Day Two: The Giant (2)
Eeek!! What the hell?! Something yellowish just shot past!!
All at once something—skin-colored?—clipped the tip of the tree I was hiding in, and the leaves in front of my face came showering down. Enough of them stayed put to keep me covered, and for that I was grateful.
I tipped my head just enough to peer through the gaps and see what had gone by.
A person... from behind...?
Huge!!
The tree had to be somewhere around twenty meters tall, and I'd climbed a little past the middle of it—yet that thing's height matched the very branch I was perched on. Wild brown hair hung loose and tangled all the way to the waist, and the body was packed with working muscle, nothing like a bodybuilder's vanity bulk. Like rock. Like stone...
A w-woman? No—a female...? It was shaped like a person, at least.
Past those plank-broad shoulders, the hair-veiled back ran down into a waist, and the pelvis traced a line so perfect it might as well have been boasting: this is what an S-curve looks like. And the giant woman was naked. Not a thing to cover her, above or below—she was simply displaying a body of muscle hard as dressed stone, every inch of it out in the open.
Under the taut swell of her backside, between her thighs, I caught a glimpse of dark hair and the cleft of a woman's secret valley, and the long legs stretching down from there made me feel as if I were looking at the nude of an athlete who had trained herself to the limit. My heart started to pound for an entirely different reason. Little Buddy, down below, began ever so slyly to lift his head.
...I can't help it, all right? I'd never once seen a real woman's naked body, and that—okay, it's big—but it's still a woman's body...
An Aberrant. It had to be an Aberrant, right? I had my doubts about whether getting aroused at an Aberrant counted as sane, but my eyes would not come off the giant woman's backside.
I hadn't forgotten that getting caught meant death. I smothered my breathing as best I could and stared, eyes bulging, at everything she did.
The giant woman was gripping a club as big as the tree I was hiding in. They say people see what they want to see first—and apparently that's actually true. How had I failed to notice a club that enormous?
I dragged my gaze off it and looked her over again. A flawless nine-heads figure, through and through. Limbs filled with nothing but working muscle, a firm backside, and—every time she moved—the faint glimpse between her thighs of a woman's parted cleft. Then a breeze tousled that unkempt hair, and I caught two long scars running down her back. Looking more carefully, I found plenty more carved into her arms and legs as well. Wounds, as if something sharp had cut her and raked her.
...No. Wait.
Idiot that I was, only now did I notice how wrong this was. What is this? This is a beginner zone, isn't it? The only person who ought to be here is someone freshly sucked into the Phase World—me, alone. Wasn't it supposed to hold nothing but Lowest-Rank Variants, scaled to me?
According to what everyone calls established theory, a forced summon drops you where the Phase Power concentration is lowest, doesn't it?! So there should be nothing here but Lowest-Rank Variants. Then what the hell is that giant woman?! Something's off. More to the point, if I stay worked up like this she'll notice me, so—calm down.
I studied her again. Those were definitely wounds. Cuts, from something. Which meant there existed a monster—an Aberrant—capable of injuring a terrifying giant who was that enormous, whose every step shook the earth, and who swung a pitch-black tree trunk as thick as her own thigh as if it weighed nothing.
...
My body began to tremble, and my heart sank back into terror and hammered like mad. Afraid even my breath would give me away, I clamped both hands over my nose and mouth.
Can I... can I even get out of here alive...?
Not daring to breathe properly, I struggled to settle the two contradictory feelings knotting themselves up inside me, and stared holes through the giant woman's retreating figure as she drew nearer the waterfall. She'd gone quite a distance, but her sheer bulk meant I could take all of her in at a single glance.
The perspective's going strange.
When she reached the falls, she set a hand against the cliff to brace herself, rose lightly onto her toes, tipped her face upward, and began to drink the water pouring down.
I flinched.
As her body grew wet, the curves of it—her backside—and because of the posture, the valley of the giant woman's sex lay starkly exposed. She drank for a while, then raised the right hand still gripping the wooden club and wiped her mouth with the back of it, twisting her torso a little to the right. With that turn, the rounded swell just visible along her upper body, and the small peak at its tip.
Whoa! Breasts!
I flinched again in the same instant. Over and over, the thought returned: getting turned on by an Aberrant makes me a lunatic.
While I floundered, the giant woman finished drinking, gazed off at something for a moment, then approached the plunge pool and slowly began to lower herself in. The waterfall crashing down right beside her soaked that wild hair until it clung sleek and wet, and her whole image changed—subtract the height and that terrifying muscle, and she transformed into an extraordinarily beautiful woman. Seeing the giant's figure laid bare like that, it was no joke.
