Blade at the ready, he crouched his legs to dodge at any moment. With subpar reflexes, he needed every optimisation possible, and quickly focused on the lioness’ body, specifically her legs.

Dodging once she entered the air would never work. Even if she just ran forward he stood little chance… But if he recognised the first signs of a sprint and escaped, he could grab her in that moment of weakness.

The two turned about one another. But with a slowing movement, even a child could tell the injuries weakened her immensely, and just one working eye meant she put exceptional care into following up.

In which case, why was he playing so defensively? The bleeding from his shoulder and chest weren’t pretty, but it wouldn’t kill him!

Pushing forward, he suddenly dropped into a roll and moved to her right side. The one with a ruined eye! Very quickly, she forced her body to turn but didn’t expect the human to actually stay right beside her!

A blade stabbed into her neck, buried about halfway in, before suddenly being yanked out with a twist. A howl escaped her, but the wounded beast couldn’t withstand the pain.

Even with a fixation on killing the human, it was still a living creature in the end. Bleeding out in the course of a minute, he received a succulent message from Neuro.

Obtained 29 Experience Points.

You reached level 1. Good job!

Received 1 stat point and 1 class point.

While there are certainly many excellent paths to take, including a variety of rare and unique ones… he only desired complete potential. And on the list of hundreds, only a few classes could reach and exceed his previous peak.

And he knew precisely how to both obtain and maximise the efficiency of that class, in fact knowing how to do so for any of the five best classes in his mind.

If you spent years working on a rebirth spell, wouldn’t the idea of a new path naturally come about?

However, several problems existed regardless of his choice. The biggest being his character, in that one of the five is called Karmic Host, and could grow infinitely stronger by managing and relinquishing karma.

The problem is that it required an impartial mind with neutral karma at all times, something best left to those emotionless individuals who only sought balance. Even then, while technically the limit is infinity, at some point the returns given are so small that they stopped mattering.

And the only solution is to resolve the karma of stronger beings, of which only so many exist.

So… that left four choi–

Sin devourer actually had to be struck out in advance since it would morph his already malicious mind into a being of pure destruction. He’d lose most reason in exchange for easily growing power which only sought endless death and misery.

Three then. Three choices!

“But which is best… Well, I was never that good at magic so going for Creation mage is a poor choice. And the last two are physical classes… Neuro, place the stat point into dexterity,” he said with partial certainty.

The beauty of physical classes is that most of them are unlockable simply by obtaining level 5 or higher in a weapon’s skill! Furthermore, almost all of them benefitted from both strength and dexterity, making a few points in either a worthwhile investment for the next few levels.

As dexterity hit two, his speed and reactions literally doubled in an instance. The precision with which he held the dagger, its unwavering edge, and an ability to swing it towards where he pleased on most strikes.

Neuro is uncharacteristically unfair. No one denies that.

A single level 10 human can easily kill dozens at level 1, and because of that most children are pretty much forced into awakening. It was why the previous host received copious mockery and bullying for their noble, albeit stupid, decision.

Killing just a few creatures can double a person’s strength instantly, just that alone should iterate how powerful Neuro is.

Endurance matters less as a regular human as skin isn’t that tough, and even placing 10 points in the stat doesn’t amount to much. Skin as tough as hide means nothing when everyone can cut through thin metal sheets, and as a result endurance is saved for stamina and healing.

Adapting to rise in speed, he longed for his old body even more. The skills never left him but everything felt wrong. The force of kicks, the rebound, the precision, the depth to which a weapon penetrated, and even just force of an enemy hitting him…

This body sucked.

“Neuro, disable all experience messages,” he said with an eye looking outward. This heavy bleeding wasn’t horrible, but he needed something to cover himself with.

The lioness’ fur was better than the fox’s, stretching a bit more and allowing for a tighter bandage. Washing is preferable as well but the lack of streams made that impossible. He’d give it a few minutes, and if Regeneration didn’t block out his wounds well enough he could admit a loss today.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

In truth, he overestimated his ability by a high degree. Perhaps with a sword he’d have killed the lioness in a single blow, but he chose a dagger to mask those skills. His blade quickly separated a few long strips of the bloody pelt before wrapping it over his wounds, a tight compression now blocking the spill of blood.

Everything hurt pretty badly but pain meant little to him. A few cuts and wounds is practically nothing, none of them even caused internal damage, let alone a single bone deep wound!

However, even after five minutes things weren’t looking great.

Overall status: Bleeding, minor dissociation between body and soul

Title: None

Class: None

Sub-classes: Reborn

Level: 1

Experience Points: 27/30

Unassigned Class points: 0

Health Points: 78/100

Magic Points: 1/1

Strength: 1

Dexterity: 2

Endurance: 1

Mind: 1

Magic: 1

Spirit: 1

Attunement: 1

Unassigned Stat Points: 0

Class Skills: None

General Skills: Walking, Jogging, Running, Dagger, Medicine, Critical strikes, Skinning, Regeneration

“Show skill levels in status,” he tiredly stated. Wanting to see some of the skills, it never hurt to at least pay attention to levels. Seeing the messages was simply too much of a distraction though. Reading through them, he only cared about one.

