Yuuta crouched behind the fractured boulder, his back pressed against its cracked surface. The ground was littered with splintered arrows, some still quivering, others snapped in half. Wisps of smoke curled up from blackened craters where fireballs had smashed into the earth. It looked like the aftermath of a medieval airstrike.
His lungs burned, his froggy breath ragged. Each inhale felt like inhaling smoke and gravel.
"Shit… I need a plan," he muttered, bulging eyes scanning the battlefield.
His frog legs were jelly. His three-fingered green arms shook each time he conjured a new spell. He'd been running, dodging, and firing off Lightning Bolts and Magic Missiles for what felt like forever, and the pigs—those ugly, slobbering bastards—just. Kept. Coming.
And now the rumbling. Not distant anymore. It was close.
Too close.
The thunder of hooves—or rather, the stomping of those four-legged pork mounts—grew louder behind him. His eyes darted to the side, and his heart nearly leapt out of his green chest.
A wave of pigs was rushing straight toward him, their crude weapons glinting under the sun. Fat ones in armor, grunting like war drums. Clumsy axe-wielders with bloodstains already smeared across their weapons. Spellcasters in tattered cloaks preparing their next fireball. And in the rear, archers on fat mounts, arrows nocked and ready to release hell from a distance.
Yuuta didn't wait to see who was leading the charge.
"Fucking persistent pork faces," he spat and launched himself out from behind the crumbling boulder.
His frog legs, though screaming in protest, sprang into action. Slap-slap-slap—his webbed feet smacked against the rocky canyon floor. His tongue hung out one side of his wide mouth as he panted furiously.
"If I stop now, I'm gonna end up sizzling on a stick," he wheezed, not bothering to look back.
Arrows began to rain down again. He didn't need to see them. The whistling in the air, followed by the thunk-thunk-thunk of shafts embedding into the ground around him, told him everything.
And those damn fireballs—they weren't far behind.
Another loud BOOM echoed through the canyon, and the shockwave nearly knocked him flat.
"Okay! Okay! I get it, you want me dead!" Yuuta shouted at the sky, veering sharply around a jagged outcrop. He glanced over his shoulder and nearly tripped. The army was gaining. Fast.
He needed a plan. Desperately.
His eyes flicked left, right, up, scanning for something—anything—that could give him an edge.
That's when he saw it.
Just ahead, the canyon walls narrowed. Two cliffs, steep and jagged, funneled into a tight stone corridor. It wasn't exactly a bottleneck—those fat pigs could still march through it in formation—but it was close enough.
A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth, despite how dry it was.
"Oho… that might just work," he whispered.
His legs protested with every step now. They wobbled like overcooked noodles. He could feel the fatigue in every joint, every tendon. If he had a normal human body, he'd have collapsed already.
But he wasn't human anymore. He was a frog. A magical, dickless frog with delusions of harem supremacy and a vendetta against anything with tusks and a fat belly.
He bolted for the narrow passage, weaving between scattered rocks and debris, arrows still streaking through the air.
Thunk!
One arrow grazed his thigh, slicing the skin. He winced but didn't stop. Blood dripped, but his plan was more important than pain.
"C'mon, legs, don't fail me now…"
The narrow entry loomed ahead like the gates of salvation—or maybe a tomb, depending on how this went.
He reached it just as another fireball exploded behind him, the shockwave knocking him forward. He tumbled and skidded to a halt, his limbs sprawled out like a squashed gecko. Dust coated his slick green skin.
Yuuta coughed, pushed himself up with trembling arms, and stared back down the canyon.
The pigs were almost there.
He could see them clearly now—sweaty, armored, blood-soaked, charging with wild abandon. In the back, the spellcasters raised their staves. More fireballs were coming.
"Right… showtime."
Yuuta turned toward the cliffs on either side of the narrow passage. Towering slabs of jagged stone, riddled with cracks and crevices. Erosion had eaten away at the base in some spots. Weak. Fragile. Ready to fall.
He raised both hands, one glowing blue with the swirling crackle of [Lightning Bolt], the other pulsing with the raw energy of [Magic Missile].
"This better work," he muttered. "Otherwise I'm gonna be flattened into frog jerky."
He pointed at the cliffside above the narrow path—first the right wall.
ZAP!
A bolt of lightning shot from his hand like a wrathful spirit, tearing through the air and striking the stone with a thunderous crack. The impact shook the cliff, and thin cracks spiderwebbed down its face.
"Alright, not bad!"
Next came the [Magic Missile].
The spell streaked from his left hand, a blinding projectile that howled through the air before slamming into the same weakened cliff. BOOM!
The entire side of the cliff groaned. Dust fell in sheets. Loose boulders tumbled free, smashing into the ground below with teeth-rattling force.
He didn't wait.
Yuuta spun and fired at the other cliff—another [Lightning Bolt], followed by a second [Magic Missile]. Sparks and light lit up the canyon like a firework show.
The pigs had just reached the threshold.
Crack… grooooooan…
Yuuta didn't even cheer. He just watched.
With a titanic roar, the cliffs collapsed.
Thousands of tons of rock came crashing down like an angry avalanche. Dust shot into the sky. Screams of pigs were swallowed beneath the chaos. The earth shook beneath Yuuta's feet.
He shielded his eyes as the wind whipped past him, debris pelting his skin. When the dust finally began to settle, he looked up—jaw slack, eyes wide.
A massive wall of broken stone and shattered corpses now blocked the canyon path. A few pigs scrambled at the edges, squealing in panic. Most were buried.
Yuuta blinked.
Then he laughed.
"Didn't see that one coming, did you pork-breath freaks!"
