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 in your miserable existence is to kick the bucket as soon as possible.

Erik West is an ex-combat medic. He and his best friend, marine recon sniper Jimmy "Rugrat" Rodriguez, have been thrown into another world. They've become one of the "cursed". Now they have to figure out this fantasy world, where cultivation, skills, and abilities must be grown...or death awaits.

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. You are too puny to survive by might alone. Information is the single resource that might keep you alive, but the brainless “digis” have none of it. Only those with experience can give you what you need, but most care nothing about you or your plight. In fact, some make it their mission to kill you.

Something quite odd is happening in Second World - the planet's foremost MMORPG. Something that's causing alliances to be broken, and friendships, forgotten. A worthless low-level mine becomes the stage of vicious battles, its burned ruins suddenly contested by the game's toughest clans. Every border is controlled, and every road in the province blocked off. The weak players and NPCs alike are subjected to non-stop violent raids courtesy of Eastern invaders. And the strong are scouring the virtual world for the culprit - the weirdest noob the game has ever seen.

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 thanks for his service, but no matter how far he travels, it's impossible to escape the war's devastating effects on the world.