Chapter 2
The kid, Leon, now eighteen. Working fields. Tilling the land, training magic, and doing housework.
The magic in the air trembles, thinning like something massive pushing through the sky.
Leon feels it before he sees it.
A huge fist slams into his side, sending him crashing into his parents' barn.
The giant stands outside, waiting to see if he will rise. Then, deciding he's down, it turns toward the cattle. It picks one up in one hand, bites off its head, spits the skull aside, then peels the skin and devours the rest.
Inside the barn, Leon groans but forces himself upright. Dust slides off him, and shattered wood clings to his clothes. He grabs his father's hand cultivator, a tool with short, bent spikes like steel claws.
Fog glows around his body, his own technique, a body-enhancement method he developed with his parents and grandfather.
The giant turns back toward the barn, spitting out bones. Leon steps into the open.
He sprints toward it.
The giant slams its fist down in front of him. The ground shakes. Dust erupts. Leon leaps onto the giant's arm, climbing up like he's scaling a cliff, burying the hand cultivator's metal claws in its skin for grip. The metal claws rip and tear at the giant's rough skin. Leon muscle-ups with the cultivator's metal claws digging deep in the giant as he climbs into the giant's shoulder.
The giant's adrenaline kicks in almost immediately when Leon stabs into his flesh as he fails to reach his shoulder with his fat arms, choosing to try and shake Leon off, but Leon just digs the cultivator's metal into the giant's neck, hitting a vein. The giant slams himself onto the ground, the force knocking Leon off.
Leon hits the ground, the air knocked out of him. The cultivator is still buried in the giant's neck with the vein severely bleeding, the giant's vision goes blurry as he falls to a knee, the blood running down his neck and sticking onto his chest hair, the blood on his arms dripping onto the soil, causing it to get even darker.
Leon attempts to get up before the giant slams his knee onto him, knocking the air out of him before he can even try to inhale.
The giant wobbles from side to side. The giant's arm looks cold, his fingers hanging loosely.
The giant topples over off of Leon and onto the ground, staining the ground an even darker shade of brown, the blood sticking to the blades of grass.