A perfectly ordinary lizard-type monster, in the literal sense.
The Association’s assessment of the monster was exactly that.
With a big head, a plump body covered in red scales, and limbs that looked a little short.
By its round, harmless-looking appearance, it seemed safe to say it was below Wolf level.
In fact, no one had even looked at it closely.
All that had happened was that a report came in saying, “A monster of this kind was spotted in City A,” and someone gave it a cursory glance.
It wasn’t much different from the other Wolf-level monsters that had shown up before.
It had brought down one abandoned building that was in the middle of demolition, but the collapse itself wasn’t that large, and it was confirmed to have been caused by a chain reaction.
The estimated level was only Wolf.
The Association didn’t have the luxury of paying much attention to something so trivial.
There were far more urgent problems involving Demon-level monsters right in front of them.
So they asked a nearby hero to go deal with it.
One hero who happened to be nearby volunteered to head out alone.
C-Class Rank 37, Gogmuboots.
Among the new heroes who had recently joined, he stood out as someone with noticeably solid skill. His rank was low, but his combat ability was effectively on par with B-Class, making him one of the promising up-and-comers.
For someone like him, a Wolf-level monster was easy enough to handle.
He never thought he would fail, and even less did he think he would lose.
Once his deployment was confirmed, everyone except the minimum personnel needed for basic response immediately turned their attention to other matters.
There was no reason to waste concern on a mere Wolf-level monster when there were Demon- and Tiger-level threats that needed attention right away.
Especially when a hero who could handle even a Tiger-level monster had been sent.
No one paid it much mind.
It was just another routine job.
Yes.
That was how it was.
Until Gogmuboots reported that he had defeated the monster, and then, in the middle of the call, was counterattacked in an instant.
The desperate scream of a helpless human, not a hero, was recorded in vivid detail.
And then...
-Chomp.
-Crunch.
-Gulp.
The sounds of a satisfying meal were no exception.
They hurriedly requested backup, but once a ship had sailed, there was no catching it again.
All that remained at the scene was a pair of boots, nearly melted down and limp, as if they had been the only thing the monster had vomited back up because it couldn’t digest them.
Okragejotobosu.
A Wolf-level monster.
So lazy that even moving was a hassle, it had trained the octopus it kept as a pet and used it instead of its own arms. For some reason, the two had fused together, creating this monster.
At the time, it only had nine hairs left on its head, so when the octopus’s eight legs merged with it, it ended up with seventeen tentacles sprouting from its head.
After becoming a monster, it smashed its own house and waddled around the streets on its stubby legs.
Then, by chance, it sneaked aboard a truck headed for a convenience store and arrived here.
Since this was a sparsely populated mountain area, there was no hero to stop it.
The convenience store had just received a fresh delivery, so there was plenty to enjoy.
When it found the part-timer working there, it smashed every means of communicating with the outside world and started using the person as a servant.
Not a bad servant, all things considered.
Once the food in this place ran out, it planned to kill the servant too, but until then it intended to use them thoroughly.
After all, a normal civilian part-timer had no way to resist it.
Its tentacles were all precise and fast.
Its large, thick arms were practically weapons with the greatest destructive power among the tools it possessed.
Its weakness was that its body was only short and thick, so it could move slowly, but even so, it was strong.
Above all, it had three eyes, giving it a wide field of vision, so ambushes were difficult. Even if someone attacked from behind, it could simply respond quickly with its tentacles.
And its greatest source of confidence was its rapid regeneration.
If its body took no damage for five seconds, everything would regenerate in an instant.
In other words, unless it was attacked without even a five-second gap, or suffered a fatal blow that destroyed its brain or heart before it could regenerate, its super regeneration was invincible.
...Or so it believed.
After sitting in the middle of the convenience store like that, how many hours had passed?
The anomaly occurred when it popped the cap off its seventh cola bottle.
“...Huh? What, an earthquake?”
