Yuuta coughed into his webbed elbow as dust poured into his makeshift shelter like it had a personal vendetta. Every breath scraped his throat raw. The stinging in his bulging frog eyes had him blinking like mad, muttering curses between gags.
"Fucking magic pigs," he spat, voice muffled by the sleeve of his tattered robe. "I didn't know fireballs came with a side of powdered misery."
The air inside the cave-like wedge of stone had turned from shelter to suffocation. Particles floated thick and heavy, coating his tongue, seeping into his lungs, scratching down his throat like gravel. The stone above him vibrated with each distant explosion. Outside, the pig mages were still painting the sky with colorful death.
Another rumble—different this time. Not a fireball. A sharp, distinct crack.
CRRRK.
Yuuta froze.
"The fuck was that?"
His eyes flicked up, toward the ceiling of stone above him. Small pebbles rolled down, pattering over his face. His gut clenched.
Then the realization hit him.
"Oh fuck—oh fuck—they're trying to bury me alive!"
Panic struck like a whip. Maybe it wasn't intentional, maybe it was, but either way those spell-slinging pork bastards were doing exactly what he did to them.
Karma's a bitch. Especially when she comes with hooves and fireballs.
Yuuta lunged toward the cave mouth, half-hunched, half-stumbling. He peeked out—and instantly ducked back as a glowing sphere screamed past, slamming into the cliff wall with a booming WHUMP that made the entire canyon groan.
"Fuckin' rain's still coming down like fireworks on steroids!" Yuuta snapped, retreating. "Can't even get a breath without some oversized bacon hurling fist size meteors at me!"
He turned in frantic circles inside the cramped shelter, pacing like a madman in a pressure cooker.
Another crack above. Louder. Closer.
Yuuta glanced upward again, and this time, his imagination didn't need to do the heavy lifting. A fist-sized stone chunk fell from the ceiling and smashed against his foot.
He hissed. "Oh, you've got to be shitting me!"
The cliff side was coming down again. And if he didn't do something now, he'd be frog paste under a pile of boulders.
Outside was a meat grinder. Inside was a soon-to-be coffin.
"Not like this," he snarled, spinning back toward the deepest part of the shelter. "Not like a damn roach under someone's boot!"
He dropped to his knees and started digging.
Frantic, desperate, animal digging. Like a rat in a flooding burrow.
His three green frog fingers scraped at sand, gravel, broken rock—anything that could be moved. Sharp shards bit into his skin, carving open his digits. Blood, dark and sticky, seeped down his palms. Bits of green skin peeled off and hung like limp seaweed from his knuckles.
He didn't stop.
"Come on, you slimy bastard," he growled to himself. "You can grow these fuckin' fingers back. Move that shit!"
Every scoop was agony, but it didn't matter. If he died here, it was lights out for his frog harem dreams, and that was not acceptable.
"You wanna end up dead and untouched? Like some ugly virgin toad who never got to see a single tit?" he screamed at himself, flecks of spit mixing with the dust in the air. "Keep digging, asshole!"
Outside, another distant boom shook the ground. A larger one this time. The cliff wasn't just cracking—it was giving way.
Yuuta dug like a demon. Blood spattered the small pit he carved deeper into the rubble. Sweat mingled with dust, forming a crusty layer over his already grime-coated skin.
Another boulder shifted above. The entire ceiling groaned.
Yuuta threw himself flat, panting, his fingers throbbed and raw, twitching as regeneration magic sluggishly kicked in. Bits of torn skin flaked off and wriggled before being pushed out by fresh green tissue.
"Fuck, that stings," he muttered, curling tighter.
He grabbed a few broad, flat stones nearby and shoved them over the hole he'd just expanded. He stacked them at an angle, wedging them between larger supports, sealing the entry with the precision of a desperate lunatic. Not pretty, but it was something.
A bunker. Crude, miserable, and barely stable—but it was something.
He shoved himself under the new roof and curled up tight, trying to brace for the inevitable. Each breath now came with a mouthful of dirt. His ears rang from the muffled blasts outside. His fingers were halfway grown back—pinkish green now, skin tight like baby slime.
"Stupid fuckin' pigs," he wheezed. "Only I get to bury people alive. That's my move. That's a frog signature, bitch. You don't steal my fuckin'—"
BOOOOOOMMMM!!!
The canyon shook like the whole world just slammed its fist down.
Everything went white for a moment. A blast wave roared past the stone barrier, sucking air out and then slamming it back in. Yuuta's tiny bunker rattled but held. Just barely.
Dust forced its way in through every crack, filling his nose, his mouth, his eyes.
He coughed and gagged, blinking furiously, trying not to choke.
"Shit... can't even die pretty in this fuckin' world," he croaked, curling into a ball as dust swirled around him like a storm in a tomb.
Outside, the world was chaos.
Inside, Yuuta was buried. But alive.
____________________
The air above the collapsed canyon pass churned with blinding dust.
Thick. Suffocating. Relentless.
It rolled out in waves, a vast brown smog that smacked the pig army in the face like a kicked-up sandstorm. The surviving pigs—matted with soot, many of them limping, some armless, others singed and bleeding—grunted and groaned, staggering to shield their eyes and nostrils. Their long snouts twitched violently, overwhelmed by the pungent cocktail of dust, smoke, blood, and pulverized stone.
