Smoke and blood mist still danced through the cracked canyon air like foul incense, thick with the stench of roasted flesh and seared metal. Yuuta's battered frog body twitched against the stone cliffside, his breath ragged, each inhale scraping his lungs like gravel. The echo of that last brutal impact still reverberated faintly through the jagged rocks of the canyon, like a ghost refusing to fade.
But he wasn't done. Not yet.
Yuuta's wide, bulging eyes locked onto the silhouette of the fat, armored pigman. The bastard was trudging toward his club—his spiked, mountainous slab of metal that had already shattered cliffs and nearly turned Yuuta into green paste.
"No you don't, you pork-flavored asshole," Yuuta snarled through his ripped throat, forcing his legs to move. He could still feel the throb of his half-regenerated bones screaming at him, but he ignored it. The pain was fuel now.
Magic Missile.
With a sharp croak that almost sounded like laughter, Yuuta unleashed the spell. The projectile screamed through the air like a missile fired from a railgun, its faint white light glowing like a falling star.
The pigman had just curled his thick fingers around the handle of his massive club when he turned—too slow, too late.
BOOOOOOM.
The blast detonated directly against the side of his already burnt, oozing face. A plume of smoke erupted from the impact, mixed with a spatter of dark red blood that misted into the air like a firework gone wrong. The pig let out a screeching, deep-chested grunt, stumbling back—his enormous form teetering.
Yuuta blinked away sweat and blood from his frog eyes and laughed, his voice scratchy and ugly and gurgling like a clogged sink.
"THAT'S RIGHT, YOU FILTHY SLAB OF BACON! Didn't expect that from a little green bastard, did you?! I'm the future fucking harem mage king, bitch! You don't even know who you're messing with!"
The pigman swayed on his feet like a drunk about to pass out. His enormous arms loosened. His head dipped forward. His spiked club hung limp in his thick fingers.
Then Yuuta froze.
Something about the way the pigman was collapsing didn't sit right. It wasn't the limp fall of a dying monster. It was too poised. Too controlled. Like a pitcher winding up at the mound.
Yuuta's frog throat clenched. "Wait a fu—"
The ground split with a loud CRACK as the pigman's hooved feet dug into the canyon floor like stakes, anchoring him into place. His enormous arm swung. The spiked club, now little more than a steel comet of destruction, spun in a full arc and—
WHOOOOOOOM!!
The club launched like a goddamn missile, shrieking through the air with a splitting sonic boom that blasted the surrounding dust into rippling waves.
Yuuta's blood drained.
"SHIT!"
He leapt off the edge of the cliff, frog legs pushing him clear just as the spiked nightmare of a weapon tore through the space he had just occupied.
KRAAAAAAANG!
The club slammed into the cliffside with the fury of an angry titan. The impact sent tremors through the entire canyon. The cliff didn't just crack—it disintegrated. Chunks of stone the size of a cow sheared off and plummeted down like meteorites, obliterating everything in their path.
Dust, smoke, and shattered rock engulfed the canyon in a choking grey avalanche. The deafening roar of collapsing stone drowned everything out.
Yuuta twisted midair, flailing as the shockwave carried him like a piece of trash in a storm. He hit the ground in a rough tumble, his frog body rolling painfully across the canyon floor. He came to a halt behind a jagged stone outcrop, wheezing, half-deaf, ears ringing.
He peeked out from behind the rock, heart pounding in his throat. The cliff he'd been standing on moments ago? Gone. Nothing left but a smoking ruin.
"...Okay. Note to self," Yuuta muttered. "Don't fucking taunt the pig with the building-sized club."
Yuuta's limbs twitched as he lay sprawled on the dusty ground, chunks of rubble skittering past him. He groaned and forced himself to rise, blood oozing sluggishly from the gash across his thigh. His frog fingers clawed into the gravel, pushing his aching body up. The world around him was a mess of noise and chaos, the cliff behind him still collapsing in chunks.
He barely got to one knee when it happened.
A deafening, metallic CRAAANG erupted through the canyon—like a freight train made of steel slamming into another at full speed. No, not just metal clashing—this was pure, destructive force unleashed. The sound didn't just echo; it tore through the air like a blade.
The canyon howled in response.
A violent shockwave blasted outward from the epicenter, obliterating what little was left of the dense smoke and debris that clouded the battlefield. A gust of pressure slammed into Yuuta like the hand of an angry giant.
"—The fuck?!"
He didn't get a chance to finish his thought before his slimy frog body was picked up by the sheer force of it. The world spun. Dust. Stone. Sky. Cliff. Ground. Repeat. His limbs flailed like wet noodles as he tumbled end over end, smashing into the dirt, rolling and bouncing, each impact like a drumbeat against his already cracked bones.
He finally skidded to a stop, breath wheezing through his lungs, mouth gaping like a fish on land. His frog tongue lolled out briefly before he sucked it back in and pushed himself to his elbows.
"...What in the actual shit was that?"
His wide frog eyes darted through the canyon, vision swimming and blurred from dust and the ringing in his oversized ears. He winced and turned his head to the epicenter of the shockwave.
