NOVEL NEXT Chapter 2.00: Recap and Refresher
For those of you who came in late…
Xander Kell was just another burnt out corporate drone trying to get home for a long weekend of camping. One more stretch of highway, and he'd be back with his fiancee and anchor, Jo. But the universe had other plans.
He stopped at the Starlight Oasis Truck Stop, a flickering neon speck on the edge of nowhere. And then… the Simulation came back online. The sky blinked. Reality peeled open like an orange, and everything stopped. In its place: a world transformed with swarming with beasts, dungeons, and classes. A landscape littered with dead cities, broken memories, and systems that hadn't run in 12,000 years.
Xander should've died. But he didn't. Instead, he leaned in on his bushcraft training and the singular purpose of finding Jo. And in the ruins of what used to be Earth, he uncovered a terrifying truth: Reality is a game. And it's been offline for 12,000 years.
After the world shattered, Xander didn't give up. He got to work.
Teaming up with Zoey, a former Olympic-level archer from Alaska, and Alex, a fast-talking rogue with more charm than sense, Xander helped the manager of the Starlight Oasis, JT, establish one of the first functioning safe zones in the Midwest. It wasn't much, but it was a start. People needed food, walls, and hope, and Starlight gave them all three.
That was just the beginning.
Xander and his two companions set out across the wild, unrecognizable expanse of Central Illinois, searching for Jo. His journey led him to Saint Joseph, the town he'd grown up in, now reshaped into another safe zone. But this one was different.
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On the surface, it looked stable. Beneath? It was a nest of scheming politicians, backroom deals, and power-hungry survivors more interested in controlling the future than rebuilding it.
Then the Gnolls came.
A full-scale assault by a savage, organized army of mutated beasts shattered the political games and forced everyone to focus on survival. Xander, joined by the iron-willed Major Rex Steelgrave, traced the threat to its source and led a brutal campaign to eliminate it. His leadership, sacrifice, and unshakable devotion to finding Jo didn't go unnoticed. Not by his allies, and not by the Simulation. His class changed. The Paladin became the Crusader.
With the Gnoll threat neutralized, Xander and his allies returned to Saint Joseph. But what waited for them wasn't just politics, it was something far worse.
Victor Stern, long suspected to be just another corrupt official, turned out to be a mad scientist with a god complex and dangerous access to lost alchemy. He had already killed Alex... and came within minutes of killing Jo. Only the combined effort of Xander and his allies brought the chaos under control.
But they were too late to stop everything. Victor escaped. And Xander doesn't believe for a second that he's gone for good.
Now, with Jo and Zoey by his side, Xander is heading back to where everything started: the Starlight Oasis Truck Stop. He doesn't know what they'll find there, but he knows he can't stay in Saint Joseph. Even though things are better now, there are still too many terrible memories associated with the place. What he does know is that the Simulation is waking up... and they're still only scratching the surface of what that means.
Major Rex Steelgrave and his remaining team members have gone their own way, continuing toward a designated military fallback position. Whatever's coming next, they'll face it on separate fronts.
The struggle for survival isn't over. It's just getting started and just to make it interesting, the Simulation has kicked off a world event full of undead!