Jake's Magical Market
J. R. Mathews
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.
Progression: LitRPG/Gamelit magical card system with explicit quantified advancement tiers. Core mechanic is a god-granted card/deck system where collecting cards creates decks granting magical powers, with dungeon/market levels and divine ascension ladder. Book 1 establishes card collection and deck crafting from market survival to dungeon delving under apocalyptic shuffling. Book 2 adds divine progression: Jake consumes divinity and ascends as a new god, facing jealous gods hungry for power while learning cultivating mortals' centuries-long contemplation path to godhood, plus card crafting at divine tier. Book 3 concludes the arc. Goodreads description confirms 'magical card system that gives them magical powers', 'collect enough cards and create a good enough deck', 'snatched divinity', 'newly ascended divinity', and 'craft his own magical cards' with 4.32-4.46 ratings across 2515-7194 ratings. Advancement is not metaphorical: hierarchical tiers include market survival -> card/monster levels -> deck power -> dungeon tiers -> divine ascension -> god-tier card crafting.
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