It was dark. That was the first thing Sean noticed when they came near the entrance of the cave. It was too steep for horses to go in and perhaps too rocky. It didn’t seem like they would be able to continue the trip on horseback. The entrance was large enough to fit half a skyscraper or so it looked like.

System Notification

You are about to enter Dungeon ‘Helthur’s Lair’. Completion Status of Main Quest ‘Giant Hunt’ has been increased to 70%. You have reached another milestone for eligibility to leave the Calibration Stage. All injuries sustained during the Calibration Stage will be healed and all non-System-integrated equipment will be recovered if broken during the Calibration or left behind if granted during it. Do you wish to leave?

A) Yes

B) No

“You ready, hunter-mage?” asked Ian from the side, holding an ax far larger than Brandon’s in his right hand. It was meant for hacking away at things instead of throwing, it seemed. But it wasn’t a large polearm. The others were getting ready, but Fillmore stayed behind, hands crossed —he didn’t have a weapon.

“It’s not too late,” said Sean quietly, but that was drowned out by the noise of warriors preparing for combat. He wagered it would be the last for many of them. Brandon had a Class, which he insisted made a difference, but still fell.

“What’d you say?” asked Ian after he saw Sean’s mouth move but no sound reached his ears. Not from his mouth, at least.

“I said good luck,” said Sean. If they wanted to jump to their deaths, who was he to stop them? It was not his right, and certainly not duty. For a second, they reminded him of delinquents. Except they were friendlier.

Sean breathed slowly. His mind wanted to believe that this was a game, but his heart was beating faster than ever. Slowly, sweat made his palms wet and poured down his back, and for the first time, he felt the cold wind.

He debated on pressing the ‘Yes’ button, but his more logical side didn’t allow it. He had to get stronger, and for that, he had to fight Helthur. So with shaky legs, he started to walk forward. Somehow, hearing the footsteps of the others from behind him gave him courage. So he hastened his pace and walked just a bit faster.

He tapped on the ‘No’ and dismissed the notification. Then he looked at Fillmore one last time, who only nodded in response, standing aside. Then he started to sprint forward and into the darkness, as cheesy as it was. Then from behind, he could hear shouts.

This made him feel like he was dreaming.

Being at the center of attention or leading something wasn’t a thing that Sean did all that often. In fact, the only thing he’d led before was a team that was supposed to work together on an assignment. Suffice to say, there wasn’t much to lead. He simply ended up doing everything all alone.

And as they charged, another set of shouts and screams sounded out. This was from the other side —from the cave.

Giants came charging out of the cave and clashed with the Vikings. At least that’s what he thought they were. They were pretty close to them in design.

But miraculously, he hasn’t swept away or crushed under their feet.

The crash happened at the entrance of the cave, but Helthur didn’t come out. Fillmore said that he was far larger than the giants and would most likely tower over them easily. So Sean only assumed that he was still inside the cave.

For a moment, he hesitated, but he’d already made the choice. With a determined heart, Sean walked into the darkness, leaving the commotion from the outside to fight the boss of the dungeon.

Soon, he realized that it wasn’t truly dark. There were many gaps in the ceiling, letting in an ample amount of light into the caverns. It was a tunnel that led down and the ground seemed to descend ever so slightly as he went. There seemed to be a faint, faded stairway with edges so dulled that it seemed like it was natural, clearly meant for humans. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be so low.

The corridor seemed to be spiraling as it went down, and after a few circles, he was disoriented. But thankfully, he got to the other side. It almost sounded like his footsteps were echoing through the corridors, only adding to nausea that had taken a hold of him the moment he entered the spiral corridors.

The walls were mossy and touching it wasn’t an option. He always got the creeps when he saw moss. This cave had an ample amount of that.

He slowly breathed in and out.

Sean didn’t know any breathing methods or anything of the sort, but just assumed that breathing in and out slowly would help him deal with this. After all, all hypnoses started with it. That was something he knew from the few dozen times he listened to ASMR videos.

