Case 05: The Gigas with Herculean Strength

Case 05:
The Gigas with Herculean
Strength

Snap.

Snap, snap.

“Aghhhh!”

The Giant Goddess—Dione Nephilim, a gigas—let out a pitiful scream.

“It brooooke agaaaain.”

With a stature about ten times that of a human, Dione was the only survivor of the gigas race. She wasn’t yelling to cause an earthquake—this scream was flat and lazy. There was still snow on the mountains.

Dione was curled up, still, but she was holding two small—well, small to a giant like Dione—tools.

“They’re too smaaall.”

Each time she raised her pitiful voice, the animals on the mountain gathered around. There were deer and goats by her feet and small birds resting their wings between the hairs on her head.

Wild rabbits pushed aside the snow to burrow in the warmth of her clothes.

Most surprising of all, the wolves, who would normally be eating those small animals, lay at Dione’s feet, yawning instead of hunting.

Dione had a special air about her that calmed animals who would normally be subject to the law of the jungle.

“Ooohh, I’m so clumsy,” she groaned as she tossed away the pencil she had been holding in her fingers.

It was a newfangled writing tool made from wood and graphite—a groundbreaking invention that didn’t use ink, born from the development of graphite-processing technology. Pencils hadn’t really become popular on the continent yet, but Lindworm tended to adopt new trends quickly and already had an established, independent trade route. A large shipment of pencils had come in recently. Sales were good, and more and more residents were taking to the tool.

But they were a bit… No, they were much too small for Dione.

“Ahhhhh. What a waaaaste.”

There was a pile of broken pencils at Dione’s feet.

According to Illy, so long as only the wooden shaft was broken, it could be remade at the workshop. But that was no excuse to waste so many brand-new products, especially since they’d just become popular.

The claim was that pencils were stronger than quill pens, which was why Dione had thought they might work for her. But it didn’t matter if it was a pen or pencil, Dione’s body was too big for them all.

She was bored.

The Giant Goddess Dione had too much time on her hands. It took days to reach the harpy village closest to the peak of the mountain, and her footsteps were always mistaken for earthquakes by those living there.

It was in Dione’s nature to sit still. After the monster doctor, Glenn, had examined her, the residents of the village and an arachne woman had helped her take precautions against the frigid temperatures. She would never catch a cold again, even if she were covered in snow for 10,000 years.

Normally, she idled away the time, playing with the animals. Merchants would sometimes come to collect the precious ice that could only be found at the peak of the mountain, while other times, the youth from the harpy village would come bearing food offerings, but that was about it. Dione herself was as calm as a plant, but her life was unchanging.

She had decided to send for pencils so that she could correspond with her friends.

“I thought I could write a letterrrr.”

She wanted to write to Skadi, Cthulhy, Glenn, the lamia woman, and the centaur woman. Oh, and the town elder she had known for a long time. And those young people she had just met. She thought it would be wonderful to hear what was going on in their lives, but…

“I can’t do ittt.”

The only ones who could hear her cries were the animals. The new wild boar sat at her feet and began snoring. There was no getting around it. Normal-sized pencils were just too small for Dione.

Snap, snap, snap.

Snap.

The pencils Dione had had delivered to the top of the mountain broke in half, one after another. At this rate, she would never be able to send any letters down to Lindworm.

“Aaaggghhh.”

She sat curled up, hugging her knees.

In her hands was a small piece of paper and a small pencil.

Over the past few days, Dione had grown frustrated with trying to write. In that time, she’d only managed to write a few lines. What’s more, her handwriting looked like a lamia had wriggled across the paper. It was illegible. This made the forlorn gigas want to break down and cry.

“Heeey!”

Dione thought she had heard a voice calling from far away. She lifted her head.

“Giaaant Godddessss!”

She looked up to the sky and saw a massive shadow. The colorful wings were way too big to be those of a bird, even a raptor, and they were far more exquisite than either the speaker’s voice or the face, which told her exactly who it was.

It was Illy, a girl with some of the most beautiful wings in the harpy village.

“Yahoo, Giant Goddess!”

