Giantess World
Cain looked around for the hottest girl possible and found her over a blacksmith’s anvil, a hammer in her hand, pounding away at an iron-hot axe. She had wet black hair glued to her forehead and sweat like rain over her soiled clothes. Her sleeves were pushed all the way up to her shoulders, exposing her bare arms, which were still fragile and feminine, and yet had a certain tight muscular strength to them. Her steel-gray eyes hardly blinked as hot iron coals sparked from every hit of her hammer against the metal. Her tongue poked slightly out from her lips and it was on that which Cain found himself fixated with, panting, watching her sweat and saliva mix with every swing of her arm.
“Hot damn!” he said, running towards her bare feet (as we all know that would be extremely safe while working with hot iron). “May this game never end.”
She didn’t see him until he was at her feet, pounding away at her ankles. Even then, she didn’t stop right away, causing hot sparks to rain around him. Then finally, when she realized that wasn’t going to scare him away, she threw down her hammer, slapped her hands to her knees, and fell onto her behind. Cain remained standing in front of her.
“Can I help you?” she asked, wiping her forehead with the back of her arm, which was so damp and grimy that it did nothing but soil her skin more.
Cain grinned. “You can do whatever you want to me. Help, hurt—I don’t care. I want you.”
“That’s great. I’m getting hit on by a newb.”
“Me? A newb? Ha! I scoff at the very idea.”
“Oh, really?” the blacksmith girl raised an eyebrow. “And what class are you, pray tell? A Beggar? An Idiot in Rags?”
Not even a flinch on Cain’s behalf. “If you would be so kind, I would be honored to be whatever class it is you teach, for I know you have too much class in you to not be a trainer.”
“…You’re right, I am a trainer. But only a fool asks to be that which he does not even know.”
“You make weapons! Ever since I first laid eyes upon you, I could tell you were a woman with skill. I’ll take what it is you teach, for better or worst, just so I may keep a part of you in me forever. At least, until I log off the game.”
“Game?”
“Come now! What is it that you teach?”
“…I teach the use of axes. Those who train under me become Axemasters.”
“You see!” he said, winking. “I would love to train under you and be your assmaster.”
“That’s ‘Axe’master, freak.”
“Ah, but a girl by any other name still smells as sweat!”
“Smells…as sweat… Okay… Do you want to be an Axemaster or not?”
“Do I get an axe?”
She stared at him.
“Oh, right, right. That would be stupid not to. Hey, is there an Axemaster club? Like, do you have membership cards and meetings that you attend? By ‘you’, I mean only you. You’re the apple of my eye, sweet thing.”
She kept staring. “You…really need to raise your Charm.”
“I put all my points in Good Looks.”
“I can tell you didn’t have many to spare.”
“Look, bitch, I’m the main character here. You don’t even have a name. You’re just a stupid NPC who does whatever I tell you to. Now, I’m telling you to make me an Axemaster. Make with the magic.”
The blacksmith girl scowled at him, reached into a small crate next to her, and pulled out a small axe and book, dropping them dangerously close to Cain. “Here you go. These belonged to the last Axemaster to say those words to me.”
“What happened to him?”
The girl twisted her hip, revealing a handheld axe, almost like a tomahawk, with a lifelike figure carved into the handle. It was then that Cain realized that figure was real, just melted down and hardened in the metal. He stared up at the girl, who had a smirk on her face.
“…You’re one sick bastard,” he said.
“I hope that axe gives you better Luck than its last owner.”
Cain picked up the book from the ground and turned it over. “Well, look at that. ‘Axemasters for Dummies.’ Very funny.” Then he reached for the axe, but the moment his fingers touched the handle, he felt a tingling course through his veins. He screamed and fell back, but the axe had taken hold in his hands and he couldn’t let go. The pain increased as his skin stretched, expanded, the veins ready to explode from his biceps. He was getting stronger. His arms doubled in size and his chest popped out like an iron breastplate. As if going through all of puberty in ten seconds, his beard grew longer and longer and chest hairs began to sprout in every direction, eventually covering his front as well as his back and even some other places. His thighs became sturdier, his muscles more toned, and…he realized he was getting shorter as well. Not by much, but at least half his original height, leaving him at only three inches tall, staring up at the blacksmith girl, who was still sitting down.
“I’m shrinking!” Cain yelled at up her.
“Of course you are. Male Axemasters are dwarves.”
“What!? I don’t want to be a dwarf!”
“That sucks,” she shrugged. “Guess I forgot to tell you.”
The transformation stopped and Cain looked at himself. Sure enough, he was buffer than even the toughest of jocks back at East Shore High, but he was also the chunkiest one, as well as the shortest, now. He waved his axe like an angry fist. “Bitch, bitch, bitch! I don’t want to be a hairy beast.”
She held up a finger. “Oh, wait, there’s one last requirement needed in order to become an Axemaster. You have to duel me.”
His jaw dropped. “What!?”
Grabbing a hot metal rod, she held it over her head and then swatted Cain like a bug. He screamed, torn between the burning sensation of the metal as well as the fact it had practically broken his skull. She did it again. He collapsed. A third time finished him off and he found himself unable to move.
“You’re dead,” the blacksmith girl said, standing up.
Cain tried to squirm, but found he couldn’t even do that. “Yeah, um… How do I revive?”
“Need a cleric.”
“Where do I get one of those?”
She pointed to a temple down the road and then returned to her blacksmithing.
Cain remained flattened on the ground, his skin burnt to a crisp. “How do I get there?”
“Most people walk.”
“Most people aren’t crushed into the earth with all their bones snapped into a million pieces.”
“That’s true.”
Cain was glad he could at least watch her, high above him, pounding away at the anvil, even if he couldn’t move. She paid him no mind, though. To her, he was just a bug, a stone, something not even worth the time it takes to glance towards. “Come on, there has to be another way to revive…”
“I thought all newbs knew how to revive. You die enough.”
“I know, but I always shut off the game when I die.”
She stopped hammering for a second. “What do you keep referring to as a ‘game’?”
“What do you mean? This here is a game. Neverquest.”
“No... ‘Neverquest’ is the name of our kingdom. What kind of fantasy world are you living in?”
“Forget it. I’ll just shut off the game and play later.”
“Yeah, okay,” the blacksmith girl rolled her eyes.
Cain subconsciously reached behind his head to flick the ‘off’ button on his game helmet. Nothing happened.
He tried again.
The girl was still staring down at him, her bare arms now folded across her chest.
“I…can’t seem to shut it off,” Cain said. “Maybe I can’t log out when I’m dead after I become a class.”
“I think you’ve been reading too many books. Now, if you don’t mind, I have some smelting to do.”
“What about me?”
“What about you? You’re dead.”
“I don’t want to be dead! Damn you, tell me how to revive!”
“I will,” she said. “As soon as I finish my work. You just stay there and remain…squashed until then.”