I was currently wrapped up tight. Specifically, wrapped up tight in a giant hand. We were moving so fast the wind was pushing my hair back as I felt my body being squeezed firmly but gently. The ground? At least five hundred feet straight down.

The view was amazing really, despite it being night. There was a certain grandeur finding yourself a small, tiny person in a massive, giant land. It would be more pleasant if I hadn’t just gone from horror, to shock, to surprise. Damn souless monsters.

I could see Konohora to my right, both of us being quickly carried towards what sounded like a massive battle. As Saisaie suddenly came to a stop, I could make out the attackers and my face went… incredulous.

“What?”

Trees. It seemed like half the women in the village were fighting trees. Living trees, sure, but that wasn’t all. No. A lot of them also seemed to be stabbing blindly up into the air. Fierce winds batted them and the noise alone seemed deafening, until one of the women apparently stabbed the right ‘spot’. The wind, quite literally, died.

Air Elementals?

And the final thing, were the stabs going towards the ground. It almost seemed amusing, till the ground opened up and tried to eat one of the women. That had briefly sparked a pit of horror in me. What was a ‘bit big’ for the Giantess, was a massive gaping chasm to me, that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. It wasn’t just the air and nature itself, even the ground was rising up for a battle.

And it looked like an Epic out of some kind of tale.

Giants fighting tornadoes and hurricanes, earthquakes and chasms, trees bigger than skyscrapers. Even if I fully had my strength back, this would be impossible for me. It was like watching the Greek Gods fight against the Titans. What would I do against a fucking hurricane? Against miles of land itself trying to kill me?

Once again, my world view expanded. And I started bitching out my Power Gauge.

C-Rank?! C?! I’m supposedly C, Riary is C, how are these giant women only C?! They could kill a million of me!

I could practically feel my Gauge crying to itself. There was a reason power levels were thrown out quickly in that one show. Measuring shit like that was hard! And yet still, it flooded into me like an equation. One that I could answer, unlike the impossibility that was Happy.

Damage. Weakness. Danger. These are not the same concepts. How much damage could I do? At full strength, I could kill a village… but could I destroy that village down to its last brick? No. Riary could, if the houses were made of wood. Tyler would probably struggle as much as I would. Yet he could beat me in a fight.

Riary had higher ‘damage’ in this scenario. These Giantess and… nature itself, had massive amounts of damage, far outweighing anyone else I knew.

Weakness. What were our weaknesses? I had much higher durability at regular demon level strength. We all did. Konohora potentially had the least out of the four of us though, with her healing. Or it could be Tyler, with his shield.

These Giantess and Elementals had more weaknesses. If it was before the power drain, my gauge was telling me I could survive being thrown around by a tornado or possibly even thrown by a Giant Woman, if only theoretically. But what about them? What were their weakness like? My Gauge was, disturbingly, equally telling me that I could easily burrow into the Giantess or break the ‘Spots’ to end the life of the Elementals.

And finally, Danger. These Giantess and Elementals were far more dangerous to me than I to them, even at full power. But Tyler? His defense and Aura power would make him far more dangerous to me personally than they would. As for Riary? She could burn up that tornado or those giant trees without much issue.

And those three concepts… they only made up a few of the small bits that formed the ‘pressure’ waves I felt from… everything. I stared into it, into that ability, and was lost in awe. There were thousands, no, millions, no… just… more.

More and more and more of those small bits of something that made up the pressure waves. How like a tsunami is made from drops of water, which are made up of countless amounts of molecules, which are made up of countless atoms. Turtles, all the way down, for there was always more.

I had been trying to rank all of existence, that I can not and will never understand, into a 5 letter category measuring ‘Power’.

I didn’t know whether to be more ashamed of my stupidity or amazed at the power I had gotten from merely coming over to this world as a Demon.

Lost in my thoughts, lost in my own Power Reading, I hadn’t even noticed that we had been moved. Some other Giantess was holding us, while Saisaie had already grabbed her spear and headed out into battle.

It was mesmerizing. Watching, watching her while reading my Power Gauge, was like art in motion. The whole battlefield fell like an unmatched beauty. There was so much. So much to it all. I felt lost in the waves-

“Derek!”

I blinked, Konohora’s voice reaching me. The world came back to me, my flaw of getting into my own head having gone into overdrive. Fear started racing through me. There was a reason Konohora had yelled at me.