At the end of the spiral tunnels was a stairway that you would often see in apartments. After it descended a few meters, it would turn around 180 degrees, then go a bit before it repeated again —this was the type of stairs he was used to, not this spiral nonsense.

However, the stairs were far from the most important part of the cave.

From his vantage point, he could see the entirety of the main area of the cave. The empty space looked like there were two football fields linked together from one end to the other in length and over four football fields placed side-by-side for width. The ceiling was tall as well, almost the same height as a twenty-floor building. He’d know. He lived in one before they moved to the suburbs.

There were around fifty women, living in some bizarre caveman society. They were dressed in rags at best, and most of them seemed to be near Helthur. There were cattle everywhere and hays prepared to feed them —many of them, but mostly sheep and cows. The women tended to the cattle, it seemed.

He was surprisingly underwhelming, simply a giant man that looked like nothing special. Somewhat like a leader of barbarians in movies with a fur coat thrown over his shoulders, some scars here and there across his body. His hair was brown but the eyes burned a dull golden color, much like cinders of a dying flame.

And in terms of height, he was ridiculous. Even while sitting, he looked at least five times as large as the others from a distance. Fillmore was definitely understating his size. Or he hadn’t paid much attention when Fillmore was explaining it.

He sat on a crude throne created from large boulders placed in a neat manner so as to create a seat, but it looked like it would fall apart if he moved wrong once. And that meant the countless people underneath him would be crushed to death.

There was only one way down, and that was the stairway. It faced Helthur, making any element of surprise impossible. Unless… he fired an attack at him before he noticed. Sean wasn’t confident in it, but he didn’t mind. Even one cheap shot against a foe like this would be alright.

So he thought of the timer. He’d thrown attacks at the sea back at the cliff, but when it was against an enemy, it was a wholly different feeling.

Then Sean looked at the ones surrounding Helthur.

He let his hands down and frowned.

His conscience didn’t let him attack the giant head-on when there was far too much at stake. Sean then frowned as he looked at him. He’d created himself a convenient base of operations where people couldn’t fight him unless they wanted to wager the lives of the captives if they could be called that.

It might cost him the fight, but he didn’t want to feel like he did back at the first hut. It was a disgusting feeling that he could live without.

So he descended the stairs, and by the time he got near the middle, Sean felt Helthur’s eyes trailing him. With a booming voice that made the cave tremor ever so slightly, he spoke, “Outlander, you are powerful.”

Helthur slowly stood up and revealed his true size by standing up. The countless people below started to scurry away, trying to hide in the tunnel homes they probably lived in. It felt like he was right in front of him despite being far away, a testament to his size.

After walking half the way there within mere seconds, he continued. His voice was deep and hoarse. It made Sean’s bones shudder when he heard it with primordial fear. Was he titan-sized? Because he was getting intimidated by the size, which should be impossible with his title unless he was that large, “But are you stronger than me?”

It seemed like size and speed were inversely proportional, as his words seemed like they were in slow-motion. It wasn’t so slow to the point of being a hindrance, but it was slow enough to be considered to be twice as slow as that of a regular person. His movements looked sluggish, but his sheer size made it moot.

After all, if each step lets you travel fifty meters, you don't need to take a step fifty times. So even if you were five times as slow, you would get there ten times as fast regardless. That was what applied to Helthur. He seemed slow, but he closed distances fast.

The casual ignorance of the ones below as he walked over them, crushing some to their deaths made Sean’s stomach turn.

Could Helthur even be damaged by his Explosive Mana Balls? He was doubting it.

Sean shuddered slightly.

He imagined the circles required for the Explosive Mana Ball one by one and pointed his finger at the giant. The circles came out from his fingertips, but Helthur didn’t move. He simply stood there with a smirk on his face, as if taunting him.

He configured it for the explosion to happen in one second and shot it at his face, hoping to at least escape Helthur’s gaze for a surprise attack using the smoke. But where would he even hide?

