A wet, throaty cough ripped from Yuuta's dust-clogged throat as his trembling, three-fingered green hand finally broke through the surface. It was like touching salvation—or at least the nearest thing to it when your lungs felt like they'd been scooped out and replaced with powdered stone.
"F-Fuck… finally…" he wheezed out, pushing harder. Every movement sent sparks of pain crawling through his fingers, which were still bleeding from dozens of embedded stone shards. His green skin, usually glossy and smooth, now looked like cracked pottery. Dry, dusty, flaking. Even his knuckles had split open from the frantic, clawing dig to survive.
He pushed again, cursing in short, sharp bursts with every inch. His legs strained beneath him as he hoisted himself through the makeshift bunker's stone slab ceiling. The slab gave one last grinding protest before shifting with a dull thunk, dislodging a curtain of fine dirt and pebbles that rained onto his shoulders and head.
Yuuta groaned, spitting a clump of sand out from his mouth. "Fucking pigs… bury me alive, huh? The nerve—like I'm some common frog stew!"
His eyes were still shut tight, squinting against the sting of the dust that filled every crevice of his battered frog body. He slowly opened one eye, then the other, inch by inch like peeling apart old scabs.
All he saw was brown-grey.
The air was thick—almost chewy—with dust. It swirled in choking clouds, the sun completely blotted out. No light pierced the heavy atmosphere. Even the smell was oppressive: burnt earth, charred stone, and something foul, probably pig blood.
Yuuta blinked rapidly. The grit scratched his eyeballs, but he refused to close them again. His bulging frog eyes darted through the fog, scanning the canyon's ghostly remains.
"Shit…" he muttered. "Looks like a frog massacre."
He wasn't exaggerating either—he looked like a disaster survivor who'd crawled straight out of a mudslide. His skin was caked with fine, grainy sediment. Dust clung to his arms, his back, and his thighs. His hands—oh, his fucking hands—were a horror show. Still bleeding, still twitching, still loaded with sharp little bastards digging into his muscle with every flex.
He looked down at them and winced.
"Fuckin' should've worn gloves. Or… I don't know, been born a turtle or something…"
The pain made him hiss through clenched teeth. Every movement tugged at raw skin, and he could feel each shard grinding against his tendons like someone trying to sharpen a knife inside his bones.
Still… he was alive.
That counted for something.
"I'm still alive, you ugly pork-scented shits," he croaked into the dust. "Didn't think I'd go out that easy, did ya? Frogs don't die—they adapt. Fuckin' evolve, bitch!"
A dry cough cut his speech short. He staggered forward, covering his mouth with a crusted forearm. His throat burned, his chest wheezed, and his legs wobbled like overcooked noodles. But somehow, the damn frog kept walking.
Guided more by instinct than vision, he stumbled forward, feeling out the path with cautious steps. A few times he bumped into loose boulders or stepped on sharp debris, letting out high-pitched croaks of pain.
"Fuck—ow—shit—fucking rock—mother—" he muttered through clenched teeth, each word timed perfectly with a misstep.
Minutes passed like hours. Slowly, the wall of dust began to thin. Yuuta could feel it—the air wasn't as dry and chalky anymore. His breathing grew less ragged. The sounds of settling debris faded behind him.
Then, finally, light.
Soft and hazy at first, but unmistakably sunlight. It trickled through the thinning smoke like water into cracked stone. The sharp, bright blue of a cloudless sky peeking through the haze.
Yuuta blinked in disbelief.
He'd made it out.
The collapsed canyon wall lay far behind him now, still cloaked in trailing dust clouds. Ahead was the open expanse of rock and canyon he remembered. Dry. Wide. Familiar. Almost welcoming—if only it weren't for the fact that he'd just cheated death under it.
He exhaled, his breath catching on the dust still lodged in his lungs.
"Didn't kill me…" he muttered, half in awe. "Fucking tried, but didn't kill me…"
He glanced back over his shoulder at the now-buried passage. Crumbled rock. Loose debris. Dark splotches of pig blood and smashed armor peeked out from beneath some of the stones.
"Ha! Eat shit, you bacon-brained bastards! Think you can bury me the future king! You don't bury me, I bury you!"
Another dry cough cut through his arrogance, cracking his voice mid-rant. His legs finally gave in, and he plopped down on a flat boulder with a painful thump.
"Shit…"
His muscles felt like jelly, his lungs like sandpaper. He took a moment to breathe—just sit and breathe. The silence was eerie now. No grunting pig soldiers. No screeching war cries. No spellfire.
Just… peace.
Dusty, quiet, blood-flavored peace.
He looked down at his hands again. The skin was still flaking and torn. He flexed his fingers, grimacing as a few shards worked their way loose. Blood trickled down, dark and sluggish.
