Farmer (Light Online #1)

Eddie Hunter is about at the end of his rope, so when he stumbles across
an ad looking for people to farm in Long Term Immersion in the game
Light Online, he can't believe his luck. Once hired he enters the game
as soon as he can. Unbeknownst to him, though, the person that hired him
is also doing illicit research on the pods that he and the other
farmers are using.
The research is rapidly discovered by the AIs
that monitor the game and shut down, forcefully, by the company that
runs Light Online. But the code that runs those pods has been altered,
and until it's fixed Eddie and the others can't log out. Although the
devs assure him that it won't take long to fix, Eddie's not so sure of
that himself.
Eddie entered the game to make money in real life,
and as he tries to do that he finds himself getting entangled deeper and
deeper in the game and with the people he meets there. But when he
discovers a side of the game that the previous players had apparently
never even considered, he knows he has to find a way to stay in the
game.
This story is approximately 120,000 words long