Chapter 38: Chapter 38 — The Festival of the Hunt IX
Down at the bottom of the canyon, the scene turned bloody in a matter of seconds.
The two fifteen-meter colossi burst into brutal laughter as they pulled on opposite ends of the feline creature. There was a hideous, dry, deafening crack, followed by the tearing of flesh and tendons. The majestic wings of the feline were ripped clean off, splattering bursts of gleaming blood against the stone walls.
The magical roots surrounding the beast tried to lash at its captors’ legs, but the giants simply stomped on them, crushing them into splinters and mud with terrifying ease.
By the time the feline stopped roaring, the giants were already dividing the spoils. They buried their filthy, enormous hands into the creature’s open cavity, devouring the viscera and crunching through bones with the same ease a human bites into a crispy cookie. The visceral sounds of their feast echoed throughout the entire ravine.
I watched the carnage from my hiding spot, completely impassive. Surprisingly, my stomach didn’t turn this time.
"A predator being a predator, I guess," I murmured to myself, letting out a soft sigh. "I think I’ve gotten used to this."
At another point in time, watching a mystical creature be dismembered alive would have made me vomit my breakfast, but this world was already shaping me.
I decided I couldn’t let a golden opportunity slip by. The giants were completely distracted with their meal, their backs turned to me. It was the perfect moment to strike.
---
Without thinking twice, I mentally summoned the Tenazcrya Heroine’s Bow.
The weight of solidified moonlight settled into my hands, and instantly, the ancient warrior’s muscle memory took hold of my body. I got into position, drew a silver arrow from the quiver, and aimed toward the canyon.
I adjusted my trajectory, waiting patiently for the exact second when both colossi would align while fighting over a chunk of meat. There. One stood right behind the other.
I pulled the string to its limit and released.
The arrow left the bow in a flash of pure white light. It traveled through the air like a silent lightning bolt, slamming directly into the first giant’s back. The projectile didn’t stop; it pierced cleanly through his torso and continued its lethal trajectory, punching through the chest of the second colossus standing right in front of him.
There was no explosion, no blood. The white glow simply erased matter in its path, leaving behind a perfect, clean-edged circular hole through the middle of both monsters’ bodies.
The two giants froze for a millisecond, let out a dull groan of pure confusion, and then collapsed forward, crashing against the canyon floor with a thunderous boom that shook the entire mountain. Dead on the spot.
"Wow... That was fucking easy," I said, lowering the bow with a smug smile. The legendary weapon was complete overkill.
---
But my celebration lasted less than a heartbeat.
A second later, a seismic vibration rippled through the rock beneath my feet.
BOOM! BOOM!
Titanic footsteps, far heavier than those of the previous colossi, thundered behind me and stopped dead.
An icy cold shot down my spine. Slowly, I turned my head to look toward where the corpses lay, and then I raised my eyes to the opposite ridge.
Up there stood a third giant. But this bastard was playing in an entirely different league.
He was easily twenty-five meters tall, his skin covered in battle scars, and in his enormous right hand he held what looked like the femur of some colossal creature, modified to serve as a savage club. His bloodshot eyes shifted from the two corpses at the bottom of the canyon straight to me. The sheer bloodlust radiating from his body nearly drove me to my knees.
I understood the situation instantly. I didn’t need to be a genius of monster ecology to figure it out. The first two giants weren’t adults... they were just teenagers. Children playing. And I had just killed this titan’s babies. The goddamn father was coming for my head.
"Shit!" I exclaimed.
Remembering the wise teachings of anime and, specifically, the infallible tactic of Joseph Joestar, I screamed at the top of my lungs in my mind: NIGERUNDAYO!
I spun around and fled at full speed.
---
I pushed my enhanced stats to the maximum, propelling myself with a force that would have left any Olympic athlete in the dust. My boots barely touched the ground as I descended the steep slope.
However, the physics of this world worked against me. I could run fast, but a single stride from that twenty-five-meter colossus covered about a hundred meters of terrain in one second. The ground crunched and cracked behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder and nearly had a heart attack: the giant was already right on my heels. He was practically on top of me, blocking out the sunlight with his colossal figure, reaching out a hand full of filthy claws ready to grab me and crush me like a fly.
"System, don’t screw me over!" I bellowed internally, panic taking hold of my mental voice. "Give me something that lets me run fast right now or I’m going to be paste!"
Ding!
A golden flash flickered in my mind as the gacha roulette spun at the speed of light and stopped immediately.
[Congratulations! You have obtained the Sneakers of Hallen, God of the Wind — Rank: Epic, 4 Stars!]
In the blink of an eye, my heavy adventurer boots vanished, replaced by extremely light footwear of a sky-blue color that pulsed with visible currents of air swirling around them.
I felt as if gravity stopped affecting me. I touched the ground once and shot forward like a rocket, breaking the sound barrier with a resounding BOOM!
The landscape around me turned into a blurry smudge of colors. I was running at a speed worthy of Quicksilver himself, devouring kilometers of mountain in a matter of heartbeats.
---
I managed to put some distance between myself and the giant, but to my absolute frustration, the colossus was still damn close. Due to his immense size, the distance that was enormous for me was just a few hurried strides for him. The bastard had no intention of letting me go.
And to make matters worse, the son of a bitch proved that giants also have brains for warfare.
Seeing he could no longer reach me with his hands, the giant drove his bone club into the rocky ground as he ran. Using the weapon like a colossal shovel powered by hydraulic force, he unearthed tons of dirt, gigantic boulders, and loose slate, and with a violent flick of his wrist, he hurled them through the air at me.
"What the hell?!" I shouted, narrowly dodging a house-sized rock that crashed a few meters away from me, kicking up a cloud of dust.
A rain of improvised projectiles began falling from the sky like an artillery barrage. I had to run for my life at supersonic speed while dodging stone missiles that threatened to pulverize me from every direction.
Comments