The Apocalypse is a Side Quest

When the apocalypse hits, Nathan Lee accidentally dumps all his rare skill points into fishing. Humanity has been ripped from Earth and dropped into a colossal multidimensional dungeon — a nine-realm gauntlet. Nathan has no interest in being a hero, but the universe has other plans. A system bug, a snail fed radishes, and a fishing rod that kills ogres later, it turns out side quest rewards and weak classes may be the most powerful thing in the dungeon.

After being separated from his allies at the end of the first circle, Nathan is trapped in the second — an endless desert wasteland where survivors have cobbled together a fragile kingdom. A magical storm called the Dustend can rip through his Constitution like tissue paper. His main goal is to find his way to the Third Circle before it's too late. Nathan's attention, however, is thoroughly elsewhere: there are farms to repair, political factions to navigate, and a gang war between magical fish that desperately needs his intervention.

Nathan Lee has an army of werewolves, a now-sentient prosthetic arm that is only mildly bratty, and an unlocked ability to ride in a boat. In the Fourth Circle — an infinite ocean of giant killer fish and a skyscraper-sized Kraken — his real enemy turns out to be a mind-controlled cult led by his sister's ex-husband, backed by a System Admin who wants Nathan dead. Even his werewolf army might not be enough.

Nathan Lee has near-divine abilities that can open dimensional rifts for fishing — and sometimes liquefy his own brain. With three species fighting to defeat the Sixth Circle, he's going to need all the power he can get. Only one species wins; the other two go to the woodchipper. The only chance to avoid collective genocide is to bypass the System with the aid of a mob-boss fish smuggler. If Nathan fails, two species are erased from existence. If he succeeds, he becomes the sort of ultimate hero he never wanted to be.

Nathan Lee is done and plans to deal with it via aggressive procrastination — specifically, he's going to ignore the main quest and catch every species on floor seven to grind out a class upgrade. But with the admin dead, the entire circle system is on the verge of implosion, a friend is facing trial as a war criminal, and local NPCs are waiting for a prophesied Fisher King who definitely doesn't match Nathan's description. Despite his best efforts, he gets dragged straight back into the main quest.