The sun reigned over a cloudless sky, allowing the changing colors of the flora to appear ever more vibrant.
Along the outskirts of the Sine Riverstead, on a hillock overlooking the lowlands and bountiful pastures, there stood a tract called the Needle Forest, the origin of the name being plain enough even for young Miroya to understand.
From a distance, it looked as though countless iron needles were protruding from the hill, creating an environment too desolate for even a single tree to grow.
A determined climb up the hill revealed the true identities of the needles. Every one of them was a thick iron pillar, the same as those seen every year during the Offering Festival.
Miroya kicked the heel poking out from the sea of iron. "C'mon, wake up! It's past noon already!"
Just the sole of the foot Miroya kicked was nearly three times as tall as he was.
"Quit your barking… Ugh, not you again, stupid brat…"
"You're a lazy good-for-nothing! All you do is lie around all day!"
For a long, long time, there had only ever been a single inhabitant living atop the barren, iron-covered hill. A gigant. His name was known to everyone in the village—Mele, the Horizon's Roar.
"Hnnnggh… Up we go."
Grabbing one of the nearby pillars, the gigant languidly sat himself upright. The iron pole that took twenty adults to carry every year warped horizontally—like a clothes-drying pole—with a grating metal squeal.
He was a huge man. Too huge.
He was clad in simple clothing, woven from trees and vegetation through the use of Craft Arts. His head, even when sitting cross-legged, was so high that Miroya needed to crane his neck all the way back to be able to see his face.
Miroya had heard from the village chief that even among the ancient gigants, Mele was special.
Just as it was with minia, there were tall gigants that towered above other members of their race, and Mele's height was, in Central Kingdom metrics, between twenty and thirty meters tall.
"Well then, get into another fight with your pops, did ya?" "That's not it! Your bow! You have one, right?!"
"Oh, that thing? Where did I put it…?"
"How could you even lose something that big?! Look, it's lying right over there!"
His voice frantic, Miroya easily located the item in question. Of course, anyone who lived outside the Sine Riverstead would never have recognized it as a bow.
The black, impossibly large weapon had been crafted from some unknown material. It looked almost like part of the landscape as it lay out on the ground, amid the gaps in the stalwart pillars.
"Pook said that just being able to move that thing's bowstring even a little bit would automatically make you the strongest person in the village. Is that true?"
"C'mon, give me a break. A brat like you becoming the strongest in the village doesn't mean a damn thing, anyway. I'd still be a thousand times stronger."
"Like I care about how strong you are, Mele! Pook made fun of me and said there was no way I could do it, so I'm gonna find out for myself!"
"What a pain…"
The gigant sluggishly lay back before plucking the massive bow from the earth with his fingers. It dragged along the grass and soil, loudly grinding down into the hill's surface.
Miroya sighed, exasperated. In his eyes, Mele was even more of a lazy slob than his older sister. Could someone like him really be the village's guardian deity?
"Hey, try not to get pinned underneath this thing and die on me, got it?
Not that I'd expect much else from a puny weakling." "Oh, shut up."
With a biting reply, Miroya tried pushing at the taut metal bowstring.
The string was almost as long as the gigant was tall, yet still Miroya
devoted his entire body weight to moving it, but it did not budge—it was a firm iron rod, not unlike the pillars standing tall around him.
He started to wonder if there was some truth to the legend of a wild boar appearing in the Needle Forest and dying after colliding with the black bow. Even in that story, the bow hadn't moved a single inch off the ground.
"Argh, hnnnggh, c'mooooon…! Haaa."
"Bwah-ha-ha-ha! Just give it up. You're too young to be throwing your back out."
"W-well, I've lifted up a whole water barrel by myself before, okay?! But there's no one who can move that thing!"
"Of course, there is. You're talking to 'im." "Ugh, you know what I meant."
Mele turned over on the barren soil once more, his interest waning. Miroya had never once seen the gigant move with any sense of urgency. "Oh yeah, that reminds me. A few decades ago, some idiots from the
village all got together and tried to prove their strength by lifting up another
something of mine. And I'm not talking about my bowstring." "What 'something'?"
"C'mon, isn't it obvious? My manhood." "Huh?!"
Miroya instinctively looked at the gigant's crotch. The area under his grass skirt was indeed fully visible.
"Um…h-how many people did it take?!"
"Five guys didn't cut it. So, they decided if they were gonna seriously attempt to pull it off, they'd need at least six. All six of 'em were considered some of the strongest men in the village."
"Why were there even six adults stupid enough to do something like that anyway?!"
"Try asking your pops or granddad about it. Men stay stupid no matter how old they get. Truth is, I couldn't really tell if they actually managed to lift it up or not…"
"What…? Hold on, you can't just cut the story off there!"
