A world on the precipice of the apocalypse. A secret forged in the flames of war. A chance to start over. For John Sutton, only one of those three things matters. Retired from a decade of brutal war, he wants nothing more than a quiet pastoral life while he does his best to stem the steady increase of his Doom Points before they hit 100, signaling the start of the end. He’s been given a small farm on the outskirts of the empire as a thanks for his service, but no matter how far he travels, it's impossible to escape the war's devastating effects on the world.

Every beginning is also an end. Rem, the Foxkin Oracle of the Wildwood, knows this better than most, seeing as he is on his second life. Most people don't get another chance at the whole life thing after a stupidly oversized adventurer's hammer uses their head to paint a tree, but a goddess on the Pantheon of the Divine sees great potential in Rem. Granted salvation by his Patron, Rem becomes a Dungeon Core, a magical entity tasked with creating the trials essential to helping adventurers become the true warriors they were meant to be.

The decision to start a new life is never an easy one, but for Joe the transition was far from figurative. Becoming a permanent addition to a game world, it doesn't take long to learn that people with his abilities are actively hunted. In fact, if the wrong people gained knowledge of what he was capable of, assassins would appear in droves.  

Newborn Dungeon Cores must choose what entity they help contain, and that choice determines what monsters they are able to summon. After being executed for crimes forgotten in death, Tira is given the chance to make that choice. Tira chose Acekorah, the Primeval Terror, a being so dangerous few cores will risk trying to contain it.

Larek Holsten is different from most people living in the Kingdom of Androthe, where his seven-foot-tall frame is looked at with suspicion and anger from its shorter residents; but as long as it helps him become the best Logger he can be, he doesn’t let it bother him all that much. He and his best friend, an axe with a powerful Fusion that causes it to become sharper and stronger than a normal tool, are feared by the trees in the magical forest north of his home, as he can fell the quickly growing monoliths faster than anyone else in the community.