While others fight for their lives inside the dungeons, Lin Chi sits in a safe house drinking coffee.
On the screen before him are several blood-soaked figures. They are his “assets.” He just spent 80 karma points on a crucial tip, pulling his ace dungeon runner out of a deadly trap. A notification pops up on the screen: Trust +12. Return on investment: 340%.
That’s Lin Chi’s job. He isn’t a fighter or a strategist. He’s the only person in this hellish game who never has to enter the fray himself.
He’s an investor.
In this world, some people are chosen to become “dungeon runners,” thrown into terrifying scenarios to fight, solve puzzles, and struggle to survive with their lives on the line. Others, a very small number, are given a different role: they stay behind the scenes, sign contracts, and invest in dungeon runners like they’re stocks, wringing profits from their life-and-death struggles.
Choose. Bet. Cash in.
It sounds like the perfect business. Until Lin Chi realizes he needs more than contracts. He needs trust, the fragile and precious kind that can only be forged between life and death.
Until he discovers that other investors outside the dungeons have joined forces to hunt down his team.
Until he learns that when trust hits zero, investors devoured by their own “assets” will fall into the abyss, never to return.
And when Lin Chi finally fights his way to the top of the game, he sees a line of text inscribed in the System’s deepest code:
“Attention, S-rank investor: You, too, are being invested in.”
This is a game without end.
