Once Shin Sua and Baek Yeon went to help the others, only Linnea and I, the two with nothing to do, remained where we were.
Linnea asked with an oddly restless look.
“Shouldn’t we help?”
“Why? Do you want to fight too?”
“Well, they are giants, aren’t they?”
“That they are. Giants.”
Before the Nine Worlds had begun walking the path to ruin, if someone asked who had traded blows with the giants of Jotunheim the most, the obvious answer would have been the bastards of Asgard.
That was how frequent the conflicts between the residents of the two worlds were, and they fought so often that even I, living in Niflheim, would hear the news and go watch.
And Linnea was a Valkyrie who had belonged to Asgard.
Perhaps it was only natural for her hands to itch whenever she saw a giant.
Even so, I had no intention of throwing Linnea into that fight right away.
“Let’s see how much those two have grown over the past few weeks. For now, stay still.”
“Understood…”
Linnea, who had been fidgeting because she wanted to fight, gave up at my firm decision and sat down beside me.
I turned my gaze and watched the two of them fight.
The first to step forward was Shin Sua, who put on her Valkyrie armor and blocked the giant’s attack.
Perhaps annoyed by the human who kept dodging this way and that, the giant swung a fist full of irritation, and Shin Sua deflected it aside with a single slash.
To think she could divert a giant’s fist dozens of times larger than her.
Next came Shin Sua’s turn after blocking the attack.
Drawing dense mana from her sword and coating the blade with it in a sharp edge, she aimed for the giant’s wrist.
The foolish giant must have thought Shin Sua’s attack was no different from those of the other humans, because it did not even try to dodge properly and took the blow head-on, causing blood to spurt from its wrist like a fountain.
“Guaaah! It—hurts!”
The giant clutched its mangled arm and cried out in pain.
But that much could not be called a fatal wound to a giant.
The blood gushing like a fountain from its wrist gradually lessened, and before long, the wound began to close.
“Wow. That endless vitality is one of the most annoying things about giants.”
Just as Linnea said, a giant’s absurd vitality was so exceptional that ordinary wounds healed in an instant.
So in order to kill a giant, one had to aim not for something like the wrist, but for a proper vital point.
Though the wound was recovering, once a proper attack landed for the first time, the expedition team also coordinated with it and launched attacks from long range, whether magic or crude masses of mana.
The expedition team’s attacks did little more than obscure the giant’s vision and leave slight burns on its skin, but that was enough.
And while the others bought time, Baek Yeon lowered her stance and gathered mana at the tip of her spear.
The purple mana gathered at the spearhead spun in a spiral.
“Die, monster.”
Baek Yeon muttered coldly and hurled the spear she had drawn back as if releasing a spring.
Leaving behind an afterimage of purple mana, the spear became a single line and flew high into the sky.
The spear that soared upward aimed for the giant’s right eye, revealed through the mist.
It buried itself deep in the eye.
“Gueeeeeek!!”
As the spear lodged in its eye, the giant cried out in pain and brought its fingers toward the eye to pull it out, but Baek Yeon’s attack did not end there.
Kwaaaang!!
A mana explosion erupted from the embedded spear, blowing away part of the giant’s head.
The explosion that occurred inside its eye was fatal even to a giant, and with part of its head blown off, the giant’s eyes lost focus and it collapsed.
When Baek Yeon reached out, the spear embedded in the giant’s eye returned to her hand.
It was the function of the retrieval magic Linnea had placed on her spear.
At last, when the giant fell, Shin Sua and Baek Yeon turned proudly toward us with confident expressions.
The way they stood with their chests out, as if hoping for praise, was quite cute.
But it was still too early to praise them.
Other giants, drawn by the giant’s words, slowly began to appear.
Some were about the same size as the giant they had just killed, and some were even larger.
Three giants appeared like that.
The expedition team, having already fired off several wide-area attacks while dealing with the previous giant, did not have enough mana left to face three more giants. In effect, the only fighting force left was Shin Sua and Baek Yeon.
If the fight continued like this, casualties were guaranteed.
Looks like it’s about time I stepped in.
I rose from my seat, walked forward, and said,
“Everyone, fall back.”
The faces of the expedition team, who had been wearing despairing expressions at the appearance of the new giants, brightened at my arrival.
Shin Sua and Baek Yeon moved the others back and stood in front of them as if to protect the expedition team.
Now that there was nothing to hold back for, I released the power I had been restraining in every direction, flaunting it, and flew into the sky.
Though this was only a clone, releasing my power without worrying about my surroundings for the first time in a while made me feel refreshed both physically and mentally.
The giants’ gazes gathered on me as I rose into the sky.
“A d-dragon!”
“It’s a dragon! Run!”
The giants, frightened by the sudden appearance of a dragon, stepped backward.
But only for a moment. One giant shouted,
“It’s fine! Weak dragon!”
“It true! Small weak dragon!”
Realizing that my size was even smaller than those humans, they reignited their fighting spirit.
What? Small and weak?
Half-baked giants, and they dare judge me?