Wind pelted us, both of us held in the Giant woman’s hands. She was rapidly backpedaling but it wasn’t the source of the wind. To my eyes, I couldn’t see it. But to my Gauge? I saw it all too clearly.

A tornado was bearing down on us, having slipped through some of the defenders via the sky. The woman was running away in fear but never taking her eyes off the source.

It was a smart move, as she almost lost her head.

She ducked, moments after I saw, with my actual eyes, the attack. It distorted the air with its passage and when it landed, the hut behind us was cut apart. My eyes shook and my body felt covered in sweat. My earlier feelings that before now, things had been happy and carefree, came running back. If it had been a normal house cut in two, I wouldn’t be freaking out as much. That would still be scary.

That cut alone would have cut the village we had saved in two. The size of this battle… was apocalyptic.

I felt the wind tugging at me and panicked as I realized that it was gaining ground. The woman holding us had fallen and in the process her grip had loosened. I had a single moment, a single frozen second to lock eyes with a struggling Konohora, before I was yanked up into the sky.

I screamed as the already faraway ground, grew further out of sight. The winds were twirling, loud, so impossibly loud. I felt part of my body lock up, the memories too fresh after Happy ripped open that blocked out wound.

It saved my life.

As I suddenly stop flailing wildly, I moved an inch further than the Wind Elemental expected. I only knew this as a blade of pure wind distorted the air right where I would have been. This was no time to get lost in my head, I was going to die if I didn’t act now.

Moving, struggling, flailing. No success, I was still spinning madly into the atmosphere.

Wait.

My Wings.

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I flared out my wings… and rose. Higher, so much higher and higher, my wings catching the air. My mind shook as the useless props on my back suddenly gained relevance for the first time. Turning me from a pure grounded creature into one partially of the air…

For all of five seconds.

The Wind Elemental wasn’t having it. I felt more blades come at me as the air all around me grew more and more turbulent. My wings were useless immediately, wind hammering me. It felt like punches to the face, kinetic force alone trying to knock me out. I was strong, for a human, but the teleportation had robbed me of my superhuman strength. Too much longer, and this would kill me.

Still, I was almost helpless. I was learning quickly when and how to flair my wings to dodge a blade of wind but the force behind them was impossible to escape. I couldn’t get down, I couldn’t go up, for the first time I felt like the air was no different from the deep sea, threatening to drown me inside it, never to see land again.

My dodges were getting harder and harder. The Wind Elemental, the fucking Tornado, was focusing solely on me. I was like a fly to it, constantly evading its manipulation. My only saving grace was that it was clearly not smart. If it had just stopped, I would have fallen to my doom. If it had even just slowed down and created a ‘hammer’ blow instead, I’d be red mist in the wind.

I dodged another blade, this one cutting too close. It was getting faster, more frustrated, and my haphazard dodging by pure chance could only go so far. I felt the wind get knocked out of me, as my vision went black for a moment. I was sent tumbling, the dizziness only making it harder to stay awake. If I passed out, I probably wouldn’t wake up.

At this rate I was going to-

My eyes lit up.

There!

I can feel it! There, there’s, its weakpoint! The ‘spot’ it has. I tucked my wings in, not stopping my spinning, but increasing it! The spot I had sensed earlier, that I could ‘see’, was right next to me!

I felt… sick. Oh god. I was spinning and spinning and spinning and- OOF!

I hadn’t been paying enough attention, just aiming for the spot. Spinning like a demented beyblade.

I had crashed right into whatever it was. It felt like a solid wall to my body though. I smacked into it hard enough to bounce back off it.

Then… everything stopped.

The tornado, the winds, it all died down so fast it gave me whiplash, blinking stupidly up into the sky. My Power Gauge was already telling me what I hadn’t figured out yet.

It died. It was dead. Me simply smacking into its ‘Core’ was enough to break it.

Huh.

And that was when I began to fall.

Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.

I turned around, facing the ground and-

Oh Fuck Oh Fuck Oh Fuck.

The ground was getting closer, way too close. Alright, alright wings. I need you to be more than a prop right now.

I stretched them out… and nothing. I continued to fall like a rock.

Okay, come on now. Do something!

Flap Flap Flap

Come on?! Do more than that! I’m going to die here you know?! Wings, wings please. Wings?!

WINGS?!

None of my screaming, not the kind I was doing inwardly, or the kind I had started doing outwardly, helped as I fell.

