Why do I have so many class options? Zarian was barely conscious of what was happening. He was on his feet because of his Willpower.

He felt like he was about to fall over and kick the bucket soon. He stayed up because the people he’d yanked into this cavernous room would die if he didn’t take responsibility.

It didn’t take him long to believe it was his duty to protect them. Even the police who had shot him. He had no hard feelings toward them, really.

He’d done some freaky stuff at the mall that would’ve scared anybody. He was self-aware enough to acknowledge that. He had to be self-aware to be somewhat functional.

Or maybe that was another weird quality of his.

Self-awareness hadn’t done him much good before, but he could change things around now. Especially with his class selection.

He’d shorten the list of over a hundred class options to a few. So many varied between different brands of warrior, rogue, cleric, and more.

There was a Death Squire class. There was a Blood Reaper class. There were class-types for Wiccan, Alchemist, Murderer, Assassin, Executioner, Torturer, Soldier, Jailer, Wanderer, Vagrant, Studier, Portal Jumper, Void Dancer, and more.

There were mundane sounding classes. There were super special classes that seemed cool. It was a lot to take in, and he didn’t have time to examine them all.

Thankfully, he found one that fit his fancy early on the list. He kept thinking of it as he zoomed down to the bottom and back up multiple times.

There were a few other epic classes. But none of them suited him like the Black Wizard Apprentice.

Anything below epic gave fewer stats, even if they sounded cool like Portal Jumper and Void Dancer, which were rare classes. They probably had strong skills.

But Zarian liked the idea of being an epic wizard with a fancy spellbook.

No, not a spellbook. It’s called a grimoire. That sounded even better.

There was one legendary class, which seemed major. It gave more stat points than Black Wizard Apprentice.

Zarian didn’t like the sound of the class or the skill. The legendary class didn’t even come with a rare trait, whatever that could be.

He had little time to scrutinize things because he was dying from blood loss. He needed something to help stop that.

Picking Black Wizard Apprentice was probably a Hail Mary judgment call. He figured the epic wizard class might have a fix-me-up type of spell if he was lucky enough.

He locked in his choice with a push of his will, which he found really cool. There was no need to plant chips in his brain. The magic system, or System, did it automatically.

A new notification confirmed the addition of the new class. He also felt the update, like someone uploading new codes or runes into his soul. He shivered from the sensation, nearly tripping over.

Did having a profile and being connected to the Star System make him part magic machine now? Even with the fleshy bits?

Or was the magic so advanced here it was almost Sci-Fi? Maybe it was sufficiently advanced science that became magic-like.

Either way, this was all rad.

I’m getting too distracted by all these scattered thoughts.

Where was Ariana?

Ugh, he was going to give her a good scolding the next time she showed up. For now, he needed to save the people who probably wanted him dead.

It’s my screw up. I’ll fix it.

Zarian didn’t even bother looking at the skill description for the Grimoire of Black Arts 101. He felt it in his soul-attached profile and pressed the inner button to activate the skill.

A flash of runic text scrawled across his mind’s eye.

The runes were deep, vast, complex, and almost incomprehensible. He felt energy drain out of him. He was flagging a lot now.

The book came out with a big rattle of chains like a wraith exiting its container, which was him. The covers spread open, and the pages flipped in a blur.

The book glowed an eerie black light before shifting to the bloody red spectrum. Zarian could barely focus, but somehow he could make heads and tails of the magic geometric shapes and hieroglyphic scribbles of an unfamiliar language.

“Oh, that’s straight up gruesome,” Zarian muttered before shrugging lazily with his better shoulder. “But a man’s gotta do what man’s gotta do.”

The koi fish monsters slithered toward him. There were ten of them left, with a bigger koi fish in the back acting like a mini-boss.

Zarian stopped at the edge of the murky, oily liquid that the koi fish splashed around in. He sighed tiredly as he forced himself to think through a few actions.

First, he dumped 30 Free points into Mysticism, 10 Free points into Wonder, and 10 Free points into Willpower. While raising Mysticism felt like the smartest move, his gut instincts told him to raise up Wonder and Willpower as well.

Just like that, he felt more focused and ready. He didn’t feel so close to death anymore. And he was swelling with a new inner power as the koi fish launched their attack.

He commanded the darkness to spring into a wall of pikes in front of him. It happened so fast the speed of the formation nearly shocked Zarian.

The koi fish monsters thrust themselves onto the pointy ends with their monstrous bulk. They were even more surprised than him.

He was going to smile when a few more monsters slammed into the backs of their brethren. The jarring impacts did the unexpected. The long, dark spears snapped.

