"Will you tell me what I want to know?" Kaito raised an eyebrow warily upon seeing the woman speak, as she did not seem stronger than the others, at least not enough to speak for all of them.
The giant frowned, sensing his thoughts, but gritted her teeth and forced herself to speak politely, even bowing slightly as a sign of respect.
"L-leader?!"
"That is not necessary..."
"You do not have..."
"Silence!" she interrupted all the giants in front before turning her gaze back to Kaito. "I will tell you, so please leave my village"
"Your village? Are you their leader?" Kaito asked.
"Yes, I took the position after Matrona's death recently.
Matrona's death affected Diane, so she decided to flee the village" the giant leader explained.
"Where to?" Kaito asked directly, not caring about the overall situation, since he already knew it from the anime, he only wanted to know where she went.
"You will not hurt her?" the leader asked, she had her suspicions seeing that Kaito was trying to talk and was not killing any of them despite being able to, but she had to confirm it.
"I will not"
"You know, you could have started with that" the amazon leader sighed.
And the resentful looks from everyone around seemed to indicate they agreed with her.
"I forgot" Kaito shrugged. "So, where did she go?"
"We only know she fled south two days ago, nothing more. She could have changed direction at some point"
"That is enough, I suppose" Kaito said, when it came to searching, he was very efficient, so having a direction and knowing it had not been long was enough.
"Alright, goodbye then" Kaito said and immediately left, not wanting to waste any more time there than he already had, but remembering something, he looked back.
"By the way, does your village have a hammer shaped weapon?"
"The war hammer? Yes, why?" the giant asked in confusion.
"Does Diane have one?"
"Yes, even though it is an elite weapon among giants, it fits Diane's style perfectly, which made her worthy of one despite not having the rank yet"
"Good, I am leaving then" Kaito said quickly and departed, leaving all the giants with confused expressions about his intentions.
The truth was that Kaito did not remember where Diane got her hammer from, since she had already left and would not return before the story began, it was logical to assume she either did not get it from here or had already taken it when she left, but Kaito still decided to confirm before leaving so he would not have to come back later.
...
Entire hours passed, the sun was already beginning to set on the horizon, bringing twilight with it.
But more importantly, Kaito finally found Diane's trail.
He spent a while searching in a straight line until, after going too far, he realized there were no signs and she probably had not gone that way.
After realizing that, he went back and asked in the villages closest to the giant clan to the south. Fortunately, a giant is not hard to notice, so they quickly confirmed they had seen a brown haired giant with twin tails, and that she had gone east from that village.
Finally, heading east, Kaito found clues that led him to his target.
Especially because to the east there was a forest, so finding traces was easier than on the plains. He easily found many broken branches and an artificial path cutting through the vegetation.
Following that path, Kaito went deeper and deeper into the forest. Somehow, by the time he realized it, the sun had already fully set and darkness dominated the place.
Not only that, what were once normal sized trees were now, the deeper he went, becoming larger and larger, so much that they would seem normal for a giant.
Which in other words means the tracks ended.
Kaito had to search again through the forest at full speed for hours.
"Damn it, why does she not stay in a city like a normal person?" Kaito could not help but complain, when he entered the forest he had no idea it would be this large.
"Or is the fatigue just messing with me?"
Despite moving slower than usual while searching for Diane and with his night vision not being as good as normal vision, even so, after searching for so long not only had he not found her but the forest did not seem to end.
At some point he began to think that the forest was not huge, but that his mind was simply confused.
After a while, after having searched all day, Kaito finally found her.
Although found might not be the right word, since he literally fell in front of her by accident.
While checking the area, a simple mistake made him fall into water, leaving him soaked in hot water.
For a moment his brain shut down, the hot water felt strangely comfortable, almost making him want to stay there for a moment without reacting.
It was only the movement of water in front of him that made him react.
In front of him was a completely naked girl with large features, with enormous breasts in every sense of the word, and equally thick thighs, embodying the expression of an hourglass figure.
She reacted immediately, grabbing a hammer from beside the water and attacking Kaito.
The rushed movement made her large breasts bounce first to one side and then the other in an exaggerated way like a pendulum whose center guided Kaito's gaze, with no coverage at all.
"A human!" Ignoring the view she was giving, she shouted angrily as she attacked Kaito.
"Damn it, wake up!" Kaito slapped his cheeks hard, forcing himself to snap out of it immediately and rising into the air until he was above the naked giant in front of him.
"Wait, I am not human" he said immediately.
"You are not..." As little knowledge as a Diane who had just fled the giant clan might have, she knew humans do not fly or have wings, so she had to believe him.
"You are not human, then... you are a pervert!"
As soon as she knew he was not human, Diane's anger disappeared, but it was instantly replaced by embarrassment as she noticed her state.
She dropped the hammer into the water, causing a large splash, while covering her chest with her arms and sinking as much as possible into the water.
She sank so much that only part of her face remained above, surprising Kaito.
'Is it that deep'" he wondered to himself.
"I am not a pervert"
"Of course you are. You were staring at my chest just a second ago!" Diane exclaimed.
'And can you blame me?' Kaito thought, but out loud he said something else. "Sorry, I was not looking at you, I just spaced out. I am a bit tired. This forest is incredibly huge"
"You... do you have something on your mind?"
"What?"
