The man stands up, shaking. However, half of his body is suddenly burned, but in an instant, the burnt flesh fades away as new fresh flesh is generated.

But... the burnt flesh comes back quickly.

That keeps repeating. It seems Tanya's attack is a little bit too much for him.

"Ha! Look at you!" I mock him. "Just admit defeat already!"

Annoyed by it, he takes in a deep breath, his arms moving unsteadily.

Then with an exhale, the air becomes insanely hot. And suddenly, white flames vertically explode from him!

His body is enormous and he towers over us, making us look like mere ants in comparison.

"Okay, perhaps we should apologize. He will let us go with our lives, right?! Because, how the hell are we supposed to fight that?!"

I have fire immunity, but his flames seem like they will burn me.

With a thunderous voice that causes the air and ground to tremble, he shouts, “You mortals will pay with your lives! I will rip you all to shreds. First, I will take the clone boy, and tear him into two. I will eat the right side, then I will save the left side for dinner. I will take the shapeshifter girl and use her blood for tea! And—“

Tanya then speaks. “Heyo.”

He stares at her. He looks her up and down. Moving from her flat chest down to her crotch area then back up.

Uh…

Suddenly, the flames disappear and he returns to normal, standing at attention. “I apologize for raising my voice against a beautiful lady like you. How may I help you?”

… What?

“What the hell do you think you are doing?! We are going to kill you! Do you think joking around is going to save your ass?!” I shout, which causes my flames to rise a bit.

He stares at me and immediately becomes a giant of white flames.

I clasp my hands and lower my head in submission. “I apologize for the tone of my voice, sir.”

Fucking Tanya said his stats were halved. That bitch lied.

He turns back to normal, eyes set on Tanya.

With a single hand on her chin, she makes a ‘huh’ sound before laughing. “You want to help me any way possible?”

“Of course! You are an evil manifestation…” His eyes move to her wings, completely enticed by their slight movements. “I apologize.”

Ghomas looks around, waiting to see the runaway signal.

Tanya then says, “Then please, die.”

Pft— as if that would wor—

He makes a sword out of extremely hot white flames and cuts his head off.

…

What the fuck…?

His head drops and rolls and his body soon collapses, blood pouring out.

Hessien snaps towards Tanya and asks, “You! You can mind control people?!”

With a smug look, she says, “If you mean through my sheer beauty? Then yes! I didn’t even need to modify myself.”

She demonstrates what she means by suddenly growing huge breasts and widening her hips.

Fucking show-off.

Still, I refuse to believe things could be this easy.

I move over to the corpse and poke it a couple of times. “Ayo, if you don’t wake up, i’ma burn you alive.”

There is no response.

Hm.

I crouch low and say, “I will burn your dick off.”

Again nothing.

Vacinay walks over, still in her huge tiger form. She raises her huge paw and applies all her weight on the head, causing it to splatter.

We look at each other and shrug.

I then stand up and look at those who are going to become sacrifices.

“You are all safe,” I say with a smile.

Their eyes that lost hope suddenly have light returning to them.

They cry and hug each other while.

“Thank you!” many shout.

Yes yes. I am responsible for saving you all and not Tanya.

Tanya, who is now floating with her legs folded, says, “Hm. No skill energy gained. He is still alive.”

Their cheers and happiness suddenly disappear, and sudden horror takes form instead. And for some odd reason, they are looking at me with a maddening gaze.

“You all are not safe,” I tell them and then proceed to ignore their panic.

“But where is he?” I ask.

Tanya looks up at the sky then she taps the ground, sending a white crack of energy that spreads out through it.

Then she quickly points to the distance on the flats!

I rush to see, and see that the piece of shit is running away with his horribly burnt body!

He must have put on an act when he saw Tanya, who was responsible for that beam.

“Hessien, free the sacrifices and help them down.”

If Tanya didn’t mention she wouldn’t be helping us, I would have opted for Ghomas to stay here while he sends his strong clones to help us.

Hessien sighs. “Got it, as soon as I am done, I will be heading to you all.”

I nod. “Do that!”

Vacinay is back in her human form and stands near me. “What’s the plan? The one you plan to stick to.”

Ghomas asks too.

With my body still ablaze, thanks to my EP generation being at 11 EP per minute, I say, “We kill him, really good.”

Vacinay grins. “I like that.”

Ghomas snaps his fingers, and in that instant, the ground shakes violently. His two giant clones are running straight forward.

Eh?

I turn towards him and ask, “They can survive from that height?”

“I mean, if they were in a Marvel movie, they would.”

I just stare at him. He gets the memento after a second and turns away. His giant clones also stop running.

Whatever.

I approach both of them and slap their calves, using fire skin on them, setting them ablaze.

I say, “They can survive it now. Send them.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Fire skin is a tough one to push the boundaries of. I am thinking about how much imagination and desire must play a part in skill functions. Vacinay's entire existence is the reason for it.

Not just her shape-shifting powers, but self-repair and partial transformation.

