The task to survive - the first book in the The Way of the Shaman series, one of the highest rated LitRPGs of the present
When you end up trapped in a virtual game with a freshly created character. there's nothing to do but grit your teeth and start leveling up!
Do you like MMORPGs but don't have time to play them? Tired of stories about virtual realities where no one bothers to set proper rules? Just for you is a new genre that has taken Russia by storm lately: LitRPG. It combines a classic sci-fi or fantasy story with online game mechanics. It's one thing to watch a budding thief or mage complete their first quests in a virtual world, but what if you're watching their progress from a player's perspective? There's nothing sweeter than when the game - or in this case, the book - tells you that your character has gained a new level and unlocked their first specialization.
But Mahan, the protagonist of Task to Survive, doesn't enjoy his adventures in the world of the massively played Barliona. While most players namely in capsules, that will bring them completely into virtual reality, spending time voluntarily, Mahan is a hacker convicted of contract, that was supposed to be perfectly legal, until the police arrested him for it. As such, he has to serve his time in the mines of Barliona, with a brand new character who has the most useless professions possible - a shaman and a jeweler. And although the game protects regular players = from physical harm, prisoners feel all the injuries and fatigue - as well as the euphoria of gaining new levels, which is better than most drugs.
Perhaps the most fun part of any MMORPG is learning a new system and choosing the best abilities for your character, which often needs to be discovered through trial and error first. The challenge of surviving this aspect fully carries over into book form: Mahan's shaman is not just another figure in another story of a man trapped in another reality, but a character with a complete list of traits, experience and stats that are always at hand for inspection. And every player must know the feeling of elation when a rare item falls out of the boss as a reward...
