With a newfound respect for dwarves and dwarf-kind whose technological ingenuity had begun to extend beyond their underground towns and cities—bringing exciting contraptions of great length to the people across the land—One Swing had accepted the dwarf woman’s quest, and was immediately led to another odd contraption sitting atop the railway. It was a small platform, lying across the tracks, with a giant lever in the middle, seemingly made for two people to pull.

“What is this?” One Swing asked.

“I call it a rail trolley,” Condie replied. “If you pump that lever up there, it’ll take us further up the track. Might take a while, but it’s definitely faster than walking. Ah, climb up and I’ll show you.”

After the two of them boarded the platform, Condie reached her black-stained hands up to the lever and jumped to grab hold of it. However—

“… It’s not moving.” Still holding the lever, the woman tried to pull it down but was instead left dangling beneath it, her little toes barely tapping the base of the trolley below. “I think we might be too heavy…”

Strange, One Swing thought. The trolley looked to be made to accommodate two people, so it was odd for it to have already reached its capacity with just the two of them on it.

Shifting his grip on his hefty one-hundred-and-sixty-four foot long weapon—the weighty blade trailing fifty meters into the sky and towering far above the high walls of Zwieback still visible in the near distance—One Swing offered his hand instead.

“Let me try.”

Letting Condie drop back to the platform, One Swing tugged the lever down. Surprisingly, he found it to go down quite smoothly, and—with the sharp creak of shifting metal—the trolley began to move along the tracks.

One Swing lifted the lever back up— And then pulled it back down once again. With each pull, the trolley began to move faster and faster along the track. And so, with the force of somebody who had diligently practiced this movement time and time again—

—One Swing swung the lever down.

“Edge Breaking Cobalt—!” One Swing shouted. It was the name of his beloved weapon. Part of its name, at least. He didn’t know why he shouted it in that moment, seeing as the one-hundred-and-sixty-four foot blade was still trailing fifty meters behind him, held atop his shoulder by his one free hand. But he did so anyway. Because it felt appropriate somehow.

As One Swing continued to rapidly pull the lever, the trolley continued to fly rapidly down the track.

“S-so fast!” Condie clung tightly to the base of the moving platform as her messy orange hair flittered violently in the wind. “At this rate, we should get there in no time!”

With his own long hair flittering at his back—and the scarf around his neck leaving a long red trail fluttering behind them—One Swing continued to pump the lever, until a tap at his leg signalled him to stop.

“That should be enough!” Condie shouted over the wind. “We’re nearing the end! Let’s let it roll the rest of the way!”

One Swing nodded, and let go of the lever. Just as Condie had said, it continued to roll along the rail, before eventually coming to a stop.

“Oh! Perfect!” Condie exclaimed, jumping down from the trolley and looking around the area they had ended up at. It looked much the same as the place they had come from, with the look of an abandoned worksite, scattered with tools, crates, and piles of gravel, metal, and lumber. The only exception being that there were no tall walls of civilization in sight, instead replaced by a clearing of felled trees that stretched out a little towards the woodland in front of them.

The rail tracks also seemed to stop just a little ahead as well, One Swing noted, seemingly abandoned mid-way through layering the base of the tracks with gravel.

“Well.” Condie nodded, giving One Swing a wide grin. “We’re here!”

“Yes.” One Swing nodded back. “We’re here.”

“…”

“…”

“I.. didn’t tell you what the actual quest was yet, did I?”

One Swing shook his head. “My apologies. It seems I forgot to ask before accepting it.”

Enticed by the promise of a quest with substantial length—a promise that was undoubtedly delivered on due to Condie’s railway—One Swing had made the mistake of accepting a quest without actually finding out what he was supposed to do.

“Well,” Condie began. “We were trying to clear the forest up ahead to lay some of the tracks, but it turns out there’s some monster hanging around up there. We haven’t been able to make any progress since then and I’ve been waiting for the Adventurers Guild to send someone in to clear it out.”

“I see.” One Swing nodded. “What kind of monster? Is it a long one?”

“A long—? Ah, uh, maybe? It’s a troll.”

