Flame Giants (2)
Two flame giants meant twice the internal elixir for me, then.
"The Thorvalg is the male, my lord."
Srudal inclined his head and offered the counsel with courtly calm. I stared at him, wondering what on earth he was talking about. Twice the elixir, and he was lecturing me on giant sex?
"Among flame giants, the female grows far larger and stronger. A male and a female might as well be different threat grades altogether."
"I see."
Bringing an ecologist along had been the right call after all. This is why people — well, ogres — need an education.
If a monster seemed a rank above Grade 3, that made it Grade 2. You couldn't mechanically match monster grades to Awoken Ability tiers, but Grade 2 was generally considered the level where only a Grand Master could hope to handle the thing.
"Anything else I should watch out for?"
"Their body heat is extreme, and their raw strength is immense. If combat becomes unavoidable, I would advise against grappling with them at close quarters."
I couldn't begin to fathom how strong you'd have to be for an ogre to call you strong.
"Kaldric, tell me your plan as well."
"Might I explain once we've moved inside the fort?"
"Of course."
I headed toward the fort with Kaldric. When the baron returned with an ogre in tow, the soldiers lowered their spears and stood down.
As I drew closer, the fear written in their eyes became unmistakable. Most of them were young men in their twenties — people with far more life ahead of them than behind, and their lives had just collided with a trial far too large for them.
Kaldric and I climbed up onto the palisade. It stretched across the narrow valley, walling it off from end to end.
"Allow me to outline the operation."
Kaldric extended a hand toward the fort's entrance.
In the direction he pointed, a wide pit ten meters deep had been dug across the road.
The trap was camouflaged with fallen leaves and dirt.
"The pit is packed with alchemical explosives. The explosives will react to the flame giant's high body heat. Once the blast wounds the giant —"
He gestured to the steep cliffs on either side of the valley.
"Boulders come down from the walls on both sides. And then —"
This time his hand swept toward the two dozen archers drawn up along the palisade.
"A volley of poisoned arrows rains down. After that, we assess the giant's condition and decide whether to open the gates and engage, or hold our ground. That concludes the briefing."
"What makes you sure the flame giant will come down this road?"
He pointed to a stack of firewood piled behind the fort.
"You see that large woodpile over there? Flame giants are drawn to firelight and smoke. The plan is to light it and lure them in."
"You haven't lit it yet. Why not?"
"We sent a request for reinforcements to Count Villoy. We were waiting for the relief force His Excellency promised to send."
"And you truly believe the count will send anyone?"
"······."
Kaldric hesitated a long while before answering.
"...I doubt it. His Excellency has troubles enough of his own."
That rang true. Count Villoy had recently sold his villa in Esterji Fortress City to me. Whatever was going on, his finances hadn't looked healthy.
"Fine. Light it."
A flustered expression crossed his face.
"Are you certain, my lord?"
"We have to see what we're dealing with, one way or another."
A storm of emotions played across Kaldric's face. Then he clenched his teeth and bowed deeply to me.
"Thank you, Prince Iden Esterji."
His voice trembled. It told me just how much anguish the man had been carrying all this time.
Kaldric straightened and walked out in front of the soldiers. He cleared his throat once, then pointed at me and called out with everything he had.
"Listen well, all of you! This man is Prince Iden Esterji, third son of Duke Drek himself!"
He gave the soldiers no time to be shocked, sweeping straight into a stirring oration.
"Prince Iden Esterji has come at the head of a mighty relief force to destroy the flame giant that has tormented our lands!"
"We're saved...!"
"May Solitas smile upon us!"
The soldiers wept with gratitude. Kaldric seized the moment without hesitation.
"That's right! Solitas has not abandoned us! The flame giant will fall before the overwhelming power of Prince Iden!"
When he thrust both fists into the air,
"Uwaaaaah!"
the soldiers' courage blazed back to life.
There was a real reason Kaldric worked so hard to rally their spirits: they genuinely, desperately needed it.
They were no fools. Nobody believed that if they formed a tight square and raised their spears high, the giant would think, how admirable, and obligingly die.
They were facing a battle with no hope of victory. Once the scheduled slaughter played out, no one in the world would remember that a hundred-odd spirited young men had stood here today.
How often did something like this happen? In truth, weren't most of the commoners in the duchy exposed to exactly this kind of wretched circumstance?
"Light the firewood! From this moment, we lure the flame giant!"
The soldiers hurled oil-soaked torches onto the stacked wood. A great blaze rose at once, sending black smoke billowing up over the fort.
"Lighting the fire won't bring the flame giant immediately, my lord."
Srudal said.
"It takes time to register the stimulus, and more time to travel. Even once it perceives the fire, it may feel no urgent need to feed."
"Then we'd better feed the soldiers well in advance."
Kaldric looked up at Srudal and asked politely,
"Might I ask your name, sir knight?"
"I am called Srudal."
"Sir Srudal — could you tell me about your, ah, dietary habits... your preferred foods?"
"Roasted meat of any kind will do. Ah — if you were to heap a great deal of bluermint over the meat, I would be most grateful."
It was a strange scene.
The sight of a baron asking an ogre about his eating habits was funny enough, and it was equally fascinating to watch him use honorifics for a knight of lower station.
No doubt it reflected my peculiar position — the ogre was, after all, my bodyguard.
