Nathaniel's bus ride was supposed to be just another boring commute. Wrong. Now, he, 23 fellow passengers, and a corgi named Biscuit, are stuck in a "Hell Difficulty" Tutorial, battling monsters and leveling up to survive. Easy difficulty, anyone can handle. Normal difficulty, you've got to put up a fight to get by. Hard difficulty is where only the tough ones last. And Hell? That's where you have to be a bit out of your mind! With his terrifying talent for mana manipulation, Nathaniel decides to invest every stat point into mana.

The heroes Terry Fairway once idolized have turned against him, hunting him down at every turn. His grandfather, the ruthless S-ranked necromancer who rules the city, watches from his throne as the people starve and suffer. Vampires stalk the streets unchecked, feeding on the innocent without fear of reprisal. Terry always believed his family were the good guys, but Wichita isn't a city of heroes or villains—it's a city of power. And if power is all that matters, then power is what Terry will seize.

Freddy Stern, a twenty-one-year-old cashier, has lived a plain, albeit harsh life. Having been orphaned—twice—he's spent the last ten years working and staying out of trouble. His only aspiration is to save enough money to become an archhuman. His dream gets the jump on him when he barely survives a near-death encounter and finds himself in possession of 1% Lifesteal, a bizarre talent with numerous contradictions and just as many uses.

Benny White had been having a rough couple of years, and the approaching apocalypse wasn’t exactly helping. Pulled from the point of death and thrust into a horde-mode-style survival game, Benny’s odds weren’t looking too great. To make matters worse, an eldritch god… entity… thing named ‘Dave’ tasked him with destroying the very System that now controls his fate. But hey, it's not all bad news. Benny’s experience as a lab tech grants him a rare Splicer Class that lets him repurpose the genetic material of slain enemies into augments for himself.

After his parents died, Alex Roth had one desire: become a wizard. Through hard work, he was accepted into the University of Generasi, the world’s greatest academy of wizardry.... Fate, however, had another plan. On his 18th birthday, he is Marked by prophecy as one of his kingdom’s five Heroes, chosen to fight the Ravener, his land’s great enemy. But his brand is "The Fool". Worst of the marks.

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

Compiled by intrepid journalist Neve Pride, this archive of recordings spans the months after dragons emerged on earth, chronicling the communities that sprang up amid the destruction, the scientists, military leaders, and experts searching for a defense, and those steadfastly seeking the missing. Neve and her young daughter Bex travel among the wreckage speaking to those left behind and surviving, against all odds. Neve records everything for history, and in the hopes of locating a clue as to where the dragons came from and how one might stop them.

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive - and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet.

Annie has always had high hopes for her future. But the reality of her life just isn’t measuring up. She loves her fiancé, Greg–doesn’t she? She’s going to get her degree and open her own business–won’t she? Then, a strange old woman shows up outside her house, and she seems to know a lot about Annie. An awful lot. Annie could tell the old woman to get lost. Yet there’s something about her Annie just can’t shake. And what she learns could change her life forever–but is it the life she envisioned?

Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.

For Ronan, life in the Bunker was seldom exciting. He had spent all of his time trapped below the surface of the Earth, exploring the same floors over and again. Returning to the surface had always been a taboo subject, something that had always clearly not been an option yet was a necessity. When nature itself fights back against exploration, you stay where it's safe.

Greg walked into a bar hoping to wash away the sour taste of a bad day at work. What he got instead was a bartender offering him the opportunity of his dreams—with a catch. A ticket to purchase a class that could make him the strongest being alive. If he can afford the asking price. Thrust into a world he knows nothing about, Greg will need power on another level entirely. To get ahead, he'll need the kind of power only deities possess.

On a day like any other, an alien descends to Earth, unleashing untold death and destruction. Alistair watches the live news footage of the carnage, his eyes glued to the image of impossible power made manifest. The alien’s arrival kicks events into motion that no one could have predicted. Earth is prematurely initiated into a universe-spanning empire of cut-throat cultivators, beasts, and entities of ungodly power–all guided by a mysterious AI System. The System’s first quest? Kill someone.

Larek Holsten is different from most people living in the Kingdom of Androthe, where his seven-foot-tall frame is looked at with suspicion and anger from its shorter residents; but as long as it helps him become the best Logger he can be, he doesn’t let it bother him all that much. He and his best friend, an axe with a powerful Fusion that causes it to become sharper and stronger than a normal tool, are feared by the trees in the magical forest north of his home, as he can fell the quickly growing monoliths faster than anyone else in the community.

As reality's grand show concludes and alien watchers abandon and reset Earth, the world dissolves into primeval chaos. Monsters roam, magic surges, and the survivors battle to reclaim their world. Humans are forced to adapt… or become extinct. But humans aren't the only players in the game. Cunning mandrills now weaponize Earth's creatures, laying waste to the remnants of humanity. Warring dinosaurs, primordial monsters, and alien beasts complete this apocalyptic free-for-all, each hungry for their next kill.

It is known as the Day of Awakening. Across the continent, the Heavenly Interface appears, presenting each being with a system to track their skills and quests in the name of achieving their goals. Bandits rise to power, forgotten masters come out of seclusion, and spirit beasts arise from their slumber, drawn to the promise of a new era. Little do any of them know, it is Kai, a young herbalist from a small village, who was the cause of the Heavenly Interface's introduction.

Assassins don't retire; they reincarnate. 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.

James Robard was a risk-taking con artist and thief before he turned over a new leaf as a loving husband and a dull suit in a law firm. He's never felt so unadventurous. That is, until the System descends upon Earth and he's initiated into a thrilling game world of magic and mayhem, training for exhilarating challenges that make him feel alive again.

Eleven years after the Mana Apocalypse, nineteen-year-old James Summers has more on his mind than just the flailing economy and a country full of monsters. Orphaned and living with his grandparents, he's given up on college in favor of working at the Coney Island Home Depot while pining for Sally, his cool, beautiful colleague.

System Initiating.... Valhalla Protocol Activated.... Welcome, —Insert Name—, you have spawned into a level 70 city—soon to be dungeon. All safe zones are transitory. Due to the city’s failing infrastructure, a permanent safe zone cannot be established at this time.

Eric Thornfield’s life is about to get a lot more complicated. After losing his high-level character in his favorite MMORPG, Major Online, he thinks he’s done with gaming for good. But when a mysterious coin from a street vendor opens a portal to a new world, he’s thrust into a reality that combines magic, monsters, and the most intense leveling grind he’s ever experienced.

He thought he was at rock bottom. Then the world blew up. Now, he’s the only one that can save the city. But it may take more than he has to give . . . Detective Kurt Weller has been framed, shamed, and beaten. And now he wakes up to the end of the world. Bombs are dropping, and dead people are trying to eat him.

After being killed by a high-velocity tree-hug, Arlo is transported to a new world where those brave and talented enough to conquer ancient Delves are rewarded with incredible power and abilities. Unfortunately for Arlo, there is no tutorial. He is immediately forced to tackle a Delve set to the highest difficulty with a party of adventurers who are not only strangers to him, but strangers to each other as well.

Sylvas Vail is a big fish in a small pond, the most powerful mage on his planet. But when the doors to the cosmos come crashing open and all the untold wonders and terrors of the universe come pouring in, he is left with only two options: Ascend or die.

Syl, an archmage who tirelessly fought the monsters spilling from the magical Gates and Towers, yearns for a life free from the chaos of battle. When he is assigned to an Aurian magic academy to guard an undercover princess, he is happy to be no more than an unremarkable class three student with dismal practical scores. Right up until people start trying to kill them both.