Anyway, what I do is think about all the layers of skin and their function for the body; hoping my skill would affect them differently.

With a slow nod from Ghomas, the clones proceed to run off the cliff and make a giant leap.

Vacinay runs forward two, grabbing both of our hands.

“You can generate wings now?!” I ask.

“Nope!” she replies, and jumps off the cliff.

The wind is really messing with my now flame body. It is like blowing wind on fire!

Ghomas is screaming in panic. Although, he stops a couple of times and holds his throat in disgust.

He definitely caught a couple of bugs.

I ask her, “What’s the idea?!”

She can’t seem to hear me, but she gestures to the clones and points at us.

Oh.

I tap Vacinay and Ghomas, using fire skin on them. Welp, it isn’t like they can breathe while falling anyway..

Then we hit the ground and go practically splat, or was supposed to. The clones had spreaded out like fire and regrouped, functioning as cushions for us.

My body slowly regroup and the same happen to the other two. I turn flame skin off on them.

My plan works. Fire skin does more than wrap the body in fire; it turns the exterior into flames itself. This brings up the question of why wouldn't the blood and organs rain out.

When that drill guy killed me, instead of bleeding, I died by having my flames outed; that moment also added to my theory of how fire skin can be used.

Just like how I always bring up Vacinay's desire may affect her skill, I suspect our desires/thoughts/biases are already affecting our skill. So Vacinay isn't so unique.

In other words, skill descriptions may not be accurate at all. I suppose it's like a simple manual of how a skill is supposed to work.

Vacinay transforms into a tiger. “Let’s move fast!”

My flame skin goes off. I wait for her to start running off so I can follow her. I create the time modulation barrier around us. The barrier is simply me making a smaller range of effects.

Skill Description Cost Time modulation Change the flow of time 2 - ∞ EP

Instead of slowing anything down, I speed it up by 3x, which drains around half an EP a second.

Surprisingly, Vacinay and Ghomas don’t realize the buff in their movement.

Oh, and Ghomas gave me his shirt and pants that were under his armor, so I'm not running around naked.

Following Vacinay, we run deep into the forest, constantly jumping over a corpse or some fallen tree.

But after a minute, we finally see him. He's leaning over with his hands on his knees, gasping for air.

"Time to pay for your evil deeds, mortal!" Vaicnay, who shapeshifts her head to her human one, shouts.

So gross...

He turns back to us in a panic, half of his face still roasted.

I turn off the time modulation and immediately manifest and throw a fireball in the sky, catching his attention.

Let’s see how much the level-ups have buffed it!

He turns towards us and… drops to his knees, hands up, pleading. “I am the wrong guy, I swear! I am just a humble man who… um, accidentally burned himself.”

What?

While he runs his mouth, my fireballs split like cells, surrounding him in a 2-meter radius.

Vacinay turns back human, points her broken sword at him. “Stop lying. We are going to kill you no matter what.”

“B-but, I swea—“

I launch the fire bullet(fireball, version fire bullet) at his head. It hits and sends him into a screaming fit.

He then stands up, crying from a single eye, the one that isn’t roasted. “Damn you all! I am going to make sure to kill you in an absolutely painful way, you hear me?!”

Time to release control over those fireballs.

Time freeze.

In two seconds, I am in front of him, seeing his angry expression as clear as day. I move behind him and raise my left arm near my neck in case he counters the attack and tries to slit my throat.

With my guard up, and my hand directly on his back, I deactivate time freeze and then use fire skin on him.

“I am going too—“ his sentence is caught off as he realizes he is feeling a little hotter than usual.

Time freeze again.

I get a safe distance from him and then unfreeze.

Obviously, the skill itself doesn’t do harm, directly.

“Why am I on fire!” he shouts in a panic.

Too late!

With a flick of my finger, his body obeys me and flies towards an already existing fireball.

Vacinay asks, partially confused. “This isn’t going to be this easy, right?”

I shrug. “Shit, I don’t know. I actually wanted to try a pseudo-fire sword using fireballs, but this is good enough.”

“Oh wow? And I thought the way I made self-repair work on other people was creative.”

Hmm… that was right. Her skill was called self-repair, not body repair…

How the hell did she—

The man I turned to a fireball exerts some will! Causing the fireball to feel ridiculously heavy.

“Damn it…”

I slam him to the ground, causing his fire body to scatter about.

I rush towards a piece of flame and tap it, removing my skill effect.

Immediately, the scattered flames turn into chunks of meat.

“Holy shit. When this is done, we are going to have to name you Queen of the Flame,” Ghomas says, baffled.

I can’t help but smirk. “I am a natural born genius, yes. But we can afford to praise me later, as much as you want.”

“Dude I—“

A white light shines and the next second, the man appears again, this time extremely worried. “What the hell is wrong with you?! Do you know how many lives it took to give me two extra lives?! And you all are just—“

Ghomas's giant clones rush in at full speed, still on fire, which means they are setting the trees around them on fire, but I am handling it.

