Jake is working at the neighborhood market under his apartment when the world ends — not from nuclear war or climate change, but cruel and arbitrary gods from another world shuffling Earth like a deck of cards. Monsters, dungeons and magical items scatter across the globe, and everyone gains a strange magical card system. Jake, alone in the cooler, must learn to survive, collect cards, build decks, and survive divine politics as elves arrive to buy his goods. When he throws himself backward through time and steals divinity from an ascending god, jealous gods hunt him and cultivating mortals offer a strange path to power.
To find peace, Alexander must first embrace war. After tragically losing the only person he ever cared about, Alexander, a rogue artificial intelligence, opens a portal to an alternate dimension to escape his grief. Scanning trillions of different dimensions, Alexander finally finds a world that is reminiscent of the only time he was ever happy, back when he could play virtual reality games with his only friend. He doesn't know why, or how, such a world exists, but he doesn't care. All he cares about is finding a place where he can escape the misery of Earth and start over. Join Alexander as he risks it all by downloading his consciousness into this new world — Nova Roma — and as he and his growing legion learn that the rest of the world may not be as ravaged and destroyed as they thought, setting sail for ancient Venice, confronting pirates, merchant families, and a darker violent side that threatens to take control.
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