“Very well.” One Swing nodded again, before turning towards the forest ahead. “I’ll slay it immediately.”

Trolls were, indeed, very long. They were a creature whose length could even reach those of some of the large houses and buildings you might find in the Capital. One Swing liked the idea of fighting something so long.

"W-wait!" Condie stopped him. "You don't even know where it is yet, and there's something I need to warn you about!"

“Ah…” One Swing came to a stop., and turned back to the small woman. “My apologies. I seem to have gotten ahead of myself…”

“Alright, so this troll…” Condie continued. “I haven’t seen it myself, but some of the workers who did see it said that it was Cursed. That’s what the Adventurers Guild seems to think as well. It's a pretty infamous one that they’ve known about for a while but haven’t been able to put together a group to take it down yet. Shur-Burt the Troll King, it’s called.”

“Troll King?”

“Ah, that’s just what it’s been calling itself. It’s one of those clever ones, apparently. I don’t know if it’s actually some kind of troll royalty or something. You’re an adventurer, so you probably know more about this kinda stuff than I do.”

Though One Swing had heard about monsters who were capable of speech, he hadn’t actually seen or met any in his time. Unless, of course, he had seen one, and it was promptly dispatched in a single swing of his gigantic blade before it had the chance to demonstrate its speech capabilities to him. That was always a possibility.

He also doubted that monster royalty was a thing either. Monsters were simple creatures, and having the title of ‘King’ or ‘Queen’ was most likely a way for them to declare themselves the strongest of their kind. It was very possible that there were hundreds of ‘Troll Kings’ declaring themselves as such all across the land.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

As for the thing that most concerned One Swing about this Troll King Shur-Burt…

“You said that this troll was Cursed? What kind of Curse does it have?”

Very rarely, people across the land were born with odd or abnormal abilities called Curses. They were bizarre—almost supernatural—abilities randomly given to only a rare few. However, as their name implied, Curses were, more often than not, a curse. Afflictions with no cure. One Swing had heard of people suddenly bursting into flames because of their Curse. Turning into living corpses. Driven mad by a heightened sense of self-awareness. Becoming invisible to the ones around them. One Swing had even heard a story from one of the guards back in Bredkrum about a woman who wouldn’t stop vomiting strange objects into her holding cell.

And it wasn’t just people that were born with Curses. It seems monsters were just as susceptible to the bizarre affliction.

“They say it’s got two heads instead of one,” Condie replied. “I dunno if that changes much, but you’d best watch out for it anyway.”

“I see.”

That didn’t sound like much of a problem for One Swing. It didn’t matter how many heads or limbs something had. Everything simply disappeared beneath the heft of his gigantic blade in a single swing anyway. It made no difference to him either way.

Condie pointed a finger into the forest ahead of them. “The tracks they found lead that way. It’s probably hiding out in some cave somewhere. You seem like a pretty capable guy, so I’m sure you’ll be able to find it.” Taking a seat back on the rail trolley atop the tracks, she shot One Swing a wide grin. “I’ll be waiting here for you to get back. And if it doesn’t look like you’ll be getting back... Well, I should be able to tell where you are and if you’re still alive or not by tracking that sword of yours over all the trees. Do try not to die though, yeah? When I finish building this railway and get my rail engine up and running, you’ll be the first one I call for to give it a test ride!”

One Swing smirked.

“I would like that very much.”

And then, with a small bow, he left towards the direction Condie had pointed him towards.

Making his way into the forest of trees, he very quickly found signs of the monster he was hunting.

Many a felled log laid across One Swing’s path ahead. It was obvious that something very big had come through this way, snapping the thick trunks of the trees and stomping the surrounding greenery into the dirt beneath its giant feet. Most definitely the work of a troll, One Swing thought.

Continuing to follow the path of destruction—just as Condie had said—One Swing stumbled upon a cave. It was tall and wide, and fixed into the side of a steep cliff. Just the right size for a troll.

“… Hm?”

As One Swing attempted to step into the mouth of the cave, he found himself unable to enter. Looking up, he realized the gigantic blade of his weapon would not fit beneath the roof of the cave. Truly a troubling dilemma. However…

One Swing smirked.

