Wage Slave to Archmage

Finn was a Senior Engineer at Google. He died at his desk at 3 AM and woke up penniless in the gutter of Cinderhold — a brutal fantasy world where humanity is at the bottom of the food chain. His talent is non-existent and his mana pathetic, but then the System loads: the Genesis Editor lets him optimize spells like a programmer refactoring code. There's a catch — it runs on money. From brewing black-market tonics to exploiting dungeon glitches, Finn intends to monetize magic and optimize his way to the top.

Finn has secured a foothold in Cinderhold, but keeping a low profile is about to become impossible. When his companion drags him into the sewers to retrieve a mutated former teammate, a simple job escalates into a life-or-death struggle against human-faced spiders and underground explosions. Worse, the danger isn't isolated: the Abyss is beginning to consume the city.

Finn just wanted to count his gold and quietly level up. But when his highest-paying client — a Grand Knight — is ticking down to an Abyssal transformation, quiet is off the table. To save her, Finn and his companion are dragged into the lost history of the realm, from the ruins of a massacred noble house to the locked-down City of Molten Iron, where the only way in runs through the criminal underworld. The Abyss is watching, and Finn is about to show the frontier what a Novice Mage looks like with the gloves off.