The world was unfair, and today it had chosen his stomach as its battlefield.
Iris trudged along the dirt path leading out of the village, one hand pressed dramatically to his midsection as it growled in protest. The other hand clutched a worn wicker basket that contained exactly nothing, which was also what his wallet contained, his house contained, and – if one asked certain villagers – his future contained.
"Just once," he muttered, kicking a pebble off the road, "just once, I would like to wake up and not have my first thought be: 'What can I eat that's free?'"
The pebble bounced, missed a bush, and vanished into the weeds.
"That's right. Even the rock has better aim than me."
The forest loomed ahead, a thick wall of dark trunks and dense foliage that most sane people treated with the respect one reserved for sacred grounds and angry gods. The villagers called it the Green Maw. According to them, it was teeming with monsters, man-eating plants, cursed fog, and a suspicious number of things described as "unspeakable."
Iris called it something else.
"Free grocery store," he said, squaring his shoulders as he stepped beneath the trees. "The only problem is that the groceries try to kill you."
Shade swallowed the warmth of the sun almost immediately, replaced by a cool dampness that clung to the air. Birds chirped overhead, insects buzzed unseen, and somewhere in the distance something let out a low, distinctly unfriendly growl.
He stopped.
"…That was far away," he decided. "Emotionally, I mean. Spiritually distant. Now then, mushrooms."
He had heard more than enough warnings about the forest beasts growing stronger lately. Adventurers spoke in hushed tones of eyes gleaming in the dark and pressure so heavy it pressed on the lungs. Beasts, they said, were changing. Evolving. Growing more dangerous.
Iris' stomach growled again, louder this time.
"Well, they're not the only ones changing," he muttered. "I'm evolving too. Into a corpse if I don't eat something today."
He picked his way through the undergrowth, scanning for anything that looked edible and ideally non-poisonous. His criteria were flexible. He had considered adding "won't cause hallucinations" to the list, but last time the hallucinations had at least included giant roasted chickens dancing in circles, so he wasn't entirely opposed.
"Let's see…" He crouched beside a patch of mushrooms sprouting from a fallen log. "White with spots. That's either delicious or instant death." He reached out, then pulled his hand back. "You know what? Let's not play mushroom roulette on an empty stomach."
He moved on, muttering to himself about how beasts had mana, claws, fangs, built-in weapons, and meanwhile humans had taxes.
For a while, it was just him, the forest, and his constant, grumbling commentary about life's injustices. It took his mind off the hunger, if nothing else. But eventually, even he had to admit that wandering in circles complaining wasn't filling his basket.
He stopped to catch his breath and leaned against a tree, pressing his forehead to the rough bark.
"Why are beasts so dangerous anyway?" he asked the tree. "What are you all so upset about? You don't pay rent. You don't owe anyone money. Nobody expects you to have ambition."
A branch creaked overhead. A leaf fell, landing on top of his head.
"I'll take that as agreement."
He pushed off the tree and resumed walking, deeper this time. The sounds of the village had long since faded, replaced by rustling leaves and the occasional distant screech. A thin trail of disturbed undergrowth hinted that something large had passed through earlier.
He followed it.
"Best case," he murmured, "I find a fruit tree. Worst case, I get eaten. Honestly, both involve me putting something in my mouth, so I'll call that even."
The trail led him into a small clearing partially hidden by low branches. The air here felt heavier, the shadows a little darker, the silence a little too watchful. He stopped at the edge and parted the foliage to peek inside.
Then he froze.
Lying in the middle of the clearing was a wolf-like creature the size of a horse.
Its fur was a dark, smoky gray, streaked with lighter markings along its sides like someone had painted faint, jagged lightning across its body. Its ribs expanded and contracted in slow, strained breaths, each exhale faintly misting the air. One of its forelegs was twisted at an ugly angle, and dark blood matted the fur around its shoulder and flank.
Iris' first, instinctive reaction was fear. Every story he had ever heard about forest beasts came rushing back about claws like daggers, teeth like swords, and eyes that glowed with mana.
His second reaction, perhaps more telling, was irritation.
"Why," he whispered, "do even wild animals have more presence than me?"
He swallowed, forcing his racing heart to calm down, and took another cautious step into the clearing. The beast's eyes were closed. Its chest rose and fell in shallow rhythm. Up close, the wound on its side seemed less like the work of another beast and more like… something else. A burn? A blast? He wasn't sure.
He should turn around. That was what any rational villager would do: quietly back away, pretend they never saw anything, and definitely not approach the giant predator that could bite them in half.
He took another step forward.
"Hey," he said softly. "You dead?"
The wolf's ear twitched.
"Okay, so not dead," he said. "That's… good for you. Less good for me."