The Mana Ball struck his face and exploded, creating the blue smoke. He lazily waved his hands and forced the blue smoke to move away. And he spoke, “That tickled.”

Sean was gone.

Of course, he hadn’t sprinted down. That’d take a while. Instead, he’d run up the tunnel and back toward the exit. And he stood waiting there for Helthur’s reactions. At least audible ones, as he couldn’t see him at the moment from within the spiral corridors. The size of the tunnel could easily fit Helthur inside with its height but wouldn’t let him move too freely in terms of width, and fighting him inside here seemed like the best choice.

Everything was quiet and all Sean could hear was the pounding of his heart. It felt like his chest was being tapped on regular intervals and his breath caught in his lungs.

Was he… afraid?

Then came the voice of Helthur, “Come, mage. Meet your fate.”

Mage…

Right, he was just a mage.

He’d gotten too used to being called a hunter-mage, but in the end, what did being a hunter even offer him? Reputation? It was useless. Vitality? That was also useless. This was the last fight, and that meant he couldn’t run away and wait for his arm to regrow if torn off. But it wouldn’t grow back. Some stamina? As if it mattered when he would just end up being caught by him far too easily.

The ground shook following a loud thud. It was close —Helthur had entered the tunnel. The sound of his steps overshadowed Sean’s own heartbeats as it came closer. Not that it would take a long time for him. He was almost at the edge, just hidden behind a wall.

“Fight me,” roared Helthur. Standing on a stairway let him look at the giant from near his chest, but in the tunnel, all he saw was a towering giant whose shins he barely reached. His feet were a quarter of Sean’s height. It seemed like he was at the very least 30 meters in height and had a wideness proportional to his height, similar to a bodybuilder.

The distance between them was roughly five meters.

Sean shot an explosive Mana Ball, this one toward his groin. Nothing was off the table. This was a monster that far outclassed him in durability, power, and size. Sean was sure that Helthur could even squash him with a flick of his finger.

It exploded after colliding with his groin. Covered in a loincloth-like attire made from the brown fur that made up his coat, Sean doubted that it would do much damage. Kicks would hurt, but was his Explosive Mana Ball half as strong as a kick of someone with a size like that? He doubted it.

It exploded, eliciting a groan. It hurt, probably. Even a slight flick would, but doing damage and hurting were different. Even kicks didn’t do much of it unless repeated. So he made the only sensible choice —he shot two more. After casting three, he had enough Mana for eleven more. An extra one if the fight lasted for him to recover enough Mana.

Helthur tried to actively stomp on him, but he ran past him.

That was when he realized his weakness if it could be called that. Helthur was large, very much so, but he couldn’t punch him. He’d have to try to trample Sean, which would be difficult if he was constantly moving right underneath him!

But the caveat was that even a single successful stomp would kill him then and there.

Sean could see why no one could beat him. The only chance they’d have is if they had impressive firepower, and Sean doubted even a bazooka would phase the monster much.

However, when Sean ran past Helthur and back into the cavern, he didn’t follow. Instead, Helthur waited. It seemed like he was trying to corner him. So he descended the stairs, trying to hide from him and pull off guerrilla warfare if possible While he was on the stairs, following a loud thud, something flew past Sean, startling him.

He stopped.

It was a natural reaction from his body. Even when his mind told him to keep running, his body forced him to stop and look back. There, he saw Helthur grabbing large pieces of rock, peeling them from the ceiling —they were at least half as large as Sean.

His blood ran cold.

It was one thing to run from a giant that was trying to squash him, but… dodging something as fast as that, and could probably kill him in one hit was impossible. Hell, he doubted even his magic would do anything against that!

“Is that the extent of your prowess, mage?” asked the giant as he threw another. This one wasn’t aimed at him, but at the stairway. He felt the stairway he stood upon shudder, but it hadn’t collapsed yet.

