He had killed the dungeon boss as well, so they were only leaving the dungeon.

Nothing was supposed to be here anymore.

Then it appeared from behind a rock in front of them, a pig, its grey hide slick with grime and its tiny eyes burning with unfocused aggression.

It planted itself in the middle of the corridor and let out another growl that rattled the air between them.

But something was wrong with it.

A deep cut ran along its left side, ugly and ragged, the wound still glistening. Its breathing came out heavy and laboured, each exhale a wet, shuddering sound. It was injured badly.

It had clearly already survived something.

And now it was angry.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Ran clicked his tongue sharply.

"That cut..." His eyes narrowed on the wound running down the pig’s side, recognition settling into his expression. "So the bastard didn’t die."

He had sliced that particular pig himself on their way deeper into the dungeon, a quick, careless cut he had delivered without breaking stride.

It hadn’t been a killing blow — he simply hadn’t bothered making it one, fully expecting the creature to bleed out quietly somewhere while they moved on to handle the boss.

Somehow it hadn’t.

The pig lowered its head and charged, blood leaking freely from the gash at its, leaving a trail behind it.

But it was far slower than it should have been. The injury dragged at it visibly, each step carrying just a fraction less force than a healthy dungeon pig would have unleashed. It was still dangerous. But it was manageable.

One of the party members stepped forward immediately, planting himself between the charging beast and the rest of the group. He glanced back at Ran with a confident expression.

"Don’t worry Ran, I’ll take care of it."

Ran’s eyes flashed.

Something shifted in his expression — a quick, dark spark that came and went in an instant. Then the corners of his mouth pulled into a slow, sinister smirk.

"No..."

He turned.

His gaze slid past the party member who had stepped up, drifting back along the corridor until it landed on Leon.

"Why don’t we have Leon take care of it."

He let the words sit for a moment, that smirk stretching wider.

"It’s not like you’ve done anything good since you joined this party."

Leon’s eyes went wide.

"W-what...?" The word stumbled out before he could stop it, barely above a whisper. "Me...?"

Ran said nothing back.

He only smirked.

And then, before Leon’s mind had fully processed what was being asked of him, he felt a firm, sudden pressure slam into his back from behind.

A hard shove.

He stumbled forward, the bag lurching violently on his shoulders, his feet scrambling beneath him as he fought to stay upright and failed.

The corridor blurred around him as he pitched forward, carried by momentum he hadn’t chosen, and then —

He stopped.

On his hands and knees, on the cold stone floor.

He looked up slowly.

The pig was right there.

Enormous up close, its grey bulk filling his entire field of vision, its hot breath washing over his face in short, ragged bursts. Its small eyes burned down at him with blind, wounded fury.

The cut along its side dripped steadily onto the floor inches from his hand, pooling dark against the stone.

Leon’s face drained of colour completely.

Every thought emptied out of his head at once.

His body had gone completely still, frozen in the space between the last second and whatever came next.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The pig wasn’t looking at him.

Its tiny, burning eyes had dropped lower, fixing on the bag on Leon’s back.

More specifically, at the brown liquid still dripping steadily from its soaked bottom, slowly pooling on the ground.

Leon’s mind caught up a second later.

The liquid wasn’t mud.

Or rather, it wasn’t only mud. Mixed into it, was the monster’s food, which drew the pig to it like a magnet.

Ran had only added the pig’s food with the mud to humiliate Leon, though he hadn’t expected them to actually encounter a monster.

The pig’s nostrils flared wide as it inhaled, drool swinging from its jaw in a long string.

Then its paw came down.

It was almost casual — a sideways swipe, the way an animal might brush something out of its path without particular malice. But the claws were long and the force behind it was considerable, and it caught Leon clean across the side of his head.

"Agh—!"

His body slammed sideways into the stone floor, the impact rattling through his shoulder and cheek simultaneously.

His vision blurred at the edges, and he felt the warm, immediate sting of the claw marks running down the side of his face.

Then the numbers flickered into view.

[— 20]

Leon’s stomach dropped.

’Shit...’ His thoughts came slow and stunned, still catching up to everything happening to his body. That already took half my HP!"

Half. From a single, almost careless swipe.

He didn’t have time to sit with that horror before the pig moved again. It stepped forward heavily, lowered its massive snout, and drove it straight into the bag still strapped to Leon’s back like a battering ram.

The fabric split.

A long, ugly tear ran down the side of the bag and the brown liquid gushed out freely, soaking into Leon’s shirt and spreading across the floor in a wide, reeking pool.

The pain of the impact exploded across his back.

[— 10]

Leon grunted into the stone floor, fingers scraping weakly against it.

Even the pig burying its face into the bag had chewed through his EXP, despite not being a direct attack.

It said everything about how fragile he was. How pitifully, embarrassingly fragile.

He lay completely flat now, cheek pressed cold against the dungeon floor, arms loose at his sides, the torn and leaking bag still draped across his back. The claw mark on his face throbbed in pain.

And the pig paid him no further attention at all.

It had found what it wanted, eating from Leon’s back with joy and satisfaction.

Warm breath and drool hit the back of Leon’s neck with every exhale.

He was pinned beneath a dungeon monster.

Being used as a feeding trough.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Each time the creature’s jaw came down too deep, Leon felt it. A sharp, piercing pressure through the torn bag, digging into the flesh of his back in short, greedy intervals.

Not deep enough to be a killing bite on its own.

But enough to matter.

[— 1]

[— 1]

[— 1]

His HP kept chipping away at the edge of his vision again and again with each messy chomp. Individually they looked almost harmless, the kind of losses that wouldn’t concern anyone with a health pool behind them.

But Leon wasn’t anyone else.

For someone as weak as him, those small bites were not small at all.

If it continued long enough, those tiny HP losses would actually kill him.

From behind him, Ran’s laughter broke out loud and sharp, filling the entire corridor with the kind of cackle that came from someone genuinely, deeply entertained.

"What a sight!" His voice echoed off the stone walls, bright with amusement. "How much of a loser do you have to be for a fucking pig to turn you into a plate!"