TDH Vol. 1 pts. 21-22 (Patreon)

[Vol. 1 pt. 21]

“Well what fun would it be if I was the only one who got to watch?”

Those were his words before kicking me out of his personal space back into the dungeon.

The coin that I chose landed on the floor in front of me, bouncing a few times before stopping with its ornate side sticking up. I had no idea which side was supposed to be the back and which was supposed to be the front, and I never saw such symbols on either side before. The coin was as foreign and mysterious as the man who the dungeon belonged to—well, as the man who the dungeon was. I was technically inside of him with every step that I took within the dungeon.

Wait, it’s weird to think about it that way. Seriously weird. I’m inside of another man right now. Not just inside in a sexual way, but… my entire body is walking around inside him.

There was a time when I was a kid who actually had friends in the village. One of the other kids stole some magazines from their dad who bought them from the city, and they were full of… let’s say, interesting fetishes. Seriously interesting fetishes, and not necessarily interesting in the good way. As kids, we thought they were all gross and we laughed at them.

Now I felt like I was inside of one of the bizarre ideas from that magazine whenever I thought about my entire body being inside of somebody else.

Huh. Now that I think about it… I remember one magazine being dedicated to thighs and feeling funny when I looked at it. Is that why I’m obsessed with thighs? Because I saw a magazine about them when I was a kid? Wait, this isn’t the time to be all introspective. I have a coin to flip.

Though, there were a few questions regarding the coin. One, how was I supposed to flip it? Two, what would happen once I flipped it?

Three, should I flip it as soon as possible?

What if it only gave me a temporary boost or something? If I used it right away, I might end up wasting it. Then again, what if it gave me a weapon or power that might stick with me? In that case, I should use it as soon as possible so that I’d get the most use out if it.

The problem was that I had no idea what flipping the coin would do.

Then there was the problem of how to actually flip it. I didn’t have thumbs so I couldn’t just pick it up with one of my paws and flip it normally. I couldn’t even really throw it in an attempt at flipping it.

The only thing I could think of to flip it was to try and pick it up between my teeth and throw it up into the air… and potentially mess up by dropping it into my throat and choking on it.

I sighed and barked, “Let’s get this over with. At least it should be entertaining if I choke on it.”

I then discovered picking up something that flat on the ground wasn’t going to be easy. I ended up pressing my snout against the ground and smooshing it up against my face without actually being able to bite the coin.

Alright. This might be harder than I thought it would be.

I tried going in with an angled approach.

Another failed attempt.

I stood and blinked at the coin a few times as the floating orb came in nice and close to probably get a good shot at me failing to pick the coin up. That was when I had an idea to be just a little bit more entertaining. After all, most of the people watching didn’t actually care about whether I made it all the way through the dungeon or not. They just wanted to be entertained. In that case…

I looked up at the orb, down at the coin, back up at the orb, and repeated the process of looking between the two a few more times before trying to bite the coin again and barking out of “frustration.” When that didn’t work, I rolled onto my side to try and bite it. All I ended up doing was pushing it even farther away by accidentally bumping it with my nose.

How can I make this even better to watch?

I figured I was accomplishing two things. One, I was being cute and funny to watch. Two, I was making the audience invested in my struggle of flipping the coin and getting them to root for me. Fane told me that they loved a good struggle, after all. They’d get bored if I managed to flip the coin without any struggle.

But at the same time…

It wasn’t like I wasn’t seriously struggling with the coin. None of my failed attempts were illegitimate. I was just purposely being cute while failing. Or at least, I was doing what I thought would probably look cute.

And when I thought about a crowd of people watching me thinking that I’m cute… I kind of liked that.

I felt like it might have been awakening something in me.

Before I could get too into that idea, though, I had an idea.

The floor wasn’t even. There were small cracks in it every now and then that the coin would be able to fit into. So, I pushed the coin around with my nose until it dipped into one of the cracks and stood up on its side. After getting it into that position, it was actually pretty easy to bite and lift up.

Alright. Never thought that flipping a coin would take this much effort, but let’s do this. All I have to do is throw my head back and let go. And hope that I don’t mess up and drop it into my throat.

So, after taking a deep breath, I threw my head back as quickly as I could and let go of the coin once my head was pointing straight up.

I managed to do it without choking on the coin, thankfully. I tossed it up into the air and watched it spin around, and I made sure to take a few steps back to give it a clear spot to land on.

The coin landed and bounced a couple of times before coming to a roll on its side… where it rolled right into another crack on the floor.

