I landed right in front of the Burning-man and gave it a shove. My clothes immediately turned to ash, and my skin took a serious grilling, simply for being too close to the Burning-Man. My hands turned to dust simply by coming into contact with the creature’s body. Thankfully my constitution stat had a new pair of hands growing in their place in next to no time. Despite my mountainous strength, the creature slid back only a few centimeters. Its existence simply outweighed my own by that much. That was fine though, that little shove and that momentary contact, was all I needed.

The [Tale of the Fool], [Tale of the Devil], [Tale of the World], and the [Tale of the Arcanist] had taught me a great many tricks. The best one I knew for this sort of situation, where I needed to use my maximum strength, against a foe, whose strength could cause a “rock’s fall”, for everyone in the surrounding area, was my “Ideation”. Which sounds like a really wishy-washy new-age thing, but was in fact an ability that combined my data-manipulation, energy-manipulation, spatial-manipulation, and matter-manipulation, with certain magics pertaining to dreams and the mind.

I had a very strong suspicion that my ideation would eventually become one of the strongest, if not ‘the’ strongest tools in my repertoire. It was basically a direct alteration of reality by adding a few extra steps into the abstraction process that made the rest of my powers possible. Thus creating a crumbly, fluffier, much less weighty version of reality that I could alter like one would a dream, or daydream.

One might wonder what the difference between this and all my other powers was, and the simplest was, that if I didn’t have ideation there’s no way my little True-Soul ranked self would have been able to use the “Stage-Setting” Art taught to my by the [Tale of the World]. Without ideation, there’s no way that I would have been able to create a directly identical, albeit temporary, and much smaller, parallel reality that was “far” enough away from our actual reality that even if people outside the “stage” could still see what was going on, they were unlikely to be affected by the battle.

“Okay, the stage is set...On with the show,” I mumbled beneath my breath before striding forward to do something stupid and ill-advised.

Transcendental mortals, true-dragons, fae royals, gods, devils, angels, spirits, ascendant machines, great undead, and eidolons. These were the ten categories of true immortal. The twisted things that crawled into our shattered world from the space between the worlds were generally associated with either the gods, the devils, or the fae. Right now, I was rushing toward an existence that was already outside the petty ranking system that our people used for measuring strength.

I threw the sharpest, cleanest, most powerful, punch that I’d ever thrown in my life at the creature. It was a punch carrying enough force to level most man-made structures and the buildings behind them, and the buildings behind those buildings. The only result was the bones in my arm being broken, and then incinerated again. Meanwhile, the burning-man barely shifted under the force of my blow. Never mind me getting an actual reaction from the creature.

In contrast, when the burning-man struck out with a clumsy blow that might well have been born from haphazard reflexes, I lost my entire lower body. It wasn’t merely blown away. I wasn’t just torn in half. No. Instead, I received a blow that carried the force of a hundred, thousand, nuclear bombs. If it wasn’t some very fast, very timely, energy-manipulation on my part, I think that’s where my story would have ended. Even with the energy-manipulation sapping away 90% of the heat and kinetic force carried by the burning-man’s blow, I still lost my lower body.

Thankfully, the [Tale of the Arcanist], the [Tale of the Alchemist], and one of my newer stories, the [Tale of the Healer], helped me regain what I’d lost, almost instantly. Even more fortunate, was the fact that I wasn’t an idiot, and had held no intention of trying to win a slug match with this monster. This creature that might well have been the twisted, broken, remnant of some long-forgotten god. I wouldn’t be strong enough to fight beings that powerful for a good many years.

I’d just been trying to soften it up and make an opening for myself, in its incredibly resilient, incredibly on fire, hide. Jack and I had used our considerable knowledge and resources to create a number of measures to help us strike back at foes that were far above our weight class. It was one of the main reasons we’d been so footloose and fancy-free about returning to civilization instead of staying the Bellgrave and grinding for a few more decades.

The next couple hours was me getting the snot beaten out of me, while I tried to make any kind of significant damage on the burning-man. I’d kick it and lose an arm. Then it would hit me in return and I’d lost up to two-thirds of my body. Once I actually lost my head. That was when I realized that the extremely decentralized nervous system that I’d started developing thanks to my high mental stats, the [Tale of the Hunter], the [Tale of Growth], and the [Tale of the Devil] were even more vitally important than I’d thought they were.

Then I finally made that all-important crack. Immediately that I saw my opening I took it. I stuffed a small capsule inside the crack and crossed my fingers. Then there was an explosion of wind and ice as all the energy within the Burning-Man’s body and soul were violently inverted. Eventually, the Burning-Man’s very body was turned inside out. I was a little flabbergasted when the burning man became a glowing woman. I was even more befuddled when my entire body opened itself like a venus fly trap and consumed the glowing woman. Some latent instinct born from the [Tale of the Hunter] and the [Tale of the Devil] compelling me to strike.

“Uh...O-, Okay, I guess I won?” I said. Staring at the empty space where the burning man once was, before disassembling the illusory world that I’d created. I was able to stay standing by reabsorbing the energy that was left behind when I broke down the illusory world. Then I turned around and saw that everyone was still waiting. The other elders and the youths were goggling at me dully. Jack just sat at one of the pilot chairs looking tired and relieved.

“Why the hell didn’t you guys go?” I said. Aghast. Wondering what I’d put in all that effort for if they weren’t going to use the window to get away.

“Dude, the aura that thing put out shorted out the flying-boat…” said Jack. Sighing.

“Oh…”

“G-, good thing you won, huh?” said Trefor. Laughing overly loudly in a manic fashion.

“I uh...I guess so,” I said. Before blacking out into Jack’s strong arms and firm bosom.