Dungeon Core Online: Remastered Edition - Book One

James is recruited to play as the dungeon in a new VRMMORPG. During the day he attends high school (dealing with bullies and negligent teachers) and at night he hops in her emersion pod to manage his dungeon (dealing with bullying from the lead developer for some reason.) Time is experienced at an accelerated rate in the virtual world, one day for every hour in real world time, so while the real-virtual time is technically balanced, far more of the book is the video game. Being a dungeon is secret, so his only confident is a drunk, gambling addicted advanced AI fairy.

This first book is focused on dungeon building and watching players experience the dungeon. James's dungeon is “Random” type, so he doesn't know what kind of monsters he's working with until he starts building each floor, and his options are always weird.

DCO is set a few decades in the future. There are lots of references to other LitRPG books and pop culture throughout the years. James doesn't get all the references and sometimes looks them up but other times it's just an easter egg for the reader. If you don't get all the references, that's not going to hamper your enjoyment. But being familiar with “dungeon core” style books might help.

Audiobook performed by Travis Baldree, who is excellent as always.