Her face was hidden behind her hair and hard to make out, but the neck—a little less thick than her head—led down into collarbones, and beneath those sat full, beautifully shaped breasts that were just... God. At their tips, pink nipples and small areolae, perfectly matched to the size and the shape. Past the breasts, a hard flank with not a trace of rib showing, and a crisp six-pack that drew the cute little navel out into a flat line...
She was still in the middle of sinking into the pool, and the hair guarding a woman's precious place—past a waist without an ounce of spare flesh and a smooth lower belly—dizzied my eyes. No. Not a woman! A giant! An Aberrant! A monster!
Ngh—!
As if to mock my helpless, flustered virginity, every time the giant woman moved, those breasts—round as overturned rice bowls—stole my gaze with a beautiful sway.
"Nn—!"
I ground both palms into my eyes, told myself this is wrong about ten times over, and fixed my attention on her again. Even through all of that, she never let go of the club. So there really is something in this forest that threatens a giant's life—
Wha—?! Hk—! That—!!
A one-eyed giant! That's a one-eyed giant!!
The moment she lifted a hand and swept her hair back, her face came into view, and I nearly died of fright. A one-eyed giant—th-that's a Superior, High-Tier Aberrant, isn't it?!
A single enormous eye, a third of her face, cutting across the brow, darted left and right, warily scanning everything around her. There were eyebrows. There were eyelashes. The iris was a pretty blue. Eek!
Her face seemed to turn this way, so I squirmed and hid myself behind the leaves. ...Except my body was lashed in place by the rope I'd improvised from my belt and school-uniform jacket, and I could barely move! I worked the knot loose as carefully as I could, never once taking my eyes off her.
She reclined in the pool as if soaking in a half-bath, her left hand endlessly scooping water and sweeping it down over her chest, while her right hand still refused to release the club. No question about it—something out there was a threat even to the one-eyed giant woman. Miss One-Eyed Giant, enjoying her soak while splashing water over herself with one hand. Looking closer: an oval face, a head small for that frame, a straight nose, moist lips, and an overall air very much that of a lovely young lady.
...I can't hold it anymore.
Every time she swept a hand down her chest, the way those breasts deformed threw my sense of who I even was into chaos—but I couldn't beat the desire, and I started staring at the giant woman's chest as if I meant to burn it into my brain. Ugh. The first naked woman I ever see, and she's a giant... But she looks like a woman, so this is barely safe, right? It has to be safe.
The self-loathing was no joke, and I'd been feeling the blood pool in one particular place for a while now, but I did my best to ignore it. And kept right on devouring her naked body with my eyes anyway.
Looking at those swelling breasts and the nipples standing up on them like cherries, I remembered how old-fashioned smut used to describe a woman's breasts as the moon, and call the dainty peaks atop them sumildo—I looked it up; it's just a Chinese peach—while the scenes of someone licking away went on and on. The wisdom of the ancients is not to be taken lightly. That's exactly what it looks like, isn't it?
Maintaining my life-or-death bout of peeping—observation—I buckled the belt back on with my hands and pulled the uniform jacket over myself, bracing for the worst. If that giant realized I was hiding and came charging... how would I even run? Five of my strides, and she'd close the gap in one. Then she'd bring that tree-trunk club down and pound me flat as a sheet of dried fish. The moment I pictured it—my head smashed, my belly burst, my guts pulped—Johnson shriveled at a terrifying speed.
What were a one-eyed giant's habits, again? I couldn't remember precisely, but wasn't it that they fly into extreme hostility and attack the moment they meet you? It hadn't come from a textbook. I'd seen it on a site run by ability users, so I wasn't even sure of the memory. Ugh.
Still, the one-eyed giants in the field guide at least roughly covered their lower halves in hide, wrapped their feet in leather for protection, and favored weapons made by ripping up whole thick trees. So why was that woman stark naked?
She splashed water over herself for a bit, then rose and stepped beneath the falls to wash in the pouring water. When she lifted one leg to wash... that place... her pale, full sex was completely exposed, and since it was the first time I'd ever seen a woman's petals, I swallowed without meaning to. Pale, and pink... I think I understand why people compare a woman's private parts to flower petals. And seeing that an anus was there too, puckered like a chrysanthemum, her anatomy seemed identical to a human's. Nude photos of women aren't hard to find online, but setting those dark, thickly haired places beside this giant woman felt like it would be an insult to her.