Zarian had made them too long and thin without enough density. Now the monsters were lunging down at him.

Zarian cursed as he dropped to the floor and quickly manipulated more lines of darkness. Thick bars criss-crossed inches above his body from both sides.

The koi monsters slammed down with a heavy force, bending the dark bars inward, threatening to crush Zarian. He wished he put points into Strength. He was too weak to push back physically.

Things looked bad until the blood of the perforated monsters dripped through the gaps. Loads of it. It was pouring all over him.

The chained grimoire was lying next to him. Zarian hadn’t done his research on the consequences of its use, but he evoked his first ever spell: Bloody Lifesteal.

The spell pages glowed a malignant and vampiric red. The blood touching Zarian glowed the same foreboding color.

Then Zarian felt renewed energy uplift his entire sense of life. He felt further away from death than ever.

He felt like he could live forever. He felt like he could drain life from the blood of his enemies, or anyone he deemed his enemies, nonstop.

It was a rush.

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It was insanely intoxicating.

It was a new drug.

Zarian crushed that pleasurable high with Willpower. He had enough to refocus on his situation. The dark bars continued to buckle under the hill of crushing koi monsters. It was time to get squirrelly and escape.

Feeling more lively, Zarian twisted around and belly crawled through a gap above his head.

A koi monster lunged down and scraped some flesh off the shoulder. Zarian hissed out a curse and raised his hand, shooting out a dense jet of sharp darkness.

He punched out the brains from the monster that bit him before he crawled the rest of the way out.

He made it just in time. The dark bars holding up the monsters collapsed. He avoided getting crushed beneath the bulky monster hill by a few feet.

The danger at his back remained. The ones on top thrashed free and resumed the chase.

They were too late to stop him, however.

Zarian was up on his feet now, and he was more aware.

He had his second wind and enough magic.

“Sorry for what happened to you,” Zarian said, sliding to a stop before spinning around with arms raised. The koi fish lunged at him again.

He struck them back with rapid fire javelins of the densest and sharpest kind.

It was an incredible display of power. Like he was a heavy caliber machine gun. Each puncture wound tore out so much flesh from the monsters, it almost seemed comical if there wasn’t so much blood and gore.

By the time Zarian felt like he was gassing his reserves, he’d slaughtered all the koi monsters, including the big one. He tore that one apart the most until it stopped moving.

Then all was still.

Silence filled the cave. Nobody spoke. Zarian only heard the pulsating beat of his hammering heart and the blood racing through his ears.

His floating, soul bound grimoire rattled as it shut closed and phased back into his body. Zarian lowered his twitchy hands and smiled, soaking in the momentous victory.

Then the closest police officer pulled out a taser while still on the ground and shot Zarian with it.

The taser stung somewhat. But it wasn’t enough to drop him. Not anymore. He weathered the shock for long enough to pull the prongs out of him.

“Do that again and I’m not saving you from the next monster attack.” Zarian stuck a thumb back at the monsters.

“This is your fault!” shouted the cop.

“Yeah, and?” Zarian still stuck his thumb at the dead monster corpses.

The cop shook his head before laying back, groaning in pain, his eyes looking about in bewilderment. The other police officers were doing the same.

Zarian had struck them so hard they still couldn’t move. He’d definitely broken some ribs.

One man was coughing up blood. He sounded like he was struggling to breathe.

“Can someone help that guy?” Zarian pointed. “I need a break.”

“I’ll help him, sir,” Sergeant Naomi Washington offered.

Zarian looked hard at her, puzzled. Naomi wore a serious, no-nonsense face, which suggested he was better off accepting the ‘sir’ designation than fighting her about it.

It made him itch to be called a ‘sir’ when he was an enlisted man, but she was clearly doing it for a reason.

“Yeah, cool, much appreciated. I got to examine some things. You all work together for now. I’ll be over there. Oh, and stay away from this evil-looking gunk here. It’s like dark radioactive waste, but magical. That’s what transformed the koi fish into monsters, I bet.”

While he had a short stint in the Marines, he learned enough to lead people. He wasn’t always the best at it, but he had a decent time leading subordinates before having his ranks taken, kicking him down to private.

Wow, thinking of that brought back some heavy emotions.

He almost wished things had gone differently. Oh well. He had magic powers and was in another world now.

He was closer to tracking down his origins more than ever before.

I took a bunch of losses to get here, but I’m here.

There were plenty of bright sides. He wasn’t dying of blood loss. He was still bleeding a little and covered everywhere in crusted blood, yeah, but the wounds that would’ve killed him earlier had sealed up mostly.

He’d gotten lucky with Bloody Lifesteal as his first spell from the grimoire.