“Ohhh! Illy!” Dione was barely able to stop herself from waving her arms and instead just smiled at her friend.

---

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If she were to wave her hands, it would make all the birds nesting on her head panic. Even if there hadn’t been any birds, she always tried to minimize her movements.

Illy didn’t have a last name. She’d been abandoned, and she’d never learned her parents’ last name. She was just Illy. But she didn’t mind one bit.

“Hey!” Illy landed on Dione’s head with a grin on her face. “What’s up, Giant Goddess? Oh, you’ve broken more pencils…”

“Ahhh. I’m sorry. After you brought them all the way up here.”

“Well, I figured that would happen, so I brought you some more.”

Once Illy showed up with her loud voice, the animals sensed danger and scattered all at once, back into the mountains. Even if they didn’t find Dione to be a threat, they reacted like normal animals to Illy.

The package Illy held in her feet was full of pencils. She was busy delivering packages all over Lindworm as a courier for Scythia Transportation. Of course, Dione’s mountain peak was part of her delivery route. Thanks to Illy’s wings, it was easy to get to the top of the Vivre Mountains. Few people ever visited Dione, so the fact that Illy flew all the way up here to bring Dione packages and to chat meant that she was someone Dione could call a friend.

“Oh, Giant Goddess, I brought someone with me today.” Illy flapped her wings over Dione’s head.

“What?”

Someone else?

Unless it was another harpy, there weren’t many who could fly to the mountain peak. There were very few monsters with flying abilities.

Illy collected the remains of the pencils that had been strewn about and put them in a bag, doing all of this with her feet. As she did, Dione tilted her head to the side, trying to imagine who the guest could be.

“Long time no see.” A small shadow descended slowly.

Right in front of Dione’s face, on top of the knees she was hugging with her arms, appeared a face that she knew well.

“Oooohh! Miss S-Skadiii!”

“Don’t call me Miss, I’m the City Council representative.”

“So whaaat? Heeey! I thought you weren’t supposed to fly because you’re siiick?”

“I had surgery, and I’ve recovered now, thanks to Dr. Cthulhy and Dr. Glenn.”

“Oooh!”

Skadi Dragenfelt.

Dione had known the name for as long as Lindworm had existed. But she had only met Skadi in person a few times. Since they were both long-lived, she wanted to get to know Skadi better, but it wasn’t easy for a dragon who couldn’t fly and a gigas stuck on a mountain peak to find the time.

When she’d established the town, Skadi had come to greet Dione, but her face had been hidden by her robe, and she’d walked to the top of the mountain with many others. But now, the wings on Skadi’s lower back were spread for flight. She had taken back the luxury of the skies.

“Wooow! That’s amazing! Let me give you a big huggg!”

“Stop it this instant. I’ve only just recovered. If you keep it up, I’ll fly away!” Skadi curled into a ball.

“You’re a dragon, you’ll be fine!” Illy joined in.

“That’s enough out of you, Illy! Do you know how strong the Giant Goddess is?”

Dione hung her head in disappointment at being denied. “Ahhh… That’s too baaad…”

Her body was too massive to express her affections without restraint. The world was too small for the gigas species to live in. That was why all the others of her kind had died off, leaving only Dione. It couldn’t be helped, but it still made Dione feel sad. Her perspective on life and death was very different from that of humans, but she still felt lonely as the last of her kind.

That’s why she was so happy that Illy and Skadi had come to see her.

“I’m glad to see you’re doing well, Dione.”

“Yesss, it’s always the same for meee.”

The gigas never changed or grew. Even though Dione had tried writing letters as a change of pace, it turned out the letters wouldn’t grow either. Illy would probably take the broken pencils to the workshop to be repaired.

“Pencils aren’t free, you know. Where do you think that money comes from?”

“Thank you so muuuch!” Dione couldn’t bow her head, so she could only express her gratitude in words.

Illy always brought her pencils. The harpy never said anything, but Dione was sure that Skadi paid for them since Dione didn’t have the means to pay for things. Even so, Skadi always made sure that she had ways to pass the time. Dione was glad for that.

