He survived F-rank by dying more times than anyone will ever know. Now the System is starting to notice.
Ethan Cross has a perfect clearance record - too perfect. Three of New Chicago's top guilds want him on retainer. Only one person wants to know why he's this good: Sera Voss, an HAA investigator who can't prove how Ethan fights like the outcome is already decided, but recognizes the pattern when she sees it.
Her offer: join Division Zero, an experimental unit built for Hunters who don't fit the mold.
Ethan takes it - and walks straight into the biggest case of his short career. A chain of B-rank Fractures is tearing open across the Great Lakes in a pattern that shouldn't be possible. Fractures don't follow patterns.
Unless someone is making them.
As Division Zero digs into the operation, Ethan discovers a truth uglier than any monster he's rewound past: someone is deliberately destabilizing the world for profit, and the Fractures are just the byproduct. Stopping them means a fight Ethan can't afford to lose - and can't afford to win the wrong way. When the final confrontation offers no clean outcome, Ethan does what he always does.
He dies. He rewinds. He tries again.
Seventeen times.
Division Zero walks away with everyone alive. Ethan walks away with a name he wasn't supposed to find - a name connected to the top of one of the most powerful guilds in the world.
The higher he climbs, the more his victories start to look like someone else's design.