Too bad the bullet lodged in his back right shoulder was still in there. That sucked. A lot. He could feel it when he shifted his right shoulder around.

Note to self: Lifesteal helps with securing life, not fixing my pains. Miniscule difference, but still a difference.

Zarian walked over to the nearest wall and sat against it. He closed his eyes and chilled out.

He was back to feeling weary, but he wasn’t as far gone as before. He probably looked even more crazy to the others, but he couldn’t care about that right now.

Ariana was gone.

He was in a new environment, the Infinita Star System, which called him an Honored Outsider. It sounded like he wasn’t in the old Solar System anymore, let alone Earth.

Zarian had literally ripped open a hole in spacetime and flung him, some koi fish, and ten other people across the universe. Or into another universe.

Yeah, he caused the isekai.

Suck it, Truck-kun.

Since nobody had followed in after Zarian, he assumed the portal had closed up once he went through. Earth was safe on the other side.

Unless Ariana waited for me to go through so she could take over Earth, Zarian thought, feeling crummy.

He was better off pushing forward and examining the new magic stuff made available to him. Then he could go on an actual adventure.

Ariana would either show up or not. Hopefully, she was just playing hide-and-seek. Or maybe she wasn’t. Maybe this was goodbye.

Zarian shoved his feelings deep down. He was no stranger to people abandoning him.

Clapping his hands quietly, Zarian forced himself to smile, eyes opened. “Back to the magic powers.”

Yes, he had those. He also had new notifications to examine. Those might be important, so he pulled them up with a whim.

They were still golden.

He enjoyed seeing the gold boxes a lot. That VIP feeling made him feel warm inside.

Zarian reached the end of the notifications, surprised by all he’d accomplished. He also felt disappointed that he didn’t choose his third skill in time for it to get some levels.

He was still shaky about what the evil alignment meant. He was also unsure how his current level compared to when he unleashed his powers in public view at the mall. The chaos of the past ten to twenty minutes had blurred the differences.

I definitely feel different. I feel way healthier and stronger than before. If I had a reference point, I can tell the difference easier.

Before he dove deeper into his profile, he noticed one civilian talking excitedly. Zarian caught traces of the conversation surrounding blue boxes and levels.

Ah, I’m going to have to check with them about all of that, Zarian figured.

He was pretty sure Sergeant Washington mentioned having a skill. Zarian could’ve sworn someone conjured a shooting star that hit the wall.

He didn’t know who – he had been dazed at the time – but that was another useful skill. He wondered what their classes were.

When he looked at the nearest civilian – or survivor – he stared a little harder this time. Something inside of him flipped like a switch. Then a golden box hovered over the person’s head – the woman holding onto her shopping bags.

That looked like the major parts of her profile. If all of that was true, why was her level so low?

After some thought, Zarian figured it was because she was a normal Outsider instead of an Honored Outsider like him.

Could the others see each other’s levels and skills, or was that special to him?

Zarian checked his traits. He had a few compared to the last time he saw his profile. And he could read all of their powers.

Yeah, Dark Affinity made sense. It was thematic with him. And he’d guessed right when he distributed stats earlier on which to focus on.

Mysticism was probably his most important stat, while Willpower and Wonder served as good supportive pillars.

He had no idea what those stats truly meant. They wouldn’t explain themselves. But if his Dark Affinity liked them, he would like them, too.

He wished the Dark Affinity would explain a little more about what ‘aura’ meant. Was that the magic energy fueling his powers?

Aura, huh? Not mana?

Zarian let it sit for now and moved on.

Now that was a badass trait. Probably the only reason he could overcome a bunch of giant koi monsters. His magical abilities came with an overkill switch he could turn on whenever he wanted.

He needed to test the Overpower trait to see how fast it could switch from boosting stats to boosting a single skill. Pairing this with the grimoire skill would be devastating, honestly.

Bingo bango, this one was the reason he saw Hannah’s info. He had gotten the Identify trait from accepting the Dark Wizard Apprentice class.

It was likely that the others didn’t have this trait, only him. And it was a rare trait, which sounded highly valuable.

In fact, the epic trait Overpower was probably higher in value than a rare trait.

He was an overpowered wizard.

Yeah, it sounded cheesy to call himself that. He couldn’t help it, though. This was everything he wanted, plus more.

Excited, he turned toward where Ariana would usually stand. He wanted to tell her about all the great news so far.

She wasn’t at his side, however. She was still nowhere to be seen.

Zarian forced himself to move on. He had his current skills to look over along with a new skill choice.

He also had that unopened achievement. What would that get him?