He was trapped between a rock and a hard place, literally.

On one side, Helthur was throwing rocks at him, but if he got off the stairs, his exit would be gone and he’d be stuck.

It was a dilemma.

Yet another rock hit the stairway and he felt the ground almost give. There was no time to think. He ran down the stairs, trying to make his way to the bottom as fast as he could. He jumped a few times, skipping several steps at a time.

Given the height, it was a miracle that he managed to make his way down to the lower quarter of the stairway before two more hits struck the area that he was aiming for. In Lord of the Rings fashion, the stairs started to tumble down in large chunks, except Sean was at the bottom, faced with a very real threat of being crushed to death.

So against all odds, he jumped down. Sean didn’t know how to fall properly to not sustain injuries, but he landed on his legs. His left knees hurt, probably something broken. He did jump from a height of around three floors, but he was more durable than a regular human now. Hopefully, it wasn’t a big deal.

The loud thuds that signified Helthur’s steps crawled closer before he finally stopped at the edge of the tunnel, above. Then he used three large boulders placed near the stairway to make his way down. Sean didn’t think the stairway would accommodate him or the others —it was for humans. Apparently, those boulders served as his stairs.

The distance between him and Helthur became around forty meters now —just about two of Helthur’s steps if he was barely stepping forward.

The pressure was difficult to bear with and made Sean sweat. He was hyperventilating, breathing far more than he should be. And that made him grow exhausted for the first time in a long time. His Vitality accounted for regular breathing, but if he was actively making himself more tired, then it would mean he would get exhausted.

“Is that all you have got, mage?” taunted Helthur, “Pathetic.”

His fight or flight response slowly teetered toward the side of flight rather than fight after he saw his strongest blow doing nothing even despite hitting the giant in the groin.

But the time for freezing had long since passed.

Sean didn’t stand there, waiting for the giant to crush him.

Instead, he fired several of his explosive Mana Balls. They were his best tool in combat at the moment and he could only rely on them.

This was his last stand —the single assault that he’d do before his willpower slipped away and was replaced with fear. He put the timer on the spells to two seconds and hoped for the best. And with that, he shot not one, not two, not three, but four Explosive Mana Balls in quick succession. His hands looked like he was playing some computer game with how fast they tapped on the created circles.

It felt like he cast several at once with how fast they were formed.

At least to him, they felt fast.

All four of the Mana Balls hit Helthur in the chest, and as if converging together, they stacked on top of each other as they pushed slightly into the giant’s body. It looked like how it would feel if someone was pressing somewhat hard on someone’s chest, but not hard enough to be uncomfortable.

Then they exploded in a puff of blue smoke that concealed his chest, but the legs of the giant were still visible.

He’d taken a step back.

Sean’s eyes lit up as he saw that, but as the smoke inevitably faded and revealed Helthur’s chest with absolutely no damage at all, he hesitated.

But that meant it was as strong as a punch, at least. Forcing a giant creature like that to step back was already good enough.

The fear that had been clutching his heart started to disappear as he felt a sense of ease, or rather, relief.

He was tired of this.

If he died, he’d simply come back to life… right?

Back on Earth, where Clara was. Where his family and friends were. Where he’d find out the true nature of his family.

The paranoia of being afraid of a Lord of the Flies scenario slowly faded. Monsters had existed for so long and his family fought them, actively so even before the System came, so what was it to fear from a few random humans with the equivalents of guns?

His resolve started to falter.

Then Sean felt a large hand wrap around him —it was Helthur.

“Do you see the difference between us, Outlander?” asked the giant. Surprisingly, his grip was gentle at the moment, almost delicate as he raised Sean up to eye level, “Do you admit defeat? Perhaps then I can give you a painless death.”

One of his hands wasn’t held within the hand of the giant —the left one.

It was hopeless.

He couldn’t win.

Not against a monster like this, unless…

He was at eye level now, and that meant he was near the weakest spot on Helthur’s body. Even weaker than the groin, weaker than the thinnest part of his body —Sean was near his eye.