He stood there for a moment, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. The smart thing to do would be to leave. The compassionate thing to do would be to help. The hungry thing to do...
He glanced at its gigantic flank, then quickly looked away.
"Nope. No. I am not that desperate. Yet."
He set the empty basket down and knelt at a cautious distance, studying the creature more closely. Its fur was glossy beneath the blood, its muscles tense even in unconsciousness. There was a pressure around it, like the air itself was thick. It made his skin prickle.
"Are you one of those stronger beasts they keep complaining about?" he asked. "You know, the super dangerous, mana-filled, life-ending kinds? Because if you are, I'd just like to say you're doing a terrible job at being invincible right now."
The wolf's lips curled, revealing a line of sharp teeth, but it did not move.
He blinked.
"Did… you just growl at my commentary? Look, I'm starving and talking to an unconscious monster. Objectively, my life is worse."
His stomach interrupted with another long, miserable rumble.
He sighed and sat back on his heels. "Right. Food first. Existential crisis later."
From his belt pouch, he pulled out his last piece of hard bread – a small, misshapen lump that looked more like a rock than food. He stared at it with the solemnity of a priest approaching an altar.
"This was supposed to be my lunch," he told the unconscious beast. "My one, blessed, pitiful lunch. I saved it. Protected it. Dreamed about it. And now..."
He glanced at the wolf again.
It really did look bad up close.
"...now I'm apparently having a moral dilemma about feeding a creature that could eat me like a snack."
He groaned and leaned back, holding the bread above his face as if hoping divine enlightenment would strike.
"Why am I like this?"
The bread, being bread, had no answer.
He lowered it and scowled at the wolf. "Do you have any idea how poor I am? No, of course you don't. You just run around with your built-in fur coat and sharp teeth, while I have to pay for everything. Food? Money. Roof? Money. Warmth? Money. Meanwhile, you lie in a forest and the world provides."
The wolf's ear flicked again.
"Yeah, yeah, you're injured. So am I. Emotionally." He hesitated. "Fine. We'll split it. But you're getting the smaller half. Because I am petty."
He snapped the bread in two. One half crumbled slightly; the other looked marginally less pathetic. He nudged his own half back toward his body and eye'd the other piece with lingering regret.
"Don't you dare die without eating that," he warned. "If you die and I gave up perfectly good food, I'm haunting you."
He shuffled closer on his knees, moving slowly so he wouldn't startle the creature assuming it could be startled in this state. He set the chunk of bread near its muzzle, just within reach, then immediately scooted back again.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
Then the wolf's nose twitched.
Its eyes opened – slitted, luminous, and not at all human. They were a deep, burning amber, and for one heart-stopping second, they locked directly onto him.
Every instinct screamed at him to run, to dive into the bushes, to void his stomach and flee and never look back. Instead, he lifted one hand in a tiny wave.
"Hi," he said, voice higher than usual. "Don't mind me. Just your friendly neighborhood idiot."
The wolf's gaze flicked to the bread. Its nostrils flared.
"Yeah, that's for you," Iris said. "Payment for not murdering me. You can consider it… an apology offering. For… existing near you. While poor."
Slowly, the beast's jaws parted. It moved with clear effort, head tipping just enough to close its teeth around the bread. It chewed once, twice. Swallowed.
It did not try to stand. It did not lunge. It simply lay there, watching him as it ate a piece of food far too small for its size.
"…You know," Iris said, letting out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, "I kind of expected to die there. But I guess even giant terrifying murder-wolves understand the universal language of snacks."
The wolf blinked slowly, as if unamused by being called a murder-wolf.
He hugged his knees to his chest and rested his chin on them, studying the creature with open curiosity now that immediate death seemed marginally less likely.
"So what happened to you?" he asked. "Fight? Hunter? Fell out of a tree? Emotional breakdown?"
The wolf did not answer, of course. But its gaze drifted away, unfocusing, as if following a memory only it could see.
"There's definitely intelligence in there," Iris mused. "I wonder if you understand human language. If you do, I apologize for calling you a grocery item in my head earlier. That was rude. Accurate, but rude."
He pulled a waterskin from his belt and hesitated again. Water was harder to replace than bread. He weighed his options: keep it and remain reasonably hydrated or share and risk future thirst.
The wolf's sides shuddered with another labored breath.
He grimaced. "This is why I'm broke, you know. I invest in all the wrong places."
He crawled forward again, uncorked the waterskin, and carefully tilted it so a thin line of water pooled near the beast's mouth. "Here. Don't drown. I don't know if it's possible to get sued by nature, but I'd rather not find out."
The wolf's tongue flicked out, surprising quick, catching the trickle of water. It drank with a low, rumbling sound in its chest.
