s accuracy is unparalleled, and Lady Luck is on his side....

The Second World is a mire of intrigue; the game's creators have left several back doors permitting them to terminate anyone at will....

An unexpected roadmap—or better yet, a book—makes looking for treasure so much easier. Reading into it what the authors have never even thought about makes for a welcome bonus. These are all but lucky waystations on my journey to the doorsteps of this world's greatest mystery....

Some things cannot be bought for cash. Not even a pot of gold would buy you those coveted tally marks on the blackboard....

It started with a girl. Her father, as it turned out, was a barbaric maniac. Decades into the 21st century, the madman seemed terribly out of place. Yet he was also a powerful mogul....

Imagine a warm, beautiful country populated by friendly and happy people who live in harmony under a true democratically elected government.

The new, detached setting is teeming with "land mines"—highly unusual ones. Plenty of other, deadlier things would be happy to reach out and touch someone anywhere, be it the roof of a skyscraper or a subway tunnel deep underground....