The Crystal of Light: An Epic Fantasy Romance Heist Thriller LitRPG Adventure

To learn who hunts him and why, Sylis takes a job he should have refused: the heist to steal the Crystal of Light.
Sylis the farm wizard is living a happy life on his farm when mysterious assassins come after him and burn his farm to the ground and he barely escapes with his life. He has no idea who they are or why they are trying to kill him. On the run from killers and having run out of money, he takes the only option open to him: accept a job offer working for the Dark Wizard, one of the most evil and powerful wizards in the Realm of Six Colors. The Dark Wizard is putting together a thieving crew for the heist of the century, a grand theft to steal an ancient, powerful magical item named the Crystal of Light. The Dark Wizard thinks that Sylis's proficiency in time magic will fit nicely into his plan for how to break in and steal it. The heist to steal the Crystal of Light is near-certain suicide because it is protected in a labyrinthine fortress named the Temple of Light where it is guarded by the White Wizard, the realm's most powerful magic-user. Sylis knows he shouldn't take a job working for an evil wizard, but the Dark Wizard dangles a prize in front of Sylis's eyes that makes the heist irresistible: if they steal the target, the Dark Wizard will use his network of spies and informants to learn why the mysterious hunters are after him, and also to discover who he really is, because Sylis has begun to suspect that he was more than a simple farmer with a talent for magic and that his mother was hiding the truth about who he was when she took him to a remote rural part of the kingdom as a baby to raise him on a farm.
As the heist unfolds, nothing about the Dark Wizard's evil scheme to steal the Crystal of Light is really what it seems, the cops close in, the Temple of Light turns out to be a dungeon crawl full of traps and monsters, and Sylis finds danger around every turn. But he also finds something else: hope, in the form of his newfound friendships with the other members of the Dark Wizard's thieving crew, and in his blossoming romance with Kylus, a soldier who works for the Dark Wizard and who hides secrets of his own. Sylis will have to make epic decisions with huge consequences: how far will he go to get what he wants, how much is it worth to him to learn the truth about himself, and will he pay the Dark Wizard's price to obtain it?
This novel features epic fantasy, queer fantasy romance, heist thriller, and LitRPG with a hard magic system with six types of magic. It's a standalone novel complete story that runs about 600 pages long. Get ready for an exciting adventure!

Russell Hasan was born the son of a white Jewish mother and a dark-skinned Muslim father—and that isn't the strangest thing about him. His father had ties to the mafia—nope, not the weirdest thing about him. He thought he was a gay man for many years before realizing he is agender asexual—relatively normal compared to what truly makes him strange. Do you want to know what the weirdest, strangest thing about Russell is?
He's a WRITER.
Yes, that's right. He writes. Why? How? Why would he want to do that to himself? How could he allow this to happen to himself? He is still trying to figure that one out. Therapy can cure lots of things and alcohol and drugs can cure other things, but the only cure for being a writer is to write, so he writes. He's not into BDSM, yet for some reason he has chosen to punish himself by having a passion for writing and a need to write. Despite having made the huge mistake of choosing to be a writer, his books have sold over 10,000 copies, so perhaps it was not the worst mistake he ever made after all. He does not have one particular bestseller but has instead spread those 10,000 sales across many books he wrote. His magical journey of self-torture begins when he has the idea for a new book, and then continues when he wakes up at 6am to write from 6am to 8am before work every day (he has a day job—he's not insane! His day job is being a lawyer, the most boring, evil job in the world, by the way), and, after many cups of Starbucks matcha tea and Coca Cola (never Pepsi—yuck!) he somehow puts words onto a page. He has written 30 books, both nonfiction and fiction, but, as something of a twist on the traditional successful indie author model, he is known more for his indie nonfiction, not his fiction. But he does write fiction. Some of his fiction is good too, probably, he hopes.