From Today, I'm a Player

Chapter 80: Giants Pt. 2

What was a giant? Were giants enemies?

Jeong In-Chang didn’t ask any of the questions that rose in his mind.

Boom, boom, boom!

Just by looking at the giant barrelling through the land of ice, whoever it was, he could tell it was definitely an enemy. It was running at them with a frozen ax that appeared to be the size of a house

“Roar!!”

The first of them to run forth was Fenrir, who swiftly transformed into a white wolf and collided with the giant.

“Groooh!”

He had aimed his attack at the giant’s nape, but the giant was very quick compared to its size. Fenrir ended up biting into the giant’s right arm. The wolf bit harder, putting more strength into its jaw, and the giant toppled over.

Boom!

“Don’t let it get back up!”

Suddenly, Lee Jun-Kyeong ran forward, a thick flame spewing from Muspel’s Spear.

Whoosh!

Suddenly, flames were roaring into existence everywhere, even where the giant had fallen.

–Groooooh!!

Flames erupted, starting from the giant’s feet. It screamed in pain as it struggled to get back upright. However, Fenrir didn’t just stand there.

Crack!

The wolf didn’t miss this time and bit into the giant’s nape.

However, that wasn’t enough.

“T… that’s absurd,” Jeong In-Chang said without slowing down as he ran forward with his greatsword. Fenrir, the giant wolf, had been thrown to the side by the giant’s hand.

Although it didn’t look like the wolf had taken any damage, Jeong In-Chang was still amazed by the power the giant had, considering it had been able to throw Fenrir.

“How strong is this thing?!” he asked.

Whoosh!

The flames spewing out from Lee Jun-Kyeong’s spear grew stronger and stronger. Muspel’s Spear was too small to injure the giant, so it was being reinforced with fire and mana. This was an ability he had obtained access to as his mana stream grew.

BOOM!

A sound that normally wouldn’t be attributed to a spear piercing something rang out. It was as if a falling building had pierced the giant.

“Please finish it off, Mr. Jeong!” Lee Jun-Kyeong shouted.

Jeong In-Chang had gotten close to the giant. For a moment, he questioned himself.

‘Can I really do this?’

It wasn’t that he didn’t have any experience in hunting large monsters. It was just that the feeling this giant gave him was different. However, his hesitation only lasted a short moment.

‘Let’s focus.’

He hadn’t just been messing around—he had trained so much that he had even overcome his awful motion sickness.

Although he hadn’t fully learned it just yet…

“You can do it!” Lee Jun-Kyeong shouted.

“AHHHH!”

Jeong In-Chang hollered and stomped the ground, dashing forward. The frozen ground he had stomped on shattered into pieces like a frozen flower.

All of a sudden, Jeong In-Chang was hurtling toward the giant’s head, his greatsword rising high in the sky.

“DIIIEEEEEE!”

“GROH!”

Although the giant hurriedly tried to knock away Jeong In-Chang, the Hunter moved even faster.

Squelch!

“Gasp… gasp…”

Jeong In-Chang took a deep breath and looked over to the side.

The giant’s hand had appeared right next to his ear. Jeong In-Chang involuntarily shuddered.

It cast a huge shadow over him, but the giant’s forehead had been pierced by the greatsword, and the hand that loomed over Jeong In-Chang lost its strength and fell over.

“Wow…”

Within an instant, the giant hunt was over. Only then did Jeong In-Chang seem to realize it again.

It seemed as though he had forgotten it for a while during their journey, as they had been able to reach this point without any major crises ever since they had left Mt. Baekdu.

“So this really is hell…” he murmured as he pulled out his greatsword.

***

"What the hell is that?" he asked incredulously.

After defeating the giant, Jeong In-Chang was able to see the giant's face properly.

He commented, "It really looks like a human."

It was completely different from anything he had encountered before. He had hunted countless humanoid monsters, such as the undead or goblins. However, there wasn’t anything as human-like as the giant that they had just hunted. The only visible difference was that it was massive and couldn’t properly speak.

It really looked like a human, so, having killed it, there was an unpleasant aftertaste in his mouth.

“It’s not human,” Lee Jun-Kyeong adamantly said. “This is a giant.”

“...”

Jeong In-Chang had a blank expression at Lee Jun-Kyeong’s bold-faced comments. Lee Jun-Kyeong laughed, looking at the Hunter.

