The book is a strange amalgam of a impressive world building, rich imagination, well written and intriguing combat, logical character decisions and well made and understandable character growth, BUT also lack of any conflict. Almost the whole of the “story” takes place in a video game. Since you know nothing serious can happen to anyone, there is no conflict. Without conflict you have no tension. And without tension, it is a book fo worldbuilding, character growth and no story at all. The whole story goes like this Dude is a gamer, he plays a game. Everything else pretty much that happens has no tension since it has no consequences. No matter how high EXP loss you stack to a death, it is still meaningless since it can be just negated over time. If loosing experience in a game is a story, than a video about Lineage is a book.

Look how easy it is to fix this, you would not need anything to change at all, just add in something like the character dies while in his pod, or the introduction of his AI glitches in a way that makes him stuck in the game, and an AI abbreviation of his mind is cultivated within the game, suddenly you have stuff like how will he handle death, you have uncertainty, fear, anxiety. Suddenly all decision he makes are not just part of a game but part of his only world, Also how would he handle stuff Lile outages and maintenance, would he be stuck in a limbo, go through literal hell of void, what ever… How would he handle devs? Tell Klein what is happening to him? Or play it as if nothing happened… You could add stuff like if he did survive how would he handle help for his body, how would slow death affect his mind in game… What ever.. Anything to create tension. Without which it is not a story book, it is just a video game description from the point of view of an RPG role player.