He turned into a goddamn giant.

  Yuen screamed at me, "Nice going!"

  Tch.

  In a fit of fury, the giant raised his foot high, intending to crush us into mush. Whether he could actually do that was another matter entirely.

  I peeked at the giant's level and noticed it was only level 11. Huh. I was surprised he could transform into such a massive creature at such a low level.

  Suddenly, cracks spread across Yuen's body, and he dispersed into an army of spiders, scurrying away in every direction.

  "Eh—"

  The giant's foot landed on me with a thunderous thud, shaking the ground beneath me.

  I grunted as my face was slammed into the dirt. Damn, this guy was heavy… but not impossible to handle.

  "Die!" he roared.

  I was basically pinned… at least, without using my skills.

  Immediately—actually, I wasn’t keen on burning my clothes to a crisp.

  Instead of activating Fire Skin to teach this idiot a lesson, I froze time. With the world now still, I used all my strength to crawl out from under his foot. I was basically digging through the dirt.

  How annoying. But once I got my head free, the rest of my body followed with moderate ease.

  Now, I looked up, accidentally seeing his dick.

  Oh…

  Then I looked back down.

  Hm…

  Yeah, I wasn’t going to do that. I like men, but I like to be ethical.

  I stepped back and unfroze time. Instantly, he resumed hurling profanities and insults.

  Hm! Now that I thought about it, how the heck did I know Ghomas had called me a slur from this world when it was the first time I’d heard it?

  "I’ll kill you!" he kept shouting and stomping, still convinced I was under his foot. While he ranted, I pondered theories to explain this strange phenomenon…

  Hm. Probably just some kind of slur-sense I’d picked up from my mother. I wanted a cooler reason, though.

  Like maybe I had a hidden skill that granted me an innate understanding of the world. Or perhaps it was a secondary feature of the localizer/translator function?

  The handsome, now-naked giant spotted me and turned, his eyes blazing like a dragon’s.

  "Why… aren’t you under my foot?" he demanded.

  "I don’t know. I’m not into that," I shrugged.

  "You think this is a joke?!"

  "No, but you should listen to me. I want to help."

  "You—you burned down my village! You killed my grandparents! And then you came back here, spouting nonsense about reviving them!" he screamed.

  Okay, fair point.

  He continued, "And then you had the audacity to suggest we get to know each other! You don’t even have flow patterns. You’re clearly some kind of genetic freak! And even if you weren’t, why would I want to be anywhere near a monster like you?"

  I pointed at him. "Okay, you didn’t need to call me a genetic freak. Especially when you’re the one covered in weird tattoos. You don’t even have family names."

  "You…"

  With time frozen again, I ignored the giant’s fist, which was now just a meter away from my face.

  I hopped onto the nearest tree branch and climbed higher, weaving through the dense orange leaves at the crown.

  I unfroze time to conserve my EP. The giant resumed his screaming. I spun on the branch, scanning the forest for the burned village…

  It wasn’t like I could remember exactly where it was— Oh. I had an idea. Instead of searching for the destroyed village in the middle of the night, what if I looked for the part of the forest I’d burned down?

  Then, I’d just… uhhh… try to recall the path we’d taken when we’d followed them to their village.

  Did I need to worry about Yuen? Probably not. Besides, he’d abandoned me and run off like a coward.

  The war cries started again. This time, they sounded like a dying goat.

  What the heck happened to their vocal cords?

  All the hairs on my neck stood up as my instincts screamed, Danger!

  I jerked my head up and found a massive eyeball staring directly at me.

  At the same time, someone shouted, "On the tall tree!"

  Tch.

  I destroyed the eyeball with a fireball. What a nuisance.

  The giant, now only half the height of the 100-meter tree, grabbed the tree trunk and groaned with effort, trying to uproot it.

  At this rate, finding their village was going to be impossible.

  I slapped my forehead and tried to focus on a plan. It was hard, though, with the giant shaking the tree like a maniac.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Damn it!

  I’d had enough. I gave up and jumped to another tree, then another. I was basically tree-hopping.

  "Come back here!" the giant bellowed, running through the forest like a rampaging beast. Each step seemed to wound him further.

  What an idiot. He was struggling to keep up, but it was a lost cause.

