Thorn's Edge

Sometimes you've got to play the cards you’re dealt. Even if you don’t know the rules, don’t trust the dealer, and aren’t completely sure you’re playing with a full deck. When the System arrived, I was gardening. Head down, music on, in the zone. So I didn't notice the giant, fear-projecting squirrels until they went for my dog. My sixteen-year-old, scruffy white terrier, who happens to own my heart. I'm not a fighter, nor a gamer, and I've never killed a thing in my life. But I love my dogs. And anything trying to hurt one of them is gonna have to go through me first. Five minutes later, I've been dumped into something called a challenge scenario, dog in tow. Now I'm fighting monsters, making friends, and trying to keep us all alive while the creepy Santa Claus in my brain offers quests, classes, and abilities. A guy who tried to kill me swears none of it is a hallucination. Given my history, that's not as reassuring as he thinks it is. As mana reshapes the world and the System cheerfully insists that this is a rescue, not an invasion, I'm gonna have to learn how to navigate monsters, rifts, and multiversal bureaucracy without losing myself — or my dogs — in the process. Thorn's Edge is a character-driven LitRPG System Apocalypse series about surviving, and eventually thriving, at the end of the world. What to expect:– System Apocalypse / LitRPG– First-person, emotionally grounded narration– A reluctant heroine who becomes extremely OP and remains faintly baffled about it– Strategic thinking over reckless power fantasy– Dry humor in the middle of objectively terrible circumstances– Dogs. Soul-bonded, loyal, plot-relevant dogs. Absolutely no dog death.– Not grimdark. Not even remotely close to grimdark. But that said, it is an apocalypse. And people are people. Hope is never lost, but sometimes things look bleak. Content warnings: There's profanity, but not crazy amounts of it. There's violence, but it's not particularly graphic or gory. There's sensitive content, especially if you consider references to mental illness, death, and grief to be sensitive, but it's treated sensitively. (I think, anyway.)  Posting schedule:Book One: Challenge Scenario - every dayBook Two: The Rift in My Backyard - every other dayBook Three: Finding J - Sundays & Wednesdays, unless I get so far ahead that I can go faster ***** Thorn’s Edge is a revised and edited relaunch of the series previously published here as Taming the System. The story hasn’t changed in any fundamental way, but it has been cleaned up, tightened, and given a series name that actually fits where it ended up going. (Olivia did not, in fact, become a tamer.) If you read Taming the System, you’ll recognize the events, but you may notice smoother pacing, clarified mechanics, and small adjustments throughout. Also a lot more Riley; I just wasn’t fair to him before. He’s a good dog. If you’re new here, welcome. I hope you enjoy the ride!