Regeneration: Level 2

Not bad for a single day, but he recalled hearing that someone once allowed a colony of ants to slowly eat him alive for 3 hours just to raise it from level 66 to 70.

It sounded bearable… Once or twice that is. In what world could anyone raise this skill to Max?

“This should pay off for part the dagger at least.” He looked to the dead and half skinned lioness beside him, the skin clearly ruined by the hasty removal but meat still intact. A light cleaning and it would make a good stew; muscular creatures tended to have meat too tough for generic roasting.

Except, looking back to the village, he the originally small plume of smoke growing bigger and bigger. Retreating slightly into some tall grass himself, he watched as it grew heavier until bright flames grew visible from his distance. There was no surprise over the situation, but rather intense vigilance.

This was a perfect thing! Although, less than perfect timing...

“Still, it happened a bit fast. Did the thousand year hibernation release all that bad luck at once? Unlucky bastards in that case.” He didn’t truly look down on this unfortunate village, they stood in the crossfire of his return, and that meant they would suffer without a doubt.

Whether bandits, raiders, a foreign army, an enemy tribe, or even some intelligent beasts, he couldn’t bear trying to fight with them.

The village remained ablaze, flames and smoke ever growing. A plume of black misfortune no longer rose up from the place, but now descended onto the regions nearby, smothering it in the choking cloak.

He needed a breeze to pass through and disperse it all before rushing in, surely this group couldn’t take absolutely everything if they were burning it to the ground.

And in no way could they absolutely kill every single villager…

“I think I’ll be reaching level 5 today.” He finished with a hideous smile, slowly walking back to the village using the cover of trees. As he crouched forward, a few shouts still sounded out from the burning homes, clearly a few stronger fighters remained, but they truly stood no chance.

Just minutes later, he heard a tranquil silence.

Not even the roaring flames reached his distance, and crouching besides a tree, he saw groups of men and women leaving the cloud of smoke with muscular horses. In just a few gallops they accelerated to extreme speeds, not even checking for survivors as they left his sight in mere seconds.

How powerful were those horses to move so quickly?

Nothing about them appeared unordinary, simply being powerful steeds with black or brown hides. Yet clearly, they were magical.

“Ten… No, at least twenty. Who the hell sends level 20 horses to slaughter a village?” He couldn’t understand the logic.

Make no mistake, he clawed his way up the levels and ranks in his last life. The value of such horses was not lost on him, as he obtained his first magical companion at level 50!

Unless taming methods developed a monumental degree, he couldn’t imagine a way for individuals like this to possess such mounts. They clearly weren’t extremely powerful either, as some in the village put up a struggle.

In other words… These were either highly trusted individuals or this world was far more developed than so many years ago. He actually preferred the latter, it stopped things being a bore. Perhaps he didn’t know everything and some new, stronger ending classes had been found.

The wait allowed his own wounds to close up a bit, only a few deeper ones still bleeding while the rest barely clotted. Heavy handed movements would tear open wounds though, and he couldn’t enter the village until ensuring a growing wind carried away this smoke.

For a little while, the bad luck remained. Albeit for himself this time, as even after fifteen minutes the fire remained strong with burning all round. The heavy cloud clearly let up a bit though, with some of the fires being put out by a lack of fuel.

His attention was elsewhere though, more specifically, the dozen or so other plumes coming from his surroundings. Several from the east, but far and near, but also more in all other directions in very distant places. This smoke mimicked his own village, and he began to wonder who was systematically attacking remote places like this.

It didn’t benefit a takeover or war, in fact he believed it a waste of power and resources. Only one major reason for killing villagers existed, and he encountered it first-hand.

A religious purge. Another god wished to destroy the native one looking over these lands, and the most direct route to such a thing is complete annihilation of believers.

Standing up, he finally walked towards the village as heavy winds set through the plains.

Smoke and ash rose into the air, being led away, and he took the chance to look through the smouldering and still burning remains of this place. Corpses, both burnt and fresh, littered the grounds, regardless of age or identity. These people did not care for capturing the women, as even a single believer for the enemy god presented a dire threat.

Amusingly, he came across the body of that bully, laughing a bit but feeling some remorse within. For a good while he thought about slitting this asshole’s throat before leaving in a few days, and now that pleasure had been taken from him.

Snatched by the cursed aura which plagued him for every single day of his life.

On the way, he occasionally found some bleeding person’s clinging for life, too wounded to move but otherwise capable.

In favour of ignoring them, he quickly rushed to the chieftain’s building and found the old man dead in his space. Decapitated in a single blow, he clearly wasn’t physically capable…

The building had no roof, most of it collapsing with the walls already falling apart. But the unmistakable glint of metal shined through, allowing him to reach through the ember coated wood and grab a single blade.

A so-called ritual dagger, although he knew better than that.

While not a sword, its durability and sharpness exceeded everything in this village, and based on this fact alone it was the only thing worth using.

And then he did what anyone like him would do.