Excerpt

After more and more shadows of withered trees, mushrooms, and puddles, it was awhile before they saw anything different. A blurry shadow that was much smaller than the trees made an appearance. The closer they got, the more defined the edges were, and the more human-like they looked. 

"Am I seeing things...?" Tatusya whispered out in astonishment.

"Then we must all be seeing things." Tadashi whispered back.

Everyone nodded with similar expressions of shock, surprise, and apprehension. 

Naoko had not read about a creature like this in the world book and did not remember coming across something like this in the creature encyclopedia. 

"They look like us but they're at least two times our size." Hansuke whispered. 

"Are we about to meet giants?" Tatsuya wondered aloud. 

While Naoko was still pondering over what they should do, Aimi made a suggestion, "I think it's better to wait for them to approach us."

Knowing that Aimi held memories beyond the world book, Naoko chose to bet on that knowledge and sounded her agreement. 

While they moved to stand back to back in a circle, more of those human figures appeared all around them. Before long, they got surrounded by the mysterious creatures whose features were still unclear. 

They still had not been able to identify the creature as human or not when the creatures suddenly came at them at a speed that the cameras could barely keep up with. 

"Humans?!"

"Giants!"

"What do we do?!"

"What's that they're wearing?"

Tatsuya, Hansuke, and Tadashi exclaimed and spoke over each other all at once. On the other hand, Naoko and Aimi remained quiet with serious and pensive looks on their faces. Everyone was using their preferred weapon of choice to fend off the creatures' attacks but made no move to go on the offensive.

"Even if they're human, we don't know if they're friendly. Focus on protecting ourselves. Don't hold back!" Naoko shared her judgement. The attacks were not light. Their mechas would begin taking significant damage if they continued to tank the damage this way. 

"Maybe we could try to communicate with-"

Tatsuya's speech got cut off when Aimi drew the first blood. It stunned everyone and caused them to take some damage to their mecha. Only Naoko who has BaoBao as her backup continued unscathed.

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