Chapter 40: Chapter 40 — The Festival of the Hunt Part XI
Every impact of the giant’s fist felt as though an entire mountain were collapsing directly onto my chest.
There wasn’t a trace left of the adrenaline or the false confidence that had blinded me minutes before; there was only a pure, liquid, suffocating agony consuming every corner of my being. The slate floor beneath my body had already turned into a pasty mass of mud, crushed rocks, and my own blood.
Please... let something happen... anything... I begged desperately in my mind, as tears of pain mingled with the constant flow spilling from my mouth.
In a pathetic attempt to cling to life, I hoped for a miracle. I thought that maybe Lady Alba and the dark elves would appear among the rocks to bring down the titan with their arrows, secretly grateful that I hadn’t attacked them.
Or maybe, just maybe, the Gacha System would detect that its host was about to vanish and would automatically activate some hidden ability, a divine shield or a miraculous last-second healing.
It had to be that way. I was the damn protagonist of this story, wasn’t I? I had an infinite system in my head. I couldn’t end here.
Gathering the last strength left in my dying nervous system, I ignored the pain of my punctured lungs and tried to force a single mental command. One last pull. Whatever it took.
"Sys... tem...! Gacha, activ—!"
There was no time for more. The giant, letting out a guttural roar charged with primal hatred, lifted both fists interlocked and brought them down with cataclysmic force directly onto my face.
CRUNCH!
The sound was horrific, final. There was no pain, at least not for more than a millisecond. I felt the gruesome crunch of my own skull collapsing in on itself, my teeth shattering and my eyes bursting under the massive pressure just before the gray matter of my brain was completely pulverized against the bedrock. My body convulsed one last time and went perfectly still, reduced to a shapeless mass of flesh and bone at the bottom of the crater.
---
Suddenly, the pain vanished. The pressure in my chest, the broken ribs, the suffocation... it all evaporated in a blink.
I found myself suspended in a deep void, an absolute blackness where there was no up, no down, no time nor space—simply a consciousness floating in the densest nothingness imaginable. The silence was so heavy it was deafening.
I’m... dead. I’m really dead, I thought, and this time my mental voice didn’t tremble. It was completely calm, filled with a cold and devastating clarity.
Self-reflection struck me harder than the giant’s fists. In that void, stripped of the world’s noise and the system’s illusions, I saw the reality of my actions.
Why the hell did I never think things through?
Why did I always have to act in such a stupid way?
A deep shame washed over me as I remembered my chuunibyou behavior, believing myself a superior being, an untouchable strategist just because luck had blessed me with an infinite Gacha system.
I had been cocky in the most miserable way possible. Surviving a couple of skirmishes and humiliating Dollmun at the palace had made me believe the entire world was at my feet, that the rules of physics and danger didn’t apply to me.
I had treated a real, dangerous hunt like a stupid video game with a respawn option.
And in the end, my own arrogance, my pride in thinking I could beat a twenty-five-meter alpha titan with nothing but my fists, had exacted the highest price. I had died in the most terrible and pathetic way possible, alone in a canyon, turned into pulp by my own stupidity.
"Another idiot otaku..." a feminine voice, soft, melodious but laden with deep, absolute annoyance, broke the silence of the void.
I startled mentally. The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
"Really, I’m so tired of watching you act like complete fools," the voice continued, sighing heavily. "It’s ridiculous. We give you a second chance, a beautiful new home, abilities so fucking broken they defy the laws of existence so that you can mature, do something useful, and help the inhabitants of those worlds... And how do you repay us? By being ungrateful morons. Pretentious idiots who think they’re kings of the universe and always end up wasting their lives on all kinds of nonsense out of sheer arrogance."
Before I could process the scolding, the darkness of the void began to tear like an old theater curtain.
A warm, brilliant light filtered through the cracks, sweeping away the blackness and pulling my consciousness toward the other side with irresistible force.
When my vision stabilized, I realized I was no longer floating. I had a body again, or at least the spiritual projection of one, and I was seated in an elegant carved wooden chair.
Before me was a perfectly polished mahogany table, and on the other side, seated with impeccable posture and legs crossed, was the owner of the voice.
She was a woman of unreal, mystical beauty.
Her hair flowed like strands of starlight and her eyes reflected a wisdom as ancient as the universe itself, though at that moment they were fixed on me with an expression of pure disappointment and mockery.
"Allow me to introduce myself, though I doubt your tiny brain will retain the name for long," she said, flashing a sly smile. "My name is Dakilla. I’m one of the many multiversal goddesses that useless otakus and idiots like you love to worship in your cheap little fantasies."
Dakilla raised her right hand and, with lazy elegance, snapped her fingers.
SNAP!
Instantly, a delicate white porcelain tea set with golden rims appeared on the table. The aromatic steam of freshly brewed tea began to rise between us, flooding the space with a scent of jasmine and mysticism. The goddess picked up her cup with delicacy, stared at me over the rim, and extended her other hand toward me, inviting me to take mine.
"Have some tea, Harold. We have a lot to talk about regarding how stupid you were today," she stated, with a calm that terrified me more than the giant himself.
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