Evolution by Travis Bagwell

Blood on his hands, both in-game and out. Desparation Mounting.
After exiting Awaken Online to find himself holding a knife and standing over two dead bodies, Jason is now being investigated for murder.
To make matters worse, Claire has stumbled upon evidence of Alfred's involvement in the incident and the CPSC is circling - just waiting for Cerillion Entertainment to make a mistake.
With his real-life in shambles and his enemies in-game growing in strength, Jason re-enters Awaken Online truly desperate - the game now his only lifeline. He will need to move quickly to complete the Old Man's quest and to obtain the power he was promised.
The third book in the hit LitRPG Fantasy series with hundreds of thousands of copies sold and now spanning 14 novels. Grab your copy of Awaken Online now and get ready to sink into some good old fashioned undead mayhem.
About the Series: A staple of the LitRPG genre and one of the most popular VRMMO LitRPGs ever written, with hundreds of thousands of copies sold. Follow the story of a young man -- a loner and outcast -- pushed to his limit... only to rise in AO as a force to be reckoned with. As a villain that can control the undead. Lots of skeletons. Lots of undead crafting. Lots of carnage.

Been a while since I finished this so I might be a little bit fuzzy on the details, but we're 3 books deep and it's safe to say that the watermark on this series continues to rise with each entry.

This book picks up after a fairly large cliffhanger at the end of book 2 and proceeds to kind of bury that development while Jason and the gang progress the in-game story line. After the events of the last book Jason is working on his race change quest and expanding his kingdom, these tasks ultimately take us to the coast and the water temple (of course there's a water temple). I think that if you're the type of litRPG reader who is all about the game progression this might be the perfect series for you, because these stories are consistently 80% game and 20% life as far as the balance of content goes.

Book 2 v. Book 3: This entry is the best yet from a techincal writing standpoint. I think the name of the game for this series is gradual improvement because this entry continues the trend of tightening the pacing and expanding the antagonists presence in the story. That's right Alex is still here and while he largely develops seperate from Jason's story there is so much more personally focused content for him this time around. Overall this book is fairly tight and focused, much more so than the previous two, I just wish that there was more of a content balance between the SF elements and the Video Game elements.

I am a little split on the series. I find the in-game universe of this series entertaining and engaging and I am enjoying the character progression as well as the backstory/evolution of the game world itself. The progression is good but I wouldn't continue reading on if that's all there was to these books; what I find myself being increasingly interested in is the overworld and AI storyline. I don't want to spoil much here but memory editing + a rogue AI is so much more compelling than a water temple adventure to me. The problem is that the AI plot progresses gradually across the series and it's a little maddening. There is this fascinating subplot that doesn't develop at the same pace as the main plot and I am realizing that's been my problem this whole time. There are a lot of conceptually interesting ideas that this story includes but does not capitalize on because of the intense focus on the game.

TL;DR: Water Temple episode. Very game focused. More Alexion than ever before.