"Gonna have to clean this shit out," he mumbled. "Damn healing magic. Always stings worse when it's working…"
He slowly raised one foot and noticed the stone shards poking from his webbed frog toes. They throbbed like tiny drums of pain with every movement.
Yuuta sighed and leaned back against the boulder, muttering curses under his breath.
Still, a small smirk pulled at the edge of his wide mouth.
He'd survived. Somehow.
——————————————————
Time had passed. Yuuta didn't know how long exactly—maybe an hour, maybe two—but the pain in his fingers was gone, the searing sting in his feet had dulled, and his lungs no longer tasted like powdered rock.
He raised his three-fingered green hands into the sunlight, turning them this way and that. Smooth skin had grown over what were once bleeding cracks and raw muscle. Even the bits of stone shard embedded deep had been pushed out by his body's slow but steady regeneration. His toes flexed experimentally beneath him, and he grinned with satisfaction.
Well, as much as a frog could grin.
"If frogs could smile, I'd be flashing a big one right now," he muttered, tilting his head and admiring his now fully healed limbs.
He stretched out both arms wide, back cracking faintly, and stood tall—well, as tall as his squat frog body would allow. He brought his right fist up and clenched it tightly, holding it close to his chest.
"They're not getting away with it," Yuuta said under his breath, voice low and sharp. "Those damn pigs? They're gonna pay."
It would've been a dramatic sight if he didn't still look like a half-buried scarecrow. Dust clung to every inch of his body like a second skin, forming weird shapes across his smooth frog limbs. A fine gray layer coated his face, his chest, his thighs—even his ass was probably caked in sediment. It made his serious pose look almost comedic.
"…But first," he said, glancing down at himself, "I gotta clean this crap off. I look like a failed pottery project."
With a heavy exhale, Yuuta began patting at his chest with both hands. A few puffs of dust exploded off his body with each slap. His taps grew more aggressive as he tried to shake off the stubborn dirt sticking between the folds of his joints and the underside of his thighs. His grunts echoed lightly in the otherwise silent canyon, accompanied by the rhythmic thump of hand against frog flesh.
After a minute of dust-beating, Yuuta raised a hand over his bulbous frog eyes, squinting into the sun. The sky above was still a blazing blue—cloudless, harsh, and merciless. The heat clung to him like a wet towel, and his back was starting to sweat under the remaining dust layer.
His gaze drifted, scanning the landscape slowly. The wide canyon stretched far in both directions, broken only by scattered boulders and the occasional jutting cliff face. But it was the collapsed passage in the distance that caught his eye—the place he'd nearly died trying to escape. Smoke still curled faintly from between the crushed rocks. Stone slabs were scattered like fallen dominoes. A gray mist hung lazily above it.
Yuuta narrowed his eyes.
He frowned.
"If I want real revenge… I need more power."
The thought settled in his gut like a rock. Power—he'd tasted just a bit of it already, enough to blow cliffs apart and fry pig faces. But it wasn't enough. Not yet. Those pigs would come back, and next time they'd probably be smarter. Stronger. Fatter.
He needed to get stronger first.
And that meant XP.
A lot of it.
His eyes drifted again toward the rubble-strewn passage, and his stomach sank slightly.
That place was a graveyard.
There were probably dozens of dead pigs under that collapsed cliff—soldiers, archers, even a few mages maybe. If their corpses were still buried beneath the stones, then so were their XP balls. A treasure trove of strength just waiting to be picked up.
But…
Yuuta looked down at his hands again. The memory of digging—of blood-slick fingers scraping against jagged rock, of his own skin peeling off in strips—flashed through his mind. He shuddered slightly.
"Damn it…" he muttered, dragging a hand down his face.
It was a gamble.
He could just walk away. Head in the other direction. Look for easier prey, safer ground.
But he knew himself. Deep down, he was too stubborn for that. Too greedy. Too hungry for payback.
And he hadn't clawed his way out of a stone coffin just to skip out on loot.
With a quiet sigh of resignation, Yuuta turned toward the collapsed cliff.
The air still hung heavy near the ruined pass. Ash and dust danced lazily in the breeze. It wasn't as thick as before, but every step closer brought the taste of burnt rock back to his tongue. The stone underfoot crunched faintly—loose debris scattered across the path like forgotten bones.
Yuuta walked slowly, his webbed feet padding over the uneven terrain. His legs felt stiff again, but not from exhaustion—this time, it was tension.
The boulders rose up before him like a sleeping beast. Towering slabs leaned against each other, forming uneven ridges and sharp corners. Smoke hissed faintly from within the cracks. The narrow path that had once been an escape route was now a chaotic mess of crushed stone and splintered cliffside.
"Okay," he whispered to himself. "Just in, quick look, grab whatever XP balls I can find… and out."
He took a breath.
And stepped forward.