  I spotted Yuen in the distance.

  He was in the area of the forest I’d burned down. That explained it.

  Yuen slowly turned toward me, likely reacting to the loud thuds and destruction caused by the giant’s rampage.

  His face twisted in horror as he stared at something. I turned to see what had caught his attention.

  Ah.

  His flaccid dick swung from side to side. I didn't particularly mind looking at it. It felt too strange to do so while time was frozen. There wasn’t much of a reaction from me—it was more like observing an oddly shaped jet or watching a car accident.

  "Come back here!" the giant roared again.

  "Call me mama first!" I shouted back, spinning mid-air to face him and gauging his reaction.

  His rage intensified. He grabbed a smaller tree and hurled it at me.

  The tree spun through the air with a sharp whistle.

  I quickly launched a fireball at it. As the tree ignited and continued its trajectory, I simply watched.

  Moments before it reached me, the rapidly burning tree disintegrated into ashes.

  I moved near Yuen.

  He turned to me and asked, "Do you know what’s happening? Is that why they want to kill you?!"

  "Yeah," I replied, raising my left hand to the sky, flames crawling up my fingers. Three small fireballs shot into the air.

  With my other hand, I conjured a fireball three times the size of my head and hurled it toward the ground in front of me.

  I watched intently as it erupted, losing its shape and spreading into a barrier.

  There was no way he’d run into the fire—

  He ran straight into it, and his skin immediately began to burn.

  "What the hell!"

  I extinguished the flames around him. I’d been planning to create a triangular fire barrier by rapidly exchanging fire between the fireballs in the sky.

  Think of it like how Wi-Fi transmits data. Fireball 1 requests fire from Fireball 2, which sends a stream of fire in response. At the same time, Fireball 2 requests fire from Fireball 1, and they continue this exchange back and forth, creating a dynamic barrier.

  I hadn’t performed it yet, but I already knew how genius it sounded. And that wasn’t the only trick I’d thought of. I was also considering a cool way to travel quickly… which I decided to try… right now!

  Yuen stepped forward with the confidence of a knight. "Tch. It seems I have no choice now..."

  He rolled up his sleeve. "I’ll show you all the power... of—"

  I tapped his shoulder, casting Fire Skin on him.

  At first, he was baffled, then he panicked and rolled on the ground. "I’m on fire!"

  I didn’t need to focus on maintaining the skill, so I froze time and ducked behind a tree. I quickly stripped and buried my clothes in the dirt. Then I unfroze time and activated Fire Skin.

  I wished I had a skill to make things immune to fire. I was sick of this.

  The giant charged at us, his horrible burns making me wince. I scanned the area for what I’d noticed earlier and found it: the small half-men that had tried to ambush me. That was my cue.

  I sent the fireballs plummeting in its direction.

  Yuen touched his face, calmer now. "I’m on fire... but it doesn’t hurt?"

  The giant leaped at us, but it was futile. Our bodies turned into balls of fire and followed the two fireballs.

  My body shrank into a sphere, losing all human features. It was a weird experience.

  I was a bit worried I’d lose consciousness, but not too much. Fire Skin kept my brain functioning even though I was a living flame.

  Seeing the trees as a blur was strange. I could still see and hear everything.

  Then, finally, to the left, I spotted the burned village!

  I canceled the Fire Ball Request technique and relinquished control over our bodies.

  The Fire Skin skill forced us back into our human forms, and we free-fell toward the ground.

  Yuen’s mouth opened and closed multiple times. I suspected his brain had short-circuited from the experience.

  “Sorry about that!” I shouted, which was uncharacteristic of me. But I owed him that much.

  It seemed pointless, though, since he wasn’t processing my words. The air pressure from falling at neck-breaking speeds probably didn’t help.

  We were moving fast... very fast!

  At any second, I could imagine our fire bodies splattering across the ground. Even though I’d done this with Ghomas and Vacinay, I didn’t want to risk my entire flame body going poof!

  Then I had an idea!

  I tagged him and used Fire skin on both of us, then Fire Ball Request—

  We hit the ground and lost shape and form… almost. His and my fire heads didn’t completely scatter.