Its final position was on its side.

I went through all of that just for it to not even land on a proper side.

I sighed. At least flipping it again would be easier now that I had it figured—

The sound of clapping filled the dungeon.

“How lucky you are!” a familiar voice shouted out—the voice of the dungeon’s master. “Would you believe me if I said that this is the first time in my entire life that I have seen a coin land on its side like that? Bravo! Though, this does complicate things. The coin has landed, but not on a side that it was supposed to land on. If anything… one could make the argument that both sides of the coin are currently ‘up.’ Well, in that case, I suppose it would only make sense for you to receive both results. Ah… what an entertaining surprise.”

His voice disappeared at the same time as the results appeared. One of them was a floating orb of energy right in front of me that looked like it was covered in burning flames. The other result was a large beast similar in appearance to me, but several times my size. It even made the rats look small in comparison to it, and it bared its fangs at me to snarl. There was also a metal collar covered in spikes around its neck, and just from looking at it… I could tell that there was some kind of special strength to that collar. It was a gut feeling, maybe, but there was no way that the collar wasn’t special.

So, seems like the results were either magic or an enemy. An enemy that looks like it wants to tear me to shreds and is probably more than capable of doing so. An enemy that I have no idea how to fight. Great. Seriously great.

I didn’t even begin to fool myself into thinking that survival against the beast was possible… but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t try.

And since I was up against likely impossible odds, I figured there was no harm in accepting the first result by biting into it. I wasn’t sure how else I was supposed to accept the dungeon’s gift.

Flames erupted from the sides of my mouth after biting it. I would have thought that having flames inside my mouth would be painful, but I felt nothing aside from a slight warmth.

Well, I’m not sure how useful having my mouth on fire is going to be, but I guess a flaming mouth is better than a non-flaming one. Wait, does this mean I can roast meat in my mouth now?

I shook my head. I had more important things to think about than whether or not I could cook food in my mouth with the flames.

Especially since that more important thing charged at me.

[Vol. 1 pt. 22]

Being cute is way easier than fighting giant beasts!

Sure, I had flames in my mouth, but what good was that against a giant beast that could easily fit my entire body in its mouth?! Having a really hot mouth didn’t mean anything if I couldn’t even bite my opponent due to having to run away the entire time!

I’m never gambling again! I should have just taken that sword or water magic! This isn’t worth it at all! This seriously isn’t worth it! I just want to go be Elanah’s lap pet for the rest of my life! Not deal with any of this!

Was Elanah a little bit crazy? Sure, probably, but she looked nice, she acted nice, she had nice thighs, and she made me feel nice. Therefore, even if it meant spending the rest of my life with somebody who was a little bit questionable when it came to how sane she was, spending my life with her was an extremely preferable option to having to fight giant beasts in the dungeon wanting to eat me alive!

Shit! I got used to those rats and stopped fearing them… but this thing is way scarier! Seriously scarier!

Even though I knew I would be fine if I died, hearing the beast’s growls and snarls from behind as it chased me through the halls terrified me like the rats never could. My heart pounded faster than ever before to the point where I was worried about it bursting out of my chest at any moment. There was also the fact that, as long as I kept on running away, there was a chance I might run into another beast or trap and that would seriously screw me.

Shit, shit, shit!

All the confidence I felt from getting used to the previous floors was thoroughly eliminated. Not an ounce of it was left as the beast snapped its jaws right behind me. I felt his nose brush against my tail, but that was it.

Had he scored a direct bite on me with those jaws… I probably would have been bitten in half.

Alright, I need a plan. I at least need to plan to create a plan. Alright, new plan: start thinking of a plan. Alright. Plan complete. I’ve officially done something other than run away, so I can die satisfied in knowing that I didn’t just run the entire time.

Yeah, right.

I was a fleeing coward and I knew it. Whether the audience found it entertaining or not, I didn’t know and I didn’t care.

With a corner up ahead to turn into a new tunnel, there was only one thing I could think of doing. Running forever wasn’t going to work and I didn’t want to die while putting up literally no fight at all, so it was the only thing I could think of doing. There was a huge chance of me looking stupid and getting killed in an instant, but that was better than getting killed while doing nothing.

I need to be fast. Come on, you stumpy legs! Go faster!

I squeezed every last drop of strength out of myself to go as fast as I possibly could toward the wall. Then, before reaching it, I jumped up and held my legs out toward it to land on the wall and use that as a platform to jump off of it right over the pursuing beast.

