Even though Hamatarou had decided to investigate the Salamanders, the Hamster Prince was actually quite afraid to do it alone. One enemy would be easy to handle but fighting the entire group was suicide in his mind.
Still, Qiu Yue and Lynn had repeatedly assured him that after signing the temporary contract, there was apparently some magic at work that would protect him. He could only clinch on to this hope while trying to find out more about the Salamanders.
As a Druid, he had created multiple tunnels within this forsaken giant city to facilitate easier travelling when needed. At the same time, they were also quite handy in the frequent cases where he had to escape from the Giant wildlife that plagued their world. This underground network had become quite vast and would at least allow him to reach the inner castle.
Within his heart, there was hesitation in meeting the Salamanders once more. Hamatarou had once trusted them after their world got turned upside down and he got betrayed by them once. Thus, the druid figured that meeting them could only result in a particularly bad ending. But part of him could not bring himself to kill them, after all, they had once been his relatives.
His kingdom was similar to Jin’s medieval age with just a tinge of magic mixed into the formula. Nothing too out of the ordinary and while each world had their petty disputes, the Royal Family Hamatarou was born into controlled one of the most successful kingdoms within their own world.
However, his life hasn’t been too rosy. His future subjects lived their lives as one might expect in a highly defined hierarchical structure. The rich got richer, the middle remained the same, and the poor become poorer. As for Hamatarou… he was considered an anomaly within the Royal Family.
All of his relatives and siblings held the power of Fire while Hamatarou was the only one who was born with an affinity for controlling the forces of nature. His father did not want anyone else to find out that one of his offspring had been ‘tainted’ with he regarded as a ‘lesser power’.
Unfortunately for the young boy, Hamatarou was forced to endure a tough childhood in their castle. He grew up the victim of constant bullying by his own siblings, the harassment of their servants as the King did nothing to prohibit such action and instead encouraged it.
Even the ‘wise’ elders seemed to have nothing but spiteful words for him, with some going as far as blaming the mother for producing such a varied offspring.
At one point, Hamatarou had been kidnapped by a politically motivated extremist group who demanded the Royal Family to step down yet the King did not bother to send out a single knight to rescue his youngest potential heir.
Ultimately, the personal knight in service of his mother had to take action to search and find young Hamatarou. It did not take long for Clyde to find their hideout, and the knight was skilled enough to reduce all the kidnappers to ashes with his magic. He then eventually found Hamatarou in an enclosed underground basement with mouldy bread and dirty water as his only source of sustenance.
While the Queen wished for him to return alive, the King had long suspected his latest wife’s course of actions and had promised Clyde a wealthy reward to get rid of Hamatarou and blame it on the kidnappers.
“It’s nothing personal, kid. It’s just business. Do not blame me.” Clyde whispered to suppress his consciousness as he raised his hand to conjure a fire blast to kill the feeble, starved prince.
However, what no one had expected was that Hamatarou’s will to live awakened his natural magic to an unprecedented tier. Without ever being introduced to the magic, he managed to manipulate it by sheer willpower, not needing to utter a single world. The ground erected as if alive and surrounded Hamatarou in a protective barrier.
Clyde’s fireball was unable to dent the ground barrier, and after a few attempts, he decided to give up and just burn down the whole place. Before he managed to leave another surprise awaited him. In front of the knight, magical tiny creatures had appeared…
Fairies.
One of the fairies offered to bestow Clyde with more magical power than he could ever dream of in exchange for a small favour. He was to deliver Hamatarou to a specific location. The Queen’s personal knight did not need long to make up his mind.
Clyde never expected that he was able to meet fairies in the course of his life and they appeared as what he had dreamt of after hearing those wonderful tales in his youth. Magic was believed to be fixed at the moment of one’s birth. If one was lucky enough to have an elemental affinity, one either had a lot of power or be merely blessed with it.
Thus, the Queen’s knight believed that with an increase in his magical abilities, there was a good chance he could get promoted to a higher calling. Everyone in court knew that it was the King who really held power (and more importantly coin) so rising to become one of his personal guards could not only ensure his personal wellbeing but perhaps even result in a noble title for his progeny.