  When our bodies regrouped, I sprang to my feet. “I’m alive!”

  Yuen, on the other hand, just lay on the ground. It seemed his mind was halfway to being completely broken.

  Then another idea hit me. “Do you have fire-immune spiders?”

  His eyes slowly moved, then locked on me. “Huh… Yes, why?”

  “Mess with your skill rules and make spider exoskeleton clothes for me.”

  “Wha…?”

  “If you don’t, I’ll never remove this Fire Skin from you.”

  He groaned and pushed himself up to his knees. “I hate you so much…”

  “Sorry, I’m kinda desperate.”

  “Whatever… wait, why do you want that?”

  “Fire Skin burns clothes.”

  He stared at me, then at himself. Slowly, his eyes moved from his legs, to his crotch, then to his chest. “Wait… me too?”

  “Yep. I used Fire Skin on my friends earlier and…” Wait.

  He shouted, pointing at me. “You damn fiend!”

  I ignored him as I realized something. Their clothes and armor hadn’t burned. Had I subconsciously thought of their clothes as part of them? I’d been pushing the skill to its limit... Yes yes! Society has conditioned us to see clothes as our true skin. Being seen naked, without clothes, is a fear of many, an almost universal fear. Many have killed themselves or experience depression when their nakedness has been leaked.

  In short... I’d just found the solution to everything.

  “Hah…” I chuckled before descending into a mad laugh. “I’m a genius!”

  But… it didn’t really change our current predicament. “Chop chop, make body coverings out of your spider exoskeletons.”

  He groaned and summoned a large blue spider, ripping its exoskeleton apart. Hm…

  I was really going to wear bug body parts… Gross.

  Actually… I didn’t like that idea one bit.

  I flicked a small fireball at a tree to mark it, then used my Fire Ball Request technique to travel back to where I’d buried my clothes and retrieved them.

  After putting them on, I fully envisioned them as part of me and activated Fire Skin… then deactivated it.

  …

  The clothes remained.

  HELL YEAH!

  Now we were talking!

  Time to perform some forbidden resurrection. I flew back as a fireball, tracking the tree I’d set on fire.

  When I returned, Yuen asked, “So… can you remove this fire thing from me?”

  “Can’t do. You’d be naked. I don’t want to see that. We’ll worry about it later.”

  “You… Fine,” he replied, following me.

  When we reached the burned-down village, he noticed the corpses and asked, “By the way… the reviving stuff was a hoax, right?”

  I grinned at him before gathering all the corpses and touching them one by one, saying, “Pseudo Resurrection.”

  He stared at me. “Wait, pseudo?”

  “Yeah, but trust me. I know the secrets of skills.”

  “Are you insane?!”

  Before I could answer, war cries echoed through the forest. The handsome guy came running toward us, now back to his regular size, panting and heaving. It seemed he’d run out of EP.

  Damn, I’d wanted him. Oh well, that ship had sailed.

  Despite being drained, he pointed at me. “You… dare gather their cor—“

  He fell silent as the corpses began to tremble. Flesh started to reappear, enveloping their bones.

  Honestly, the sight was so disgusting I had to look away. But my plan was working.

  Soon, the resurrected villagers began muttering as they looked around. Yuen was far more freaked out than I’d expected and had backed away as far as possible.

  One of the resurrected looked at the handsome guy and said softly, “My grandchild…”

  With my arms spread wide, I shouted, “I brought your family back to life!”

  The handsome guy and the others were so stunned they began to cry, calling out the names of the resurrected.

  One of the resurrected touched my shoulder. “Thank you…”

  I didn’t feel the need to turn. “Sure, no problem.”

  Then… the hand began rubbing my shoulder in a way that made me uncomfortable. “You... have really nice shoulders.”

  What the hell? Did I bring back a predator?

  I turned with an irritated look. “Please don’t touch me like tha—“

  Then I saw it…

  The man’s face grew increasingly pale. The left side began to deteriorate, the flesh melting away like butter and revealing his skull underneath.

  He muttered, “You have really… nice shoulders… nice meat. Nice flesh... I want your flesh…”

  … Oh. He was a zombie. At least he wasn’t a predator, right?

  He lunged forward, jaw wide open. “I want your flesh!”