Lazarus opened his eyes to view a rat that was approaching him. Lazarus stomped on the rat spreading splattering gore across the floor. He decided that today was the day he conquered the Blood-Soaked Caverns. He prepared as best he could. He tied his shoes, pulled up his pants, and left.

  Lazarus was at the entrance of a massive cavern. From what he could spy, hundreds of rats occupied the place. Lazarus analyzed a few and identified them as Blood-Soaked Rats ranging from level 50 to 80. He looked towards the center and viewed one rat that was larger than the rest by a good meter in width and length.

  Lazarus grinned. That must be the boss of this dungeon he thought. Lazarus contemplated what his best plan for this was. As he thought through his abilities he realized that his best bet was to kill the boss and then immediately attempt to escape. He could go back to a narrow passage that he’d passed that was barely wide enough for him. This would allow him to face them in fewer numbers. Ready, he took a deep breath, activated the Form of Life & Death and charged.

  Resplendent in shining gold and black armor, Lazarus was quickly noticed. The large rat regarded him curiously as he flew towards it unstoppable by the weak rats in the way of it's charge. The rat put up a fight but was too shocked by the sudden entrance to comprehend it's impending peril. Lazarus quickly dispatched it as it put up a fleeting resistance. All it took was a stabbing hand through the eye. He ripped out its small brain, gray matter and blood splashing on the floor and skin of the rats surrounding it.

  Lazarus turned to run but noticed that there was already a circle of decaying rats around him. Changing his mind due to the unexpectedly powerful effect of his armor, he decided that he would face this horde to death.

  As the battle went on Lazarus gained a grasp of what his chosen style was. It seemed that The Art Of Survival granted him an eclectic knowledge of martial arts and brutal killing moves. He found himself both ripping bodies in half and performing elegant blows that always seemed to be made for the purpose he put it to use. He also noticed that his instincts drew from his own knowledge of martial arts. He recognized karate and jiu-jitsu moves that he knew being put to use in a very unsportsmanlike and heavily modified way.

  As the battle went on he eventually came to a point when he whirled around and realized that there was nothing left.

  Lazarus laid back on the floor. He was exhausted, bleeding and suffered a raging headache but he was alive and powerful! He had won! He had faced down something more than twice his level and killed it and it's horde. Laughing hysterically, Lazarus realized that he was at a turning point in his life. He was no longer subject to the whims of a modern machine. No more was he helpless as a car came speeding towards him. No! Soon he would be able to smash the car as easily as breathing. Lazarus was ecstatic as he kept laughing.

  "I'm free! FREE!" He shouted as loud as he could.

  Smiling in expectation, Lazarus. No Lazarus was from before. It was the name of someone who was saved by God. He didn't want to be saved, he wanted to save himself. He decided that from now on he'd be called Laz. It wasn't much of a change, but to him it was a change in identity. Laz opened his status first.

  As always he first checked his stats.

  Laz thought about what he wished to accomplish in this life. First off, he wanted to be strong, so he gave himself strength, 68 points of it. Then he went with his survival based attributes, 66 points in each of those. He continued focusing on willpower as another one of his primary stats due to his desire to never lose control again. Not to mention the feeling of absolute confidence and certainty in his own effort was just slightly addicting. With that, he also added 66 to Willpower. He only had 54 points left, so he beefed up his mana pool by adding it to intelligence. Now that his stats were taken care of he moved onto see how much his resistances had changed.

  The only drastic change was the increase to his resistance to blood magic. It had doubled throughout this battle. Satisfied, he moved onto his titles. He had an inkling of what it may be and sure enough he was right.

  He also took a look at the main screen of his titles. He wanted to see if his World Walker title showed him what it did yet.

  Laz looked at his titles. Assuming that this a very rare title, he guessed that he was going to be much more powerful than the average person of this world. Other than that though he was most curious about Spatial affinity. Did it mean that he would be able to cast cool spells like teleportation. Either way he didn't know how he would make that happen so he didn't worry about it.

