Extended, Professionally Edited Version (~1,700 words)
The wolf stepped closer—not charging, not stalking, but moving with the quiet, oppressive certainty of something that had never once questioned its place at the top of the food chain.
Its paws were massive. Each step pressed deep indentations into the damp earth, roots shifting slightly beneath its weight. The soft glow from the bioluminescent fungi illuminated its outline: thick fur, bone-like plates along its spine, muscles rolling under its coat like coiled ropes.
This was not a monster meant for Floors 1–10.
This thing belonged here.
I didn't.
I stayed kneeling, bone shard trembling in one hand, bloody meat chunk drooping in the other. My hands shook so badly the meat almost slapped the stone.
The wolf stopped about ten meters away.
Close enough that I could smell its breath from here.
Metallic. Hot. Rotten in a way only carnivore breath can be rotten.
It tilted its head slightly, watching me the way humans watch bugs: curious in the way that curiosity does not help the bug.
My brain screamed move, but my body said freeze or die.
I swallowed hard. The sound was so loud in my ears I almost winced.
Slowly, I lowered the meat chunk to the stone and nudged it forward with the bone shard.
A peace offering.
A bribe.
Or maybe a pathetic attempt to say, "Look, I respect the natural order, you're the apex predator, please don't rearrange my insides."
The wolf didn't react.
It didn't even flick an ear.
But its nostrils flared, taking in the scent of blood, rot, and… me.
It took another step.
Then another.
My chest compressed until breathing felt optional.
The wolf lowered its head until its muzzle hovered inches from my face.
I had never been that close to death before.
Its breath steamed across my cheek. Warm. Wet. Heavy.
It sniffed once.
A long, slow inhale that raked my soul through its nostrils.
Its pupils widened.Narrowed.Then widened again.
It took another inhale, even deeper—so deep its ribcage expanded visibly—and a soft growl rumbled from deep inside its body.
Every instinct I had screamed:
"THIS IS IT."
Then—
The wolf's jaw opened. Not fully—just a slight parting that revealed two rows of teeth designed to crush bone.
My heart stopped.
The wolf froze.
Its eyes locked on mine.
And for one horrifying second, I was certain:
This is the moment.This is where I die.
Then—
It closed its mouth.
Exhaled sharply.
A dismissive huff.
Like the world's biggest, most terrifying sigh.
Then it turned its head away from me and walked toward the corpse behind me.
Not because I wasn't a threat.
Because I wasn't even a thought.
It stepped over the meat chunk I'd pushed forward, not even acknowledging it. It didn't care about my peace offering because it didn't see me as a rival.
It saw me as background noise.
Somehow, that stung.
Not emotionally.More like… existentially.
I stayed frozen.
The wolf reached the corpse and began to feed.
No roar. No dramatics.Just violence in motion.
Its teeth sank into the dead creature's flank—muscle tearing like wet cloth. A crack echoed as it snapped a rib. Blood smeared across its muzzle.
The sound was awful.
Wet. Tearing. Crunching.Every noise made my stomach twist, both in disgust and hunger.
I pressed a hand tightly over my own mouth, terrified a ragged breath or panicked wheeze would be enough to get me demoted from "ignored" to "meal."
Minutes passed.
Or maybe seconds.Time was losing meaning.
The smell intensified—hot, iron-rich, sour from early rot. Not old decay, not the dry, stale smell of long-dead things. This was fresh rot: organs already destabilizing, fluids reacting to air, the heat of the body still lingering.
A corpse like this smelled within an hour.
And judging from the warmth still rising off the exposed guts, this thing wasn't dead long.
That meant the wolf had killed it recently.
Very recently.
That also meant it was probably still hungry.
My pulse throbbed in my temples.
When another bone snapped inside the wolf's jaws, I flinched—my foot skidding over the stone with the faintest scrape.
A tiny sound.
Barely audible.
But the wolf's ears pricked instantly.
Its chewing slowed.
Then stopped.
