Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Decision (1)

A world where gods, nymphs, dwarves, satyrs, monsters, and humans existed.

In one far corner of it lay a small village.

Nestled deep, deep within a forest, most people in the world didn't even know it existed.

In short, it had no presence.

But that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

Having no presence meant no king to collect taxes, no temple to demand offerings, and no outlaws to extort protection money.

Thanks to that, the villagers could keep every last reward of their own sweat.

But where there's good, there's bad.

A village without exploiters was also a village without protectors, so it had to weather every disaster the world threw at it on its own.

Floods, droughts, vicious beasts... Vicious beasts were especially dangerous.

Perhaps because the forest was so deep it could be called the middle of nowhere, the beasts around the village were mostly fierce and massive, threatening the village's very survival.

Well, at this point in time, all of that was a story of the past, though...

In the present, vicious beasts were no threat at all to the small village.

Why?

A hut in a corner of the village. Thanks to the young man named Anagin who lived there.

Anagin, a Giant capable of wielding a giant's power, had a physique no different from anyone else's, yet he possessed superhuman strength far beyond common sense.

As a child, he'd pulled trees out bare-handed, smashed boulders, and beaten to death boars and all sorts of other beasts...

In a small village whose founding wasn't even clear, Anagin's birth was a miracle, and thanks to him, the village was freed from the threat of vicious beasts.

So despite Anagin's prickly personality, all the villagers treated him well, and Anagin took pride in that.

He was a hero.

It was a small village, yes, but he protected it, so he was surely worthy of being called a hero.

A hero from a story, the kind who could do anything if he set his mind to it.

Maybe that was why. For Anagin, the most familiar emotion was confidence, and the most foreign was helplessness.

And now, in spring—the season of hope—that Anagin was tasting helplessness for the first time.

The same man who had dealt with wolves, bears, boars, and even the village drunk.

"Cough...! Cough...!"

A cough echoed feebly through the hut.

Tasting the humiliation of being able to do nothing, Anagin lifted his head toward the sound.

This was the first situation of his life where his strength was useless, and he had no idea how to handle it.

Awkward, baffling, unpleasant. But he couldn't let it show.

"Cough...! Cough...!"

If he did, his younger sister lying in bed would be frightened.

"Drink."

When Anagin feigned calm and held out the water, his sister smiled and took it.

Meanwhile, Anagin studied her.

A pale complexion. A gaunt face. Dry lips. Cold sweat beading on her forehead.

It was the exact same symptom as the plague that had taken their father, their mother, and the villagers that winter.

That plague was now coming for his sister.

Clench...!

Anagin tightened his fist.

At the humiliation of it all—burying corpses to stop the plague, burning contaminated belongings, scouring every herb he could find—and it had all been for nothing.

What enraged him most was that he alone remained fine.

They said Giants who wielded Gi, the power of giants, were immune to disease, and apparently it was true.

Everyone was dying, and only he was fine... It felt like a tasteless joke from some spiteful bastard.

"How sad."

His sister's voice reached Anagin's ears as he wallowed in his thoughts.

The only family he had left.

Anagin answered inwardly that he felt the same.

He wished his sister had awakened the power of a Giant as he had.

But even with Giant blood, the power didn't always awaken.

"Haah..."

Anagin let out a breath and asked what she meant. His sister wouldn't be sad over something like that.

"What are you sad about?"

"I wanted to go traveling with you... We promised, remember?"

A promise... Right.

His curious little sister had wanted to travel to the outside world their Master had told her about.

She'd been so earnest that she'd thrown a tantrum—something she'd never done in her life—and wrung a promise out of Anagin to go together.

Honestly, Anagin didn't care much. He was content with life in the village and had no interest in the outside world.

Even so, the only reason he'd promised to travel with her was because she'd asked.

But now it was all meaningless. In the end, his sister was going to die.

"What nonsense is that? Just get better and we'll go."

Anagin lied. His sister was going to die. The bodies he'd buried all winter told him that clearly.

"Tomorrow Master will bring a new medicine."

It wouldn't help. Not even their Master's medicine, brought from beyond the village, had helped.

"You'll get better, and you'll travel with me. We promised."

Anagin rattled off words he didn't believe himself. A lie, as they say.

It was his first time telling one. He'd boasted plenty thanks to his innate strength, but he'd never lied.

And now he was. Powerless and useless as he was. It felt filthy. And he wasn't even good at it.

"Yes... Anagin."

But his sister nodded despite her pain. Even knowing full well her brother was lying.

"Hah... Give me a sec, I'm going to take a piss."

Unable to bear the suffocating awkwardness, Anagin told another lie and fled outside.

All he could see was the forest sprouting fresh buds and starlight embroidered across the night sky.

Some of those stars were said to be gods, and Anagin silently looked up at them.

It wasn't that he had some girlish hobby of gazing at the vast sky for comfort when things got stifling. He just didn't like looking up at things.

