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The dragons are dead. Their colossal forms, once the lifeblood of an empire, now rot in the wastelands of a cursed continent. The people they empowered have been driven to madness by their absence, and a creeping decay smothers the land. Magus Montgomery Maldrak, driven by a desperate need to save his daughter lost on the decaying continent of Draya Calyrex, crafts a solution that skirts the edge of life and death: puppet-automatons animated by necromantic sorcery. Through their lifeless eyes, he will walk the ruins of a dead empire, searching for the truth behind the plague, the madness, and the dragons' fall. Some truths, however, are meant to stay buried.

Once, the sun shone brightly on Azlant — until the Whitemoon came to steal mankind's light and condemn it to eternal darkness. Valdemar Verney is a sorcerer with a dream: to find a new world for his people to settle, one where the sky isn't a ceiling made of stone. But in the underground empire of Azlant, dissent is never tolerated. Brought before one of the undead Dark Lords, Valdemar is offered a choice he cannot refuse. Meanwhile, swordswoman Marianne Reynard is given a mission: to investigate a dead cult with a few mysteries left to unravel. Both are looking for the truth, though they might regret finding it — for many cultists, monsters, and cosmic horrors stand in their way.

One month has passed since Akihiko Kayaba's deadly game began, and the body count continues to rise. Two thousand players are already dead. Kirito and Asuna are two very different people, but they both desire to fight alone. Nonetheless, they find themselves drawn together to face challenges from both within and without. Given that the entire virtual world they now live in has been created as a deathtrap, the surviving players of Sword Art Online are growing desperate — and desperation makes them dangerous to loners like Kirito and Asuna. As it becomes clear that solitude equals suicide, will the two be able to overcome their differences to find the strength to believe in each other, and in so doing survive? A retelling of the Sword Art Online saga that starts at the very first level of the deadly world of Aincrad.

The land is conquered. A thief and a demon killer run afoul of its new overlord and the wizard that serves him. Now the wizard seeks his life's ambition — an artifact that will make his word law. Hearing this, the demon killer and thief begin to have ambitions of their own. The race is on for who will reach the artifact first, and an entire barbarian horde is in the running. Yet the prize lies within the Forest of Giants, grown from the corpse of an empire. There are tales of things that stalk the trees. Tales of those that hunger endlessly. Tales of ogres. A fast-paced, dark fantasy adventure.

The Netherworld is a hellish landscape inhabited only by Demons, creatures born from the dark abyss — and it is the only world Salvos knows. Joining the ranks of newborn demons, she is thrown into a violent, anarchy-ruled landscape where she must learn, adapt, and evolve to survive. Her curiosity aids her but her pride could be her fall. It is the nature of the Netherworld to avoid or conquer any threat — after all, the law of evolution is survival of the fittest. Set in a game-like world with Classes, Levels, and monster evolution, Salvos is a story where the world is entirely real to those who inhabit it.

Truth Medici has to fight every step of the way out of the Harban slums. If he fails, his parents will sell him and his siblings to the brothels and gangsters. The Starbrite Corporation offers wealth and power to those who survive its brutal selection process—and the truly driven can even access the System Astrologica, which can turn an ordinary person into a Demigod. In a world where angels and demons are hired help, "Demigod" is achievable. But power like that has to be fought for, and fighting is the one thing Truth has always been able to do.

A normal person reincarnated into the Narutoverse faces a world full of red-eyed clans, a child jailor of the most dangerous being in existence, a snake creep with serious boundary issues, and an entire civilization of super soldiers with licenses to kill — none of whom particularly like him. Starting out weak and struggling for every gain, the protagonist must work his way up through gritty, often bloody conflicts in a world painted in a much darker light than expected. The story follows a zoomed-in perspective on the protagonist's gradual growth, from individual combat to large-scale battles, with an expanded take on the chakra power system.

When Garrett comes to after a close brush with death, he's in a new world — missing an arm and paralyzed from the waist down. The brutal gang lord whose floor he's crashing on wants him gone, and only a plucky young woman and his own wits stand between him and a cold death in the streets. Armed with a system that grants experience for exploring this new world, Garrett is determined to survive by any means necessary — even if it means becoming a villain. But the city is far from what it seems. Terrifying creatures lurk around every corner, immune to conventional weapons, and a strange lucid Dream world keeps bleeding into reality. When it does, Garrett realizes the hostile gangs around him are the least of his worries.

Gods are lazy. After a few hundred millennia they learned to delegate, and so the Heroes were born — useful pawns to handle the messy business of saving worlds. Quasi Eludo has been a Hero. He did the whole save-the-world routine, came home, and decided it wasn't enough. So he sold his services back to the Gods: Quasi Eludo, Hero for Hire. After countless subjective centuries on the job, an odd God arrives with a unique request — destroy a world, minimum payment several million dollars on completion. Quasi sees no reason to refuse.

A puzzling encounter leaves Dimitry a beggar with a strange emblem on his wrist. Around him, people suffer as ruthless organizations, opportunistic nobles, and an overly pious church vie for power in a medieval land under constant siege by stone monstrosities rampaging from the coasts. Can a kindhearted surgeon aid this ailing world with modern knowledge, resourcefulness, and magic? Or will rival powers crush him first? The story starts brutally grim and transitions into technology uplift with a focus on science, magitech, and town building.