He leaned against the cliff wall, panting, shoulders heaving.
His legs finally gave out, and he slid down to sit on the ground. Dust clung to his skin, and his tongue lolled out of his mouth.
But his eyes—those bulging frog eyes—were alive. Triumphant.
_____
On the other side of the devastation, silence hung thick in the canyon air.
Ash and dust drifted like gray snow through the ruin of broken cliffs and mangled bodies. The once roaring stampede had been reduced to choking quiet and the faint crackle of falling pebbles.
But not all had been crushed.
Figures emerged from the haze.
A squad of pig mages stumbled from behind a craggy outcrop—horns singed, tusks blackened with soot, the tattered remains of their robes fluttering in the warm breeze. Their twisted staves sparked erratically with residual magic. Behind them, bow-wielding pigs limped forward with torn quivers and cracked bows. They looked dazed, like survivors pulled from a collapsed mine.
They stood in a loose cluster, staring at the mountain of rubble that had sealed off the narrow path. Large slabs of broken cliffstone jutted out at odd angles, dotted with crushed limbs, snapped weapons, and gory splatters.
The air was still, except for the low whining coming from the pigs.
A guttural sound, neither word nor cry—something deeper. Anger, grief, disbelief. Their comrades were buried beneath that stone tomb. Their victory turned to mud.
Then the ground rumbled again—but not from an avalanche this time.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The survivors stiffened.
From behind them, a shadow grew—a massive silhouette cutting through the dusty veil. A towering pig creature stepped forward, twice the size of the others, armor strapped across his thick belly and arms like a war god sculpted from raw meat. His weapon wasn't a blade or a club, but a massive tree trunk, still crowned with roots, splintered at the end and stained with old, dark blood.
Their commander.
His tiny red eyes narrowed toward the fallen pathway, nostrils flaring. He lifted his snout high, inhaling deeply.
Blood. Lots of it.
He could smell it beneath the rubble—his warriors, his mages, his kin. Crushed, flattened, splattered.
But more than that… he could smell something else.
Frog.
He stared beyond the stone barrier, as if his eyes could pierce the smoke and see the little green bastard who did this.
Then he let loose a roar.
No, not a roar—a screech. High-pitched, animalistic, raw with primal fury. It echoed through the canyon like a sonic blade, scattering birds from cliffside nests and shaking dust loose from the upper walls.
On the other side, Yuuta flinched.
He had been nursing his exhaustion, sitting against one of the rubble piles in his makeshift cave of broken rock, trying to calm the thudding in his chest. His legs still trembled. His tongue flopped from his mouth like a wet towel.
Then that sound hit him.
He jerked upright, wincing. "What the fuck was that?!"
The screech reverberated across the stone. Even without seeing, Yuuta felt it in his chest, like his guts were being kicked from the inside.
"Oh, you mad now?" he said, grinning despite his pounding heart. "You fat bacon slab didn't like my little landslide trick?"
He staggered to his feet, arms thrown wide as if addressing a stadium.
"That's right, bitch! You come for the frog, you get the fuckin' mountain! Hope you enjoyed the view before it fell on your ugly fuckin' heads!"
He laughed—dry and wheezy—and rubbed his sore shoulders.
"Stupid pigs. Think you can run me down like some roast-on-legs? Mess with the frog and you don't see the light of day, fuckers!"
But before he could launch into another monologue, something flickered in the smoke.
Yuuta's eye twitched.
Tiny glowing orbs began to appear in the swirling haze of dust—dozens of them. Soft at first, like dying embers. Then brighter. And larger.
"What the—?"
Each light hummed with building intensity, trails of energy crackling along their forms. The sound came next—high-pitched, metallic, shrill. Like a swarm of whistles charging through a tunnel.
Then it hit him.
"—Ah, fuck me."
Magic projectiles. A lot of them.
And they were coming fast.
"OH YOU PIECES OF SHIT!" Yuuta shouted at the oncoming barrage. "After all that!? You're still throwing glowing bullshit at me!?"
The glow intensified, flares of red, blue, and gold now clearly visible—fire, lightning, raw mana. Spells fired blindly into the rubble, and a surprising number were cutting through, seeping through gaps in the stone.
Yuuta's frog face twisted in outrage. "You dare—you dare launch a goddamn magic airstrike on me!? I'm the future king, bitch! I'm royalty, your next fuckin' emperor, and you're lobbing spells at me like I'm trash on discount day!?"
He glanced around rapidly, the noise now deafening. Stone trembled. Light flashed across the dust-cloud like a fireworks display gone rogue.
He spotted it—a curved slab of stone leaning against a heap of rubble. A partial gap beneath it, just big enough to squeeze into. A shelter, of sorts. Like a cave made by luck and physics.
He didn't hesitate.
"I swear, if I survive this, I'm turning your whole tribe into crispy fucking breakfast!"
Yuuta dove for the opening like a lunatic scuba diver flopping off the edge of a boat.
Pebbles clattered around him as he slipped beneath the slab. Just in time.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The canyon lit up with explosions.
Spell after spell slammed into the fallen cliffs, setting off secondary rockslides, blasting new craters into the debris. Heat baked the air. The cave trembled above him.
Yuuta curled up beneath the stone, arms over his head, swearing nonstop.
"Shitty pigs! Filthy magic-slinging bacon freaks! Who the fuck throws this many spells!?"
Dust rained over his back. His skin sizzled from near-misses. But the cave held.
Barely.
And as the noise roared on outside, Yuuta lay in the dark, blinking against the flashes of light leaking through cracks, breathing heavy, waiting for the barrage to end.
He wasn't done yet.
Not by a long shot.