During Elbaph’s Winter Solstice Festival, the Giants fasted for twelve days to welcome the arrival of the Sun God.
Before the fast began, however, the Giants would hold a grand feast.
During the celebration, they brought out their finest food for staving off hunger—semLA—and ate enough of it to sustain themselves through the twelve-day fast.
Linlin’s hunger pangs had started because, after tasting the delicious semla, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Unable to endure the hunger during the twelve-day fast, her hunger pangs eventually erupted.
She completely lost her mind, went on a rampage, destroyed the Giant village, and even killed Elder Jorul.
Now the Winter Solstice Festival was rapidly approaching.
If Linlin’s hunger pangs flared up, things were going to get seriously troublesome.
Unfortunately, Thor was still just a baby who couldn’t speak and spent his days crawling around on the ground.
Giants really did develop far too slowly.
“Thor, let’s go find everyone and play!”
Realizing that only she and Thor were left and all their other friends had disappeared, Linlin began playing hide-and-seek, pretending to be the monster searching for everyone.
The big silly girl walked ahead.
Thor, twice her size, shakily pushed himself upright and followed behind her.
Even if Giants developed slowly, Thor couldn’t stand spending all day crawling around on the ground.
Whenever he had the chance, he still tried standing and walking on his own two feet.
It was just incredibly difficult.
A baby’s body had yet to fully develop, leaving him with terrible balance.
The slightest mistake would send him tumbling over.
This was the first time Thor had ever realized just how difficult something as simple as standing up and walking could be.
He did his best to follow Linlin on two legs.
The two Giants, one small and one large, entered the forest.
Before long, Linlin found Hajrudin and the others playing a game where they pretended to be the Giant Warrior Pirates.
“Found you!”
Linlin suddenly poked her head out from the bushes, startling all the children hiding in the forest.
“Oh no! Linlin’s here! Run!!”
The children scattered in every direction.
It wasn’t that they hated Linlin and were bullying her.
The Will of Bullying belonged next door in Naruto.
This was One Piece—here, there was only Haki.
The real problem was that playing Giant Warrior Pirates with Linlin meant getting hurt if you were lucky and breaking several bones if you weren’t.
She was simply too strong.
Even Giant children had to avoid her.
“Why won’t everyone play with me?”
Linlin squatted on the ground looking terribly aggrieved.
Thor staggered over and patted her head.
This big silly girl truly had no idea how strong she was.
“But Thor still plays with me! Thor’s the best!”
Linlin grabbed Thor’s little hand and happily started spinning in circles.
Thor instantly became a giant windmill.
Despite being only half his size, Linlin swung him completely off the ground.
Damn natural-born monster!
Only Thor’s body, strengthened by Ancient Giant blood, could withstand this kind of abuse.
Whatever…
He could treat it as training.
If he couldn’t even endure something like this, how was he supposed to dominate the world of One Piece someday?
Since he was already here—and had been born with such an absurd starting point—he might as well work hard and make something of it.
Otherwise, all that talent and those ridiculous stats would go to waste.
Hearing the loud whoosh-whoosh and the god-awful racket coming from the forest, the children who had just scattered curiously crept back to see what was happening.
What they found was Thor and Linlin playing their human-windmill game.
Hajrudin’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.
“Linlin, what are you doing?! Put my little brother down! He’s still a baby!”
“Huh?”
Hearing Hajrudin, the big silly Linlin instinctively let go.
‘Holy shit!’
Thor vanished into the horizon like a shooting star.
For the first time in his life, he got an early taste of what it felt like to fly.
…
“Thor? Why are you back already? Where’s your brother?”
Ida looked confused when Thor crawled back into the tavern alone.
She was changing Loki into a fresh set of clothes.
Hadn’t Thor gone out to play with Hajrudin?
Thor wanted to explain, but he couldn’t speak.
His vocal cords hadn’t developed fully yet, so all he could produce were babyish cries.
Linlin, that stupid girl, was ridiculously strong.
She had actually flung him all the way to the area near the Warrior Village.
No.
Change of plans.
It would be better for Linlin to leave Elbaph after all.
Otherwise, sooner or later Thor was going to die at the hands of a woman.
“Mom! Bad news!”
The tavern door flew open and Hajrudin rushed inside, desperately looking for Ida.
“Thor, he—!”
Hajrudin was so flustered that he could barely get the words out.
Ida deliberately planted her hands on her hips and pretended to be angry.
“Thor already came back by himself. Did you lose your little brother?”
“Huh?”
Only then did Hajrudin notice the oversized baby sitting inside the tavern.
The words in his mouth immediately died.
“Thor made it back… Thank goodness. You scared me to death.”
“You’re his big brother. You have to keep a proper eye on him.”
Ida began lecturing her son.
Hajrudin didn’t dare argue back.
If his mother found out that Linlin had literally thrown Thor through the air, he would definitely get an even harsher scolding.
After all, Hajrudin was the older brother who had abandoned his little brother for a girl and left Thor to play with Linlin.
