Descended

In a hyper-stratified New Manhattan, where the System has been integrated into society for generations, Marcus Chen was born with a death sentence: a D- Potential rating. The son of low-level parents who couldn't afford to upgrade their stats before having him, Marcus scratches out a living in the Undercity, taking the jobs no one else wants, fighting for scraps of experience points that barely keep him alive.

But when a routine drone recovery mission leads him to discover a hidden backdoor in the System's architecture—a legacy of its mysterious creators—Marcus stumbles onto a secret that threatens the carefully maintained hierarchy of New Manhattan. Now he's being hunted by corporate assassins with S-rank potential, backed by an AI that can predict his every move, and his only allies are a rogue data archivist born into the upper tiers and a group of underground hackers who've found ways to game a system designed to keep them down.

In a world where your children inherit not just your genes but your stats, levels, and potential, Marcus will have to overcome generations of engineered inequality to ascend and find out the real truth behind the System.