"See? Look at us. Two starving creatures in the woods, sharing crumbs and drops. If anyone asks, this never happened. I have a reputation as a coward to maintain."
He recorked the waterskin and scooted back once more, just outside the reach of any sudden snapping of jaws. The beast's eyes followed him, then slowly closed again, its breathing evening out slightly, losing some of the ragged edge.
He watched it for a while longer, arms wrapped around his knees, questions churning in his head.
The forest had always been something to avoid. The beasts had always been something to fear. That was the rule everyone agreed on: humans stayed weak and cautious; beasts stayed powerful and hungry. That was the way the world worked.
So why did it feel like sitting here was… normal?
"This is stupid," he muttered. "I'm sitting in front of a monster, talking to it like it's a drunken old man at the tavern. I have no self-preservation instinct. None."
He tilted his head, considering the wolf's sleeping form. "You know, if you were a normal animal, I'd say you owe me. A favor. A fish. A rabbit. Something. But you're a big fancy mana beast, so I guess the best I can hope for is that you don't eat me first if you ever see me again."
For a long, quiet moment, nothing moved except the leaves.
Then, without warning, the air changed.
It was subtle at first, a shift in pressure, like the moment before a storm breaks. The hairs on Iris' arms rose. The light filtering through the leaves seemed to dim, colors sharpening, shadows growing deeper.
"Okay," he said slowly. "That's new."
The wolf's eyes snapped open.
This time, they glowed.
Not metaphorically, not with poetic exaggeration. Actual light, soft but undeniable, flickered in the depths of its gaze, like fire caught behind glass. That same faint luminescence spread, threads of pale color tracing along the lines of its fur, gathering around the wounds in its side.
Iris could not move.
It felt like someone had dropped a weight onto his shoulders, onto the air itself. His breath hitched in his throat as an invisible pressure expanded outwards from the beast, crashing over him in an unseen wave. His bones vibrated. His vision blurred at the edges.
His instincts shrieked to run, to drop to his knees, to prostrate himself, to do anything except sit here staring stupidly.
But underneath the fear was something else. A strange, foreign warmth that flowed toward him instead of away. Not like claws or fangs or hunger, but like… recognition.
The wolf lifted its head, just slightly, and met his eyes again.
There was something painfully, startlingly clear in that gaze now. Something that felt like gratitude. And something that very much felt like claiming.
"I… really don't like that look," he whispered.
Light swelled.
It burst around the beast, around him, filling the small clearing with a blinding, soundless flare. Mana – he knew it had to be mana, even though he had never felt anything like it before – roared through the air in a violent, twisting surge. It wrapped around him, coiled into his skin, sank into his chest.
Iris gasped, clutching at his shirt as a sharp, burning sensation lanced through his heart. It didn't feel like pain, exactly. It felt like something etching itself into him, writing an invisible mark, carving a pattern where there had been none before.
"What..." His voice broke. "What is..."
In the village, not so far away, people staggered as a pressure wave washed over them. Chickens squawked, dogs howled, and several old hunters froze mid-step, eyes wide.
Someone dropped a bucket.
"…What was that?" a woman whispered.
An older man, once an adventurer, stared toward the forest with a face gone pale. "That pressure… That's… No. It can't be."
"Can't be what?"
His throat bobbed. "A… contract."
Back in the forest, the last of the light faded, leaving the clearing strangely quiet. The pressure lifted, though the echo of it hummed faintly in the air, like the lingering ring of a bell.
Iris slumped forward, catching himself on his hands as he tried to drag in a proper breath. His heart hammered against his ribs, but each beat felt… different. Too loud in his own ears.
He slowly lifted his head.
The wolf lay where it had been, but its wounds looked less severe now. The edges were no longer raw and bleeding; instead, faintly closed, as if weeks had passed in seconds. Its eyes, still glowing softly, watched him with a calm that felt unnervingly close to amusement.
There was a whisper at the edge of his awareness. Not in his ears, not in any language he recognized, but in a place beneath words.
It felt like a voice.
He stared at the beast.
The beast stared back.
His mind clutched at the only coherent thought it could form.
"…Huh?" he said weakly.
His stomach chose that moment to growl again.
The wolf's ears flicked.
In the village, the old hunter continued to stare at the forest line, cold sweat sliding down his neck.
"A contract," he repeated under his breath, as if saying it too loudly might make it more real. "Someone… formed a contract with a beast like that?"
People exchanged uneasy glances.
"Who?" someone asked.
The hunter could only swallow and shake his head.
In the forest, Iris sat in stunned silence, facing the enormous beast that no longer felt like a stranger and very much felt like a terrible, life-altering mistake.
"I," he managed at last, "just wanted to eat."