Chapter 1385 (Patreon)

While my primary project was the search for the Charland, it wasn’t the only one I was pursuing. Some of my old projects required some maintenance and checks every so often, and even while searching for the Charland, I didn’t neglect them.

One of the projects that didn’t need much maintenance but required the odd check and adjustment was the resettlement of the giants. I had taken to visiting them once a week, just to casually check that they remained in fighting shape and that their limited number wasn’t devastated by disease or some other issue. Given that I had only managed to relocate ten of them, the loss of even one of them would be devastating. Hel, even the ten might not be enough to establish a long-term population, but I had little interest in searching for other giant populations and relocating them, too. It might be a lot easier with my recently discovered tricks, but I wasn’t sure. I might have to look into it at some point. For now, I just wanted to keep the ten giants I had alive, help them reproduce and establish a viable population that way.

Mostly because I was planning to slowly introduce some magical enhancement into their bloodlines, something much easier when I only had to deal with a limited number of bloodlines to enhance and monitor, just in case my enhancements had some unexpected side effects. 

However, those were future plans. For now, I merely wanted to make sure that the giants were thriving in this area, especially those that were gravid. Those few were also my first target for enhancement, not that I was working openly. Instead, I was using scrying constructs, shaped into my usual ravens, to do my work. 

Given that I had previously used these constructs to heal and help the giants, they were already familiar with my constructs. They might even recognise that the presence of my constructs was beneficial, that their presence meant that injuries disappeared and pain faded, but I wasn’t sure how intelligent the giants actually were. But they seemed to get it, even if the gravid females weren’t all that happy about their presence. Or maybe they were unhappy with their physical state; they generally looked as if they were smuggling watermelons or beachballs, making me wonder how easy their usual pregnancies were. 

During a previous visit, as I was using some Blood Magic to perform my regular scan on one of Naya’s giants, I noticed that something was weird. It was difficult to understand what the scan was telling me through the link, but I wasn’t about to interact with them directly, not unless I could help it. 

This time, I realised that the issue was bigger than I had anticipated. The giant appeared ready to drop the child, but the scan gave me a clearer picture now, and it wasn’t a pleasant one. Unless I completely misinterpreted what I was seeing, the umbilical cord had wrapped around the babe’s neck, meaning the birthing process would likely strangulate it, unless proper assistance was given. 

To make matters worse, it looked like the process would happen soon, in one or two days, adding further complications. For a moment, I considered simply letting the babe die, possibly taking the mother with him, but then I shook my head. I hadn’t worked so hard on these giants to have fate snatch one of them away from me, not if I could help it. Which, in turn, meant I had to make a plan to assist with the birth, despite the fact that the giants might just try to smash me into paste, just for being there. Hel, they would even be justified. Few beasts tolerated foreign creatures near their gravid females or young, and while I was many things, a giant, I was most certainly not. 

But that didn’t mean I couldn't act. The first step to successfully assisting with the birth was fairly obvious. I needed to interact with the giants directly. While I could perform a wide variety of magic when working through my constructs, some things just didn’t work as well as I wanted them to. Part of it was a certain transmission lag, for lack of a better word, in Astral River; part of it was a lack of feedback from my various senses; it all reduced my ability quite a bit. For an operation as delicate and complicated as this, I wanted to have all the advantages I could get, or, if I couldn’t get advantages, I wanted to have as few detriments as possible.

For this, my first step was to use Mind Magic on Naya, the leader of this group of giants. She had been the first giant I had ever really interacted with, the first I had taken control of, so to speak, and, somehow, she had become the spiritual leader of this group. She hadn’t necessarily been smarter than her brethren, though I was fairly certain she now was, but she had demonstrated charisma. The others followed her. 

And when she experienced a daydream of the future, of her fellow giant dying a messy, horribly painful death, she felt fear. It wasn’t just fear I had magically induced; the images she saw scared her, and they also angered her. It looked like she wanted to be a good leader, or maybe she just understood how precarious her little group's situation actually was; I wasn’t sure. 

Regardless, she saw that daydream, and then, she saw a figure emerge from the mist shrouding their forested home. It was merely an illusion within the dream, but she didn’t know that, so I could make it as impressive and awe-inspiring as I could. And given that I had experienced Lady Hecate in all her divine glory, I knew awe, and I could make Naya feel the same feelings I had when coming face to face with a Goddess for the first time. 

Amusingly, it wasn’t me who was portrayed as the Goddess in question. Instead, Naya was seeing an image of Sigmir, though scaled up a little to appear larger than life, larger than Naya or any of the other giants in her company. After all, it wouldn’t do for a divine giant to be smaller than her fellow giants; it just wouldn’t look right.

Sitting on the shoulder of the figure Naya saw was a familiar creature, one of the scrying constructs I used. Then, as the daydream around Naya morphed, the construct took flight, as if it was moving backwards in time, landing next to the giant who had just been messily dying, only that the giant was now back to being okay as the construct landed before her and turned into me. The message was hopefully understandable, namely, that a Goddess was sending one of her ravens to help the giants, and that the raven, at its core, was me. 

With that message sent, I manifested one of my constructs nearby, mirroring the daydream I had projected into Naya as closely as possible, until the raven landed. At that moment, I used a bit of Blood Magic to trigger the coming labour a little early, before the raven I had just used started to morph and grow, expanding in size. 

As the raven was becoming bigger and bigger, I stepped into the shadows, barely managing to hold onto the connections to my scrying constructs, until I stepped back out, right into the expanding shadow that had been a scrying construct moments earlier.

It wasn’t perfectly smooth, but it was good enough to convince the giants, especially Naya. While the other giants were visibly unhappy about my appearance, Naya obviously recognised me. She instantly bellowed at the other giants, causing them to, almost literally, sit down and shut up, giving me all the time I needed and wanted.

Now, up close, I had an easier time working, though I still needed some Mind Magic to make the patient cooperate. I did my best to be gentle with her. It wasn’t her fault that her baby was trying to hang himself; it was merely an annoying complication. 

That being said, the birthing process itself was comparatively easy. Part of that was the size difference, part of it was my magic, and part of it was the overall sturdiness of a giant. The difference in size meant I could manually assist a lot more easily than I could with a human or a smaller race. It was incredibly messy, but not as messy as it could have been. 

All in all, the birth turned out to be a success, and one of the most stressful things I had ever experienced. Mostly because a part of me was constantly aware of the fact that there were five creatures around me that could all match, or overpower, me physically, and I was in no real position to defend myself if they turned aggressive. 

But other than that, it worked out well. I managed to get the babe out without further complications, and my healing magic meant the mother would recover as well as anyone could hope. 

It had been an exhausting day, but I felt incredibly accomplished. Especially because I had managed to firmly introduce the image of a divine Sigmir into the giants. Hopefully, I would be able to use that burgeoning faith.