The Outcast's Ascension

When your health bar hits zero, you die. For real.Jason Reeves wakes on a steel table with no memory of his own name. Just a hospital gown, a chill he can't shake, and a cheerful voice announcing: Good morning, players!Thirty strangers. A ruined world crawling with monsters. A glowing interface that tracks their health, their levels, and their deaths.Jason's opening stats make him the weakest of the thirty. A three-Strength liability. The party that should have protected him mocks him, uses him, and finally throws him away.What none of the players know: far above the game, in a boardroom that appears on no map, very wealthy people are watching. First death, over/under ninety minutes: $4,000,000. Full-party survival: longshot.But the outcast they discarded is still alive out there. In the dark beyond the tree line, he's found an iron-willed mentor, a companion made of living light, and a power the system was never built to price.The house set the odds. Jason is going to break the board.The Outcast's Ascension is book one of The Outcast Saga, a LitRPG survival thriller where the stats are real, the stakes are lethal, and the game is rigged by people with money on the table. Book two, The Outcast's Reckoning, arrives January 5, 2027.