As a bonus by delivering the young prince to the Northern Druids would allow him to satisfy both his regents’ demands. He could receive the coin of the King while earning his trust, and perhaps (if he was feeling generous) reveal the young boy’s actual fate to his mother. So, Clyde quickly accepted the fairy’s proposal.
First, he burnt the house down to cover his tracks and blame the kidnappers for having decided to die with their hostage. Then he followed the fairies instructions and delivered the young prince to a nearby forest where he placed him inside a circle of mushrooms. Clyde did not bother to wait for the Druid to come to pick the boy up and hurried back to the castle.
As the naive knight dreamt about impressing everyone in court with his new found power, he did not see the ‘fairies’ laughing behind his back at his stupidity.
Alas, how was he supposed to know that Feys were separated into various kinds? Most humans would live their whole life without ever meeting any such spiritual beings. Encounters with them became even rarer ever since they opted to live in stone cold cities away from the magical forests.
Therefore he also was none the wiser that a bargain with the Feys could be considered the worst kind of trade deal, maybe in all worlds. They would twist their words no matter how the agreement was made and ensure that they ended up with the most fun because of it.
To make matters worse, the fairy he spoke to and made a bargain was actually a faerie instead of a fairy. And it was not an ordinary faerie, but it was the Matriarch of the Winter Court, Queen Mab. To them, Hamatarou was not just some boy with the powers of nature, he was prophesied to be the saviour of the world by the Feys.
However, Hamatarou never learned of this.
The young him had been sad to lose his mother but also happy enough to finally get accepted by a group of people who had become his real family.
As for the Fey… they mischievously set the stage and allowed the humans to play their part in it unknowingly. (Or in short, their victims.)
Clyde did receive his magical boost just as promised. Not only that, the Queen’s personal knight was experiencing a growth in his magical energy by the day. It was to the point, he needed to release his magic energy from his body in order to keep himself sane.
Coincidentally, he discovered that it was far easier to share his powers with others compared to casting spells non-stop. Utilising his newfound knowledge, he diverted his magical powers into other knights. They who started to experience themselves becoming stronger shared this incredible news. But what none of them knew was that by accepting Clyde’s generosity, they all doomed themselves.
Finally, the stage entered its next act. During an inter kingdom conference meeting, the accumulated magical powers were too much for Clyde, who suddenly exploded into pieces, right in front of everyone.
Every leader who was in that conference got infected by the magical energies that spread wildly and subsequently, it became a domino effect, causing every magic abled person to explode when in contact with those magical energies through the months.
The sad thing was that there was nothing to contain it as the air was infused with magic too. It even caused some of the normal humans to mutate by becoming larger and explode. With little to no time available, court mages managed to come up with one solution, and it’s by polymorphing them into various animals.
They theorised that the magical energies seemed to target only Humans so if they were to polymorph into an animal, changing the structure how they absorbed magic, it would stop the increased flow of magic preventing the calamity from harming them.
Most of the court mages initially believed that the mass polymorphing would be temporary solution claiming they only had to wait it out until the magical energies were dispersed or diffused into the environment.
And yes, the energy did dissipate into the environment but it also inadvertently affected the wild life, causing it to become more rampant. It caused gradual mutation to the animals, turning them into monsters as large as the humans were with their new traits like the Horned Chicken. (Through hindsight, if Lynn or Qiu Yue ever learn about his history, they can only speculate that the humans Hamatarou talked about were not average homo sapiens but giants.)
Not only that, some humans refused to become animals and decided to use the magical energy they receive as a way to kill the raging wildlife who had now come to invade their cities for more space.
Sadly, most did not make it. They either died in battle or became unable to discharge enough magical energy to prevent their head from exploding. The remaining realised it was futile and polymorph into animals.
While polymorphing did not entirely stop the ‘Giantism’ Virus (especially since they took on animal forms and were destined to grow large until they and be killed in the wild), it significantly reduced the number of incidents, and the survivors did what they can to continue surviving.
Being human became a thing of the past in the Giant World. The animals were unable to transform back into their human form and instead became animals with human traits.
Hence, it became a battle for survival against Giant monsters in their animal forms for many years until Hamatarou came into the picture and assisted the remaining survivors to shrink and escape from the gigantic dangers.
