More by Andrei Livadny
Alex is one of us. An office rat during daytime, he spends sleepless nights playing his favorite MMO game: a familiar, predictable world which is about to collapse. A new virtual universe arrives to replace it, aggressively devouring all others: the Crystal Sphere.
Alex gets involved in testing new technologies which promise to revolutionize gaming. Fitted out with a neuroimplant which provides a 100% authenticity of experience, he has to survive in the Crystal Sphere against all odds. What is he turning into? Will he become yet another expendable test subject - or the first player to transcend reality?
Alex and Enea are back in the Crystal Sphere where in their absence a catastrophe has struck. Virtual reality is now controlled by the Reapers: hybrid identities evolved from high-level NPCs who kill human players to harvest their neurograms.
Reapers are constantly on the prowl for more neurograms. No one is safe from their cannibalistic greed.
Survival in this new world becomes an ever-increasing challenge. A Reaper army is about to invade the Agrion cluster. Rion Castle has become the players' last outpost - but the struggle is too unequal.
Rion Castle! Alex and Enea are facing a serious test of courage if they want to keep this unique citadel built by the lost civilization of the Founder Gods. Abounding with mystery and powerful artifacts, its dungeons are a complex maze of tunnels swarming with creatures of Inferno. What's even worse, Alex's "impulse buy" risks to trigger the first clan war in the Crystal Sphere. And they don't yet know that the donjon's dark bowels harbor a nightmare about to become the new curse of Rion Castle. In the meantime, Infosystems Corporation begins an aggressive marketing campaign pushing its state-of-the-art neuroimplants onto unsuspecting gamers. A new era of reckless destruction is looming over the real world...