The Mayor of Noobtown

LitRPG fans: there's a new player in town. In the first book in Ryan Rimmel's fantastical Noobtown series, a young man dies only to find himself the hero in a strange new world.

It could be worse. You could be stuck with a literal shoulder demon.

For Jim, it's very much worse. Because after dying and being reborn into a world that's built like a video game, Jim has found himself stuck in an antiquated new player zone for low level adventurers--stuck with a demon shrunk to the size of a plush animal, who only will help keep Jim alive so that it can kill him later and get back to its demon realm.

But in order to survive, Jim must level up. Except the zone he's in fell out of use centuries ago and so this isn't the typical "grind through the forest" part of the game anymore. On top of that, no one told the monsters that remain they were supposed to take it easy on the Noobs.
And even worse, the only new player around is Jim.

Yet Jim has been given an opportunity, and he'll do his best to take advantage of it. Death caught him by surprise once.

He isn't going to let it happen again.