Dead Zone

The System gave humanity classes, levels, and stats. It forgot to mention the expiration date.

When a hexagonal grid locks over Earth's atmosphere and seven billion people wake up with RPG interfaces, wildland firefighter Cole Maddox gets the worst class in the System: Anomaly. Zero damage output. Zero combat skills. A designation the System itself labels as a repair subroutine - a single-use tool designed to fix a failing installation node and die in the process.

Historical success rate across seven worlds: zero percent.

Trapped in the Montana Black Zone - a region where physics breaks, monsters materialize from alien material, and the System's governance collapses - Cole must lead a group of survivors toward the zone's center while his framework builds toward activation. Every level-up offers a choice. Every choice reshapes what he's becoming. And the deeper he pushes into the zone, the more he realizes the System isn't the only intelligence that built him.

Something older than the System lives in the earth beneath his feet. Something newborn and vast and frightened. Something that wants to exist.

The System wants suppression. The awareness wants survival. Cole is the only person who can translate between them - if his bilateral framework holds, if both sides negotiate in good faith, and if whatever the System was built to prepare humanity for doesn't arrive ahead of schedule.

Dead Zone is a system apocalypse progression fantasy featuring stat screens, skill trees, and level-ups alongside first-contact diplomacy, tactical survival, and a protagonist who reads fires better than people. This is Book One of The Anomaly Protocol - a five-book series.

Perfect for fans of Defiance of the Fall, Dungeon Crawler Carl, He Who Fights with Monsters, and The Primal Hunter.