“I know Illy is here on her delivery roundsss, but whyyy are you here, Skadi?”

“I just came to see your face, Dione.”

“No waaay! You don’t have time for that. Aren’t you tired from flyiiing?”

“I thought you might notice.” The look on Skadi’s face said Dione was spot-on. Dione might live a carefree life, but even she knew that the City Council representative wouldn’t come all the way to the peak of the mountain just to see her.

“You haven’t heard of the doppelgänger…have you?”

“Of course I haaave.”

“You probably wouldn’t, way up here on the mountain—wait, you have?”

“The little birdies that fly around town told meee.”

Illy, who had finished her task of collecting all the pencils, laughed.

She was the mail carrier for the town, in charge of letters, small packages, and newspapers. If it was within the weight limits, Illy could deliver anything in a jiffy. Of course, that meant that no rumor got past her. Illy was an important source of information for Dione, who couldn’t go into town.

“I even saaaw it. It had turned into Memé.”

“You did? That’s true, there were reports of her.” Skadi nodded. “In that case, I don’t need to explain. The City Council is trying to track down the doppelgänger. It seems that it was also the fake heart that lived as a parasite in my chest.”

“Oh nooo! Will you catch ittt?”

“Yes. If possible, I’d like to talk to it.”

“That will beee tough!”

“You’re acting as if it doesn’t concern you.”

Dione wasn’t sure what Skadi meant. There wasn’t much that Dione could actually do. She was worried that the doppelgänger was causing such a fuss in the town, but it wasn’t as if she could down there—that would just cause more problems. The only things she could do were stay out of the way and hope for the best.

“The problem is that the doppelgänger understands the patrol team’s movements and is cleverly avoiding them. We’ve put up a net in the canal, but we’ve only just begun, so we haven’t caught it yet. The doppelgänger seems to be extremely intelligent.”

“Oh myyy.”

“Do you have any idea what the true form of this monster might be, Dione?”

“…”

Dione did have an idea.

The gigas weren’t really gods, but they had once been called giant gods. Dione knew of several other species that were called gods in the same way. Dione’s lifespan was longer than Skadi’s, and Skadi was now putting that knowledge to use.

“Welll, it goes back to when Miss Cthulhy’s ancestors were called malevolent gods and the like.”

“So, thousands of years ago…”

“Yesss. Oh, but the ancestors of the scylla species weren’t baaad. They just looked a bit scaryyy. But there were many storieees of them being kind to the gigasss.”

“You’re getting off track. What does this have to do with the…malevolent gods?”

“The subordinate of those malevolent gods—in other words, their aidddes—could change into anythinggg and do almost any kind of workkk.”

“I had a feeling this was something from the distant past.”

“They weren’t just able to change fooorm. They were also thought to have significant knowledge and strength. And I’ve heard they have the ability to divide and multiplyyy.”

“It sounds like they have a lot of similarities with the slimes…”

“Well, I’ve heard that when this particular species divides and multiplies, the leftovers actually become slime.”

Skadi frowned.

Species that had lived for that long sometimes possessed such abilities. If this species had served the malevolent gods, then they’d been around much longer than Skadi—and even Dione. If they were causing the ruckus in Lindworm…Skadi couldn’t even predict what would happen.

“Calling them a species is too vague. Can you think of anything else useful?”

“Aaah, well, I think they were called shoggoths?” She only had a vague memory of the name, but she was sure it was correct.

“Shoggoth… I’ll remember that.”

“Yesss.” Dione smiled.

She was glad to be able to help Skadi, though it was unclear if the doppelgänger really was a shoggoth or not. Dione only knew the rumors that were flying about the town, and it wasn’t her place to hypothesize as to what it really was. But if someone asked her for help, she would do what she could.

Dione couldn’t move. Any movement, no matter how small, created problems for the animals, monsters, and humans around her, and she was far too soft-hearted to forgive herself for creating such a commotion. Skadi was aware of this, which was why she’d flown to the mountain peak, even as she was recovering from an illness.

