Ch.1219You Will Not Be Able to Have Children in the Future.

Giants are a race without parents.

This is not meant as an insult but literally means they have no biological parents. They are a race that cannot have children through reproduction like other creatures.

No, perhaps they should be called a race that became unable to reproduce rather than one that was always unable.

In the distant past, giants who had conquered half the continent challenged the old gods, and after a long war, they were ultimately defeated and paid the price for their arrogance.

The giant kingdom was razed to the ground without leaving a single ruin, and the surviving giants who fled were cursed by the old gods.

A terrible and vicious curse of extinction that would follow all giants forever.

– “Upon your king’s heart, torn into a thousand pieces, we inscribe our spell. You shall hear, and forever remember.”

– “The land of life proclaims: I strip from you the right to grow and multiply; no child’s laughter shall come to your women.”

– “The winter of death declares: Your gate of rest shall freeze and never open again. Wander as spirits in the void, yearning for the other side you shall never reach.”

– “The primordial chaos commands: Scatter and perish.”

The curse from the goddess of life made the giants infertile, and the goddess of death took away their peace in the afterlife.

Finally, the god of chaos took away their nation by cursing them so that whenever a group larger than a certain number gathered, internal strife would inevitably arise and lead to destruction.

Of course, despite their defeat, they were a race powerful enough to wage war against the gods, so they were able to resist the curse for a while… but even that lasted only a few hundred years at most.

All attempts to rebuild the kingdom failed due to internal conflicts, and the birth rate declined dramatically year after year until eventually no children were born at all.

Unable to bear children or form large groups, it was inevitable that they would scatter, die one by one, and head toward extinction.

The ancient giant civilization perished that way, and now they barely maintained their existence in small tribes of at most a few dozen members.

In frustration and resentment, despair and hopelessness, lamenting the inescapable curse—the fate of extinction that would surely come someday.

The Father of Heresy, Bergelmir, was once a member of such a minor tribe.

From his youth, his ideas and behavior were distinctly different from other giants, making him an oddball treated as strange among his kind.

From the perspective of the dying giants, even such an oddball was a precious compatriot, so they tolerated rather than discriminated against or rejected him, but Bergelmir eventually crossed the line.

‘By what principle does this curse work? Does it prevent women from becoming pregnant, or is it the opposite?’

Rather than lamenting their eventual extinction, Bergelmir tried to interpret the principles of the curse leading them to destruction and identify its limitations.

The idea of understanding the curse’s limitations to find a breakthrough could be considered a wise approach in its own way… but the problem was the means he chose to achieve this.

‘What is the scope of the curse? How does it define “offspring”? I’ve confirmed that we cannot have children through relationships among our own kind. But what about mixed blood with other races?’

Dissection experiments to determine whether the infertility curse was placed on male or female giants.

Artificial insemination experiments to see what would happen if they tried to produce hybrids by mating with other races instead of fruitless giant-to-giant relationships.

Even breeding experiments to verify whether hybrids born through artificial insemination could reproduce among themselves to increase their numbers.

All these experiments were truly innovative, and they even achieved tangible results rather than ending as mere delusions, but…

“What is this, a monster…?!”

“Bergelmir! What are these things? What have you been creating here?!”

“These crude and ugly monsters are supposed to be our descendants…? You want us to bear and raise such things? Are you insane, Bergelmir!”

However, the process and the results were so ugly and unethical that even giants facing extinction couldn’t help but ask if he had gone mad.

In human terms, it would be like creating a dog modified to bear human children, then presenting human-faced dogs and dog-faced humans created by mixing human and dog essences as our children.

Bergelmir argued that this was the only way for giants to continue their lineage, but how could the other giants accept such an argument?

The members of Bergelmir’s tribe unanimously agreed on his punishment, and Bergelmir was banished with the contemptuous title of heretic.

Most of his ugly and hideous experimental subjects were also incinerated to ashes.

The only surviving experiments were the Kobold-Giant-Human hybrid he named Ogre and the Werebeast-Giant-Fairy hybrid he called Troll.

