Arthur Stone

I should not exist. All children like me are stillborn, or die in infancy. Those who cannot grow stronger, die. No empty child has ever reached a year of age, yet I am now 13. It has been a long and miserable 13 years, where the best I can manage to do is walk with difficulty. Sometimes, I...

The enemy is strong. There are a lot of them, and they are pressing the attack forward. Me, I don't have enough supplies and weapons for my army. Heck, I don't even have an army to speak of. Corruption is rampant, the government is in free fall, and rioting mobs run free. Thievery is rampant to...

The new, detached setting is teeming with "land mines"—highly unusual ones. Plenty of other, deadlier things would be happy to reach out and touch someone anywhere, be it the roof of a skyscraper or a subway tunnel deep underground. Tons of somnambulant extras could swing either way: cut your...

Imagine a warm, beautiful country populated by friendly and happy people who live in harmony under a true democratically elected government. In a feudal world dominated by a small cohort of ruthless nobles, that would indeed be a bright spot, right? It sure would—except keep dreaming, folks...

The System is generous. Not with presents, but with predicaments. Cheater now has a straightforward goal, or so it seems to him. To everyone else, his endeavor sounds suicidal for a high-level veteran, never mind a newcomer whose intellect is still shackled by the System. Cheater sees only one...

I had a plan; a good one that I thought through really well. But it only took a single cunning dwarf accompanied by two goons to force me into acting earlier than I’d planned to. Before I can complete, all my preparations, all my plans, need revision in face of a bunch of unpleasant surprises...

A wilderness so bare, the sight of a cactus is cause for rejoicing. A place where each step is a challenge to stay alive, a growing summons to howl in pain or perish from thirst. On his shoulders, he carries a heavy rifle that digs into his burned flesh. Worse still is his load of loot. In mass...

Something quite odd is happening in Second World - the planet's foremost MMORPG. Something that's causing alliances to be broken, and friendships, forgotten....

It started with a girl. One he had seen many months past, and only for a few evenings. Her father, as it turned out, was a barbaric maniac, straight out of the foulest dungeons of the Middle Ages. Decades into the 21st century, the madman seemed terribly out of place. Yet he was also a...

Targets come in all kinds. Some fall prey to those holding a gun for the first time. Others cannot be defeated even by the most experienced shooters in the world, unless their luck comes to save the day. Cheater’s accuracy is unparalleled, and Lady Luck is on his side. He has all the marks of...

War has come to the steppe, and it doesn't look like it's going away. A surprise attack left the enemy humbled and made them shy away from their own shadows. The aggressors are not in a hurry; they are just getting comfortable in their new territory and amassing reinforcements for their new...

At first, stories of Cheater caused nothing but laughter and rolled eyes. As the months went on, however, the tales became more terrific - and more terrifying. Now, Cheater the Lovestruck Loser has become Cheater the Lucky Legend. He never misses. He can never be held captive. And his luck never...

For two years, I have been thinking of this place and how to get here. Every step in my grand masterplan was but a waystation en route to the main prize: the door. And what a special door it is! Behind it lies what will not only make me strong, but put me at the very top of this world...or at...

The history of our world tends to move along a shallow spiral - when completing a turn, you end up mighty close to where you started. The history of Second World, in contrast....

You are no one. Level zero. Empty of mind and memory. Even your past has been stripped from your brain by the inscrutable System. A long, difficult road lies between you and remembering any part of who you are. A road punctuated with one death after another. You are too puny to survive by might...

Some say these lands are the most dangerous in the entire North. The Grove is a perilous wound on the face of the planet, home to the most fearsome creatures in all of Rock. Death himself has trod these paths, leaving in his wake freakish mutants who still bear within themselves a piece of his...

The Second World is a mire of intrigue; the game's creators have left several back doors permitting them to terminate anyone at will....

The desert has been left behind, but Sinner's troubles have not. He finds himself in an elaborate trap—him, and everyone else who failed to go north early. Now he has two options: accept his fate and die along with countless other losers or escape from the trap and pull his friends out. Except...

Welcome to the challenge. You're an absolute nobody here - nothing; a zero; a useless lump of meat filled with bones. You're but a delicious morsel for your antagonists and those who got lucky at the start. The only goal you can have in your miserable existence is to kick the bucket as soon as...

Some things cannot be bought for cash. Not even a pot of gold would buy you those coveted tally marks on the blackboard. Rumor has it that this year's leaders will receive an unusual reward from the Emperor himself. The exact nature of that reward is a mystery to everyone. What is absolutely...