Before the man can manage to run, the giant clones stomp on him. All we hear are screams from him.

We stand there until a white light shines again, but this time, it flees.

Of course, we hunt it down and find the man once again.

He looks around exhausted. “Okay… they are lost…”

“Die!”

Vacinay suddenly appears near him and cuts off his throat. Of course, she doesn’t really suddenly appear, I used time freeze the moment he started talking.

Just like before, he tries to escape and we keep hunting him down like a mad fox, killing him in all kinds of ways.

Maintaining a fireball around his head, electrocuting him, Vaciany's dog summons mauling him.

It has been over 2 hours now…

We are getting a bit tired, and unfortunately my EP generation is barely keeping up.

Each time that bastard respawns, his mental state gets worse.

When we killed him the 33rd time, he started calling Vacinay his mother and asking why she was killing him like she did to his father.

Did that make us feel bad for him? HELL NO.

Then we hear sounds behind us, which makes us think it is reinforcements at first. But no, it is just Hessien and those who are supposed to be sacrificed.

Hessien looks at the man tied to the tree.

“Where the hell did you all that weird-looking… rope?”

I, who is sitting on the ground, tell him, “Don’t ask Ghomas. He has been taking his power to the next level.”

“I see…”

Tanya is now the size of a fairy and sitting on Hessien’s shoulder. She asks in a cute tiny voice, “Why is there saliva running down his chin like that?”

Well, there is more than saliva running down his face. His eyes are randomly twitching and he now has a huge bald spot in the middle of his head.

“I think we broke him. We did it before we could ask him how to kill him,” I say.

Tanya hums then says, “So, no skill energy can be gained from him?”

Hessien approaches him and crouches low while asking Tanya, “Can’t you kill him with your negative skill energy?”

“Yeah, existence attacks, but I have been doing way too much lately, weakening me. If I kill him, I will be taking everything, only allowing you all to gain 1 level up at max. You all can have all the skill points, I don’t need such trash.”

Only… one level up?!

I ask, “How does that work; Giving us skill points as if they aren’t connected to levels, that is.”

“If you kill a person who didn’t use their skill points, you gain them.”

Oh…

She then flies up to crazy man. Her hand glows white and she inserts it into his head. The next moment, his eyes close.

She then returns back to normal with a single snap of her finger, suddenly I gain a level up and… over 25 skill points!

Tanya flies around Hessien. “I gave you all 25, except Hessien, I gave him 30.”

Vacinay grunts, “What’s this? Is she some simp? Trying to....”

Ghomas finishes it for her, "Get into Hessien's white lace panties."

"Fuck you, you ***** ***** ****!" Hessien shouts, which causes Ghomas and Vacinay to laugh.

I am grinning from ear to ear, of course.

But, I have to be reasonable.

I say, “Don’t be silly. She isn’t a biological being, and she is made out of skill and energy. Her kind clearly can’t reproduce.”

Tanya shrinks and sits on Hessien’s shoulder. “Oh no, you are wrong. That’s my goal.”

Hold on a second. What the fuck?

***

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Tanya then smirks mockingly, “Obviously not, you filthy monkeys. My kind feels no real lust. But, I enjoy the reactions. I am giving him extra points because his success benefits me.”

Ghomas has a hand on his chest, he exhales in relief. “Oh shit. Thank god. I was wondering why that bastard had to be the lucky one.”

Yeah, that’s cool and all, but what the hell did she mean by filthy monkeys? It feels like I am watching an episode of Dragon ball Z, where Freiza talks about Saiyans.

Then the people Hessien has rescued finally speak. One of them at least, a very young boy.

“Um… Is he dead?”

I nod. “Yep.”

“Oh… And that small miss who looks like a fairy, is it… an evil manifestation?”

Tanya grins. “Yeah, I am going to hunt you down and—“

Hessien covers her mouth with his finger. “She is a fairy with split personalities. She has a hobby of scaring kids, and uses my skill which allows her to enlarge her body.”

An older woman asks, “But… why are her wings black? And didn’t the evil man call her an evil manifestation?”

Vacinay steps forward and I join her. We both stand straight, like professional guards with suits.

I pretend to fix a pair of shades on my face. “We understand your concern, truly we do. However, there seems to be a great misunderstanding here. As much as we would like to answer your questions, we can’t afford to do that at the moment.”

Vacinay adds, “In addition, due to the stress and fear of death you all were experiencing, the words of ours and his may have been misinterpreted.”

They look at each other, scared.

With a vigorous nod, an old lady replies, “O-of course! W-we just hear things!”

Ah, she is quick to get it.

They all follow suit.

“Well then, we will leave you all to return to your homes,” I say.

The little boy raises his hands.

He asks, “Can you tell us who are you all? You guys don’t look like knights.

Me, Ghomas, Hessien, and Vacinay look at each other before turning towards them and say in unison, “We are the reality defenders.”

However, I do add, “I am the best one, though.”