The exiled Bergelmir spread these two experimental species—Trolls and Ogres—throughout the continent and observed as they grew, multiplied, and gradually increased in number.

And then he became convinced.

The method he had devised to counter the goddess’s curse—the idea of continuing the giant bloodline through experimental subjects like Trolls and Ogres—was indeed the right answer.

Of course, such creatures were merely degraded substitutes, far too inferior in terms of both power and intelligence to be worthy heirs of giants, but that was something that could be gradually improved over time.

The lifespan of giants was comparable to that of great dragons as long as they weren’t killed, so Bergelmir had more than enough time.

At least that’s what Bergelmir thought at the time.

Until the day when the surface suddenly became a graveyard of demigods, and all powerful beings had no choice but to head to the great underground cavern.

—-

When the strongest beings from across the continent fled to Naraka to escape Heaven’s Wall, Bergelmir also descended underground with his subordinates who served him as their father and master.

While the strength of Trolls and Ogres themselves was unremarkable, their king, Bergelmir, was a powerful warrior befitting a pureblooded giant, capable of fighting on equal terms with decent dragons.

After conquering several castles, destroying gorges, and burning plains, Bergelmir established a kingdom in Naraka for himself and his experimental subjects.

A kingdom for experimental subjects. Yes, it was a kingdom for experimental subjects.

Unlike Bergelmir, they had no need to leave the comfortable surface and descend to Naraka, yet they came underground without hesitation, unable to let their king go alone—loyal subjects.

Their loyalty was impressive enough to move even Bergelmir, who had created them as tools, and afterward, he accepted the Trolls and Ogres not as mere experimental subjects but as his true people.

To be precise, they were treated more like soldiers than citizens, but soldiers are still citizens, aren’t they?

That’s why the terrible news that these people were suddenly dying in droves was a matter serious enough for the king himself to rise and take action.

“It was war, so I won’t speak of grudges. But you monkeys attacked my territory and made me your enemy. I have no reason not to kill you.”

And now, having donned his armor and left the palace for the first time in ages, Bergelmir found before his eyes a monkey presumed to be the culprit.

“And you, Orc. Your accompanying this monkey means you were also present at the scene?”

Moreover, standing right beside him was Caljarat, the Orc battle maniac notorious for picking fights with anyone.

“Same gang—no, with this level of power, you must have been the leader of these rock monkeys.”

“…Hmm, do I look like it?”

Therefore, Bergelmir judged Caljarat to be the perpetrator who had led the rock monkey army to destroy his fortress and slaughter his soldiers.

Although he seemed somewhat weakened by recent events, Caljarat was originally powerful enough to easily dominate a minor race.

He had been a violent and bellicose battle maniac who had clashed with numerous forces in various places, causing countless bloodbaths.

With this in mind, the reason for attacking his fortress without so much as a declaration of war or challenge was easy to deduce.

“There’s no use pretending. It was a ploy to lure me out of the castle, wasn’t it?”

Everything was groundwork laid to lure Bergelmir out of his palace and deal with him quietly in a place without interference.

Bergelmir thought—no, was convinced—that this battle-crazed maniac had come for him this time.

“I’ve come as you wished, so you shall pay the price for your insolence.”

Of course, this was a misunderstanding wrong from premise to conclusion…

“Ha, is that so? Go ahead and try. If you can, that is.”

Instead of protesting and correcting this grave misunderstanding, Caljarat bared his hostility with a belligerent attitude, twitching the tusks protruding from both sides of his mouth.

An attitude that said “come at me if you dare.”

It seemed more like a madman’s bluff than a warrior’s dignity, but from Caljarat’s perspective, it was sincere rather than a bluff.

For Caljarat, the appearance of Bergelmir as an enemy was not something to fear or avoid, but rather something to welcome.

Why, you ask?

To properly get revenge on Haschal, he needed to replenish the power he had lost, and conveniently, suitable prey had appeared right before his eyes.

So it was only natural for him to welcome the fight. At least for him.

…Of course, to truly welcome this, the prerequisite was winning without significant loss.