Right before I slammed into the ground and died, something appeared beneath me and I hit it so hard I thought I broke a tooth. Yet it was soft and pliant and suddenly I was launched back up into the air, only to bounce a few more times before landing softly.

Oh thank god.

I was busy hugging whatever it was I had landed on, not paying attention to my surroundings. But my ears began to notice a change. Dead silence.

I quickly looked back up, fearing the worse, and received the shock of my life.

I had landed on what seemed to be a very bouncy ‘bowl’ with a leaf. A single leaf, stretched out and treated somehow. But the person holding that leaf… was Saisaie. And around them?

It looked like the whole village was staring at me. Countless giant faces loomed over me. I couldn’t even find it in me to breathe. Moments ago, I had been “””battling””” a tornado. Now I was the main focus of attention for what felt like a Village of Gods.

The woman that had been holding us before, spoke up first.

“A Lailla Bsailras... nallaedan el Awecalan?!”

Suddenly, there was noise. Just pure, instant, noise. It washed over me in a flood. Everyone was talking at once, nearly shouting, stunlocking me into place. A flashbang would have been less disorientating.

“Bsailr dhan dhaais Buln Meda!” Saisaie said, louder than all the others.

Suddenly, the woman from before moved forward and placed something down-

“Konohora!”

Konohora sprinted, running directly towards me, placing her hand on my chest. I blinked, not moving, as everyone seemed to also go still.

“You have a lot of bruises, a few cuts, a mild concussion, and three cracked teeth.” Konohora finally said. “I can heal it, but it would be better to save my energy in case of a life or death situation.”

I nodded in understanding.

“Sounds good to me. Glad you’re okay.”

She smiled at me with a raised eyebrow.

“I was not the one flung into the sky. It’s good that you are mostly unharmed. That was a dangerous situation to be in and terrifying to watch. I worried that you were going to die.”

I was about to answer back, when all of the Giants around us seemed to suddenly go up into a cheer.

“Buln Medar!”

I stared up at the faces, at all these very, very strange people that had just protected their village from nature itself.

“So… any idea what ‘Buln Medar’ means?”

“The book was long and I did not look through all of it. If I were to hazard a guess, I believe it refers to us collectively. The…” She shuddered, remembering things best not remembered. Or looked at, considering what everyone was wearing… “The Things, seem to mostly be… inactive. But perhaps, some of them ‘group up’. That would explain their ‘joy’ but lack of ‘shock.’ I do not know though.”

A darker thought came to my mind the second she said that though.

“Counter theory… who’s to say we’re the first People they’ve met before? People would have friends, family, etc. Of course they’d group up unlike these… abominations.”

Konohora grimaced.

“I do not know.”

The noise was dying down but there was still talking. There was a motion through the crowd and the ‘bowl’ we were in even moved a bit, as someone showed up. It was the woman with the silver hair! She was clearly the leader and a conversation soon followed, the note of authority coming out clearly even in another language.

I ignored it. I couldn’t understand it and I wasn’t going to get any closer to that any time soon. Instead, I just sat down.

I had nearly died, again. I had also won, again. But honestly, what annoyed me the most was…

“This is the second time I’ve won while naked. Debatebly third. I really gotta stop losing my clothes.”

Konohora glanced down at herself, seemingly having forgotten. I don’t know what it said about me that I could understand the feeling. I really shouldn’t have been able to but life is just strange like that I suppose.

The Tribe Chieftain finally got done with her talks and barked out some orders. I expected it was something about ‘wounded’ and watching out for more of those things. People began clearing out, leaving Saisaie and the “old” woman.

Saisaie kept talking, pointing at us, and it was then that I remembered that she had caught Konohora and me standing on her breast right before the attack.

Ah. Right. That might have consequences.

The Chieftain excitedly started pointing at us and saying something.

“Thairr Bsaan. Nuw.”

“Nuw?” Saisaie said, clearly in surprise.

“Yar! Thara Vesaieldr... aid neirr fa duu ruul fid dha yairrera wairr ersaenirr fa sarafsedailr dulairhd ailrdaen ull llaesailr aid. Ill aid rissaanr, rfaisaidr wairr rdeirr hairh.”

God damn, it’s really like throwing a mouth into a woodchipper sometimes.

Suddenly, Saisaie began walking, carrying us. Not to her hut, which I noticed sadly was the one cut in half, but towards the big tent with the village in it.

Horror gripped me. Regardless of anything else…

We were going to be stuck in a place full of horrible soulless creatures.

I had a horrible feeling about this.