Once Ida finished lecturing him, Hajrudin ran back outside alone.
He still needed to go to the House of Lambs and tell everyone that Thor had been found.
“Good boys. Sleep now.”
After changing Loki into a new set of baby clothes, Ida carried Thor and Loki back to their enormous crib.
Thor and Loki were both ten-meter-tall Giant babies.
It wasn’t easy for Ida to pick up the twin brothers at the same time.
Even in the miraculous world of One Piece, not everyone possessed monstrous strength.
Lying in the crib with nothing better to do, Thor carefully studied his twin brother.
Unlike Harald’s black hair, the hair that had begun growing on Loki’s head was purple—or perhaps more accurately, pinkish-purple.
If Loki didn’t have the same demonic horns as Harald, Thor would seriously have wondered whether Queen Estrid had been having an affair.
Incidentally, Thor’s hair was blond.
Father and twin sons somehow had three completely different hair colors.
That was probably just another wonder of the One Piece world.
Since they were twins, Thor and Loki both possessed those monstrous eyes, resembling the eyes of Jörmungandr from Norse mythology.
Loki never spoke.
He made no sounds and barely moved at all.
He was like a child abandoned by the entire world, doing nothing but staring out through those monstrous eyes as though silently cursing existence itself.
…
Evening was the tavern’s busiest time.
Hunters returning from expeditions into the Underworld and fishermen coming back from sea would all gather at the tavern after sunset to enjoy a good drink.
At first, the Giants of Elbaph had rejected Ida as an outsider.
But after she opened her tavern and more and more Giants began frequenting it, they gradually discovered that Ida was a genuinely kind woman.
No wonder King Harald loved her.
As the Winter Solstice Festival drew closer, Elbaph’s weather grew colder.
Even the sunny Sun World was blanketed in thick snowfall, piling high across rooftops and roads.
The tavern doors swung open.
A towering Giant brushed the accumulated snow from his body before stepping inside.
The moment everyone recognized him, the tavern fell silent for a brief instant.
Then the Giants raised their mugs one after another.
“To the great King Harald!”
“To Elbaph’s wise king!”
“Hahaha! Drink as much as you want, brothers! Tonight’s drinks are on me!”
“Long live King Harald!”
The tavern immediately became even livelier.
Harald had spent the day handling affairs of state in the Giant royal city of the Heaven World.
The moment night fell, he had hurried straight to Ida’s tavern.
“Dad!”
Hajrudin ran over and gave his father a huge hug.
Of course, at only around five meters tall, Hajrudin couldn’t even wrap his arms around Harald’s leg.
“Have you been behaving yourself and listening to your mother, Hajrudin?”
Harald lifted his son high into the air.
Compared to Harald’s towering height of more than sixty meters, Hajrudin really was about the size of a little chick.
Harald set Hajrudin on his shoulder.
He was just about to go help Ida when his lover immediately rejected him for being too huge and getting in the way.
“You should go check on the children instead.”
Ida pointed toward the back.
“Thor and Loki are in the room. I’m too busy to watch them right now.”
“Then I’ll go see the children.”
Despite being the strongest Giant in all of Elbaph, Harald was astonishingly obedient in front of Ida.
Perhaps that was simply what love did to a man.
Thor was sleeping in the crib when he suddenly sensed someone enter the room.
A moment later, both he and Loki were scooped up by an enormous pair of hands.
Harald held Loki in his left arm and Thor in his right.
The two ten-meter-tall babies suddenly looked perfectly normal in the arms of their sixty-meter-tall father.
“Thor and Loki… which one of you is the older brother, and which one is the younger?”
Harald fell into deep thought as he held the twins.
Thor and Loki had been born at nearly the same time, and newborn twins looked almost identical.
Then Queen Estrid had caused that entire disaster, resulting in both Thor and Loki being thrown into the Underworld.
Even the servants in the royal city no longer knew which of the two had been born first.
“Hajrudin, who do you think should be the older brother between Thor and Loki?”
Harald asked his son for his opinion.
Hajrudin’s answer was exactly what one would expect from a child.
“Whoever becomes stronger later gets to be the older brother. An older brother has to protect his younger brother, so he has to be stronger than him.”
“Hahaha!”
Harald burst out laughing.
“Then you’d better work hard and become stronger, Hajrudin. You’re the older brother of both Thor and Loki.”
“Of course! Someday I’ll become even stronger than you, Dad!”
“Then your father will be looking forward to it.”
It was a warm exchange between father and son.
Thor, however, almost couldn’t bear to watch.
Future Hajrudin…
He’d end up as little more than roadside fodder.
“All right.”
Harald carefully placed Thor and Loki back into their crib.
It was obvious that Ida was taking excellent care of Loki.
Harald could entrust the twins to his beloved without the slightest worry.
“Hajrudin, make sure you take good care of your little brothers.”
“O-Of course!”
Hajrudin suddenly sounded a little guilty.
Maybe he really shouldn’t take Thor to the House of Lambs anymore.
Linlin was way too dangerous.