Soon, at the baron's order, generous rations were distributed to the entire company. I ate separately from the rest, in a lean-to some distance from the fort, alongside the baron himself.
"I apologize for the sorry fare, my lord."
"What are you talking about? This is a feast."
I wasn't joking. I could live the whole year on wild greens alone. The baron's food was beast meat from the hunt, roasted over flame and seasoned — for that much, I had nothing to complain about.
Kaldric never rested. The moment he finished his meal, he was hurrying around the fort, meeting each soldier's eyes one by one and sparing no word of encouragement.
He even corrected the spearmen's stances personally — the estate was so small that the line between lord and sword instructor had apparently blurred into nothing.
A man worth learning from, it seemed. I had my own knightly order to lead now, after all.
Before long, darkness had closed in from all sides. On a mountainside, the sun went down far faster than it did on open ground. Just as the light began to fail, a sentry posted on the cliff screamed in desperation.
"They're coming! Front! Two colossal entities approaching!"
Flags rose on the opposite cliff as well.
"Monsters! Presumed flame giants!"
The fort sprang to life like a kicked beehive. Soldiers poured out like a swarm and raced to their stations. Srudal joined the shock troops waiting in reserve, and I climbed the palisade to meet Kaldric.
"...It's them."
Kaldric said, his voice tight with anxiety.
I didn't need anyone to tell me. Something enormous was closing in.
Birds burst shrieking from the trees, and the ground heaved up and down. The cracking of splintering trunks and the crash of stomping foliage came through with startling clarity.
A monster whose mere running could bring down a swath of the forest.
A Grade 3 monster — the flame giant.
"They're here!"
The sentry's report was all but a scream.
Between the walls of the valley appeared a giant wrapped in crimson fur. There were two of them, just as Kaldric had said. Both dwarfed Srudal, an ogre himself — and one of the pair boasted a body that could only be called transcendent in scale.
"...That one must be the female."
The wooden fort looked no more substantial than a sandcastle before the giant. The moment the pair spotted the humans swarming atop the palisade, they thrust their necks forward and loosed a roar that turned the marrow to ice.
- Graaaaaaaaaah.
The courage the soldiers had worked so hard to build evaporated in an instant. That was a predator's roar. Before it, a human was nothing more than prey.
"Archers, take aim!"
Kaldric bellowed himself hoarse. The archers drew their bowstrings to their limit. The giants stretched out their long legs and thundered toward us at a terrifying speed.
Then the trap sprang. The giant's massive body plunged through the ground in the blink of an eye. Boulders came rolling off the cliff-tops in a cascade, and —
"Loose!"
dozens of arrows streamed into the pit.
A deafening detonation, and a column of heat and dirt erupted toward the sky. Thick dust billowed up, obscuring everything inside the pit.
"Did it work?"
Kaldric murmured, hope threading his voice.
"...Did we get it?"
The same hope was evidently flickering through the soldiers' minds. Surely no living thing could survive such an overwhelming barrage.
Regrettably, I could see everything through the dust with perfect clarity. The soldiers' assault had done nothing but annoy the giant.
A long arm shot out of the pit. Then the enormous body followed, slipping free of the trap as smoothly as a gourd sliding off its vine.
"Fire — fire everything!"
Kaldric shouted urgently. The flame giant roared again, and the storm of sound swept the incoming arrows aside like dead leaves in a gale.
"Th-that's impossible......"
Fear sharpened into clarity on the soldiers' faces. It was the moment they understood that willpower meant nothing in the face of overwhelming force.
Thud. Thud.
Now only a few paces separated the giant from the walls.
"Hold your positions! Brace for the impact!"
Kaldric screamed until his voice tore. I laid a quiet hand on his shoulder.
"...My lord?"
He whirled around to face me, half out of his mind with terror. Looking at him, I realized something.
This was what the bravest man I had ever met looked like, when the only thing left to lean on was God.
"Leave the rest to me."
"My lord? But —!"
I turned my head and called out.
"Srudal!"
"Yes, my lord!"
Srudal answered briskly from his post before the gate.
"You take the male!"
"With respect, I will take the female!"
"I get the female, you get the male. It's an order, so listen!"
I had no intention of losing such a promising candidate for squad leader in a fight like this. I didn't wait for Srudal's reply. There wasn't even time to argue.
"My lord!"
I kicked off the palisade and leapt. Kaldric shrieked something at the back of my head as I soared — for a few breaths, I glided through the air like a bird, until the female flame giant and I stood at the same height, eye to eye.
Two eyes smoldering like coals.
An absurd size that filled my entire field of vision.
This would be a battle against a true beast of legend — the kind told only in stories.
The giant didn't even look at me. Its mind was fixed entirely on the food before it.
Running across the void itself with the supreme art of Voidwalk as though it were solid earth, I scattered talismans to every quarter.
Shaaaaaaaaa.
The talismans breathed the snowstorm of the Northern Sea into the narrow valley. With one unexpected lord of winter, heaven and earth froze bone-white in every direction. As the giant staggered, a lance of ice shot forth like lightning and put the creature's jaw back where it belonged.
The giant's head lolled, then slowly turned and locked onto me. Its coal-dark eyes brimmed with fresh bloodshot.
"Come on, then."
I beckoned with a curl of my fingers, baiting the thing.
"Come here, Lunch Number Two."