[Llyne's Side]
"Hm… I don't see any monsters so far…"
I scratched my head, brow furrowing.
Did I hear wrong?
Around me, the intestine walls pulsed faintly, alive and squirming. It wasn't just the walls.
Dozens—no, hundreds—of thin, finger-like tendrils swayed gently in the dim, torchlit current. They danced like seaweed beneath the waves, slow and hypnotic.
"The only thing I see here are these finger-jelly things… dancing around like seaweeds underwater. I feel like I've seen them somewhere before, but I don't recall it."
I narrowed my eyes, leaning closer.
"…Though if you see it another way," I tilted my head, "they do look like sausages. Smooth-skin slimy sausages. Yuck!"
I stuck out my tongue in disgust.
Then, a lightbulb went off.
"Ah! Right! If I remember correctly… Iz was reading something about this."
I raised a finger, mimicking his know-it-all tone.
"These things are called villi. They're lined with blood vessels and help absorb nutrients."
I paused. Silence settled around me.
"...Erm."
My voice dropped to a whisper.
"They won't try to absorb me, would they?"
Gulp.
"N-nope. No way. Out my head, you go, weird thoughts!" I slapped my cheeks, exorcising the intrusive image of being slurped into a villus like a protein shake.
I leaned forward with a sigh. "I'm bored. Why aren't there any exciting things happening, huh?"
I flopped back into the treasure chest boat. The wood creaked.
"I wonder how Rona and Ronald are doing?" I muttered, peering upward toward where I'd fallen from.
"I hope they're doing fine without me…"
A sinking thought chilled my spine.
"Without Isaac, I'd be their sole guardian… Uh-oh."
I sat up, panic creeping into my voice.
"But I'm here, and they're out there. Crap! I need to get back to them quickly!"
I slammed the paddle into the digestive current and began rowing harder, faster, my arms pumping like pistons.
Unbeknownst to me—
I was already surrounded.
ᴀ ᴅᴀɴɢᴇʀ sɪɢɴᴀʟ ʜᴀs ʙᴇᴇɴ ᴛʀɪɢɢᴇʀᴇᴅ.
The walls of the small intestine pulsed—once, twice—
Then stilled.
From the shifting shadows of the villi, dark shapes began to emerge.
Their bodies were slick with mucus, thin as eels but coiled like serpents.
Fangs glinted in the low light, three-pronged spears in their hands, each tip gleaming with poison.
They weren't supposed to be dangerous. That's what made them deadly.
Parasitic Villi-Hunters.
Creatures born from the very walls of the intestinal dungeon—fluid, silent, and patient. They did not chase. They did not roar. They waited. Nestled in the folds of the twitching villi, like needles buried in grass, they moved with the current and struck when the host was most distracted—paddling, breathing, blinking.
Their bodies were serpentine but solid, covered in a membrane slick with digestive mucus. The slime didn't just protect them—it cloaked them, bending light, warping sound, letting them vanish into the living tunnel like ghosts made of meat and bile. If the dungeon breathed, they were its breath held back. Waiting.
Each one wielded a grotesque weapon that grew from its own bone—a three-pronged spear tipped with venom glands, glistening with a toxin designed not to kill, but to paralyze—to lock the prey in place and begin the process of Nutrient Drain.
It wasn't a metaphor.
Once wounded, the Villi-Hunters would latch on and feed—through their skin, through their mouths, through their weapons. Their muscle tissue flexed like cables beneath that slime-coated skin, drawing in blood, mana, stamina—anything they could break down.
And worse—they grew stronger with every bite.
Wounds sealed mid-fight. Reflexes sharpened. If even one of them landed a hit, the battle could spiral out of control in seconds.
But they never came alone.
One to distract. One to strike. One to finish. A pack of three could dismantle a team in minutes, not because they were strong—but because they were efficient. Efficient in the way that spiders were. In the way that leeches were. Cold. Biological. Unfeeling.
Inside the small intestine where sound warped and light bent, they became nightmares made real. Not monsters you saw—but ones you felt too late.
Their only sound?
The faint, wet hiss of them whispering a single, broken word in the darkness:
"Food…"
They moved in silence.
No growl. No hiss. No warning.
They were already inside the water, inches away from my makeshift boat.
And I didn't even notice.
"Haah… I've been paddling nonstop. I deserve a break," I sighed, tossing the paddle onto my lap and wiping sweat from my brow.
That's when I felt it.
A shift in the current.
Too smooth. Too quiet.
My eyes sharpened.
"...Wait."
I turned my head—just in time to see a dark blur lunging straight at me from the water.
Whoosh!
Something snapped in the air. Instinct screamed—move!
SHLNK!
I ducked just in time as a spear whistled past my ear, embedding into the intestine wall with a sickening squelch.
"What the—?!"
The villi around me exploded into motion—monsters erupting from the soft walls like parasites breaking free of rotten fruit.
Thin, glistening bodies. Jagged fangs. Spear-arms with barbed, triple-pronged tips.
They struck from every direction.
Clang! Cling! Clank!
I spun on the treasure chest boat, blade flashing, deflecting blow after blow. Each hit sent vibrations rattling through my arms, nearly throwing me off balance.
"Gah—!"
I stumbled, the unstable floor beneath me wobbling. The chest rocked violently in the current, and one wrong step would send me plunging into the stomach-acid-like fluid below.
