About this ebook
Riven has survived Classlessness.
He has learned to dismantle skills, claimed a living dungeon, challenged the strongest Awakeners on Earth, and done what the Prime System considered impossible.
He changed one of its rules.
That single act unlocks something buried beyond Earth.
A destination.
A forgotten world.
And a trial built long before humanity ever received Classes.
When Hollow Crown opens a path to an ancient Unbound testing ground, Riven knows it may contain the answers he has been searching for. Answers about the Genesis Core. About the people who existed before the Prime System. About what becoming truly Unbound actually means.
Instead, he finds a dead civilization.
Its cities still stand.
Its technology still functions.
Its people are gone.
And the deeper Riven travels, the more disturbing the evidence becomes.
The Unbound were not simply victims of the System.
Some of them destroyed themselves.
Waiting inside the ruins is the Unbound Trial, seven tests designed not to measure how powerful Riven has become, but what he will do with that power.
Combat strips away the abilities he relies on.
Adaptability forces him to survive changing rules.
Leadership gives him lives he cannot all save.
Sacrifice demands that progression finally cost him something permanent.
Creation forces him to build power without stealing or copying it.
Authority places an entire society beneath his control.
And Identity takes everything away.
No stats.
No titles.
No skills.
No Ascension Grid.
Just Riven Cole.
But the Trial is hiding something even more dangerous than its tests.
Something inside the Genesis Core is beginning to respond.
To resist him.
To make choices of its own.
And when Riven discovers that the Core may contain the preserved consciousness of the being who began Unbound Evolution itself, his greatest threat may no longer be the Prime System.
It may be the power already living inside him.
Because someone survived the fall of the Unbound.
And the moment they recognize what Riven carries, they do not welcome him as an heir.
They call him a vessel.
Then they try to kill him.
ZERO-CLASS ASCENDANT: THE UNBOUND TRIAL is Book Five of the Zero-Class Ascendant series, a Science Fiction LitRPG and progression fantasy adventure filled with ancient trials, skill creation, tactical combat, forgotten civilizations, moral choices, evolving System powers, alien ruins, forbidden history, and a protagonist discovering that unlimited progression may be every bit as dangerous as the System designed to control it.
Riven thought the Trial would teach him how to become stronger.
Instead, it may reveal who has been growing stronger inside him.
