Dark Fantasy Litrpg

He thought it was the end, and his gun sat ready to make sure. But an oddball offer from his last friend comes at the literal last second. Curiosity gets the best of him, and he finds himself sucked into iNcarn8, a game claiming to be a whole new life. Now, as Montana, the larger-than-life tank warrior, he has one more last time to get his life right.

Sam Ryder's life already sucks, and it's about to get worse when he's fired from his dead-end job as a programmer. He's about to head home to escape into his favorite RPG, Alien Civilization, when he's offered a thrill ride on a death machine by a gorgeous woman straight out of one of his games. Before Sam can say "WTF?", he's been whisked away to a dark world of monsters and goddesses, his body transformed from Outcast to Warrior, the second level on a ladder that may eventually carry him all the way to Demigod.

We join Montana, recently returned from an impromptu study abroad trip, a bit wiser, a bit broader in perspective, and a lot freaked out by the once-dead person who's currently in his bedroom. Possible zombie sightings aside, he's finally ready to take his job as Duke seriously. And just in time too - not only are the politics of the capital rapidly closing in on Montana's little valley holding, but there are also goblins to negotiate with. Plus, that cult threatening to take the lives of his citizens.

Is it easy to survive in the game world? You could say yes, if you didn't know what the additional conditions were. They are unusual: it's the real world in which you have lived all your life. The enemy, craving to destroy you. Your own class who couldn't care less about you. Are you still sure that survival is easy? Then welcome to The Game! It will prove you wrong.

He's tried to ignore them for too long. But the long-simmering conflict between Montana's holding at Coggeshall and the Night Goblins who also occupy the valley is about to boil over. Usually, goblins aren't anything to write home about: an enemy without much size, intellect, or weaponry. But these goblins? Well, that's just not the case. These are goblins with limitless resources, never-before-seen tactics, and horrifying monsters at their disposal. Worst of all, they don't fear death in the slightest. They just might force a good guy to become what he has always struggled to defeat.

For nearly all of my life, I trained to become a master assassin, but at the height of my career, it all fell apart. I was betrayed, ambushed, and left bleeding out on the streets of London. Just before my death, though, I was offered a choice: Stay and let my life come to a swift and brutal end, or become the personal assassin of a god in another world. It wasn't a hard decision. But this new world isn’t like the one I left.

Montana Coggeshall is feeling the squeeze - and not just because of his new leather pants from the goddess Eona. His little safeholding in the ruthless world of Vuldranni is under siege. On both sides. At the front is Lord Caticorix, a grade-A Imperial flunkey if there ever was one. He's clearly ridiculous, but the army he brought with him might not be. Plus they're bent on blocking Coggeshall from getting any food or supplies from the outside world.

Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a horrific accident when he was seven, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. When Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from that shed.

Without so much as a warning, humanity in its entirety was suddenly moved to another dimension. Every person, without exception. But this new world, with all its opportunities and gifts of wondrous abilities, was a stadium. A deadly arena of an unimaginable scale. And humanity was to be its latest gladiators. Every man, woman, and child was given a weapon and ordered to fight. Stuck in this dimension without a way out, only two options existed for the would-be hunters: Fight with monsters to complete the many trials ahead, or perish.

When Theodore visited the new animatronic strip club in town, he didn't expect the elves the facility was famous for to be actual flesh-and-blood elves. And he definitely didn't expect to find an inter-dimensional phone booth tucked away in the back room. But find them he did, and before he knew it he'd been sent to a strange and exotic land. Among The Ten Thousand Worlds, power is free for any with the will and talent to take it. Here, elves practice immortal cultivation, gathering power to increase their personal strength and pursue eternal life.

When Pyresouls released, it was a brutal new virtual reality game with a twist: The first to beat the game would win billions of dollars. But after the Burgon Beast couldn’t be defeated, Pyresouls turned very real and unleashed an apocalypse of undead, monsters, and a system of levels and stats onto the world. For many years since, Jacob Windsor has fought with sword and shield to survive Post-Collapse Earth where only ancient, guilt-soaked weaponry can harm the monsters from Pyresouls.

The great hunt is over. In the end, Timothy managed to keep his invaluable prize. A victory? Perhaps. But glory and adrenaline are very powerful narcotics, and tolerance builds quickly. Once deprived of them, life immediately becomes gray and bleak. What's more, his beautiful lover is beginning to transparently hint that she could find herself a more interesting beau. What is a talented player to do in this case? The solution suggests itself: rush headlong into the most dangerous adventures, taking risks and walking the blade of a knife.

What do you do when the game resets around you? Just when Montana thought he had life in Vuldranni figured out, the rug is pulled out from under him. He's alone once again, but now he's in the crosshairs of the man who would be emperor, and a whole host of people are counting on Montana to provide a safe haven for them. Montana has one hope of actually completing his quest of forming a dukedom: he needs to bust Nikolai out of prison. A prison that no one has ever escaped from alive.

"Has your life here been so difficult? You seem to fail upward at every opportunity." So says Careena, the hag teaching Clyde Hatchett how to use magic. It certainly doesn't feel like that to Clyde, who's still got a day job scraping mud (at least he hopes it's mud) out of monster pits. And yet, Clyde's found himself at the center of a massive conspiracy to kill the Emperor. He's the only one with proof that could save the man, and take down an entire network of corrupt nobles, evil slavers, and power-hungry despots.

Michael's plans have shifted, or rather, he has upended them. His once simple plans for raising House Wolf have morphed into something different. Will he succeed at his new goals? Will the Forerunners? Or will Michael's allies be made to pay for his overreach?

When Montana first started playing in iNcarn8, his new game life, he just wanted to be one of the good guys for a change. But despite his impressive stats and incredible heroics, even his followers are just plain scared of him. Trouble keeps pouring down Montana, even in the remote, supposedly safe holding he's building into his dukedom.

Broken...Sold...Enslaved... Alistar trained from birth to fight for humanity, only to receive a unique class that's locked upon entering the dungeon. He has five years of fighting ahead of him with no way to level up and gain new skills. But when humanity falls, he quickly learns to only trust his familiar, Kale. The one perk of his class that he can use is rapid healing. Turns out, that's a curse in disguise when he's sold to the arena to fight to the death. Locked away...broken...defeated. His only dream is to see the sun again, but to do that, he must kill all those in his way and break ...

Silas, now vastly more powerful than he ever anticipated, confronts a harsh truth: brute strength alone won't save his world. Beyond mere leveling up lies a complex path to salvation. Embarking on a rigorous training regimen under the guidance of a seasoned mentor, Silas hones his skills, spells, and crafting abilities alongside allies, old and new. Yet, as his prowess grows, so too does the scope of his challenges. Drawn into ancient feuds that span clans and corporations, Silas must navigate a treacherous web of alliances and enmities.

Surviving in a tough situation is not always the best option; sometimes dying is much better than staying alive. The Academy showed Paladin Yaropolk what makes the world go round: pragmatism and personal gain. Restart was set in motion, but it only makes players more frantic. Now everyone plays only for themselves. Yaropolk faces the same dilemma: be like all of them, or keep his humanity and be known as an odd duck. Because there is only one rule in this world: kill or be killed....

After the death of his beloved mother, Swain is left at the mercy of his drunken father. His only respite from all the beatings and abuse lies in the words he scribbles down, seeking beauty in an ugly world through poetry. He has no friends until one day he meets a girl near his mother's grave. A restless spirit who calls herself Goose, over the years she encourages Swain's creativity, eventually helping him tap into a magical ability he never knew he possessed: a dark energy entwined with his despair, fueled by his anger, and controlled by his poetic verse.