Death Pays in Points

Evan holds himself responsible for his best friend's death. He stopped going to his classes at the university and lived inside the Ultimate Game instead. Then a line appeared on his interface offering resurrection for a hundred million points. He took the hundred million as the thing to aim at. With a devouring blade fixed to his hand he runs the game's dungeons: a hospital, a campus, the domain of a scarlet dragon, old castles with dead ends in them. A guild of killers hunts him and a second guild, more calculating, tries to recruit him. He picks up a squad along the way, and a woman with altered weapons coaches them. Every stage he clears is points toward the number, and the higher the count climbs the more the game asks of him.