A Helping Hand - Part 1 (Patreon Commission for VDO)

TAGS: Growth/Expansion, Macro, Macro Growth, Pokémon, RPG Rules (Kinda)

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He didn’t intend to spend several weeks helping around town after the flood, but it felt cruel not to at least try and alleviate some of the suffering after what had happened. More rain than usual coupled with very high winds and an unfortunate landslide had buried that village under so much dirt and mud that those fortunate enough not to be buried underneath wet, sodden earth were washed away by the waters, leaving most of the villagers at the mercy of the elements.

For someone like him, used to sleeping in the great outdoors, this wouldn’t be much of a problem. But these were regular folk, not adventurers, especially not ones on his level of power; it’d be insanity to leave them to fend for themselves, especially when most of their worldly possessions were either gone or buried underneath several tons of mud. Thus, the only sensible thing to do was to halt his travels and do what he could to help around.

It was, at the very least, a welcome break from his usual fare. For Blake, the adventurer’s life was one that brought with it a curious mixture of excitement and stress, as while he rarely ever found a challenge he couldn’t live up to, it was still moving from one place to another and never having any time to just sit down, settle for a bit, and not have to worry about whether he’d have a bed at the end of the day. And while he definitely wouldn’t have one there either, it was at least a constant, a place that wouldn’t change, even if he had to build it from scratch.

Not much of a problem though, given the state of him. For some reason, ever since registering with the Adventurer’s guild a month or so back, his body had begun developing far faster than it ever had… which was saying something, given that he’d never been that small to begin with. Blake wanted to think that this was a coincidence, but considering the contracts he signed and the magics that were cast on him, he could never be quite certain.

Standing a good three feet above everyone around him and about two feet wider if not more, the beefy hunk of Houndoom looked entirely out of place next to everyone around him, people who were actually people-sized and didn’t look like they’d been hitting the gym for several years in a row. It certainly helped with moving large quantities of building materials, but still, it was occasionally difficult to do any work at all when most of the people around him were often too enraptured by the way he looked to actually do anything…

… that, and the fact that he ended up doing everything himself entirely by accident. He’d be picking up a few planks to set up a chunk of a wall, and before he knew it, he had the entire supply on top of one shoulder and half a house built before he even knew it; sometimes he would fall into something of a trance, bringing bag after bag of cement over to a building site, piling up bricks until he built an entire domicile before realising he’d done so. It was surprisingly easy to lose track of time as well, enough so that he’d wake up one morning and find himself three days after last he checked.

It was hard work, getting a village back together after a disaster that large. Hard, but rewarding, and not just in the sense that he was helping people get back on track so they’d have something to live for: his body, too, reacted by adapting to the pressure placed on it, since clearly the Houndoom was in need of a few extra pounds of muscle to help deal with the constant stress he was under. Every day he would wake up just slightly bigger, just enough for it to barely be noticeable, but enough for it to stack up such that, at the end of every week, Blake looked at himself in the mirror and could barely recognise himself.

When he had first arrived at the village, he was around nine feet tall and carrying a physique bulky enough that, while definitely above average, was still recognisably within the bounds of what an adventurer like himself would be able to achieve; a barbarian’s build, really, along with a barbarian’s something else further down below. As repairs took longer than expected, however, and what had once been a month-long recovery effort dragged on to three, the Houndoom that left the rebuilt village, shaking the ground with every step, was not the same one that had come in a trimester back.

The physical work done to reconstruct the village itself, as well as the fact that it technically counted as a quest complete for the sake of the advancement enchantments the Adventurer’s Guild had cast on him, were enough to give Blake… something of a boost. For starters, he was taller than most of the buildings he had himself helped build: Over twenty feet in height, the Houndoom towered over everything and everyone around him, enough so that he had to bend down to say goodbye to everyone who crowded around him.

With extreme care, given that his muscular bulk had become something so absurd that he could rip off entire roofs without even trying, needing to pull his punches on more or less everything he did; looking over his pecs became something of a problem once they intruded on his field of view of as well, and walking without causing his hunky self to groan like leather being stretched was… difficult. Perhaps most concerningly, the simple act of moving around had become enough for him to develop further bulk, though Blake was convinced that all he had to do was be careful and not move around too quickly; plus, he was bigger now, so slower steps were acceptable.

The most drastic change came between his legs though, and in a way he couldn’t really hide or do anything about. If he already had trouble keeping his package under control, now it was utterly impossible to even begin to hide, let alone make anything close to discreet. Not only did each of his nuts swell up to the point where they were hanging mere inches off the ground, not only were they so stuffed that it was hard to walk without waddling at least somewhat… but there were four of them now.

Blake woke up one morning and there he had it: a quad. Four balls, just… there, waiting for him to empty them out with a similarly-twinned pair of cocks inside inside of his now-engorged sheath. It was one hell of a discovery, to put it mildly, and shocking enough that the Houndoom had to stay inside his room for several hours over schedule until he found where he left his bearings and managed to walk properly again… and that was before they started growing properly, leaving him increasingly laden and heavy, until he couldn’t even walk straight without causing loud-enough slorshing to be heard from half a mile off.

Still, there was something liberating about having grown that much. For one, his body temperature had risen to the point where he hardly ever felt anything other than room temperature, even in the dead of night. It was winter, and yet Blake still managed to sleep without cover and still remain pleasantly comfortable all the while; better still, even during midday, when the combined heat from the sun and himself should have left him pouring with sweat, he was still perfectly fine… even if those around him mostly weren’t.

