Inverarity is not a Scottish village

Podium Publishing, 2025, 426 pages

A high school student is thrust into a battle to the death with flesh-eating angels in the first installment of this heart-pounding LitRPG series.

Jenny Huang’s day starts out stressful enough. Between an argument with her overbearing mom and a surprise pop quiz in first-period English, she’s counting down the weeks until she can escape to college. To top it all off, she’s working up the nerve to ask her best-friend-slash-crush to prom.

But when an earthquake rips her high school into another realm, Jenny suddenly has much bigger problems to contend with. The Survival Challenge is in effect, trapping Jenny and her classmates in a hellish battle royale. There are 851 people stuck in the building, and that number is ticking down—fast. Hunted by murderous angels and guided by strange system notifications, there’s only one kill or be eaten.

By crafting weapons and mastering the mechanics of this nightmarish new world, Jenny levels up and fights to keep herself and her friends alive. But survival comes with a price. The stronger she grows, the more she uncovers of a dark, vengeful side of herself she doesn’t recognize. With every kill—with every bite—she loses more of the girl she used to be.

And one horrible truth keeps haunting the Challenge only ends when one person is left standing. How can Jenny protect the people she cares about if, in the end, she’ll just have to destroy them too?