The magic-casting pigs, drenched in sweat and caked in powder, looked drained. Their chests heaved. Their once-glowing staves flickered weakly like dying embers. Every breath was a chore, every blink coated their lashes with grit.
One of the archer pigs tried to wipe its snout with a bloodied sleeve—except there was no hand, only a twitching stump and a dangling bow. The creature slumped to its knees and snorted pathetically into the dust cloud.
Standing like a dark slab at the front of the horde was the commander.
Twice the height of his troops, his bloated frame radiated raw menace. His weapon, a massive tree trunk still wrapped in spiked iron rings, hung at his side like a bludgeon carved from nightmares.
The fat pig commander narrowed his small eyes, glaring into the chaos of the collapsed cliffside. Only a wall of shifting grit met his gaze. No signs of movement. No glowing missiles. No ugly frog.
His ruined underlings had smeared the landscape with blood and death trying to corner that green bastard, and now… this?
He snorted deeply. The commander's wide nostrils flared as he drank in the scent—dust, smoke, splintered stone… and blood. Faint. Weak. Buried.
He took one final, long sniff, then closed his eyes.
The commander raised his free hand. A flat, sideways gesture.
The order was simple.
Retreat.
The army blinked at him, then looked at each other with tired confusion. Their beady eyes darted from the dust cloud to their commander, then back to the collapsed cliff. Nothing moved. Nothing stirred.
The pig archers grunted their agreement, too beaten to argue. The mages coughed up dry laughter and leaned on their staffs for support. One by one, they turned around and began limping back the way they came, their silhouettes trudging beneath the cloudless sky.
Above them, the sun hung like a cruel overseer, pouring down heat that shimmered off the shattered earth.
And beneath the rubble…
Deep inside a makeshift tomb of misery, one frog was still very much alive.
Barely.
"Ffffuck…" Yuuta rasped, his voice dry as a sandpapered toad's ass. His bunker—if it could even be called that anymore—was a cramped hellhole of fine dust, broken rocks, and stabbing regrets.
He coughed, again and again, until his whole body curled into itself from the spasms. His chest heaved. His eyes refused to open—grit had invaded every pore. His tongue was dry. His nose burned. Even his ass itched, and he didn't know how that was even possible through this much pain and grime.
And the worst part?
It was quiet.
Too quiet.
"Those pork-skinned motherfuckers really tried to bury me," he coughed, half-choking, half-mumbling. "Like I'm the one who should be under six feet of rocky bullshit."
He spat into the floor, though he had no spit left—just a dry hack.
Minutes passed. Or hours. Maybe days. He couldn't tell anymore.
Yuuta finally wheezed, "...Is it over?"
No explosions. No fireballs. No screaming pigs. Just silence and the occasional ominous rumble of settling stone.
He didn't trust it.
Still, crouched like a miserable green shrimp, he slowly reached upward with his right arm—eyes still shut, skin raw, blood drying in flakes. His fingers, still sore and riddled with tiny shards, touched the flat slab of stone he had jammed into place earlier.
"Alright, you ugly fuckin' rock," he muttered. "Move."
He pushed.
Nothing.
"Move, bitch."
Still nothing.
Yuuta's eye twitched. That rock was jammed tighter than a salaryman in Tokyo's rush hour.
"Alright then," he growled, coughing, "you wanna play rough?"
He balled his hand into a shaky fist, let the mana charge hum up his veins, then reached up again. "Lightning Bolt," he whispered, and released.
A flash of blinding white-blue ripped upward, slamming into the slab with a thunderous CRACK.
Stone exploded.
More dust.
So much fucking dust.
"FUUUUUUUCK!"
He recoiled instantly as another choking wave of particles and debris poured into his face. Splinters of stone rained down on his back like someone dumped an ashtray full of knives. He thrashed wildly, coughing harder, blinking and flailing with frog arms like some underground circus act gone horribly wrong.
"WHY THE FUCK IS EVERYTHING DUST IN THIS FUCKING WORLD?!"
He hacked up what felt like half a lung, then shook his head violently and forced himself upright. No time to cry. No time to sit here like some useless frog-shaped punching bag.
The rock had cracked. A beam of light leaked through a gap in the ceiling. He could see shapes above, just barely—blue sky, maybe. Or another fucking rock waiting to dropkick him into the afterlife.
Didn't matter.
Yuuta jammed his sore fingers into the hole and pulled.
More grit fell into his mouth. He spat it out like a drunk gargling gravel. "I swear, if I live through this, I'm building a fucking mansion. With a roof. A clean fucking roof."
Bit by bit, stone by stone, he pried the slab loose.
The outside world waited.
And he—covered in filth, scabs, and rage—was coming back up.
Slowly, inch by inch, Yuuta climbed toward the surface, dragging his tired, dirt-caked body through the mess he'd made. He looked like something born from mud and hate. Every movement hurt. Every scrape reminded him how close he'd come to croaking. But he was still breathing. Still cursing. And still very, very pissed.