Understory, a System Integration Novel.

On the day the System arrived, Levi Cross was three hours from his truck in the Olympic backcountry, conducting a routine stand assessment.

He read the notification before anything else. All of it. While the world ended around him, he built a model, set a direction, and started moving.

The wilderness between him and the nearest town had developed some ideas. The thing that runs it doesn't share territory.

Understory is a LitRPG about a forestry technician who approaches the apocalypse the same way he approaches everything else: methodically, precisely, and without asking for help until he's exhausted every other option. He walks out of the wilderness with a title no one could have known existed, and a dungeon the town was too afraid to enter.

The System is watching what he does — so is everyone else.

Methodical MC. Solo wilderness arc. Earned progression. No luck, no handouts, just a forestry technician learning the new rules faster than anyone else.

Releases M, W, F at 12 eastern.