“It must be difficult to understand.”

“That’s what I’m saying…” Jeong In-Chang whined.

Lee Jun-Kyeong stopped what he was doing and made eye contact with Jeong In-Chang again.

"This is the world we live in. Don't try to dig too much into it. You’ll just end up with a headache."

"…"

“If you want to know the secrets, you have to survive. Survive up until the end.”

‘We have to, because that’s the only way to learn the secrets that even I don’t know.’

They were in the land of giants.

Concurrently with the transformation of mainland China into a land of death composed of ice, something completely different had been expanding in one corner.

The land of giants was a place that the Demon King had also traveled to. It was a place where many secrets were hidden and the truth of the world was hidden around them as easily as one hid a single penny.

As for the information about this place, nothing had been written in detail in the future.

In fact, anything regarding the giants had been erased. While meeting the giants, going to their dwelling, and any events that had happened while the Demon King was there had been recorded, there weren’t any details about anything that had happened or the giants themselves.

‘It was only because of Eden that I was able to learn about the giants.’

It was information that had been passed down over the years, and it was a history that couldn’t be forgotten.

‘Gigantomachia.’

It was by studying this that Lee Jun-Kyeong had learned about the giants.

By studying it and comparing it to what he knew, he had figured something out.

‘There is a gap.’

There was a big gap between recorded history and the book of the Demon King. After all, the Demon King had gone to the land of the giants but had returned from there without any problems.

However, history described them as something else.

They were called ‘monsters.’

That was why there were a lot of issues, and it was part of the reason he had come to China. The Demon King had been entirely omitted from Gigantomachia. It was as if he hadn’t participated. He had only reappeared after Gigantomachia had ended.

It was a time when humans had been victorious against the gates. Furthermore, it was only after the victory of the humans that the Demon King had been referred to as the Demon King.

Lee Jun-Kyeong bit his lip.

“Are you saying that this place is swarming with those things?” Jeong In-Chang asked.

"Yes."

“But we are still going there?” Jeong In-Chang asked again.

“Yes.”

“You mother fu…”

“Pardon?”

“I’m really craving some marinated crabs today,” Jeong In-Chang said as he corrected himself, turning his head with a face full of dissatisfaction.

Lee Jun-Kyeong looked at Jeong In-Chang, then turned away and stated in a calm tone, “Not all giants are our enemies—no, not all giants should be our enemies.”

“You mother fucker…”

In the end, Jeong In-Chang still said it out loud.

***

There was no end to the giants rushing toward Lee Jun-Kyeong and his party. As they progressed, the number of giants running toward them increased more and more.

At first, they had been somewhat flustered whenever they encountered a giant, but now, they were able to hunt them without much difficulty.

Boom!

Although they were said to be strong at first, it was still at a level where Fenrir could hunt them alone.

However, the fighting ability of each individual giant varied.

“Something is strange,” Jeong In-Chang noted.

The giants were strange. At first, he had thought they were intelligent. That’s why he hadn’t taken the first initiative to hunt on purpose and instead only defeated the enemies that rushed to him.

However, the more they hunted, the more he realized it.

“They don’t seem to have any intelligence.”

The giant was a creature that deserved to be called a monster. But, as if they couldn’t process higher thought, their patterns of behavior were simple.

It was as if they were simple, starving beasts.

They only ran towards them, recognizing them as prey from the perspective of a hungry animal.

Lee Jun-Kyeong also felt what Jeong In-Chang had noted. The giants rushing toward him and the others seemed to have no sentience.

He commented, “It seems as though these are those that were abandoned.”

“Pardon?” Jeong In-Chang asked.

Lee Jun-Kyeong clarified, “It looks like they’ve been ousted from the group. Have you ever been to a gate where there are orc hordes?”

In the early days, Lee Jun-Kyeong had attacked several gates where goblins and orcs usually appeared, and it was the same for Jeong In-Chang.

“Of course.”

The Orc Gate was a place where many Hunters passed through in the process of becoming stronger. A strong Hunter would have had at least one experience of having raided an Orc Gate.

“Orcs are a very tight-knit collective,” Lee Jun-Kyeong said.

“Yes, and?”

“And sometimes, you see an orc that lives alone within an Orc Gate.”

“True.”

There was nothing wrong with what Lee Jun-Kyeong was saying. Orcs were monsters very prone to collectivistic behavior.

