Scavengers

Scavengers is the second book in Brian J. Nordon's LitRPG series Quest Academy, set in a world overrun by demons where an Academy trains Heroes to fight back. After a near-fatal excursion leaves the second-year class shaken, the curriculum grows harsher for everyone who follows.

First-year student Sal is more at home at the crafting table than on the front line, but the new curriculum leaves him no choice: to stay at the Academy, he must take on a demon and an entire floor of a demonic tower before the semester ends. When that trial is behind him, an even harder one waits — surviving in a reclaimed zone outside the Academy's walls, paired with the worst team of misfits he could imagine.

Nordon builds the story around mythcrafting and the stat-and-progression systems LitRPG readers expect, while keeping Sal grounded as a flawed, self-aware protagonist navigating a system he suspects is rigged against him.