Anyway, feeling the blood rush to my face as well, I kept up my diligent observation. Even while she washed, she never neglected to watch the top of the cliff and the forest. The strength in the club gripped in her right hand never eased, which let me confirm yet again that something in the area was a threat even to this one-eyed giant woman. Bleak. And hopeless. Is it just down here, beneath the cliff, that's abnormal?
I was about to swallow for an entirely different reason when the giant woman—after several minutes of enjoying her waterfall shower—wrung the water from her hair, plunged a hand into the bottom of the pool, scooped up mud, and began to smear it over her body. What's she doing? She was concentrating especially on her armpits, the join of her thighs, and her chest... Erasing her scent?
I set the question aside and watched closely. She kept scooping mud and spreading it evenly over her whole body, from her face to those round breasts and all the way down to her sex, then looked down at herself, gave a nod—and started coming this way!
Thoom! Thoom!! Thoom!!!
Eek.
Moving as quietly as I could, I shifted toward where the leaves would block her line of sight, hid behind the trunk, and stuck out a single eye to stare at the approaching giant woman's lower half. ...Because the rest of her was hidden behind the tree! Even so, I couldn't see well. And what I could see was caked in mud besides.
Thoom!! Thoom!! ...
Hah...
She stopped walking all at once, and my heart dropped out of me. D-did she spot me? My pulse started to climb. Terrified, I held my breath and hid completely behind the trunk—and the instant I did, a roar and a shock slammed into me.
KRAAANG!!! ...KWAAANG!!!
"Aaagh!! Fuck!!"
I hugged the trunk and held on for dear life so I wouldn't be thrown from the branches thrashing around me. In the middle of the shaking I realized what had happened: the giant woman had cleared the river—it looked to be over thirty meters across—in a single leap, with no running start at all, and the impact had shaken everything like an earthquake. She jumped a river that looked wider than thirty meters, lightly, without even setting herself? Is that the physical ability of a one-eyed giant Aberrant?
Stunned by the terrifying jump she'd shown me, I watched her back as she sailed to the far bank. For an ordinary human, a standing long jump tops out around two to two and a half meters; the world record for an athlete honed by serious training is something like 3.7, isn't it? For a human under two meters tall, about twice their own height is the limit—and that giant had casually cleared four times hers. If she actually set herself and jumped properly, six times, seven times, would be nothing, right?
Most giant Aberrants are said to be the Physical Reinforcement type, and she's probably the same. The looks, and that balanced, muscular build—it fits. Once across the river, she spun the wooden club in her right hand round and round and walked off into the forest.
The moment she vanished completely from view, I let out a sigh of relief.
"Hoooo."
The tension had only half let go; I could feel a tremor in the breath I exhaled. I'd gotten one hell of a show, but peeping with my life on the line is not the sort of thing a person ought to do. Not that I'd had any choice in the matter!
I was about to climb down, then waited a little longer just in case. The giant woman had disappeared from sight quickly enough, but the trees blocked my view, and she might come back.
...
As the excitement and the tension slowly drained away, her naked body started replaying in my head all on its own. I'd gotten past the crisis, and here I was having obscene thoughts in a place like this... I have plenty of dirty thoughts, sure, but to be this indiscriminate here—am I even in my right mind? Has some kink I never knew I had just opened its eyes?
While I turned all of that over and concentrated hard so I wouldn't forget her naked body, hunger began to set in. Come to think of it, since yesterday all I'd had was water.
...More importantly. This situation doesn't make any sense. It's so wrong I'm on the verge of getting angry. My emotions are swinging so violently up and down that I feel like I'm about to lose my mind.
"Huff. Huff."
I clutched my head, fought to drag my reason back under control, and tried to sort my thoughts out. The firsthand accounts of Phase World survivors recorded in Otherworld Survival Studies—the textbook they use at school—number around three hundred. I'd read those, and plenty besides, and I'd also read all sorts of the survivors' essays circulating in paperback, but not one of those accounts described a Peak-Rank High-Tier Variant appearing on a first entry.
If what showed up in a Phase World you'd only just entered were High-Tier Aberrants instead of Lowest Grade ones, there's no way that wouldn't be recorded as an anomaly. So why...!
"..."
I steadied my breathing and ran a hand over the belt wrapped around my waist, and then a thought struck me, and despair came with it.
Right. Of course there might be no accounts.
If every last one of them died.
Because then it would never have gotten out.