Still, he did vaguely remember hearing some kind of hallucination when his father looked up at the night sky like this before he passed.

"Shall I help?"

Back then, Anagin had ignored it. He had no hobby of relying on hallucinations.

The hallucination came a few more times after that, and each time Anagin ignored it.

When his mother passed, when his friends died, when the girls who'd shown interest in him died—he ignored them all.

Relying on a hallucination went against Anagin's pride.

And so, at some point, the hallucination stopped coming.

Clap.

Anagin pressed his palms together and prayed to the silent hallucination.

Or to the gods beyond the night sky—he didn't care who, as long as they could help him now.

He asked them to save his sister, at least.

Surely they could save one little sister, as a human being?

His first prayer in his life was clumsy, but laughably, Anagin found a sliver of comfort in it.

Laying down his pride felt like the heavy burden on his shoulders had lightened.

He thought he understood why people prayed.

"Haah..."

He felt a little better.

In that state, Anagin went back inside and stayed by his sister's side. It was all he could do.

But then, out of nowhere, his sister spoke up.

"Anagin."

"What?"

"I can't sleep. Could you sing me a lullaby until I do?"

It was the first thing she'd asked of him since falling ill.

Anagin took it as a good sign and gladly agreed.

"As much as you want."

"Hehe, you're so kind, Anagin."

His sister smiled.

Anagin sang the lullaby their father and mother used to sing to him.

Until his sister fell asleep.

And his sister closed her eyes as if sinking into a deep sleep, and never woke again.

---

Shk—!

Shk—!

Shk—!

The village graveyard, deep in the remote forest.

Anagin was digging a new grave there.

It was where his sister would be buried, right beside the graves of their father and mother.

The ground was still stiff, not fully thawed, but that meant nothing to Anagin. He'd dug enough graves over the winter to match the number of villagers.

Thanks to that, he could lay his sister's body to rest beside their parents' graves before it rotted.

What a relief.

"...Have I finally lost my mind?"

After burying his sister and covering her with earth, Anagin asked himself.

A relief?

He hadn't been able to do a thing and had let his sister go—what was a relief about that?

Maybe he really had gone mad. He'd lost every last villager over the winter...

Anagin looked around the graves.

The graves of his father and mother. The graves of the friends he'd goofed around with. The graves of the girls who'd been more than friends but less than lovers. The graves of the village men and women who'd nagged him. The graves of the village grandfathers and grandmothers who'd slipped him snacks.

Every one of them had known Anagin, and Anagin had buried them.

He was the most fit to do it, being immune to the plague, so he'd buried each and every one of them.

Because there was nothing else he could do for them.

"Ah, should I just kill myself too?"

Standing before the village graveyard, Anagin muttered without thinking.

He had no reason to live.

There was nothing left he had to do, or wanted to do.

Dying didn't sound so bad either.

But there was one thing that bothered him.

It was that his mood was so unbearably filthy.

Like half-wiped shit, that lingering discomfort gnawed at him.

Anagin mulled over why he felt so filthy.

Fortunately, it didn't take long.

It was an emotion he'd been feeling constantly lately.

It was the helplessness and humiliation of being able to do nothing.

That filthy feeling of being unable to do anything and in the end resorting to prayer...

He felt filthy for dying after acting like such a pathetic fool.

If he died now and met his family and the villagers, it would be absolutely mortifying.

That was when.

Brrrrr—!

The ground trembled faintly, and he felt a warm snort of breath.

He turned around, and there stood a boar.

A one-eyed boar with a body the size of a house and enormous tusks.

"You?"

Anagin spoke to the boar as if they were acquaintances. And they were.

The youngest of the boar family that had attacked the village long ago.

Anagin had beaten to death every one of them back then—its brothers, its mother, its father, all of them. In the meantime, that one had run.

How did he know? Because that crushed eye was Anagin's handiwork.

"Come for revenge?"

When Anagin asked, the boar let out a rumbling cry.

As if answering yes.

"Pfft, haha..."

Anagin laughed. Even a runt of a pig had come for revenge.

The man who'd been about to die just moments ago looked twice the fool.

"Thanks. For coming when I was feeling restless."

With a new goal set, Anagin rose and rolled up his sleeves.

Then he walked toward the boar, and the house-sized boar charged at him.

A short while later, a tremendous boom echoed from one corner of the empty village where most of the residents had died.

---

Noon, when the sun had reached its highest point in the sky.

A middle-aged man with golden hair and a beard appeared.

He was the only outsider to this remote village, and also Anagin's Master.

Wearing distinctive leather gloves, he raised a hand to his brow to make shade and looked up at Anagin.

At Anagin, sitting astride the boar with its bones broken and flesh pulped.

Anagin looked down at the middle-aged man and spoke.

"Master."

"What."

"I have a goal now."

"What is it?"

"I'm going to try being a god."

Even if only to wash away this humiliation.