  Laz checked his perks. It was his greatest hope that there would be more perks at 200. Unfortunately, he was disappointed.

  Laz looked over the list. He was unable to get new perks at 200, so he decided that he would be freer with his choices this time. A must-have for him was the Genius perk. He needed mana for his skills after all. The next two were chosen based off of the usefulness that another general skill had, Mana Pool. He chose Forceful, Vigorous, and Stubborn. He had an inkling of what these skills would end up being. For his final two perks he both strengthened himself and helped what he was lacking. He chose Headstrong and Hulking. With that he had chosen all of his perks. He checked his skills before he looked at the most exciting part of his status page.

  Laz identified his new skill.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Laz was very satisfied with this skill. It allowed him regeneration that wasn't dependant upon his mana supply. Now if he were ever out if mana he would have a chance of staying alive without his mostly mana-based skills.

  Now for the most exciting part of all this, his second class.

  L

  Laz clearly knew which one to pick. He found Monk to be interesting, but it didn't hold a candle to the Voyager class. Just the requirements alone let Laz know that this was the rarest class. Laz selected the Voyager Class and this screen came up.

  Laz looked at the skills. He was thrilled! It gave him everything he wanted. He was able to teleport and he had a storage. Not that he had anything to store. Laz smiled wryly at that thought. The fun times were almost over though. All he had to do was finalize his status and the pain would hit. This pain would likely be his worse yet. Nevertheless, he decided to rip the bandaid off sooner rather than later. He finalized.

  Laz fell into the depths of hell. No matter where he looked there was red. He felt the pop as he grew what felt like two feet, but was likely less than that. He felt it as his joints dislocated and bones grew in their place. He noticed that his blood was more viscous as it seeped from his wounds. He felt his mind sharpen and his will become as hard as iron. Forcing through the pain, he stood and watched as his wounds began to close up with the help of Restoration and his body settled into it's new shape.

  His shirt had burst from it's place around his bicep and his sweatpants were now far too short and far to tight to be considered serviceable. Laz marveled at his new power. He stomped and his foot went straight through the earth. That enlightened him to a new problem. His feet had sunk into the ground. It appeared that a literal ton of weight on only two points of contact was two much for this ground to take. Laz though back to his perks and remembered that one of them had allowed him to disperse his weight in an area. He tried to will his weight to spread out. He did and noticed that the earth about a meter around him had sunk. He willed it further and stopped viewing that phenomenon. Laz experimented with the power for a bit, pulling the aura in and out. When he was done with that, he checked out the abilities of his new class. First he checked our his mana pool to see what it looked like. He noticed that mixed in with the black and gold was an odd mix of silvery white with a core of black. This mana maintained about half of the space inside the sphere. He also noticed that he mana shifted almost twice as fast as before. The clarity of the mana pool was up as well. The formerly faded life and death mana was far more vibrant and had a richer color. He assumed these events had to do with the increase to mana regeneration and the increased willpower that boosted the purity and concentration of his mana. Laz punched out, utilizing his spatial mana to fuel his skill, Space Destruction. Cracks formed in the air where his fist stopped. He noticed that they seemed to suck the air out of the atmosphere and looked just like the white lightning that had brought him to this world. Curious he tried to touch the cracks and noted that when he passed his finger over the crackle felt the suction. He tried to brush his finger through the crack and watched in shock as his finger was cut clean from his body. He instantly picked up the finger, held it up to the stub and began healing it. He looked on relieved that the stump reconnected with the finger. Laz moved his hand and it appeared to be fine. He clenched a fist and punched at the wall of this cave. There was a rumble and rocks began falling from the ceiling. Laz said, “ Oops” and booked it out of there. He felt broken rocks and gouging footsteps in his wake, but it did luckily get him out of the cave before a cave in.

  Laz just lay back on the ground and chuckled to himself at the thought of him causing a cave in. Him!