Flying Bird Town was one of the many obscure little towns along Kaibordo's border. It possessed all the traits common to most frontier settlements: poverty and backwardness, constant monster attacks, and not seeing a single outsider for one or two years at a time.
Moreover, it was so far from the heartland of the Empire that even from the town's location, one could not see Kaibordo's iconic central structure—the Legendary magic tower.
Of course, the lives of the people in the town were not affected by this. Every day, they still repeated the unchanging routines their ancestors had followed for centuries: working at sunrise and resting at sunset. Hunters went out with bows to hunt, farmwomen wove clothing to supplement the household income, and nobles painfully spent gold on spices to preserve "the dignity of their betters"...
This was a thoroughly inconspicuous and ordinary little town. No one would have believed that such a place could harbor any conspiracies or strange happenings. The peace born of poverty was the town's theme song, and even the Empire's tax collectors, who loved exploiting commoners and minor nobles, were usually too lazy to make a trip to such a place.
Yet on this day, on a morning that appeared no different from any other, the townsfolk witnessed a very unusual sight.
At least, to these residents, whose knowledge and horizons were limited to the scope of bards' songs, the presence of an uninvited guest was already something "astonishing."
He was a "little giant" standing at the town entrance, dressed in a furry cloak and wearing a bone faceplate, over four meters tall. As he stood motionless beside the wooden gatepost, his immense bulk was as oppressive as a furry little hill. Though this "hill" did not utter a word or make a single