There.
Through the haze of settling smoke, surrounded by cracked stone and shattered earth, the monster emerged.
The pig.
The fat, heavily burnt, broken, and furious pig.
Its massive body rose like a malformed titan from the crater of its own destruction. The air shimmered around it with residual heat, and steam hissed off the exposed plates of warped metal fused to its flesh. Armor that once gleamed with brutish arrogance now clung to it like a punishment—molten, twisted, fused with its own sizzling skin.
The pig's face was something pulled out of a horror story. What was once a brutish, ugly snout was now a grotesque melted mask of muscle and fury. The left side of its face hung loose, parts of it scorched black, the eye above it swollen shut. The right eye, though—
No eyelid.
Just a staring red orb, raw and bloodshot, pulsing with uncontained hatred. It didn't blink. It didn't twitch. It simply watched.
Yuuta gagged involuntarily. "Fucking shit... You look like bacon that lost a fight with a volcano."
The pigman didn't respond with words. It didn't have to.
It took one step forward.
THUD.
The canyon ground quivered.
Another step.
THUD.
Yuuta didn't even get the chance to fully pick himself up. Dust clung to his green skin, and his thin frog legs ached from tumbling like a wet sock in a washing machine. He panted, cursed, then froze.
The bastard wasn't dead. Not yet.
Yuuta spat a glob of blood and mucus from his mouth, wiped his arm across his lip, and grinned. Or, at least, whatever passed for a grin on his sock-puppet frog mouth.
"Heh… Still kickin', huh?" he rasped. "Alright then, let's fucking dance, crispy."
Thud.
Another quake. Then another.
The sound came like a damn tidal wave of chaos—rhythmic, rapid, heavier than before.
The burnt pig bastard.
Its melted armor clung like parasitic barnacles to his charred, blistered skin. Each step it took left behind a shallow crater, its metal boots stomping down with a deep crunch. Black smoke trailed off its hide, pieces of burnt flesh peeling like overcooked meat. Whith it's pig's face— that is now half-melted, one eye fused shut, the other glowing red without a damn eyelid to blink—was the stuff of nightmares. Its exposed tusks curved upward like rusted blades. It didn't just look pissed. It looked like it wanted to drag Yuuta straight to hell and then some.
The pig charged.
Not walked. Not stumbled.
Charged.
And somehow that was more terrifying than anything before. Its deformed legs pumped like hydraulic pistons. Its burned body flailed with unnatural speed. It was like a nightmare running on pure hate and cooked bacon.
"Oh fuck me, forget what I have just said!" Yuuta muttered, throat tight.
Yuuta's instincts screamed. He threw his frog fingers forward and cast Magic Missile.
FWOOM.
The glowing bullet of death burst from his fingertips and pierced the canyon air like a high-speed railgun.
BOOM!
The blast hit square in the monster's chest, but the pig didn't even flinch. The armor cracked further, smoke puffed from its open wound, but the fucker just kept running, snarling like a dying boar in a grease fire.
"Oh my shit! —what are you, made of, war crimes?!" Yuuta shouted, already preparing another spell.
FWOOM—BOOM!
Another Magic Missile. Then another. Every three seconds, like clockwork, Yuuta blasted the incoming abomination. Blood sprayed. Chunks of cooked pig flesh fell. But nothing stopped it. The canyon echoed with constant explosions and the rapid thudding of the pig's feet like a twisted symphony of violence.
Yuuta backpedaled, cursing with every step.
"You're supposed to be fucking dead! Just lie down and rot already, you smoked ham-looking freak!"
The pig roared, its voice guttural, raw, and ear-splitting, like a chainsaw being shoved through a dying throat.
It leapt.
The moment felt unreal. Despite its grotesque bulk and mangled form, the pig launched into the sky like a firework gone wrong. A crater exploded from its takeoff point. Rocks burst upward like volcanic debris. The air howled as its armored body sailed overhead like a descending meteor.
Yuuta looked up.
"Oh come on!"
The shadow it cast swallowed the sunlight above. His frog legs kicked into overdrive as he scrambled forward, but it was too late.
BOOOOOOM!!
The pig crashed into the ground behind him. The earth convulsed. The canyon split with jagged cracks, and a dust cloud erupted like a sandstorm detonated by a C4. The force sent rocks flying toward the sky, some the size of carts, others like daggers slicing the air. The wind whipped around him, carrying the stink of burnt pork and molten metal.
Yuuta was flung forward by the pressure blast alone, tumbling head over webbed heels, mouth agape, eyes wide, screaming curses and frog-croaks.
"Fuuuuuuuck this shit! What even is this thing?!"
He hit the ground hard, rolled across gravel, and barely managed to plant his hands down to stop his slide. His breath came in raspy gasps. The dust cleared slowly, revealing a massive crater behind him where the pig had landed.
Rocks still fell like deadly rain.
And from within the dust and crater, another rumble.
The pig was getting up.
Yuuta spat out a gravel and looked up, absolutely done with today's bullshit.