​The Chaos Vanguard

Ian Vance was having a perfectly ordinary Tuesday — cold coffee, damp cardigan, seventy-eight eight-year-olds one bell away from chaos — right up until reality tore itself in half and dumped him in a dying, forgotten corner of the multiverse with a knife, a bad attitude, and absolutely no idea what a "Void Zone" is. Turns out the System made a mistake. A big one. Instead of a proper integration, Ian gets routed into an abandoned sector so neglected even its monsters are starving — degraded, weakened, and still somehow trying to kill him. His first kill nearly gets him killed. His second one breaks the System's own maths. And his first piece of loot talks back. That loot is Athelgard: an ancient, arrogant, devastatingly sarcastic recurve bow who claims to be a warrior of the Primordial expanse, slayer of a thousand realm-lords, and is extremely unhappy about being handed to an unfit primary school teacher in a hand-knitted cardigan. He's also hiding something. Possibly several somethings.  But when his thirty-day integration window closed, the System didn't send him back. Ian is dragged to Aetheria: a massive, fully integrated planet orbiting beneath a sun and a twin-moon binary. Aetheria is ten times the size of Earth and infinitely more lethal. It is a world populated by varied human sub-species pulled from across the multiverse, ranging from webbed-handed travellers and two-fingered natives to eight-foot-tall, tattooed giants. Here, Seekers ruthlessly mix elemental spheres, bonded beasts, and unique attributes. For a newly minted Ian wielding rare elements, it’s a dangerous place to stand out. Worse, Athelgard is hiding something.  What follows is a slow-burn, banter-fuelled survival story about a man who was never meant to be a hero, a weapon who was never meant to care about anyone again, and the awkward, funny, occasionally heartbreaking process of the two of them figuring out how to trust each other anyway  Expect: a proper LitRPG system, a found-family cast worth getting attached to, dry Yorkshire humour, a companion beast who steals cores and hearts in equal measure, and a mystery about who's actually the villain. also, if you enjoy lovable beasts, this is the story for you! Part 1 is complete. Part 2 picks up somewhere Ian never meant to end up — a whole new world,  a long way from home, and nowhere near ready for what's waiting there. New chapters coming. Ratings, reviews, and comments always genuinely appreciated.