The beast snapped its jaws at me again to try and catch me midair, but it just barely missed my leg.

You might be a new type of beast, but the same tricks work against you!

I landed on the beast’s back and wasted zero time in biting into the back of its neck, just above where the collar was. I wasn’t able to do much damage since my mouth was so small compared to the thickness of its neck, but I sunk my fangs as deep into the neck as they could go. I also had no idea how effective the fire would be… until I noticed that I caught its fur on fire.

The fire was quick to spread, too. Turned out that the beast’s fur was pretty flammable. The problem now was that, while it did burn away the fur, the fire didn’t stick around to continue burning the skin. There were some little patches of skin that were on fire and turning black from the flames, but not enough to kill the beast. Not only that, but I noticed there wasn’t any major bleeding coming from its neck. It was as if my flames burned the wound I made and stopped it from bleeding.

The fire stopped spreading after burning away about a third of the beast’s total fur, mostly getting rid of the fur all along its back.

Great. So all I can do is burn it until its naked and the burns stop bleeding. I wonder if I could—

My thoughts stopped in their tracks when I noticed a light, red glow surround the metal collar.

What?

I had no way of knowing what that meant… until the beast lunged at me with even greater speed than before. And the next time that it snapped its jaws at me, it sounded like there was even more force behind the bite.

Is that collar making it stronger?! What triggered it?!

I tried to run away from the beast again, maybe to try and use the same trick as before against it, but I couldn’t.

I was barely able to escape the beast before. Now that it was even faster, it had no problem surpassing my speed and wrapping its jaws around my torso.

A single bite was all that it took to crush my body between its fangs.

Another day in the dungeon, another death.

Later that evening, after waking up in the normal cell, I was greeted by Fane giving me his condolences. “Tough luck, little guy,” he said. “Heard about what happened.”

I sighed and flopped onto my side.

“You went up against a cursed hound. Normally, you won’t find those until you’re past the seventh floor.”

Thanks, you asshole dungeon.

“And it even had an item. A berserk collar by the sounds of it. I got that item once and it was pretty useful. Makes you stronger and faster the closer you are to death. There was one crazy guy a while back who got it. Purposely hurt himself until he felt like he was close to death, and then he rampaged through the dungeon with the collar boosting him up. Killed some pretty powerful beasts with a single punch, but he was already pretty strong in the first place. Point is, don’t feel bad about dying today. There was no way you were going to win that fight.”

I rolled around from side to side as I mentally cursed the dungeon for throwing something way past my level at me. That was just unfair. Seriously unfair.

“Good news though, I hear the crowd is obsessed with you. You’ve got a bunch of fangirls out there who want to pet you and take you home.”

My ears perked up.

“You like the sounds of that, huh? I hear you’re not too popular with men, especially because of Elanah’s rambling about how amazing you are all the time, but the women and kids love you. Who knows, you might even be able to find a sponsor with how popular you already are. Though… I’ve got to admit. I feel kind of jealous that the newcomer has stolen my role as the ladies’ favorite. Maybe I should get myself turned into something small and cute, too.”

Was I really that popular? If I was, that was great news since it meant that I wouldn’t need to worry about not getting enough votes. But, at the same time, I had some seriously mixed feelings about kids watching me. There were little kids who watched me get torn apart by beasts. I probably wasn’t the only one they watched, either.

Kids absolutely should not have been watching what happened within the dungeon.

Though, knowing that even kids watched everything in the dungeon explained why so many of the current adults were alright with it. They probably started watching it as children, too.

Watching criminals fight for their lives was a common pastime for people of all ages. It was hard to blame the adults for being sadistic voyeurs when they were probably effectively brainwashed from childhood to think that there was nothing wrong with it.

The whole thing was still screwed up, but…

Well, I shook my head to stop thinking about that. There was no point to it. Even if I thought the whole “game” was screwed up, I was just one person who couldn’t do anything about it.

All I needed to focus on was surviving and getting out. Then probably getting away from the city to go and live in the middle of nowhere with Elanah… maybe while bringing along some of my other female fans if they had nice thighs.

After what Fane said, how could I not imagine myself drowning in an ocean of thighs? Women wanted to take me home and pet me! It was the most popular I’d ever been! I went from being just some random guy in a village to being an object of desire for countless women! Sure, they desired me for reasons I never expected to be desired for, but I wasn’t going to complain about the finer details like that!

I might have been a criminal forced to fight and die in the dungeon for entertainment, but still.

Life was good.

Not as good as thighs, and maybe not seriously good, but still pretty good.