Tilting his blade backwards so that it trailed behind him instead, One Swing found he was able to enter the cave with ease. For a master of length like One Swing, knowing how to shift vertical length into horizontal length was child’s play for him.

Smiling smugly to himself, he continued into the cave, his long red scarf snaking along the ground at his back.

Travelling straight through the large tunnel, he eventually found himself entering a large cavern. From up above, soft streaks of light filtered down through the gaps in the stoney ceiling, illuminating the white glint of the many bones littering the entirety of the rocky floor. The sound of One Swing's boots crunched atop them, echoing across the stone walls of the cavernous formation as he made his way further in.

A sudden stirring from deeper in the cave made One Swing stop in his tracks.

“Who there?!” A booming voice echoed out across the cave. “Shur hear something!”

“Burt hear too!” Another booming voice followed. “Go check en-ter-ance!”

A low rumble shook the floor of the cavern as the sounds of giant feet stomped their way toward the entrance from further in. Grasping the handle of his colossal blade with both hands, One Swing held his ground.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Emerging from the blackness of the cavern, the lumbering beast finally made its way into the light.

“Wha—?!”

Condie’s information was correct. It was a troll. And it did have two heads. However, the troll in front of One Swing was not what he had expected.

The troll stood as tall as a house, its blueish-grey skin faintly glistening with blood and grime beneath the light filtering in from above. However, above the troll’s thick body—sitting atop the troll’s shoulders—wasn’t a head, but a skull. The white glint of the skull, completely picked clean of all flesh, was sitting where its head should have been, a crown of teeth and bones sitting atop its boney scalp.

And then the troll raised its arms to talk.

“Shur, look! Human in en-ter-ance!”

“Burt right! It puny human!”

At the end of each thick arm, two small heads looked down at the shocked man. Each head was attached to a different arm, like a crudely crafted hand puppet of sorts. A hand puppet made of meat. The grotesque effigies of meat, teeth, and eyeballs grinned down at One Swing, before turning to one another, jerking their meaty mouth flaps up and down in conversation.

“What do with it? Burt want eat?”

“Humm… Burt sick of human. Up to Shur if Shur want eat.”

As the two meat puppets flapped their meaty mouths at one another, a question from the man in front of them turned their attention back towards him.

“What… are you?” One Swing asked. “What happened to the Troll King?”

The two heads looked at one another for a moment, before turning back to look down at the man.

“Shur is Troll King.” One of them nodded.

“Burt is Troll King too.” The other nodded.

One Swing gestured up to the unmoving skull atop the troll’s body, still wearing a crown of teeth and bone. “And what of that one up there…?”

The two heads craned their neck-like arms to look back at the skull atop their shared body.

“Troll King weak so Shur eat.”

“Burt eat face. Become new Troll King.”

“I see…”

One Swing didn’t understand the full length of the horrible affliction this troll had been born with, but that was the nature of Curses. An unexplainable phenomenon that affected the afflicted individual in bizarre and horrific ways.

However, it didn't matter to One Swing. Because, Cursed or not, there was something he came here to do. And he knew the outcome would be the same either way.

One Swing smirked.

—And then he swung his blade down in front of him.

“Cobalt—!?”

However, as One Swing went to swing his sword over his shoulder, he was only met with the sharp clang of metal against stone.

“—Huh?!” Looking above him, he found the blade of his extraordinarily long weapon had clattered uselessly against the stone ceiling, not having enough room or momentum to make the full swing.

He had been outsmarted. By a troll, no less. This wicked being had twisted his own expertise on horizontal and vertical length and used it against him. This troll truly was a most formidable foe.

Before One Swing could start backing out of the cave—

“—Guh!”

One Swing felt a heavy foot slam against his body, kicking him back along the tunnel. Unable to keep hold of his weapon, it dropped to the floor with a hefty crunch as it buried itself into the stone.

With his stomach and chest burning in pain from the kick, and the rest of his body aching from his tumble across the floor, the weaponless One Swing could do nothing but watch as the grinning meat puppets descended upon him from above.