Yuuta's blood-slicked frog body lay sprawled across the ruined field, a grotesque image of agony and rebirth. His limp form resembled a road-killed amphibian, flattened and broken, soaked in a mixture of gore and grass. His chest rose and fell in ragged, shallow breaths, every inhale scraping against the sharp stab of pain in his shattered leg and impaled arm. The world around him rang with the aftermath of his unintentional outburst of magic—debris settling, embers dancing in the air like fireflies of war, and the scent of charred pork hanging thick in the wind.
"Heh..." A faint, hoarse chuckle rattled from Yuuta's frog throat. It was weak, breathless. But it was also victorious.
Then the anger returned. Like bile rising from a churning stomach, his hatred surged anew.
"That's what you fucking get!" Yuuta spat with venom, his tongue clumsily shaping words his new mouth could barely handle. "Mess with me, the future fucking king, and you get turned into barbecue!"
He wanted to scream it louder, but his throat was scorched and dry. The words came out like a croak soaked in venom. Still, they were his words. His rage. His triumph. And it tasted sweet.
The four remaining pigmen were a sorry sight. Charred flesh peeled from their muscular frames like burnt paper. One of the shield bearers was already nothing more than scattered meat and bent metal, his companion crawling, blind and one-armed, into a smear of his own intestines. The axe wielders staggered, faces half-melted, blackened skin revealing sinew and shattered teeth. The archer was down, bow snapped in half, burnt skin, rolling on the ground with a low squeal, clutching in pain.
They weren't charging anymore. They were trying to survive.
But Yuuta wasn't done.
He wasn't even close to done.
Something inside him—a pulsing, glowing instinct—itched in his still-useable left hand. It was like flexing a phantom limb, or breathing after being underwater. All he had to do was will it. He didn't understand it, but he didn't need to.
The white-hot magic sphere appeared again.
This time, he saw it more clearly. It didn't look like any spell effect he remembered from his favorite games—it was crude, almost ugly. A roiling orb of pure destructive pressure, light and heat swirling inside, like someone had balled up a miniature sun and stuffed it full of hatred.
Yuuta grinned. No, he bared his teeth.
"Round two, bacon bastards."
With a flick of his trembling wrist, the magic ball shot forward like a cannon round. It howled through the air, heat rippling in its wake. The injured pigmen tried to scramble. One even managed a panicked scream.
Too late.
BOOM!
The explosion rocked the earth. A spray of dirt, meat, armor, and blood misted the field. Yuuta's laughter came like a croak mixed with wheezing coughs, sharp and manic. The magic sphere had obliterated the already-broken formation. Limbs were tossed like ragdolls. A pigman's skull tumbled near Yuuta's twitching foot, the tusks still steaming.
And then—again.
Yuuta didn't wait.
He raised his arm.
Another ball.
Another blast.
BOOM!
Three seconds. That's all it took. Just three seconds between each cast. A rhythm. A rhythm of death.
BOOM!
It was almost musical. Like a beat to a brutal song only he could hear.
"DIE! DIE! YOU FAT PORK-FACED PIECES OF SHIT!" Yuuta howled, tears in his eyes from either the pain or ecstasy. Maybe both. His mind was fraying at the edges, riding the high of revenge and survival like a deranged conductor of destruction.
BOOM!
The bow-wielding pigman tried to crawl. His arms scraped at the dirt, his snout squealing. Yuuta didn't let him get far.
BOOM!
The pigman's body turned into a stain across a wide radius. Yuuta laughed harder, snot and blood dripping from his frogy nostrils. His long tongue lolled from the side of his mouth as he sucked in broken breaths.
"Who's the weak one now, huh?! WHO'S THE DAMN FROG NOW?!"
No one answered. Just the wind, whispering through bloodied grass.
The field had turned into a grotesque battlefield. The green, and dirt was now a canvas of crimson, scattered with shattered bone and burnt skin. The once-menacing pigmen had been reduced to ruined corpses and smoldering remains.
And Yuuta, the pitiful frog that had once crawled through pain and fear, now lay in the center of it all. Bleeding. Broken. But victorious.
His head hit the ground again with a soft thump.
He panted. His vision swam.
The pain was still there, gnawing at him, especially in his leg and arm. But something else had taken root.
Power.
This frog body... it wasn't normal.
It had magic. Not just any magic, either. It was his. Instinctual. Explosive. Devastating.
Was this some kind of weird reincarnation gimmick? Like those games where you pick random skills and start from scratch?
He didn't know.
He didn't care.
All that mattered was this:
He had survived.
Barely.
And the look on those pig bastards' faces before they exploded?
Priceless.
Yuuta chuckled, a weak sputtering sound. "Guess I'm the damn nuke now..."
