I scanned over my available classes.

I had thought that being able to complete as many as I pleased would make the decision easier. It didn’t. If anything, it made it infinitely harder to choose. If I had only one option, I’d pretty much be forced to go with [Mage Apprentice]. Now that I could play around, I wanted to see what the others were capable of.

I glanced over at the disgusting creature standing maybe 10 meters ahead of me. I wanted to fuck that thing up. I wanted to break its shitty little body into gory pieces as I watched it writhe in—

I paused. My thoughts got a bit more heated than I was comfortable with. Shaking my head slightly, I brought my attention back to the skill selection.

After a few more seconds of deliberation, I settled on [Beginner Brawler].

You have selected a new class!

You have reached level 1 in [Beginner Brawler]

You have acquired a skill!

[Power Strike: F-rank]

Empower your next unarmed physical attack. Damage increase: 25%

For half a moment, I was a bit underwhelmed by the acquired skill. But then it sank in.

25 percent more damage…? I pondered internally.

Wasn’t that actually kind of absurd? I had never done sports, but I knew enough about physics to know that this power alone would be sufficient to turn a regular professional boxer into a world champion. And it was F-rank.

There was more to it, too. It did not consume mana; as far as I could tell, it merely put an extra burden on the body.

That aside, I realized something I probably should have caught on to earlier.

I couldn’t use the skill with a weapon.

I guess I’ll have to wait until the next opponent to try my new stick out…

With great sadness, I put away my shiny stick and raised my fists. Time to prove that I could punch like a [Beginner Brawler].

I was about to jump from my cover and rush the red-skinned monster, but then I realized something. The clothes I was wearing would probably get filthy as hell or maybe even torn up if I fought in them.

Sighing, I pinched the hem of the brown tunic, and a moment later, it vanished deep into my inventory. My pants followed, leaving me in nothing but my undergarments.

I had survived a confrontation against a far bigger opponent entirely naked. I’d live.

Without any further hesitation, I stepped out into the clearing. The monster spotted me in the next moment.

I could feel the evil behind its gaze, and as it looked upon me, its crooked mug morphed into a picture of fury and hostility.

Within my heart, a completely foreign soup of emotions stirred.

While the monster stared at me with indignation and fury, I stared back at it with a… sneer. I could sense its hostility, its deep hatred towards me, the visceral reaction of a creature of evil facing down a traitor of hell. But I felt no guilt at my choices. I felt nothing but an entitled pride, an inherent superiority over the creature before me.

At first, the battlelust burned brightly in its eyes, and it hefted the stick to assault me. But as it slowly walked forward, the grip on its weapon grew shakier. Its already uneven gaze grew more distant, and the weight of what stood before it sank in, and it shivered under my sneering gaze.

I stood a mere foot before it, looming over it like a tall tree, enveloping the monster in my shadow, but it refused to look up, merely sweating a nasty ooze and staring at my navel with pure horror.

I pulled my fist back, and with a [Power Strike], I threw a straight. My fist landed on its nose, but it felt nothing like what I expected. Rather than feeling the recoil of its head being thrown back by the force of my blow, my fist simply sank into its skull as if it was nothing but a face-shaped cake, with little but a thin layer of fonant covering the mass of blood and brain matter within.

A moment later, its head was little more than a coat of splattered crimson paint all over a nearby tree, and its body fell lifelessly to the ground.

Level up!

You have reached level 2 in [Beginner Brawler]

You have acquired a new skill!

[Brace Body: F-rank]

Brace your body against an incoming blow. Damage reduction: 10%

I had to admit it—I felt fucking awesome. The rush of crushing an inferior foe with disinterested ease, the way I would have crushed a fly long ago, was exhilarating, filling me with a rush of adrenaline.

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I knew that the human I used to be would be disgusted at the sight before me. I’d have been bothered by the smell, sickened by the image of blood and brain matter scattered across the bark, troubled by the thought of having inflicted such violence upon a being that even vaguely resembled a person.

But I couldn’t bring myself to care. My ties with evil forces were irreparably damaged. Even if it took this form, where I become something that lived to purge my newly gained nemeses, I could come to terms with it. It was comforting. It put my mind at ease.

That being said, holy shit was I strong.

I approached a nearby tree. If I hugged it, my arms would perhaps wrap around half its circumference.

It reminded me of oak, and upon closer inspection, its high branches had upon them a growth akin to acorns. It was quite far, but with my perception, I could see the little fruits clearly. They were tiny brown balls with supple skin closer to that of grapes than woody acorns.

I raised my fist and threw a punch at the tree, empowered by [Power Strike]. The entire tree shook, and a rain of brown berries showered the forest floor around me. I pulled my knuckles out of the big hole the impact had created, examining the damage closely.