"I mean, do you have something you are thinking about?" Diane repeated, suddenly changing the topic and forgetting the previous one, reacting as if she had found hope out of nowhere. "Do you not know? You cannot enter the Mind Forest with things on your mind, the forest feeds on that and becomes more dangerous"
"Is that so?"
"Yes, it is an ancient legend in the giant clan"
"Then why are you here?"
"Hehe, I ran away from the clan, since I escaped because I do not like their mentality, they would never imagine I would cross the Mind Forest, right? They will not search in this direction," Diane said, explaining her plan proudly.
"Although they do not seem to be searching for you much"
"How do you know? Were you at the clan?" Diane asked suspiciously.
"Yes, I come from there actually. I have been looking for you"
"For me? Why?" Diane was getting more and more confused. "Does it have something to do with your current problem?"
"...maybe" Kaito replied, though in reality he was thinking something else. 'Do I even have a problem? I think this forest is just a lie'
"Excellent!" Diane replied excitedly.
"Excellent? Why?" Now it was Kaito who did not understand the girl's thoughts.
"Because if we each tell the other our problems, we can get out of here, right? I heard people solve their problems by talking"
"Do not tell me... you are lost too?"
"A... haha... maybe?" Diane said while looking away. "That does not matter, let's start pervert..."
"Kaito" he corrected.
"Kaito, listen to my story. You will see that I am right.
It all started 730 years ago, when I was born. Since I am smaller and weaker than the rest, they always treated me worse. They even gave me a hammer that multiplies my strength. In a clan that values strength above all, having to use an artifact just to match your companions' strength, do you know how embarrassing that is?
But luckily Matrona, ah, Matrona is..."
For a while longer, Diane continued telling her story while Kaito listened. Even though he already knew most of it, he simply nodded in agreement from time to time or acted surprised at others until she finally finished.
In reality, more than her story, he was interested in the forest around them, not only did he not remember anything like this being mentioned in the anime, but none of his abilities had reacted.
Kaito did not know whether they were in a normal place and Diane was exaggerating, or if they were in a place dangerous enough that his abilities did not even have a chance to react.
"What do you think? Am I not right?" she asked, although from Kaito's point of view, that was not really a question but simply Diane seeking validation for her own opinion.
"Let's see, regarding humans, that is nonsense" Kaito replied after thinking for a moment.
"W-what? Nonsense?"
"Yes, does hating all humans not seem exaggerated to you?"
"They killed Matrona, they are all heartless murderers" Diane snapped, offended.
"No, no, no, all of humanity did not kill Matrona, it was a specific group. Think of it this way, even though many giants treated you badly, Matrona did not, right? Not all giants are the same, and it makes no sense to hate them all. The same goes for humans. Terrible tragedies have been born from that kind of thinking you have now"
"Really? Like what?"
"..."
"Well, I cannot tell you now, when I tell you my story you will understand" Kaito said, avoiding the question.
"Fine, even though I still hate humans, I can admit you are right about that. But what about the rest?" Diane asked.
Like anyone driven by emotions, she understood the logical version and why she was wrong, but that did not magically change her personality or make her admit her mistakes.
"As for leaving your clan? I guess it is fine, I am not really sure but, if you do not want to be somewhere you can just leave, right?
Although there is all that about responsibility, if they never treated you well then you do not really owe them loyalty" regarding that, Kaito did not really know what was correct, so he simply gave his honest opinion.
Of course, one of the reasons for that opinion is that Diane has no real bond, whether physical or emotional, with the clan, she has no responsibility there nor people depending on her. So what is her reason for staying in that place really? Her race? If that were enough, there would only be one country in the entire world.
"Good!" Diane nodded happily with a smile. "I knew a pervert who stared at my chest for four whole seconds would agree with me"
"You really counted?... never mind" Kaito sighed, she was not the first straightforward and unfiltered person he had met. "So? Am I supposed to see the forest smaller now or something?" he asked, returning to what mattered.
(~~~~~(End)~~~~~)
{Author's Note: You can, and definitely should, consider this an AU. The reason? I literally looked up timelines and other questions both on the wiki and on Google, and they all contradicted each other, so I do not have a clear idea of how everything happened in NNT.
To give an example, the Seven Deadly Sins were formed ten years before the story begins, and most sources say that Ban and Elaine's event happened ten years before that. So far so good, the problem comes with Diane, who in most of what I found is said to have left her clan shortly after the Ban and Elaine event, and after leaving her clan she meets King. Now, anyone who has watched the anime knows that when those two met, Diane was basically a child, so it does not make sense for that to have happened only twenty years before the main story. Considering Diane is 750 years old, twenty years should not make that much of a difference. Another issue is where Diane's hammer comes from, in some places it says it is a sacred treasure given by Liones with the founding of the Seven Deadly Sins, while others say it is a giant artifact, which makes sense until you remember how Diane was treated in her clan.
There are many more cases like that, so in the end there is no way to know for sure. What you can be certain of is that here, obviously, Diane is already in her anime version, not as a child.
After looking into it a bit, I found that this is not the fandom's fault for not being accurate or anything like that, but rather the story's. Outside of the main plot there is very little information, to the point that magic, literally one of the most basic concepts, does not even have an official explanation.}
+15 chapters in advance on Patreon.
p-atreon.com/IAMME26
(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)