A Trash Novel's Only Reader-Chapter 4: Bad Day

A little girl ran down the hallway with hooves pounding behind her, each breath she took tore out of her chest as another sob. She screamed for her mother until her throat went raw, yet no door opened and no voice answered.

"Mommy!"

She slipped on blood near the stair turn and crashed to both knees, biting her lip when the skin tore open again. Pain shot up her legs, but panic yanked her up before she could even cry properly.

"Mommy, please!"

An old blanket hung over her shoulders, too big for her small frame and too thin to hide the cuts on her arms. Bare legs shook under her as she limped forward, dragging one foot for half a step before forcing herself to run again.

The thing chasing her was a pig monster with a swollen body, one broken tusk, and eyes that never blinked. It slammed into the walls when it turned, then squealed louder each time it smelled blood.

She took one more corner and froze, because the hallway ended in a dead wall. There was nowhere left to go, only a narrow space beside a broken cabinet.

"No... no, please..."

With her back pressed to the wall, she clutched the blanket shut with both hands and stared at the beast rushing her way. It lowered its head, scraped one hoof across the floor, and charged the last few steps.

She shut her eyes and screamed, waiting for the hit that never came. A hard crack rang out first, followed by a wet thud that made her flinch.

When she looked up, the pig monster lay in front of her with its head caved in, still twitching near the wall. A man stood over it with a blood-covered bat on his shoulder, breathing steady while red drops slid from his sleeve.

He looked wrecked and dangerous at the same time, face and shirt soaked enough to make him look worse than the monster at his feet. Instead of rushing to comfort her, he just flicked blood off the bat and held the pose for a beat.

"That was close," he said, jumping off the monster and approaching the girl, "are you ok?"

The girl instantly covered her head and shrank into the wall, trembling so hard the blanket slipped off one shoulder. ’He is going to hit me too,’ she thought, squeezing her eyes shut as her wounded knees rubbed against the floor.

Shu stopped the moment he saw that reaction, then slowly lowered the bat until it rested by his leg. "Hey, it’s fine," he said, keeping his voice quiet. "I am not going to hurt you, so relax."

He crouched down, took a chocolate bar from his pocket, and placed it on the floor between them before backing away again.

"You did well," he said after a second, looking at her scraped knees and the way she kept shaking. "It’s over now, so eat that when you calm down a little."

After saying that, he turned around and started walking off without trying to force her to answer. The little girl watched him leave with wide wet eyes, then slowly crawled toward the chocolate bar while still clutching the blanket closed with one hand.

At the end of the hall, Shu grabbed the pig monster by one leg and dragged it away across the floor. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

The corpse left a dark trail behind him, while the girl held the chocolate bar like it was the first good thing that had happened to her all day.

As he dragged the thing down the stairs, the system screen popped up beside him and quietly logged the kill. He glanced at it while keeping his grip on the leg, then let out a small breath when he saw the reward was better than a goblin’s.

[Kill Registered: Feral Pig]

[EXP: +180]

[Credits: +420]

’Not bad,’ he thought, shifting the weight when the corpse got stuck on the corner for a second. ’After a few more of these, I might actually stop being tutorial fodder.’

He called up his status while walking, more out of habit than excitement at this point. The numbers had climbed enough over the last few hours to make the difference obvious, and just looking at them made him feel a little less miserable.

[Status:]

[Name: Shu]

[Rank: F-Rank (Low)]

[Level: 5]

[EXP: 460/1,200]

[Credits: 4,780]

[Free Stat Points: 4]

[Frame: 19]

[Core: 9]

[Circuit: 10]

[Authority: 1 (Domain-linked)]

[Skill Set:]

[ - Domain Lv.1 (Unique)]

[ - Slaughterer Lv.1 (Active)]

[ - Unwavering Spirit Lv.1 (Passive)]

’Yeah, that looks way better than before,’ he thought, then glanced back up the stairs for a second. ’Though seriously, a little girl? In a place like this?’

He clicked his tongue and kept dragging the corpse toward the exit, already knowing he could not just ignore her after seeing that.

’I will keep an eye on her from a distance for now,’ he thought, pushing open the building door with his shoulder. ’If I hover too much, she is just going to panic again.’

Outside, he dropped the pig monster onto the ground and rolled his shoulder once, then looked down at the body with narrowed eyes. A memory from the novel surfaced not long after, one of those bits readers barely cared about until money got involved.

Monsters had cores inside them, and even weak ones sold for decent value if you could get them out intact. He already collected the goblin cores earlier, but those things were trash-tier, small, cloudy, and barely worth bragging about.

He crouched beside the pig monster and tapped its skull with the bat, studying the size of it. ’This thing is bigger, tougher, and way more annoying,’ he thought, leaning in a little. ’If the novel logic still applies, the core inside should be better too.’

His hand paused on the monster’s head when another thought crossed his mind. It really was true, monsters could not enter his Domain, which meant his house was safe from outside intruders for now.

’That alone is already broken,’ he thought, feeling along the pig monster’s neck and skull while searching for the right spot. ’If I can level that skill up somehow, this cheat might get even more ridiculous.’

He still had no clue what the requirement for upgrading Domain was, and that part bothered him more than he liked. EXP, credits, kills, territory, maybe all of them? The system had not explained a damn thing properly yet.

While thinking that over, he kept patting around the monster’s body and was just about to dig in for the core when a voice called out to him from the side.

"Hey, brother!"

He looked up and saw three people walking toward him with easy smiles on their faces, two men and one woman.

Under normal circumstances, they might have looked relieved to see another survivor, but this was Zoxhia, and Shu was not dumb enough to trust smiles that came this fast.

"Stop there," he said, standing up with the bat still in one hand.

The group slowed, clearly thrown off by the tone, and one of the guys even lifted both hands a little. "Woah, relax, man, we are not here to fight."

Shu did not lower the bat. "Back off," he said, his voice turning colder this time. "If any of you take one more step, I am going to treat you as a threat."