How in the world could he not know if they managed to do it or not? Mele scratched his stomach, looking a bit uncomfortable.
"I'm not lying. I really couldn't say for sure. Having six people touch me down there…you know…I sorta got this ticklish feeling, and… I mean, if
you really wanna split hairs over it, they technically did get it into the air…" "…Are you serious?!"
"Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! They got a real shock, too! Started asking me, 'Wait, do you swing that way?!'"
Mele's conversations were always filled with these nostalgic accounts of utterly baffling episodes with the villagers.
One example was the time the village kids discovered the dangerous pastime of competing to see who could be blown the farthest away by Mele's sneeze.
In another story, when the village chief's father was young, Mele had let him ride on his shoulders to peek into the woman's bath, but Mele was so conspicuous that the village chief's father ended up getting punished.
Yet another was when his singing during a certain woman's wedding ceremony was so awful, it was banned forever, with the provision still existing in the town's records.
From small children to the village's elders… Everyone living in Sine Riverstead had memories with the long-lived gigant. Miroya himself would likely remember the bow—so firmly stuck in the ground one would think it had put down roots—for the rest of his life.
"Still though, Mele, for how giant your body is, you don't fight at all. Can you even use this bow?"
"Don't you worry about that. Hell, it'd be best to never need to fire it at all. Didn't anyone teach you that?"
"Whaaat? If it was really better to never fire a bow, then bows and arrows wouldn't exist in the first place! You've never actually fired your bow, have you?"
"Got a smart-ass comeback for everything, don't ya, kid?" In truth, it was just as Miroya said.
Mele's herculean strength and his remarkably large frame were the talk of the village.
However, among these conversations, there wasn't a single story about Mele courageously wielding said strength to fight and expel his enemies.
Mele was a champion of the village, without question, but a champion of unknown valor and heroism.
"Hey, I'm just worried about you, that's all. Aureatia even has that Rosclay guy, right? There's even Toroa the Awful, too; he shows up in all the scary stories! I don't think there's any way you could ever beat them!"
"Now you're really talking nonsense! I keep telling ya, I'm the strongest there is. If I went all out, no one could hold a candle to me. You'd be quaking in your boots, no doubt about it."
"Whaaat?! All you do is laze around! I bet Rosclay is waaay stronger than you!"
Hearing that their guardian deity would be going to the royal games in Aureatia excited Miroya a great deal.
Was the biggest presence of Sine Riverstead, present from time immemorial, really the strongest being in the lands?
However, the other candidates like him—for example, the Second General of Aureatia, Rosclay the Absolute—had prestige and fame that wasn't confined to a single village. The Second General was a great champion, beloved and looked up to by minian children everywhere. Miroya was no exception.
"You're supposed to tell me I'm gonna win, even if you don't mean it. What an ungrateful kid… Aureatia's reward is no joke, trust me. I could rebuild Kutoy's house that got struck by lighting and even replace the old waterwheel out west."
"Oh yeah, that waterwheel is pretty run-down, isn't it?"
"It's been in use ever since your grandfather was a young boy, even after several repairs. What else is there…? Oh, right, right, the expenses for Poani's childbirth. It'll be her third to date. I can buy Mizemura some Aureatia machinery to help cultivate his fields, too."
"Who cares about that weird old fart Mizemura…?"
"Bah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Since I'm gonna win it all anyway, I bet we'll get even more money! What's the point in being stingy with the other villagers, right?"
"…I was right. There's no way anyone who says stuff like that is gonna win!"
Mele was always laughing with optimism.
Whether it was someone's troubles with school or farming, or the tragedies of the world at large, compared to his massive body, they all seemed so small.
That was probably why the people of the village, even without any pressing reason in particular, would come to visit the Needle Forest.
Miroya tried to move Mele's bowstring one last time. It didn't budge an inch.
"Argh, this sucks…! Listen, you better not break this bow or anything! By the time you lose and come back here, I'm gonna pick this bow straight up off the ground."
"Cheeky little brat, aren't ya? C'mon now, time for you to head back home."
Suddenly, Mele got up. He seemed to be looking far into the wild blue yonder.
Though to Miroya eye's, all he could see was the ordinary, empty blue sky.
"There's a storm coming."
"Wait, really? It's still clear out, though." "Yep, a bad one. The clouds say it all." "Riiight… Okay then, see you tomorrow."
Miroya quickly scampered down the hill as he made his way home.
Mele and his towering frame had no roof to shield him from the wind and rain. Nor did he need one.
The Needle Forest, overlooking the Sine Riverstead, had been his home for a long, long time.
"Let's see… Should be sometime tonight…"
There was no one else who could see the shape of the clouds as they drifted along the very edge of the horizon.
Mele took up his black bow.
This year, once again, the Sine Riverstead's day of ruin was approaching.
It came not with a hiss, but a crackling roar.