Its head swiveled toward me, slow and deliberate, lips peeling back a few centimeters to reveal glistening teeth.
My whole body went rigid.
The wolf stared.
Long.
Unblinking.
Evaluating.
Muscles shifting under its fur as if testing whether the effort of killing me was worth the calories.
My grip tightened on the bone shard until my hand cramped.
The wolf took one step in my direction.
My breath caught in my throat.
Another step.
It lowered its head.
Then—
It paused.
Sniffed.
Tilted its head.
Then, with another disgusted huff, it turned away like I was too small a problem to spend energy on.
Relief slammed into me so hard my knees buckled.
I pressed myself against the cavern wall, trying to make myself as small and uninteresting as possible.
The wolf finished eating, licking the blood from its muzzle with slow, deliberate strokes.
Then it lifted its head again.
Stared straight at me.
My heart stopped again.
For a full, agonizing five seconds, we stared at each other.
Then the wolf simply turned and padded into the deeper shadows, disappearing between massive hanging roots like a ghost sinking back into the dark.
I didn't breathe until I could no longer hear its footsteps.
When I finally gasped for air, it came out as a shaking, broken release.
"I'm alive," I whispered. "I'm… alive."
My stomach chose that exact moment to growl so loudly I clamped both hands over it in panic.
"Shut UP," I hissed. "It JUST left!"
My body didn't care about fear.
It cared about food.
And unfortunately, the only "food" was the disgusting, mutilated corpse the wolf had left behind.
I crawled back toward it on shaking limbs, the smell hitting me like a physical force. Up close, it was worse—hot, sour, and thick, with early-stage rot folding into exposed organs.
The creature was… something like a deer, but bulkier, with hardened bone plates along its legs and a misshapen skull. Its stomach had been torn wide open, revealing half-digested moss-like matter.
Flies didn't exist down here.But the bacteria did.
And it stank.
But I was starving.
I circled the corpse carefully, searching with the bone shard for anything remotely edible. Most of the flesh was gone, but a thin strip near the lower rib remained intact, shielded from the wolf's teeth by a jutting bone.
It was small.Slimy.Sticky.
But meat.
I sliced it off, gagging at the sound it made—wet, stringy, almost like tearing cloth soaked in soup.
I sniffed it.
It smelled… wrong.But not instantly deadly wrong.
"Okay," I whispered. "Tiny bite first. Controlled poisoning."
I tore off the smallest sliver I could manage.
It felt like chewing cold liver mixed with battery acid.
My throat tried to reject it.Violently.
But I forced myself to swallow.
I waited.
Ten seconds.Thirty.A minute.
A faint burn spread down my throat and settled in my stomach—a dull ache. Not enough to incapacitate me. Not enough to kill me.
Acceptable risk.
Disgusting, horrifying, pitiful… but acceptable.
I took another tiny bite.
Then another.
Each one made me cringe harder, eyes watering from the taste and smell, but slowly—very slowly—the hunger quieted from a scream to a weak whine.
Warmth trickled through my limbs in weak pulses.Not strength.Just… less emptiness.
Barely.
I sat back, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. The blood smeared across my skin made my stomach twist again.
"I can't believe this is my life," I whispered. "Floor 75 is the worst restaurant. Zero stars. Will not dine here again."
A small laugh escaped me—sharp, too high, too brittle.
I didn't stop it.
I pushed myself to my feet using the stone wall, my legs trembling from weakness and adrenaline, and scanned the cavern.
Silence.
Stillness.
But not safety.
Never safety.
I turned to retreat to my root shelter—when a faint sound made me freeze.
A wet, sticky skrrk.
Then another.
Something small moved behind the corpse, hidden in shadow.
Fast.
Hungry.
Scavenger.
The wolf was gone.
I wasn't alone.
My grip tightened around the bone shard.My pulse spiked.My stomach clenched painfully around the rotten meat inside it.
A soft clicking echoed from behind the corpse.
Then something with too many legs and too many eyes skittered into view.
Its mandibles opened.
It lunged.