Chapter 5: Rural

The village, like many others, wasn’t ostentatious. There was no need to stand out unlike the capital city. Here, no corporations competed in who could have the tallest high-rises or fanciest HQ. In fact, the village’s identity revolved around its proximity to the famous monastery, and thus any kind of tall, elaborate storefront or home would detract from its image.

Consequently, even at 50ft tall Yun towered over most of the buildings around her. Most were just one or two stories tall, and made of simple wood and concrete.

The giant woman reached out to her right side and set her palm atop one of the stores. Pressing down, she flattened it into cracked wooden boards and paneling.

“Ha.”, laughed Yun. “This will go faster than I expected. A mixed blessing, but probably better over all. I still have to visit the capital after all.”

With her body facing a cluster of the courtyard-circling buildings, Yun raised her foot high, tilted it at an angle to cover two roofs, then stomped it down. Her sole met no real resistance. It was like stepping on a model made from twigs.

She stepped into the throng of closely packed structures. Up and down her knees went, flattening the quaint livelihoods beneath 7ft feet. Yun arched her leg back then pushed it forward in a kick. Bits of concrete and wood flew all the way towards the other side of the town. She laughed.

“Fun, but I bet it’s funner when the buildings are full. You people are certainly tastier than timber and concrete~”

Yun lifted up her leg to look at her sole. A wooden door was caught between her big and index toe. She grinned, then flexed that subtle aura of hers and the inanimate object seemed to fall right into her body as if her form was as passable as air. It occurred to one of the hiding village-goers, watching in anxious curiosity, that she might’ve been absorbing people more grotesquely for her own amusement rather than any need.

Yun walked deeper into the village. Everyone by now knew there was a commotion, but not all knew exactly what--or rather who--it was. Like an apex predator in the jungle, she wandered through the plain streets. Her heavy steps thudded the ground and shook the roofs above those who thought it wise to hide.

Yun had a way to suss them out. Their minds called to her: their ‘selves’. She could suss out the bits of sapient existence. Pieces of the universe and thus, by extension, pieces of herself.

A couple had hold up in their meager single-story dwelling. The outdated ceiling flaked with every tremor of Yun’s stroll. They watched as the bits of paint and plaster fell down. Each of the pair screamed when the ceiling cracked. A giggle rung out directly above: that’s where she was. Moments later, too fast for them to process, a foot came down and crushed them down as the couple embraced one more time out of fear.

Another building had a group of tourists in it. The owners were kind enough to let them also hide out in there. It was crushed in a step.

A small grocery store was filled with local shoppers from earlier. They figured it’d be better to just hold up in a corner in there, rather than run out as a big easy to spot mob. Yun took pleasure slowly squishing them down into easily absorbed smears.

All the while, the giant robed woman laughed and laughed. The various minds lingered within her, screaming out for a release they couldn't’ find. She was holding them, knowing that soon as she dissolved them she’d have to expand.

‘Just a bit longer’, thought Yun. She turned her head to some of the fleeing crowds. They were heading towards the edge of the village, though their lesser selves could only run so fast, especially when tripping over one another in their panicked fear.

‘I wouldn’t want them to think they could get away from me, even as I am now.’

Yun stretched her arms wide as though to hug something as large as herself.

“Come to me. Embrace your future. Embrace your end~”

Her fingers parted. Her arm split down along the lines of her fingers, which lost their nails and shape as they morphed into something else. Even the fabric of her robe sleeves melded into Yun’s flesh. Though her flesh kept its fair-skin shade, with the skin not breaking to reveal any red and bloody bits, Yun’s arm transformation was disturbing nonetheless to the poor foolish people that paused their escape to stare.

The strips of her arm grew thinner as they multiplied. Where the limbs once were now wiggled dozens of thin, vermiform palish tendrils. They stretched and wiggled as she moved forward towards the nearest mob of people she could find.

“To me~”, she said. Her ‘arm’ surged forward as a torrent of putty-consistency tentacles and washed over the mob. The wiggling appendages sucked their prey in and pumped them to the center of Yun’s body.

“And you all too~”, said Yun as she did a 90-degree turn to her left. Her other arm surged and roped-up a good dozen there as well.

The victims screamed till the flesh engulfed them. Yun closed her eyes, focusing, *purring* as she felt their bodies melt. She repeated the gesture a few more times, and each time she got a bit more in her ‘catches’.

With hundreds of bodies languishing in her superior being, Yun bit her lower lip, closed her eyes, and dissolved them all at once.

“Ah!~”

The bliss was expected, and still she keeled over. Tentacle-mass-arms hit to the ground and crashed through a few more buildings: a few more selves absorbed and melted then and there as a consequence. Her body surged up and out. Hope sank in the few people too stubborn to flee, but too curious to look away. Her shadow rose up and up and she finished growing at 10 times her old height.

Using her meditation techniques, the now 500ft tall Yun steadied her breathing. Her arms, now long strands of tentacles, had pooled to the ground and fanned out a bit. Without her really thinking about it. As she grew, that flesh of hers tore through homes and storefronts while entrapping everything in their way. Simply by growing, she had acquired more victims.

It occurred to Yun that if she absorbed all her victim’s selves at the moment of absorption *and* immediately reached the height such bounties offered, then she’d explode in height. As she grew, she’d get more victims, grew more, and so on in a sort of critical reaction. Of course, she also realized it’d require a dense enough area to grow in--either that or starting to absorb the ground in earnest.