Coming into town a couple of days after leaving the village certainly left an impression on the poor guards outside the gates. With an unfortunate dynastic dispute requiring their constant attention, lest their lord’s holdings be raided by mercenaries, the distant yet rapidly-approaching thumping and stomping left the handful of local soldiers trembling in their boots at what sort of monster would be coming towards them. This wasn’t at all alleviated when Blake cleared the treeline and came into full view, at which point every bell in the town started ringing and the Houndoom had to spend an hour or so explaining he was actually just an adventurer, not a mercenary giant working for whoever they were fighting.

Luckily, there were plenty of opportunities for him to prove to the townies that he was serious. With a war on, even a relatively small-scale one, there were bound to be disruptions of some sort: supplies that never arrived, either because they were waylaid or requisitioned, loved ones who had to be convinced not to join the war effort for glory and fame, even the occasional repair on just about anything of note. And while Blake was more of a fighter than he was a counselor or artisan, he could take orders well enough, and he knew how to go about following instructions as well.

What he couldn’t do was stop himself from growing further, which was something of a bother. He had to admit, the last thing he expected to happen to him was for his body to continuously surge upwards until he could barely even fit inside large buildings anymore, but there came a point where Blake had to start sleeping outside city walls, because no one had any place he could stay inside. And he couldn’t stop it either: to do so would mean to stop helping people, and he couldn’t just do that, he was an adventurer! Adventurers helped those in need, they didn’t stand back and watch them flounder about when they could do something about it!

It’d just be nice if his physical form didn’t decide to improve itself whenever he did anything strenuous at all. He knew that was the case as well… mostly because he learned to distinguish it from the gains he received from the Guild’s enchantments. The latter only came every once in a while, whenever he completed enough assignments to “rank up”, as it were, in accordance with the charter of adventuring levels that he didn’t bother to memorise. One quest here, another quest there, and suddenly he racked up enough experience that the enchantments on him granted him access to further power.

Now, in most people, this would mean a standard increase to physical ability or spellcasting skill, assuming of course one kept to the rules outlined by the Guild. As long as they did, it was a steady climb up to increasingly higher levels where their ability to be adventurers would only grow more refined; for Blake, it had always been a dream of his to one day stand there with the greats, his own statue adorning the halls of the Guild’s HQ at Saint Seron’s… though, in his state, he’d more likely be standing over the greats than with them.

It would’ve been bad enough if it were just the level-ups as well. Blake eventually came to expect them, being particularly fastidious with keeping track of his assignments: whenever he cleared a new level, there he went packing on at least ten more feet, then twenty, then fifty, all the way up to the triple digits. One moment he was fine, the next he was turning in a delivery or finishing construction on a house, the next he’d be surging upwards… and outwards as well.

Occasionally, the town would be filled with the sounds of groaning flesh as his body was pumped up, the sight of him rising towards the heavens as not only did he grow taller, but his musculature bulked up considerably as well, doubling, tripling in size each time, until he was effectively incapable of moving anywhere without ripping something off a foundation, or rubbing stone off a façade. And what happened below was… interesting as well. Blake never expected to have to deal with six nuts, but once he reached eight, each of which was big enough on its own that he could sit on it comfortably, then he figured he had something of a problem.

They were colossal, stuffed, and worst of all, constantly in need of draining. It was an embarrassment and a half, especially given how he had to walk out of town and find a large enough lake where he could dilute some of excess production; not that it did anything, seeing as he just filled up almost immediately afterwards, but he could definitely try anyway, and try he did. He tried, and tried, and kept trying, and every time he just strained himself harder, getting closer still to being unable to walk at all without causing damage.

Because it wasn’t just him gaining rank within the Adventurer’s Guild: it was everything else as well. It was every bit of effort leaving him bulkier, every moment spent working granting him further stamina. It was every person he helped leaving him more powerful, and every offer to help, oddly enough, leaving him more productive. He wasn’t growing in stages so much as he was constantly expanding outwards at a slow pace, with occasional spurts granting him far larger quantities of size… quantities that, themselves, also grew over time.

The first few levels were easy enough to assume were working on a linear progression, but this was thrown out the window the further on Blake went and the more his body grew in increasingly bigger jumps. By the time he was gaining three digits with every level gained, he approached four faster than he did those original three, leaving him further and further embarrassed whenever he had to move around and found that him just turning in his spot was enough to leave a trail of destruction… that he’d then have to fix, leading to further growth, and thus compounding the issue further.

Coupled with what was happening below the waist, it made it difficult for him to even operate some days. Every once in a while, the townsfolk would watch as he trudged off to some distant pond or lake, vanishing just below the horizon… visually, as his moans and groans could still be heard for miles and miles around. He’d have to sit down, grab his sheath, then work it for a couple of hours before the quad of cocks he carried around emerged, then spend the rest of the day servicing himself until, finally, his nuts clenched and a weeks’ worth of spunk came flowing out at high pressure. Then half a week. Then a couple of days. And then he had to ask a group of wizards to do something, because he was starting to fill while releasing.

There came a point where he had to do something about it, and though it pained him to leave behind a town that had been so welcoming to him, Blake knew he couldn’t stick around for much longer… at least, not in his current state. He was twenty feet tall when he first arrived; the giant that left was close to three thousand, and carried behind him a sack of twelve balls and two sheaths with four dicks each… to say nothing of how one couldn’t even see his head behind so much muscle.