No matter how I looked at it, the result simply didn’t make sense. It was destructive in a way a punch shouldn’t be. The outcome simply didn’t correlate to what would have happened if ordinary laws of physics applied to the action.

Rather, it almost reminded me of something from a cartoon. There was a visible indentation, akin to a crater, around the spot my knuckles crashed upon, and large cracks spread out, both through the hole and the surrounding surface of the tree.

I threw another punch without activating my skill this time. The impact was lesser, but it was also different. It far closer resembled a more “natural” consequence, even if my strike held supernatural force behind it. There was no cartoony crater, and, if I was being honest, it looked like I had done far more than just remove the 25 percent bonus. But the tree still shook almost as hard as it did with the first punch.

It seemed that [Power Strike] wasn’t as simple as it initially seemed to be. It almost felt like the 25 percent bonus converted the physical force behind the impact into a force of pure destruction. That was much scarier than simply punching a quarter harder. And it was another example of a skill description that failed to fully convey all the intricacies of the powers behind them.

There was another thing that was bothering me, however. I felt that using the skill generated a certain amount of backlash on my body. It wasn’t too bad, but it was there. Well… it had been there.

But now, I felt entirely fine.

Bracing myself, I prepared the skill again. This time, I threw one punch after another, and a mere four strikes later—

Skill [Power Strike: F-rank] has upgraded to [Power Strike: D-rank]

Immediately, the force behind my strikes felt far greater, almost as if the power of my blows had doubled.

I checked the description.

[Power Strike: D-rank]

Empower your next unarmed physical attack. Damage increase: 50%

Well. I was pretty certain that confirmed my theory on what the skill did.

As I kept punching the tree, I noticed that the backlash had worsened, but… it definitely wasn’t twice as bad, not by a long shot. It was perhaps only slightly more noticeable.

After ten more strikes, the tree began creaking, and a second later, it fell over.

My heart was pumping wildly. I just punched a fucking tree down. Holy moly. I had become a real-life Minecraft Steve.

I excitedly hopped over to another tree and continued punching it. This one also went down in only a few strikes.

After decimating several trees, I finally realized it. I did suffer a backlash from using the skill. But C-rank endurance and S-rank regeneration weren’t just for show.

I next tested [Brace Body]. I thought of just lobbing a rock into the air and letting it drop on my head, but I opted for tackling a tree with my body braced for impact instead. It took a few attempts, but I eventually passed the requirement.

Level up!

You have reached level 3 in [Beginner Brawler]

You have acquired a new skill!

[Leap: F-rank]

Empower your legs, increasing the distance of your leap. Distance increase: 50%

It seemed that my tree tackling wasn’t enough to increase the skill. Maybe I could bump it up to D-rank with a few rocks on my head, but I postponed that in favor of finishing the class.

I also tested [Leap], using it repeatedly as I rushed through the forest.

Not only did it increase the distance I could jump, but it also impacted the speed at which I flew through the air. Not only that, but it made jumping… easier. The effect was instantaneous. I didn’t need to squat or brace myself; I just used the skill, and like a zap through my legs, it pushed me forward, launching me with ease.

Level up!

You have acquired a new skill!

[Tough Skin]

Your skin is tougher.

Class [Beginner Brawler] completed!

New classes available!

As I listened to the monotone voice ringing in my mind, I grinned. I had gone through a lot of crap since I arrived in this world, and it hasn’t even been a handful of days.

I had lost much in that time—the world I grew up in; my humanity; my right to die a peaceful death.

But as I felt the cool, pleasant air washing over my face, saw the uneven forest ground vanish beneath my superhuman leaps, witnessed the trees flying by like I was driving in a car, felt my body move, responding to my commands and acting as I wished, I knew it. I knew that, had someone made me the offer, if someone had told me to give up what I had lost so I could get this instead…

I would have accepted it immediately.

Eventually, I reached a section of the forest where the trees thinned. I saw a stump. A tree had been felled there. The work looked man-made.

Instantly, my head cooled, and I was forcefully dragged back to reality. I still didn’t know exactly how I would react to seeing other humans. But I knew I had to mentally prepare myself.

As I proceeded, I spotted a few trails. they had been walked down. I saw more cut trees and the canopy thinned, revealing the sky of a late morning.

And eventually, I stepped on a wide, open road. It was unpaved, but the dirt was well-trodden, with tracks of carriage wheels visible in the pale soil.

There were no signs indicating where the road was headed. So I picked at random, turning right as I continued my run. As I continued, the trees around me thinned rapidly as nothing but a flat meadow of verdant grass could be seen in either direction.

It took me less than two minutes of running to walk to the top of a small hill.

From there, I spotted a massive stone wall with tall towers scattered across it.