She decided to keep it in mind for later. For now, there was a village to absorb.

Yun rose up to her new height. Buildings which would have been lucky to crest her waist before now sat well below her knees in height. Mobs of people in the distance, once ankle-height, now seemed to her less than an inch.

The enlightened woman drew her tentacular arm-limbs back into her body: and all the catches with them. As she reformed her arms and the robe-sleeve fabric, all the people and rubble melded into her body. A couple hundred more poor souls got crushed and melted by her terrifying body’s ever-changing inner-workings. She clung to each of their sense of self: prisoners, for now. Their bodies were gone though, as was all the building material she had drawn up with her semi-solid tendrillic expanse.

Yun raise her foot up and took one big step atop a fleeing mob, then another. Each stamp of her sole claiming dozens of lives. Buildings buckled under her steps. Entire streets fell in the span of seconds. She was like a monster out of a movie, methodically crushing and crunching every building or pack of humanity there was to nab.

Also like a monster from a movie, a bit of a defense force showed up. Enough of the villagers must’ve called the authorities for them to send some help. Of course, reports of a giant flesh-shifting woman were hard to take seriously, especially when the woman was described as the famous and much-maligned business tycoon Yun. Matters were complicated by few panicked villagers having the foresight to record the far-fetched attack, and even those that did were barely viewed and decried as fakes.

Still, the government had sent a couple trucks to the village. They expected to quell some sort of mass hysteria. It was possible, they thought, there was some chemical leak from a crushed transit craft or the like. Needless to say they were surprised to see a village half-ruined by a towering giant woman. They phoned in the report, and went unbelieved by their superiors who thought the soldiers roped up in the hysteria. At command’s insistence, they approached the edge of the village. There, they were just in time to see Yun stuff a handful of screaming tourists into her mouth.

The gigantic being took great pleasure in swishing the morsels around. Inside her mouth, the men and women floundered against her tongue and in her spit. She broke their bones and popped their joints through the force of her suckling, all the while the sounds of her enjoyment smothered their screams much as her maw-flesh did.

Yun debated digesting them right in her mouth. There were manifold ways to do it. Acid injecting teeth sprouting from her cheeks, corrosive saliva, or just letting them sink into the flesh inside all had appeal. In the end, she swallowed them down normally and relished the bulge going down her throat.

The soldiers watched on. Shivers shocked down their spines at her satisfied “Ahh~”. Her fingers tapped at the belly-region of her simple robes. Though the means of ingestion were human enough, those of digestion were far from mundane. The tourists in her gut suffered all manner of probing tentacles and merciless acids within the ascendant body of Yun.

Those big brown eyes of hers turned to the soldiers, and their spine-shivers faded to make way for all-encompassing dread.

“Oh? A bit of the army’s here already.”

She started moving towards them. They were at the edge of the village, and thus only a short walk from her giant self in the middle. Buildings crumbled, cars crushed, and screams were silenced with every booming step of hers.

The soldiers raised their weapons and fired. Rifles shots seemed to disappear into the fabric of those robes or, if aiming low, the fair skin of her exposed ankles. She paused over a couple hundred feet away from the squad. They saw her toes wiggle a small row of homes to dust.

“You’re just in time.”, came Yun’s booming voice. “To slake my thirst~”

Yun’s maw shot open and a surge of red tentacles shot out from her mouth alongside an unearthly roar. The thin, vein-like appendages headed straight for the soldiers, darting about if necessary. The force’s assault intensified, bullets flying in fear-driven response, but as before not a single scratch was made.

Pointed tips from the appendages pierced the soldiers with ease. Each man and woman had at least one of the foul things stabbing them. Not even those in the trucks were safe, as the onslaught of appendages pierced glass and steel like paper.

There wasn’t even time to squirm before Yun started draining her victims dry. Their blood and everything else their bodies had to offer was slurped up as a bit of refreshment for the monstrous woman. The tentacles reeled back into her throat with another roaring noise, and soon as they disconnected from their victims, the bodies collapsed to dry gray dust.

Yun raised her foot above the dried dusty remains of her foes and stomped down. Even those barest flakes of humanity were absorbed, as were those now unoccupied trucks were crumpled so nicely beneath her soles. The sensation prompted a coo, and Yun took inventory of all the selves she currently had wiggling in her body.

Thousands. She had casually absorbed thousands in her romp. She could read their thoughts, savor their despair. It was delightful. If just stepping on their trucks brought this much pleasure, she knew the absolute ecstasy and power that awaited her once she dissolved their minds into her dominant ‘self’.

Yun took a deep breath, focused, and silenced all those agonized minds within her.

A flood of pleasure wracked her body, far, far greater than anything she had ever known thus far. A loud roaring moan echoed for miles. The village disappeared under her expanding feet, along with the roads and sparse forests immediately nearby. The ground shook as her body wavered, as it took all Yun’s focus to keep from curling into a ball to better weather the storm of orgasmic bliss.

It was undeniable. Yun was more than big enough for a passing reconnaissance jet to pick up. There was no denying her no, no skepticism for the country’s leaders.

At one-and-a-half miles tall, Yun took a ground shattering step towards the capital city.