The rain sounded almost like an earthquake, with the dark, raging sky appearing as though it was trying to drown the whole land at once. The storm winds from the neighboring mountains began blowing whole trees into the air. A number of them crashed into Mele's skin with significant force, but he
felt no pain at all.
The hulking gigant stood on both legs in the middle of the moonless storm.
Two fearsome eyes glinted, emerging from the colossal shadow, thrusting up to the heavens.
Coupled with the terrifying torrential rain raging, anyone unfamiliar with Mele who saw the scene for themselves would think they were witnessing ruin incarnate.
"…Looks like it'll be here soon."
Mele's groan wasn't directed at anyone in particular.
He pulled up one of the deeply embedded pillars of the Needle Forest, still standing upright despite the roaring winds.
They were presented to him only twice a year.
High-quality iron ore, mined from the region, was dissolved, and every year the individual with the greatest Craft Arts skills shaped it into beautifully straight pillars. Then, they were smithed to prevent rust. The pillars were Sine Riverstead's greatest craftworks—the heart and soul of the entire village poured into each one.
They were Mele's treasures.
Mele was always looking down over his one and only spiritual home.
The lights of the people's homes as they went about their lives trembled in the apocalyptic downpour.
A peaceful village, blessed with bountiful waters, mining resources, and soil able to support crops and animals.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, in the time when all he knew was solitude, the village hadn't existed.
"..."
He closed his eyes and concentrated.
The moment the flow of the river, rampaging like a dragon, changed—
In the middle of this torrential onslaught, battering all his senses at once, it was the one moment he absolutely couldn't let pass him by.
The low, continuous roar from the river…pitched the slightest bit higher.
Mele opened his eyes. Together, at the exact same moment he had his premonition, the gigantic main river, flowing to the ocean, rushed backward from the sea into a small river that shot off from the main stream. The river that passed right through the center of the village.
Sine Riverstead was a village blessed with bounteous water and nutrient- rich soil. However, this also meant that among its long history, it was a region constantly threatened with this kind of river flood.
Once a year, torrential rains on a terrifying scale passed through this region, and each time the flooding was beyond control, with the village everyone had built destined to sink deep under water.
This was the day of Sine Riverstead's destruction.
As ever, Mele the Horizon's Roar wasted no time.
He simply pulled back the black bow that no one but him could draw or even lift.
The "arrow" he nocked was one of Needle Forest's iron pillars, presented to him by the villagers.
Within the deluge that was barreling upstream against the river's flow, three different currents became one.
One current was diverted by a large boulder on a sandbar, boring into the left bank. Another was an uninterrupted breakneck current. Finally, there was a slow but powerful current coming up from the seaward side of the river behind the village.
Even from this distance he could tell. Even on a night like this, where the view of Sine Riverstead was drowned out by the black clouds and torrential storm, facing off against a raging deluge, constantly shifting its shape, to Mele's eyes alone, everything was clear.
Would the soil bed, weakened by the rain, hold out? Had it been dug out deep enough? Were any of next year's cultivated fields in the path of the rapids? Were any of the places where Miroya and the other children liked to play in peril?
The moment before he took his shot, all of these thoughts passed through Mele's head in an instant.
It was only a single hunch—honed from years and years of experience—
that showed him the path to salvation. "There."
He fired his arrow.
The air split open with a loud crack—louder than roiling thunder. It was the sound of the heavens themselves being torn asunder.
The arrow's trajectory looked like little more than a streak of light. It thrust into the ground.
Sine Riverstead's soil split open down to bedrock deep in the bowels of the land.
The arrow, perfectly hitting its mark, penetrated further into the soil, and its direct trajectory leveled the terrain.
The impact sent a torrent of dust and debris shooting into the sky, nearly darkening it.
Saying the impact was like an earthquake didn't do it justice. The shot from Mele's bow was cataclysmic in its own right.
Even from so far away, a single shot aimed at the very edge of the horizon.
"…There we go."
Mele, for the first time that night, was able to smile with satisfaction.
The deluge veered away from the village populace and poured into the low-level and arid wasteland on the town outskirts.
The one arrow he fired was so perfect, there was no need to notch another. "All right…! Time for bed!"
The day of Sine Riverstead's destruction had come another year. However, once again, Sine Riverstead was not destroyed.
It had been the same last year. The year before that, as well. Two hundred and fifty years ago, there had been no village here.
Once a year, a disastrous flood beset this land.
Only twice a year, these iron pillars were presented to Mele.
Now these pillars sprouted up from the top of the barren hill, numerous enough for it to become known as the Needle Forest.
Mele the Horizon's Roar was a champion of unknown valor and heroism. Among the legends told by the villagers, there wasn't a single story about
Mele courageously wielding his strength to battle and drive off his enemies.