[5 Chapters will be uploaded tomorrow; I apologize for the delay (7/26)]
[13th Round] Fire King Phoenix
“You stupid bitch!”
“I-I’m sorry, Your Majesty. I’m sorry. Have mercy… Please! I beg of you! ” The elf began to plead to the Elf King.
“Tsk! Have mercy? How dare you… Kh!”
I politely interrupted their conversation.
Both humans and elves sometimes unconsciously tensed their shoulders up or clenched their jaws out of surprise. That was a completely natural phenomenon, so he shouldn’t get so heated up about such little things.
He should take me as an example.
I endured the spirits that harassed me every day.
“Hey, Elf King. Shouldn’t you ask me for forgiveness first? Instead of talking to me, you insist on flirting with a beautiful girl. That’s extremely impolite of you.”
I was still a hero, though.
I was used to such a cold welcome!
“Let go of me… Kh-Akh! You worthless human!” He wheezed, thrashing his arms and legs around.
He was more muscular than normal elves, and his body was covered with hot flames.
However, neither his punches nor his kicks did me any harm.
In other words…
“You’re really weak.”
The helpless elves seized the opportunity I opened. Screaming, they fled the scene.
The First Elf King finally stopped fidgeting, realizing that none of his attacks worked.
“How about using the excuse that you’re tired since you just fought against the giants?”
He didn’t answer my suggestion.
“Hey, weakling. Stop pretending you’re powerful! I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of weaklings before, so you should know how to act like one. If you don’t…”
“I know!” The frightened Elf King cried.
Simply put, the weak who became strong would know the struggles of those below them. In contrast, if the strong became weak, they would begin to cower in fear.
That wasn’t always the case, though.
After all, as they said, bulls forgot their experiences as calves.
There were those who, after becoming strong, began to mock the weak. There were also people who couldn’t accept their current situation after withering away, causing them to get stuck in the past.
“Starting today, you’ll be known as Phoenix the Fire King.”
“H-how do you know my real name?”
“Huh?”
For a moment, my head stopped working.
The First Spirit and Shadow A, who watched over her father-in-law, reacted the same way.
“So your real name is Phoenix?”
“Yes. They used to call me the Fire King back in my homeland… Kh-?!”
“Wait. I need to get my thoughts in order.”
The Fire King Phoenix was a colossal monster, as tall as a multi-story building. He was the Southern Continent’s Great Disaster and the progenitor of fire giants that lived in volcanoes.
But now, this wretched Elf King had introduced himself as the “Fire King Phoenix.”
That name wasn’t even supposed to exist in this era yet.
“Sir Hero, really…”
“You think so too?”
“That seems to be the case, Drug Hero.”
It was said that the First Elf King, who wielded the Essence of Fire, lost to the “Fire King Phoenix” and was eaten by him, because of which his powers passed to Phoenix.
But no sources ever said that the King of Giants called himself Phoenix. Everyone just concluded that that was what his name had always been.
So…
“He changed his race.”
From an elf, he turned into a giant.
As he watched his descendants drop like flies in this war, he became disgusted with his race and just dropped them altogether!
That was easy to understand.
“Still… blood ties cannot be avoided.”
Both the First and Third Elf Kings hated their race.
“Sir Hero, King Elfheim is different. The one I love didn’t abandon his race until the very end. Although I lacked what he loved, he told me that I was cute!” The moment I equated her husband to her father-in-law, Shadow A immediately became mad.
That pathetic Elf King was lucky enough to get married, although he would never admit it himself.
“I get it, so you can stop defending him now. We need to focus on making a Middle Boss out of him right now.”
Although I was rewriting history (textbooks), I couldn’t change too much of it.
I also couldn’t reject the truth behind past events.
Since I was asked to remove the protagonist, my senior, from the story, I had to intervene.
I wasn’t the “First Hero,” so I could change the content a little, but the result should be as close to the original as possible.
The Five Great Disasters played a key role in this story.
Since he defeated them all and solved the problems they brought with them, I also needed to do it.
But at the moment, on the Southern and Western Continents, representatives of those monstrous beings hadn’t even appeared yet.
At this point, there was only one answer.
“Hey, can you change races?”
The First Elf King rolled his eyes as he replied.
“No. If I could, I would’ve done it already.”
“Hmm…”
It seemed true that he lost to the Giant King and was eaten by him, but did this mean that he survived and took possession of his opponent’s body?
I had to consult the system.
▷ Explanation: It’s impossible to know. The truth is that the Giant King swallowed the Elf King, who didn’t die even after receiving mortal wounds. But in the records, there is no information about which of them became the Fire King Phoenix.
‘Yeah. Thanks for the unhelpful explanation.’
“I’ll have to check for myself, then.”
“Kh?!”
Spreading the wings of the righteous hero, I grabbed the First Elf King by the neck and flew to the giants’ lair.