"Ah!" Jeong In-Chang exclaimed as if he had realized something.

“...”

However, before saying a word, he shut his mouth and turned silent. He had definitely understood what Lee Jun-Kyeong was trying to say.

“Any orcs that are sick, or even needy because they are weaker than the strength of the horde, are separated from the rest and forced to move alone.”

“That means…”

Jeong In-Chang looked over to the fallen giant as he listened to Lee Jun-Kyeong speak.

“Even if we know nothing else about them, it means that these giants are probably the weakest ones.”

Jeong In-Chang nodded. If they considered that the giants didn’t live in groups, then there weren’t any issues. However, the weapons and clothes they held and wore clearly showed that they had lived as part of a group.

Lee Jun-Kyeong commented, “There’s no way of telling how strong they would be.”

They had said that Fenrir could hunt giants alone, but if the rest were stronger than this, and there were a great many of them.

“That’s terrifying.”

Jeong In-Chang shook his head.

“Goongje.”

"It looks like you’re afraid of the giants too?"

"Goongje!!!"

After getting teased, the princess pinched Jeong In-Chang’s arm.

“AHHHH!”

Of course, with the power of the ogre mage, Jeong In-Chang squirmed in pain.

As he cried out and twisted back and forth, a slight vibration was felt in the land of ice.

Thrum.

They wondered if it was because Jeong In-Chang was squirming in pain and making a fuss, but the reaction of Fenrir, who raised his head after quickly pausing his feeding, made them quickly drop that idea.

“Growl…”

“They’re coming.”

Lee Jun-Kyeong could feel it through his mana stream as well. This was something that couldn’t have been caused by Jeong In-Chang.

Thrum.

As proof of that, the vibration gradually grew stronger.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Now, the ground was shaking as if there was an earthquake, with cracks forming in the land and permafrost.

“This…!”

Knowing that they were faced with a dire situation, Jeong In-Chang quickly took out the sword he had sheathed.

“This doesn’t seem to be the time to make a fuss!” Lee Jun-Kyeong said.

It was easy for them to deduce that the approaching being was a giant. The problem was that it wasn’t just one of them

They had faced off against many giants already, so they could tell just by feeling the footsteps and vibrations. But, of course, there was also the fact that the flow of mana connected to the land of ice contained dozens of types of readable energy that helped determine it as well.

They had encountered their first group of giants.

The group's expressions hardened.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

He wondered how he should describe the sight of colossal beings approaching them in groups. At one point, they had seemed to be dots, but they had soon come closer.

Gulp.

Jeong In-Chang swallowed, feeling his throat dry. However, even faced with this situation, he didn’t run away or run forward.

“Something is strange.”

Jeong In-Chang repeated the same words over and over again as if he was trying to make the phrase trendy.

However, he was right.

The giants approaching them now were certainly odd.

They were unlike the previous ones, the giants who would rush forward without any thoughts, like monsters.

These giants kept a certain distance.

It was almost as if they didn’t hold any hostility towards them.

They approached slowly, as if trying to express their goodwill. As they grew closer, Jeong In-Chang was able to take a good look at them, and his eyes widened in shock.

“...!”

Their appearances were completely different from the giants they had faced before.

However, neither Lee Jun-Kyeong nor Jeong In-Chang opened their mouths to speak.

Thud!

As the ground vibrated, a single giant dismounted from an ice drake.

“Growl…”

"Oh, my God…" Jeong In-Chang muttered, astounded by the fact that the giant had been riding an ice drake.

As the giant slowly approached Lee Jun-Kyeong and his party, he spoke in fluent Korean, “Who are you?”

“Who are you that you are in this place, and why are you hunting us?” asked the giant, its eyes gesturing to the corpse of the giant that Lee Jun-Kyeong and his party had just slain.

“Speak.”

“Keheuk.”

All of a sudden, they could feel a vast pressure enveloping their bodies.

“Who are you?”

1. Gigantomachia, or the Gigantomachy, is the war between the giants and the gods in Classical Greek Myth. Coinciding with the deity motif and the introduction of Athena, a key figure in the Gigantomachia, as a member of Eden, unless it’s clarified later, we will be using the official term for the Giant Wars.

2. Motherfucker is ??? or gaejasik in Korean, while the word for marinated crabs is ?? or gaejang.