Stanley leaped over the wide stream, arriving on the other side without wetting any of his items. He then proceeded to find a place to stay, and on the way to find some wood.

The worst part about the second part seemed to be that there weren’t any dry woods to search for at all. All wood looked green, and those wouldn’t burn at all.

At first, Stanley was very worried, but after thinking for some time, he realized he didn’t need to be so worried.

He took one large piece of wood with him and used his new technique on it. The wood aged fast, nearly 100 times faster, so that the green wood dried quickly.

Walking around with the wood for just 2 hours did to it what would have taken the wood nearly 9 days to do. While that didn’t completely dry up the wood, it did make it a lot easier to burn.

Stanley sat in front of the small fire, with a dead hare slowly cooking over it. He had managed to find a few in the forest and killed one for food during the night.

He wasn’t the best when it came to cooking, but he had practiced enough as a child with his mother that he knew how to butcher a kill. Getting rid of the outer skin and the innards with just one hand was a rather tough job though, especially without anything sharp except for the metal spoon which he sharpened over a river stone.

After that, all that he needed to do was put the carcass over the fire and let it cook slowly.

Stanley checked it from time to time and took it off the fire when he thought it was ready. He sprinkled a bit of the salt and started digging into the meat.

"Hmm, not bad..." Stanley thought, eating more. Once he was done, he laid his sleeping bag by the fire and tried to sleep. He had torn the sleeping back accidentally, so he had to wrap it around himself to not let the cold air in.

The fire would go out in an hour or two without more timber, and that should be enough time for Stanely to—

Time slowed to a crawl as Stanley activated his power. He slowly walked out of the sleeping bag, ignoring the pain to his side, and looked away from the fire where a dark silhouette was appearing in the light.

"Is that... a Gorilla?" Stanley couldn’t help but ask when he saw the figure become more and more prominent in the light. It really was a gorilla, and not a small one at that.

It was nearly 2 and a half meters tall, and 5 times heavier than a regular person.

Stanley had seen something slam into his body in the future and knew it had to be this Gorilla. He walked up to the Gorilla and realized it was moving so very slowly.

"Huh?" Stanley thought in surprise. "My time slow is slowed by 100 times now as well." And somehow, walking while time had slowed was so much easier now. Had his body become stronger too?

"I really need to do some tests when I have the time," he thought and lightly punched the gorilla in the face.

The gorilla slammed onto the tree next to it, leaving behind splinters in the air while it itself slammed to the ground afterward like a ragdoll.

Time slowed normal again, and Stanley walked toward the gorilla. It was dark where the beast had ended up, so Stanley had to look extra hard to find him.

What he found was that the gorilla had turned into a man, and was now completely unconscious.

’Transformation power, huh?’ Stanley thought. He couldn’t help but wonder if it was just a gorilla this man could turn into, or if he could turn into something else as well.

He tried to wake him up to ask questions, but the man was out cold. Sighing, Stanley dragged him to the fire, letting him lay next to it before adding more wood to it.

Then, he got back into his sleeping bag and slept for the night.

The next morning, he woke up to the sight of the young man standing next to the fire with a stick lit up as a torch. He stood there, unmoving, but Stanley feared that he might do something stupid.

"You’re awake?" he asked the man. "How’s your head?"

"What did you do?" the man asked him.

"What do you think?" Stanley asked. "You were trying to kill me."

"I..." the man frowned. "I wasn’t. At least, not intentionally." 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

"What does that mean?" Stanley asked the man. "You were a gorilla, and you came to attack me."

"I... I was most likely here for the fire, and not you," the man said. "Still, how did you survive? Every time I was in this scenario, the other person was dead."

"So you purposefully let yourself be turned into a gorilla while knowing someone could die?" Stanley asked the man.

"It is kill or be killed," he said. "And I’m here to win. Why didn’t you kill me?"

Stanley stared at the man for a brief moment before shrugging. "I was brought here without my intention. I have no reason to kill if I don’t have to," he said. "If you don’t want to die, leave me alone."

"You’re letting me go?" the man asked.

"Do you not want to?" Stanley asked.

The man gave a look of surprise as if he hadn’t expected this to happen at all. "Thank you," he said and walked away with his torch of flame.

Stanley watched the man go, wondering if he did something bad by some chance. That man would go to kill more people. But soon enough, he found that he didn’t care who he killed.

The people who came to this game forfeited their lives from the start, so Stanley wouldn’t feel bad about them dying at all. Most of them had to be criminals in the first place.

He took a deep breath and looked to the North again. The golden wall gleamed in the distance and Stanley knew that this would be the place he would go to first.