The world is in the midst of a golden age. Humanity has been largely united under a single government for two centuries, scarcity has been all but eliminated, and the human lifespan has been extended far beyond what was once possible. Yet cracks have begun to form in this utopia — progress in science has outpaced social values, leading to conflict as the new generation struggles with perpetual disenfranchisement under their all-but-unaging elders. A class of gifted young arcanists are invited to attend a conclave held by the enigmatic Order of the Universal Panacea, an ancient organization devoted to pursuing the secret of true immortality. Several participants, including Utsushikome of Fusai — a prodigy of Thanatomancy whose grandfather was once a member — have ulterior motives for attending. Unbeknownst to them, there is a curse on the Order. An uninvited guest may already lurk among them — one that is not human. A whodunnit-style murder mystery with a focus on psychological drama and personal horror.

The gods were the enemy — slavers who chained humanity. With dreams of paradise, humanity slaughtered them and stole their powers, opening the path to ascend. Instead, they nearly destroyed the world. Vast hive cities now serve as the final bastions against a crumbling reality, and within the greatest of them, New Vultun, ascenders wage war to determine the very laws of existence. Avo was born a weapon — a slave to his instincts and his masters, made to burn New Vultun to ashes. Everything changes when he gains immortality and becomes heir to an impossible legacy. To free the world from its chains, he must ascend the megacity and challenge the tyrants who usurped the gods.

Tragedy had reduced James to a nobody — washed up and homeless in New York City, certain his life was over. Then a message appeared in his vision: the 60,000-year countdown had ended, and Nemesis 1 had been released. As the world falls apart, as billions die, as society collapses and all hope seems lost, James discovers a powerful truth: he was wrong to think himself a nobody. With the dawn of the Void, he'll become the most important person to have ever lived.

All Dan wants is to find a way home. He'd settle for a beer, a bite to eat, and a place to sleep off his hangover. But Dan has accidentally noclipped into the Backrooms — a bizarre, extra-dimensional world cobbled together from twisted carnivals, abandoned shopping malls, janky laundromats, and condemned asylums, overrun with horrific nightmare creatures known as Dwellers. No one ever gets out. If Dan wants to survive the week, he'll need to harness the strange game-like magic of the Backrooms, make some very sketchy allies, and carve out a little safe haven to call his own. He's also being hunted. The Flayed Monarch of the 999th floor has marked him for death, and no one walks away from the Skinless Court with their hide intact.

Awakening in an abandoned lab with no memory of the world, Evelyn is empowered by a system that grants her bloody magical powers in exchange for finishing missions and consuming her enemies. She knows one truth: no matter the cost, she will advance. She will manipulate allies and spread demonic corruption with a smile if that's what it takes to level up. Her first mission is to escape the lab's other newly born creations. But once she steps foot into the outside world, she must contend with people who forbid her existence and will work to eradicate those with her powers from the face of the planet. The outside world may be vast and deadly, but Evelyn will be deadlier.

Derrick is no one's hero. He is barely dealing with his mundane life when all of humanity is forced to confront the extraordinary. Overnight, across the world, mysterious machines appear offering people the chance to purchase almost anything they can think of — weapons, medicine, even superhuman abilities, seemingly for free. But following these machines come the Scourges: the most dangerous creatures, diseases, and machines that infest the universe. Ever growing and battling, these empires of horror and hunger will overwhelm and devour the Earth and its inhabitants unless Derrick and humanity can stand against all the horrors that battle between the stars.

Strip away wants, desire, dreams, and hopes. When you peel it back, such things are luxuries only possible when survival is guaranteed. Under the control of the new rulers of her world — as a pawn in a conflict she can scarcely comprehend — survival is not just everything; it is all there is left. Life, of her and her people, was nothing to the aliens if it was not useful. So she would be useful, she would be obedient, and she would survive. In this cosmic war of forces beyond her understanding, she would find a way.

My name is Xal and I live in the dims, a walled prison where my people are kept by cruel masters until we are needed to fight. One member of every family must answer The Call, for our blood bears the magic of a demonic god and all the terrible power that brings. We march to war against the Fomori — an unstoppable army of giants and their behemoths. If we do not, our families are put to death. If by some miracle I survive, I will be granted entrance to the Imperial Academy, where every noble house will vie to architect my end. They fear the rise of another dreadlord. And they are right to fear. I will pull down an empire — and that is just the beginning.

A rough draft of a dark secondary-world fantasy. The revised version contains major expansions and outright changes to multiple plot elements; this version is preserved for posterity only.

A cultivation world destined for destruction. A man fated to destroy it. There is a prophecy to ignore. Jim was thrust back in time to the moment he started cultivating — a second chance he is determined not to waste. He already knows the mistakes that doomed him in his first life, and he knows how to right them. But he must reach the top of the cultivation world without drawing the attention of those who would seize his knowledge of the future. He has seen how the world ended, and he is determined to fight through the world's hidden foes and defeat his destiny. Luckily for the world, Jim thinks fate is stupid. He doesn't care what it wants.