It wasn’t hard to find the Giant King.
Among the humongous warriors, whose average height was around 8m, only one of them had grown several tens of meters.
He, like the Snow Woman, was a mutant.
But the life of the two was extremely different. The Snow Woman was an outcast, but the Giant King led his race.
“Oh? Here to pick another fight, elf… A human? No, judging by the hideous wings on your back, are you a demon?”
“I’m not a demon, but a righteous hero!” I immediately shouted back, correcting his misunderstanding.
“Hero? Is there a race that I don’t know about? Well, there are many small races. Come on then, little one. Attack me.”
The giants around us began to run away the moment they heard those words.
Even if they were called giants, not all of them were large in size.
There were only men in their race, so they could only reproduce with the help of female humans.
The race of a child born in such a union was determined by gender. Those born as males were giants, while those born females were humans.
During early adulthood, giants weren’t particularly different from humans.
But then the women would stop growing, contrary to the men, who would only keep getting bigger and taller until the end of their lives.
Therefore, giants didn’t have any particular height.
They often reached a point where it was uncertain whether they were growing or not, but they were already pretty much near their deaths by then.
The Giant King was several times taller than the rest, and his body was larger, but he wasn’t an immortal. Like the rest of his kind, he had reached the twilight of his years.
He had a gray beard, and due to the lack of suitable clothing, his entire body was on display.
But even at his age, he managed to maintain a muscular body.
Therefore, no one had yet succeeded in taking the throne from him.
“The chieftain has decided to start a fight again!”
“Run!”
“You wouldn’t want to get into the king’s way!”
Not wanting to be involved in this battle, the giants embraced their families with their huge arms and fled in different directions.
What was a family to a giant?
It was a woman taking care of children.
There were almost no natural alliances between giants and humans. They mostly just raided villages and stole women. However, they later became extremely loyal to their wife and kids.
They were only like that with women.
They didn’t stand in ceremonies for men since they couldn’t give them children. Instead, they simply crushed them like ants.
“Hey, Giant King.”
“Don’t think you can surrender. I do not save the lives of those who challenge me. Only my wife was an exception, but she was really strong and gave me many strong heirs before she left.” The colossal monster began to prepare for combat, taking off his beads made of human bones and giving them to another giant.
It looked like the skeleton of a woman… Most likely the bones of his deceased wife.
The Giant King wasn’t like the “Fire Phoenix King” I knew.
Gray hair and deep wrinkles.
A wise look that suited his appearance.
It was difficult to see vanity in him. It was still too early to judge, though, considering all we had done so far was talk. Regardless, he didn’t treat women like cattle.
He was like the other giants.
“Don’t you want to live a longer life?” I asked, shaking the Elf King’s vertebrae in front of him.
Rumors had it that if he ate this elf, he would most likely gain immortality.
“Little Hero, if you’re not going to give up, then stop talking. Come at me.”
With one hand, he grabbed his huge club with ease.
And without delay, he immediately began to swing it.
A powerful gust blew with just a single attack from him.
If the Wind Spirit King, who settled in my armpits, didn’t use his children, then my body would’ve been blown away by this wind.
It was ridiculous.
“You’re ignoring me because I’m smaller, but you’re nothing compared to my dear friend.”
It was nonsensical to compare him to the Supreme Dragon of Oblivion, Noebius. In size, he was closer to Green Cake.
But my adopted son wasn’t in this era.
He stayed with Saintess C at the Holy Mollan Empire of the present timeline, sending me regular reports about the country’s situation.
It would be easy to call him over, but sending him back would be difficult.
“I’ll show you somebody of your own size. Come, Captain Fantasy!”
“Wow!”
Captain Fantasy hadn’t changed in the least since the time he held Ssosia in his hands.
“Wh-what?! What is that…” The Giant King shouted in surprise, falling backward.
The volcano, which was the symbol of the Southern Continent, split in two.
Standing quickly, he swung his club.
But he couldn’t do anything against Captain Fantasy’s elastic skin.
In addition, he was losing in size.
He was at the level of the baby’s thighs.
He stepped back in panic. He had only ever fought against creatures smaller than him before he met the humongous kid. I noticed fear beginning to embrace his words.
“Where did such a ridiculous child come from…”
Captain Fantasy answered the Giant King’s question in a philosophical way.
“Whoa!”
Like the words of wise men, a lot of meaning was hidden behind that phrase.
I gave the First Elf King to the advancing child and pointed to the deranged Giant King.
“Feed this expired item to that giant.”
“Woah? Weeee!”
“Hey! Why did you swallow him? Spit him out! Now!”
“Because of children’s curiosity, only safe things can be given to them. Men never look after their own kids…” The married woman scolded me with a shrug, but I didn’t have time to get angry right now.
What should I do now?
“We screwed up…”
The First Elf King, capable of controlling fire, went into Captain Fantasy’s belly.