Suddenly Yuuta's vision warped—blurred around the edges like the vignette of a bad dream refusing to end. His breath came out in erratic, ragged gasps, and every pulse of his weak frog heart echoed like a countdown timer in his ears. He blinked, once, twice—his consciousness swaying like a candle flame in the wind.
Pain no longer screamed at him; it whispered, numb and icy. His body, once overheating with adrenaline and violence, now turned cold. His blood—too much of it lost to the jagged earth beneath him—painted a grotesque trail from where he had first collapsed to where he now lay, barely alive.
"Shit…"
The curse tumbled out like a whisper, not from pain but from realization.
"That… fucking… bow-wielding bacon bastard…"
Yuuta tried to lift his right arm, but it didn't respond. The limb hung like a useless vine, the hole in it still weeping red. His left leg was no better—numb, unresponsive, alien. Only his left arm and right leg still obeyed him, and even they were on borrowed time.
He shifted his blurry gaze forward.
The field was strewn with gore, still misting with the aftermath of his explosive vengeance. Where once stood the five pigmen, now only remains remained—scattered bones, burned tusks, clumps of melted armor… and there, gleaming amidst the ash and ruin, five glowing blue orbs. They pulsed like hearts, untouched by the destruction, as if defying logic and fire.
"What… the hell… are those?"
Yuuta coughed, blood leaking from his wide mouth.
A swirl of nausea clawed at his stomach as he tried to focus. His vision swam, and for a moment, the world twisted. But then, as his mind focused again, the memory of a game flashed in his brain. That game. The one he'd been playing on his phone right before the accident. The infinite-wave survival game.
In that game, monsters dropped orbs. XP orbs.
Yuuta's blood-slicked lips twitched.
"Are… are those… XP orbs…?"
A sudden spark lit in his eyes. Desperation mutated into obsession. The idea of leveling up—of surviving—suddenly outweighed the pain, the fear, the humiliation of his current frog-shaped life.
He had to get to them.
With what remained of his strength, Yuuta began to crawl. His body scraped against the harsh dirt, every pebble cutting into his wounded flesh, but he bit down the pain. His left arm dragged him forward. His right leg kicked feebly to assist. His face mashed into the ground, collecting blood and dirt like war paint.
Every inch was a war. Every breath a scream he could no longer give.
"Too far… those damn things are too damn far…"
But he kept going. One pull. One push. Blood smeared behind him like a crimson tail.
When the world blurred too much, he thought of thighs—succubus thighs, elf thighs, human, beastkin, even dragon-girl thighs.
"Hot… women… I'm not dying before I get my fantasy harem…"
He laughed—a dry, wheezing sound that bordered on madness. The orbs drew closer.
Five feet away.
Three feet.
Two—
And then…
Nothing.
His body gave out. Every ounce of willpower he'd summoned simply vanished. His left arm collapsed under him. His vision darkened. His frog heart sputtered. Consciousness began to retreat.
"No…! No no no no…!"
He screamed internally. A voiceless, helpless shriek.
His trembling green fingers—mere inches from the nearest orb—lay still.
And then, like a miracle without divinity, one of the glowing blue orbs floated. It pulsed, shimmered… and slowly, like a magnet pulled by destiny, it drifted toward his limp, bloodied body.
Yuuta couldn't move, couldn't even blink, but he saw it.
The orb made contact.
TING!
A sharp, digital chime echoed through the void of his dying mind.
[Level Up: Level 1 Achieved]
And then the world changed again.
Color bled away from the grass, the sky, the air. Everything froze.
Time halted.
The bloody battlefield fell into a state of monochrome stillness. The wind stopped howling. Even the smoke from the explosions stilled in midair like frozen sculpture.
And then—
Three glowing cards appeared in front of his unconscious form, hovering in a neat arc. Their borders pulsed with light, each etched with mystical sigils and strange symbols.
Another chime.
[System has detected that host is incapacitated. Auto-selecting one of the three spell cards.]
The middle card lifted itself higher.
[Auto-Selection Complete: Spell Acquired – Regeneration]
The other two cards shuddered, twisted, and disappeared—sucked into a vortex of shadow that collapsed with a hiss.
The Regeneration card shimmered like a jewel under sunlight. It drifted downward, gently approaching Yuuta's twitching frog body. It hovered directly above his head.
Then, it dissolved.
A thousand threads of glittering energy exploded softly outward, bathing Yuuta in golden, sparkling light.
The tiny motes of magic sank into his wounds, soaking into the holes in his flesh, the cracks in his bones, the shredded muscles beneath. The colorless world began to regain its hue.
[Spell Activated: Regeneration]
The wind blew again. The grass rustled. The sun shined. The world resumed.
But Yuuta did not stir. He remained unconscious—his chest rising and falling more steadily now. His wounds slowly knitting together, blood crusting over and being absorbed. Bones reformed. Skin closed. The crimson trail he had left behind faded into the earth.
He was alive. Barely.