On the eve of the launch of the fully immersive world Border Protocol, Shen Zhou, an investigator of neural interface accidents, receives a test headset that should have been destroyed three years ago.
All he wants is to uncover the truth behind his younger sister Shen Lan’s disappearance. But when he creates his character, he gains an attribute no one has ever seen before: Luck, minus seven.
Other players open treasure chests and find loot; he gets empty boxes. They take the main road; the bridge collapses beneath him. Even his beginner spawn point is in a ruined city the System is about to delete.
The good news is that whenever he suffers a real stroke of bad luck, his “Error Ledger” records another entry.
The bad news is that the ledger can only temporarily lock in a fact that already exists. It can’t conjure victory out of thin air.
So while everyone else is racing for the first kill, farming legendary gear, and founding guilds, Shen Zhou is trying to prove he’s still alive alongside a group of residents the System has classified as “invalid data.” Then, inside the chest of a boss monster that drops nothing at all, he finds a number left behind by his sister.
It turns out Border Protocol was never just a game. Every map is a future humanity might reach, and every data wipe deletes more than just data.
While the whole world chases the right answers, Shen Zhou decides to recalculate the books for everyone who was marked wrong.