“I wonder if shoggoths could live in the cityyy.”

“We’re not even considering that yet. First we need to figure out if they can even communicate.”

“A species that can listen to the orders of the malevolent gods can probably have a conversaaation.”

Dione hadn’t moved from the peak of the mountain for a long time, and she didn’t know any actual gods anymore, but she knew there were still species among the immature monster civilizations who worshipped ‘gods’—giants and other such creatures. Even the dragons, like Skadi, were considered gods in some places. Dione may possess massive strength, but this continent was simply too small for a being like her to live on. Some gigas had gone to sleep deep in the ocean, while others had created their own realms in the sky to hide themselves. Even Skadi’s dragon ancestor had run away to their holy precincts. No matter where they were born, the shoggoths had to be kindred spirits to Dione and Skadi. They came from a time when the gods were common and familiar.

There was no way they couldn’t converse.

“They would do fiiine in Lindworm.”

Even the doctor who’d examined Dione’s cold had never thought she couldn’t talk simply because she was a giant. And though she seemed to break everything with even the smallest of movements—how many pencils had she broken just trying to write a letter?—Skadi and Illy never treated her like a god, either. There was no one left who would even think to call her a god. Well, the harpies still called her “Giant Goddess,” but they didn’t mean it in a bad way, so she didn’t stop them. She didn’t want to be a god, she just wanted to be a normal monster…

And, if possible, she also wanted the shoggoths to become one of Lindworm’s resident monster species.

Ohhh, but…

Dione stared at Skadi with eyes hidden behind her hair. According to Skadi, the doppelgänger had been living off her for many years. Skadi wasn’t the type to dwell on petty things, so she might forgive it easily. But even if she did, would the residents of Lindworm be so forgiving?

“Can I give you one piece of adviiiice?”

“Go ahead.”

“I’m sure the shoggoths’ understanding of the current world is inferior to oooours. They’ve only ever served the malevolent gods…”

“So what?”

“They may have knowledge and intelligennnce…but when it comes to morality and ethics, they could be verrry immatuuure. Maybe even more immature than a child.”

The fact that the doppelgänger had mimicked Skadi’s heart was a prime example. While it was still a mystery why it had infested Skadi, the result was that it had nearly killed her. Generally, parasites only killed their hosts when they’d found another one and were ready to move on…

Did that mean the doppelgänger had had another host lined up for itself after it killed Skadi?

No… Dione thought. No body would be as rich a host as a dragon’s. It hasn’t thought that far ahead.

Since Dione couldn’t move, she had a lot of time on her hands. She’d had time to collect everything she’d heard from Illy up to now, consider all the angles, and contemplate. It might appear that she lazed around, even seeming ditzy at times, but she actually did possess the wisdom worthy of being called a god.

“It doesn’t have any sense of reasoning, so it may cause damage even without meaning tooooo. The fact that Skadi almost died is proof of thaaaaaat.”

“There have still been no reports of a doppelgänger attacking anyone.”

“Yes, well, perhaps it feels baaad about what it did.”

Shoggoths were supposed to have a high capacity for learning. If the doppelgänger were to hurt someone, Skadi and the patrol team would track it down relentlessly. If it came to that, they wouldn’t try to take it into protective custody or apprehend it—the orders would be to destroy it. Dione wondered if the doppelgänger understood that much. Even if shoggoths didn’t have a sense of reason, the doppelgänger seemed like it was making efforts to understand other monsters. Maybe that was why it was changing into various forms. If it were transforming to learn…

What would happen if, once it was done learning, it decided that it was fine to hurt other monsters?

“Pleeease be careful. I’ve heard that people who meet their doppelgänger diiie.”

“I know that. But isn’t that because ghosts and phantoms show them an illusion? A ghost possesses someone and shows them a hallucination of something that’s not real. Then the person possessed by the evil spirit gets weaker and weaker… That’s what made everyone think that if you saw your doppelgänger you would die.”

“Maybe that’s not aaall.”

“Do you know something?”

“I don’t know anything. But, the rumor of doppelgängers has spread throughout the towwwn. It feels like the tales of dying when you see your doppelgänger might come truuue. Wouldn’t that be horrrrible?”

