When a mysterious Player Killer with the ability to cause his victims to die in real life appears in the fully immersive massive multi-player online roleplaying game (MMORPG) Stalwart Souls Online, administrators shut down the game servers to find the criminal.

What they didn't count on was the system being hijacked. Stalwart Souls Online is rebooted, a new patch applied. All players online at that time revert back to Trainee level, their hard work erased. They soon discover that the log out function has been disabled, and that that isn't the only thing that has changed in the game...