A faint vibration was felt beneath the ground where it was sitting.
“No. Not an earthquake... a living thing.”
It was unusually sensitive to vibrations by nature, so it noticed the faint tremor.
But at that moment, it made a mistake it could never take back.
“Heh... whatever, probably just a mole passing by.”
That was arrogance.
Stupidity.
And laziness, since checking was too much trouble.
Those three things combined to create the situation.
As a result...
-Crack!
“...Wha... huh?”
The ground around it sank by several dozen centimeters.
It thought, What the hell, what just happened... and tried to get up.
“...Ugh... ngh... huh?”
But as the ground gave way, its lower body was driven straight into the earth.
It didn’t seem like it was stuck too deeply.
But for some reason, no matter how much force it put into its lower body, there was no sign of it coming free.
It looked like it would need to use both arms to get out.
In other words, if it used its arms, it could get out just fine.
So aside from being startled, there was no real threat.
It immediately tried to calmly dig through the earth to figure out the cause.
...If not for the faint sensation it felt in its foot right after that.
“................?”
It burns.
It burned as if its ankle had been seared.
Had it touched something hot buried underground?
It hurriedly moved its ankle to put distance between itself and the heat, to cool it down.
...No, it tried to move it.
“...Huh...?”
Strange.
Why wasn’t its ankle moving?
It wiggled its toes.
No response.
The burning grew worse.
As it blanked out in the face of the incomprehensible situation, that was when...
“...Again!”
The same thing happened to the other leg that had been buried with it.
This time, the calf in particular throbbed sharply.
As it started to feel a growing unease, thinking, What the hell is going on... that “something” finally reached its brain.
Its body had swollen far too much because of its monsterification.
And because of that, this monster had one side effect.
The speed at which pain-related signals traveled through its nerves was extremely slow.
“———!!!”
A scream impossible to describe burst from its mouth.
Its mind turned blank white.
Its eyes rolled white from the shock of sudden bodily severance, and saliva began streaming from its mouth.
That was right.
The reason it felt that burning sensation in its foot... no, in the place where its foot should have been...
The reason it couldn’t move its ankle, let alone its toes...
The reason the same thing then happened to its calf...
And the reason this situation had come to pass now...
There was only one reason.
“...Ghk... ah... my, my legggg...!”
Its thick left ankle and half of its right calf had been sliced clean off.
It had happened right after its lower body was pinned into the ground.
“N-no, no, no...!!”
The pain of having its limbs severed, something it had never known, never understood, and never imagined it would ever experience, a pain it should have remained ignorant of forever in its life, flooded its entire being.
Even as that pain bleached its mind white, its body was already approaching death.
“Gahh... aah?”
Twitch.
Something large wriggled inside its lower abdomen.
Violently.
Tearing apart everything in sight.
Climbing upward bit by bit.
And when it finally chewed through all its intestines and bared its teeth against its stomach...
Only then did it realize what was happening to it.
It had been caught.
It was trapped.
It couldn’t escape.
It couldn’t stop it.
It was being eaten.
...It was going to die.
“Aaaagh!”
“No no no no no no no no no———!”
“I don’t want this, I don’t want to be eaten! Save me! Somebody, anyone...!”
“I don’t want to die....”
“I should’ve been a little more diligent.”
After that final thought, not even a speck of thought as a sentient being remained in Okragejotobosu.
It flailed wildly, whipping its own body with its tentacles and stabbing itself over and over with its big, hard fists, smashing its abdomen again and again.
Then, when its lower body had completely vanished and it was finally freed from the ground...
“Kkghyaaaagh! Kkruuuaaaaghhhhh!!! Gwoooaaahhhh!!!”
It began rolling around on the convenience store floor, completely reduced to a beast.
But it was nothing more than a meaningless struggle.
By the time it felt the thing that had bitten into its heart, crushed through its spine, and pierced straight through its back, it had already been dead for quite some time.
A typically lazy end, right to the very last moment.
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