Of course, this was nothing more than a gut feeling Dione had. But it was enough to make Skadi more alert. The Draconess was quiet for a moment, then she spread the wings on her lower back.

“Thank you for your help, Dione.”

“Nooo problem. Please come see me agaaain.”

“If I feel like it,” Skadi said curtly.

But Dione had a feeling she would be back. Once Skadi had regained her ability to fly, the first place she went was this mountain peak. She would probably come again unexpectedly.

“Okay then, Giant Goddess. I’ll be going too,” said Illy, as she spread her wings. She had collected all the broken pencils.

Illy was impatient. She and Dione got along well, but the way they used their time was completely different. Illy’s tendency was to hurry up and finish whatever was in front of her. If you looked away for even a second, she would already be on her way back to Lindworm.

Dione found herself flustered. She stretched out her arm. “Waaait!”

“Arrrgh!”

Dione grabbed Illy by the neck with her fingers, like she was catching a dragonfly. The difference in their physiques was enormous, and Illy was struggling.

“Aaah! What?!”

Dione had startled Illy. This happened sometimes when she moved, even if she moved without the intention of harming anyone. She was better off staying still.

“Ummm. Sorryyy. I have a favor to aaask.”

“Huh?”

“I want you to deliver a letter for me.”

“You do?” Illy put on her serious courier face. Once she heard the word “letter,” she couldn’t stay silent. She slipped out of Dione’s hand, landing on the ground. “No problem! I’ll deliver it wherever you want!”

“Thank youuuu. I’m going to write it nooow.”

Dione picked up paper and a pencil. She had already decided what to write. It was about the doppelgänger, and how important and necessary it was for Lindworm to be the kind of town that welcomed any monster. It should be easy to turn that into a letter.

Dione made up her mind and gripped the pencil.

“Ummm.”

She put the pencil to the paper, determined to write.

Snap.

“Aaaahh.”

It was no use. There was nothing that could be done.

Pull yourself together and try again. She grabbed another pencil and wrote one letter.

Snap.

Snap, snap. Snap.

“Oooooooh.”

Snap, snap, snap.

Snap.

When she had wasted about ten pencils, Illy spoke up.

“Ummm… Giant Goddess? I have to make deliveries this afternoon, so I need to be going.”

“Ohhhhhh.”

“I’ll come back this evening, okay?”

“I-I’m sorryyy…”

Even though Dione still had a lot of extra pencils, at this rate, it would take her an entire day just to write one letter. She didn’t even know if she could finish it. But it was vital for Dione to write the letter, and for Illy to deliver it, as quickly as possible.

“I-I’ll do my beeest! I’ll try harder than I have at anything in the last one thousand yeeears!”

“Okay! I’ll be waiting!” Illy, with her infinite cheerfulness, laughed as her crimson wings sparkled in the afternoon sun.

Apparently, Illy used to mope a lot, but it was hard to imagine that looking at her today. The young harpy girl flapped those brightly colored wings and flew off to Lindworm. Whenever she had time between deliveries, she flew to the mountain peak. She’d become an irreplaceable part of Dione’s life.

Now then.

“Let’s goooo!”

Dione. The clumsy Giant Goddess. The one who brought nothing good when she moved. Even so, it was important for her to move her hand now. She held the pencil—which to her was the equivalent of a tiny needle in human terms—and began writing her letter. But as soon as she grew too excited—

Snap.

“Oooohhhh!”

The Giant Goddess let out a pitiful wail.

Some rabbits hopped around her feet, as if to comfort her.

***

She did finish that day.

Surrounded by animals, Dione finally managed to write the letter she needed to hand off to Illy. The words were scrawled out in the continent’s official language, the common tongue. They looked like wriggling lamia, and there were probably some old phrases mixed in that would be hard to understand, but Dione believed that the recipient of the letter would be able to decipher it, so she entrusted it to Illy.

She believed that her thoughts, collected on the top of a mountain she couldn’t move from, needed to be delivered.