I’ll make them regret it.
—Kwaaaaaaaar!!
Letting out a tremendous roar that was hard to believe came from such a small body, I first increased my size.
My body grew larger and larger, and though I was still small compared to the giants, I became big enough to reach roughly their waists before stopping.
This was enough.
The reason I enlarged my body in the first place was to match their weight class, and even in my tiny state, killing half-baked things like them would have been possible.
“Dragon got bigger! Amazing!”
“It fine! Smaller than us!”
Toward the giants who still looked down on me, I swung my sharp claws and seized one of them by the head.
“A-ah! Hurts!”
As my claws dug into its scalp, the giant writhed in pain, struggling to shake me off.
But the giant’s strength was not enough to break my scales, so I ignored it and put even more force into my legs. With a pop, the giant’s head burst.
“I-it dead!”
Another giant screamed as it had been approaching to help the giant whose head I had grabbed.
I trampled the body of the giant whose head had vanished and seized another giant by the neck.
Then, opening my mouth toward the remaining giant, I spewed poison so it would not affect the expedition team.
Kwaaaaaa!!
The giant hit by the poison could not even scream as everything above its neck melted away.
As expected of my poison.
Since this was a clone, it had weakened somewhat, but because of that, it was actually easier to control it so it would not affect the expedition team.
Now the only one left was the giant whose neck I was holding.
The last remaining giant seemed frightened after seeing the other two die so horribly and could not even resist properly, so I grabbed its head and upper body and exerted force in opposite directions.
“To think you’d get scared when you’re a giant.”
Even calling it half-baked was too generous.
Crack—!
Under the immense force, its neck and body separated, and its spine was pulled out with it. I crushed the giant like clay.
Before even a minute had passed, I had killed all three giants and shrank my body back down.
When I returned to where the expedition team was in my smaller form, they were staring in shock at the sight of me killing the giants, mouths hanging open, unable to close them.
“Good work.”
“It was nothing.”
Passing by Baek Yeon, who was looking at me with sparkling eyes, I spoke to the stunned expedition team.
“You lot should head back now.”
“Y-yes?”
“I said, head back. As you saw, this isn’t a level you can handle. Go back and wait outside the Gate.”
“B-but the exploration…”
“We’ll take care of it. After the investigation, we’ll share the internal exploration information with you, so go out and wait.”
Even if we continued the investigation with the expedition team like this, with their skill level, it would only result in casualties.
So in order to prevent casualties, and so we could move around inside the Gate more freely, it was better for us if they left.
The expedition team also seemed to understand that at this rate, it would not be strange if someone died, so they nodded at my words and prepared to retreat.
They quickly finished reorganizing, and since it would be a disaster if they ran into a giant on the way back, I accompanied them to the Gate exit.
“Then, we leave the Gate investigation in your hands.”
“Don’t worry. Go back and rest.”
With that, the expedition team left, and at last only the four of us remained, including me.
“Then let’s start hunting properly.”
“Let’s go back and take the cores out of the dead giants’ corpses first!”
“I’ll do my best as far as I can.”
“May I fight this time as well?”
“Yeah, yeah. You fight too. Fight.”
The four of us retraced the path we had come from and went back to where the giants’ corpses were. I extracted the round cores inside their hearts.
The cores, which looked like large pearls, contained tremendous power in and of themselves.
I had wondered if there might be some flaw because they were half-baked giants, but they looked fine on the surface. As planned, I would ask Ratatoskr about them later and eat them.
After collecting the giants’ cores, we thoroughly searched the inside of the Gate to find Ironblood Grass.
Along the way, we encountered other giants, and the three of them took down every one.
The more they fought, the more skilled both Shin Sua and Baek Yeon became at killing giants.
As for Linnea, a Valkyrie, that went without saying.
Like that, repeating the cycle of fighting and walking, fighting and walking, we went deeper into the Gate.
“That’s Ironblood Grass over there!”
“Oh, finally.”
After defeating more than ten giants, we finally found the Ironblood Grass.
The blood-red flowers were not on the level of a giant’s core, but I could still sense a certain energy from them.
“We’ve explored enough, so let’s just take the Ironblood Grass and head back.”
“Yes!”
Shin Sua approached the Ironblood Grass and collected all seven blossoms growing there, roots and all.
Exploration, hunting, gathering.
We had done everything there was to do inside this Gate, so all that remained was to return.
There was no need to hurry, so we slowly walked toward the Gate exit while hunting the giants we encountered again.
And when the number of giants we had hunted reached roughly twenty—
Kugugugugung!!
The inside of the Gate shook violently.
Crack—!
Watching the ground split and the sky tremble, Shin Sua muttered,
“A Gate fluctuation…?”
“What?”
A Gate that had already undergone a fluctuation could change again?
If so, then when a Gate that had already been given an SS-rank underwent a fluctuation, what on earth would come out now?
But before I could ask about it, I sensed an aura from the direction of the Gate exit that could not even be compared to the giants we had faced just moments ago.
“What in the world has appeared…?”
That’s what I wanted to ask.