'I can't fall. Not here. Not now!'
My sword barely kept them at bay. I ducked under a jab, rolled to the side, and slashed—taking one of them down. The creature shrieked as its body dissolved into the digestive flow.
But there were more.
Too many.
Their movements were relentless, like coordinated insects, stabbing in perfect timing.
The intestinal current roared louder. A new force had entered the battlefield.
I looked up—and my eyes widened.
The digestive juice was beginning to swirl into a massive whirlpool, centered deeper inside the tunnel.
I could feel it—the suction growing stronger, dragging me, the monsters, even the villi themselves.
Mist began to rise.
A thick, chemical vapor that clogged the lungs and blinded the eyes.
"Ugh—what is this!?" I coughed violently. My skin stung. The mist reeked of acid and rot. "It's getting hard to breathe…"
Grrrrrrrrrroooooaaaar.
A deep, animalistic growl resonated through the intestinal tunnel like a drumbeat from the abyss.
I froze.
So did the monsters.
The trident-wielding creatures whipped around, their eyes wide with primal fear. One by one, they vanished into the villi, diving between the folds like rats fleeing a sinking ship.
"Eh…? Did… Did they just abandon me…?"
I was left completely alone.
The sound echoed again, deeper this time—closer.
I gripped my sword instinctively, breath shallow. Muscles tense.
Something was coming. Something worse than everything before. I raised my guard, ready for a monster—
But then I saw it.
It wasn't a monster.
It was a drop.
Correction:
It was the drop.
"What in the digestive system…"
The tunnel ended abruptly ahead of me. A massive waterfall of acidic juice plunged into the unknown, churning and roaring like a thousand screaming ghosts. My treasure chest-turned-boat was sliding toward the edge fast—too fast.
Slosh. Slam. Swirl.
The juice churned violently beneath me, smashing against the intestinal walls, kicking up waves that slammed into the sides of the chest. I was being tossed like a leaf in a hurricane.
"Wait—waitwaitwaitWAIT—!"
I leaned forward, squinting against the mist.
The juice vanished into a bottomless haze. Vapor hissed upward, forming a dreamlike cloud that glowed with eerie bioluminescent light. Below it… nothing. A curtain of fog, a roar of liquid death, and the sensation that the world was about to tilt upside down.
"Oui... The path is missing!"
I looked down in dawning horror.
"Ack! Wait a minute... The juice is falling downwards... Uh-oh."
My sword slipped from my fingers and clattered to the floor.
"Nope! Nope, nope, nope!"
I dove down and clutched the inside of the chest tightly, bracing myself like a toddler in a toy box tossed into a tsunami.
The box rocked violently, teetering on the very brink.
The current tugged.
The edge loomed.
I could feel gravity readying its punch.
Creeeak...
The chest rocked again, forward and back.
Forward.
Back.
Like the slow swing of a cradle.
A strangely peaceful rhythm filled my ears.
Soft. Lulling. Almost nostalgic.
"Ah... this reminds me of when Ma used to rock me to sleep…"
My eyes half-closed. I leaned back, just for a second—
CRACK.
The chest tipped forward.
And this time, it didn't swing back.
"—This isn't how I imagined I would end my life!!"
I shrieked and slammed the lid shut as the box tipped over the edge and plunged down the waterfall.
FWOOOOOOOOSH!
The box rocketed downward, swallowed by the waterfall's fury. I could feel the air whooshing past me, my insides flipping inside out. My ears popped. The roar was deafening.
Then—
SPLAAAAASH!!
The chest crashed into the pool below with a bone-jarring impact. Waves erupted in every direction, splashing against the fleshy walls. The chest bobbed violently, spinning in dizzying circles before settling into a slow drift.
Silence.
A sticky, humid silence filled with nothing but the distant dripping of intestinal juices and my own ragged breathing.
Creeeaaak.
I slowly lifted the lid and peeked out.
No spears. No monsters. No growls.
Just… digestion.
I crawled out, limp and drenched, and collapsed half-in and half-out of the chest.
"Oui… I lived to see another moment."
I lay there, hand over my pounding heart.
"Oui... My heart was going to pop any moment when I fell from that height. I doubt I'll ever forget this moment."
Still gasping, I reached over and grabbed the paddle again.
No more pauses. No more distractions.
I had to get back to Rona and Ronald.
Splash. Splash. Clank. Clink.
My hands trembled slightly as I paddled forward. The echoes of battle still rang in my bones, the sting of acidic mist clinging to my clothes like a second skin. My long sword, chipped and cracked, finally gave out during the last ambush—shattering in my hands mid-parry like brittle glass.
I looked at the broken hilt lying beside me and sighed, my voice hoarse from shouting through stomach acid storms.
"That's some journey…" I muttered.
Steam hissed from the surrounding walls as the digestion fluid calmed into a deceptively still current. My fingers ached. My back was soaked. But the worst part wasn't the exhaustion.
It was the silence.
Too quiet.
"Who knew there'd be so many monsters in the small intestines?" I mumbled, running my sleeve across my face. "It must be because all the rabbit eats are junk. Fast food, candy… soda?! No wonder this whole digestive system is a war zone."
I exhaled sharply, gripping the edge of the paddle.