“Fuck you,” said Sean. It was surprisingly loud. He put a smirk on his face and raised the one hand that was left. Then, he shaped it into a finger gun.

That was when a swoosh sounded out right near his ears.

A strong wind sped past his ears and Sean realized far too late what had happened when Helthur withdrew the middle finger of his other hand.

Helthur had flicked his arm off.

The pain didn’t come instantly. It was delayed, and only after his body finally realized what had happened, Sean’s eyes widened. He screamed out in pain and his head was filled with nothing but blankness. His eyes teared up as they opened wide, though they saw nothing.

“So be it. I shall etch the pain into your mind,” said Helthur rather loudly, the volume almost rupturing Sean’s eardrums, “That is my farewell gift for you. You cannot leave it behind.”

Then Sean felt it.

The rest of it.

His body was being squashed, slowly but surely. The bones in his body were forced together, rubbing against each other. That was by no means a comfortable feeling. But that was simply the prelude to his true suffering.

Helthur gripped his hands ever so slightly and Sean heard his bones crack.

It was hell.

His brain blanked out, but Helthur wouldn’t end his suffering all that easily.

Sean didn’t feel Helthur’s hands loosen, but they had. He was too busy dealing with the pain. He’d never been injured severely before save for his broken hands after the fight with the giants, but that was a dull pain. That was a fractured bone. This? This was breaking them in half. The difference in the degree of pain was like heaven and hell.

Just when he returned and tried to breathe, Helthur smiled.

Once again, Sean felt his body get forced into an uncomfortable position.

He didn’t know how many times it happened, but every time he came back to consciousness to even breathe, he was squeezed harder.

Then Sean felt himself get thrown.

He landed on something soft.

While his eyes didn’t see clearly, he could feel the amount of light disappear as his lower body was filled with pain.

No, that would be wrong.

His hips hurt. Everything below that was gone. He couldn’t feel it.

Maybe it was a blessing in disguise? He couldn’t feel any pain for half his body that way. Not that Sean would even realize. All he felt was pain.

Then came a moment of clarity as the light came back again and he felt his body lose yet another part when the darkness did.

He felt the taste of metal in his mouth and the drool that covered his body, making it all slippery. Perhaps it had the effect of dulling his pain, but he was finally back.

There were only two things in his mind —death and vengeance. If he came back to life, if the System let him come back after he became stronger, then he’d rip him limb from limb.

Ever so slightly, Sean remembered the circles. It was his first failure.

It was ironic, how you could remember your failures more vividly than your successes. Rather, Sean had succeeded on most other things when creating magic so far, but the flawed spell had stuck with him, despite only being used once.

He tried to open his mouth to speak, but couldn’t. But if he could have, he’d undoubtedly have said a lazy, “Fuck you.”

All the Mana in his body left his body via his eyes. The Magic Circles formed after he put literally everything he had into one last gift for Helthur.

Sean didn’t even feel the explosion happen.

Perhaps running out of Mana was the best way to go in this situation. He almost instantly lost consciousness, the sweet embrace of death pulling him into an eternal sleep.

At least that’s what would have happened had he not been an Outlander, promised a rebirth.

Had he been alive, he could have noticed several System Notifications appear.

System Notification

You have gained the status ‘Conqueror’ for completing the Calibration Stage with a Main Quest Progress of 100%. You have gained the right to be summoned for the Planetary Summit of Planet 'Earth'.

Reward: Champion (Status)

System Notification

You have gained the title ‘Legend’ for accomplishing a feat of great renown and losing your life in the process. The name ‘Hunter Mage’ will be sung by all citizens of Veidrheim for ages to come, hailed as a hero that has saved their world from a great terror.

Requirement(s):

- Make a name for yourself.

- Let your story be known via witnesses.

- Defeating Giant Chieftain ‘Helthur’.

Reward: Presence (Skill)