He Who Fights with Monsters

1. The EOA's leaders disable the Network's Grid. Jason evacuates his family to Asano Village, and uncleared proto-astral spaces start spilling monsters worldwide while EOA 'superheroes' play for the cameras. At Broken Hill, Jason evacuates almost 20,000 people through portals with Shade as buses, but around 15,000 civilians die.
2. Akari Asano reveals the Tiwari clan guards a gateway left by the Network founder that edits the fundamental realm, and Jason must undo the founder's changes before the dimensional membrane fails. In Makassar, Jason dies to the intelligent dinosaur-man 'King' and revives as a star phoenix, killing him. He keeps killing and evacuating for eight days, almost 200,000 people die, and Jason reaches silver rank.
3. In Japan, Jason reaches the Tiwari clan's door and enters the fundamental realm, where he meets the EOA founder Mr North, a gold-rank rune spider and former familiar. Jason absorbs the transcendent-rank door into his soul, excising the Builder's influence, and gains some control over Builder artifacts. Clan factions turn on him, and the Tiwari elders and Akari's family go into exile.
4. Transformation events begin: whole cities are enclosed and rebuilt as worlds from Earth's template, turning people into leonids, elves and runics, each holding a reality core the factions fight over. The American network revives the gold-rank Jack Gerling, who kills Kaito, Asya and Greg, captures Itsuki, Akari and Mei, and destroys Dawn's avatar. Jason breaks his collar and escapes, and in node space begins to edit reality.
5. In Sydney, a gold-rank vampire lord raised with reality-core-infused blood, Lord Willoughby, attacks the Network headquarters. Jason, Farrah and Dawn kill him, and Jason drains his life force as if it were a monster core. Annabeth Tilden dissolves her steering committee, the leadership splits off as the 'True Network', and arisen vampires start taking over Europe and Russia.

A transformation event forms on top of a proto-astral space outside Nitra, Slovakia. If Jason does not enter and fix it, the collapsing sphere will rip a hole in the dimensional membrane and annihilate the world, and he has to go in alone because nobody else can survive the conditions. Dawn promises to evacuate his family and Farrah if he fails, and Jack Gerling, already in Europe and obsessed with Jason's soul strength, notices his arrival.

Silver rank, reached after the Makassar fighting (TV Tropes recap).