The abandoned outpost deep within the Dungeon was cold and empty, its stone walls chipped and moss-stained.
A forgotten place for a forgotten man.
Toji tossed Kuro onto the dusty floor without ceremony.
The girl stumbled, catching herself with trembling hands, her wide eyes darting around the unfamiliar place.
She whimpered faintly, but Toji ignored it.
He was already rummaging through a battered chest in the corner, pulling out a torn, half-clean blanket and a chunk of dried meat.
He tossed both at her.
"Eat. Sleep. Don't die," he said, voice rough and detached.
Kuro caught the blanket awkwardly, blinking at him in confusion.
She looked at the dried meat, then at him, then back at the food.
Her stomach growled audibly.
She gnawed at the meat like a feral animal, hands shaking.
Toji watched her a moment longer, his face unreadable.
He sighed and crouched in front of her.
Without warning, he grabbed her small hand.
Kuro gasped in fear, struggling, but Toji's grip was firm, not cruel.
"These'll get you killed," he muttered, examining the sharp, crystalline claws that extended from her fingers.
His cursed energy surged slightly, and a slim black blade appeared in his free hand.
Kuro's eyes widened in terror.
Toji clicked his tongue impatiently. "Stay still. You won't even feel it."
In a swift, precise motion, he sliced through the sharp tips of her claws.
Small, harmless stubs remained.
Kuro flinched but didn't cry out, only squeezing her eyes shut tight.
The pieces of her claws clattered to the floor like broken glass.
Toji released her hand and stood up.
"There. Now you won't gut someone by accident."
She cradled her hands against her chest, staring up at him with something between awe and fear.
A part of her, deep inside, recognized the difference.
This man, he wasn't kind.
But he wasn't cruel either.
He was survival, raw and brutal.
Days passed in a strange, lurching rhythm.
Toji never coddled her.
No soft words, no smiles.
Instead, he threw her into the routine he'd lived by: survival.
He taught her how to move silently, how to find safe spots to hide, how to scavenge scraps of food from the Dungeon without attracting attention.
He showed her how to listen, really listen, to the breathing of the walls, to the shift of monsters in the dark.
If she failed, she didn't eat.
If she cried, he ignored her.
If she got hurt, he only treated the wound roughly and told her to stop being weak.
Kuro learned quickly, out of necessity more than anything else.
The once-terrified monster girl slowly began to adapt, her steps growing quieter, her instincts sharper.
She still clung to him sometimes, like a child clinging to a terrifying guardian, but Toji never pushed her away.
Only once did he show a hint of concern.
One night, she had curled up in the corner of the base, clutching the ragged blanket around her, shivering from cold and exhaustion.
Toji approached her silently, crouching down.
Without a word, he slung another, thicker cloak, one of his own spares, over her small body.
Kuro blinked up at him, her orange-red eyes glassy.
Toji ruffled her hair roughly.
"Tch. You're still too soft."
But he didn't take the cloak back.
Meanwhile, word had begun to spread through Orario.
Whispers.
Rumors.
The famed "Abyssal Hound", the man who had fought a giant beast that can adapt and walked away, was harboring a monster.
Worse, he had killed an adventurer who tried to intervene.
Public opinion turned sharply against him.
Adventurers muttered darkly in taverns and back alleys, their resentment curdling into fear.
His reputation, already terrible, rotted further.
Most civilians didn't dare speak his name.
And yet... none of the major Familias made a move against him.
Not Loki.
Not Freya.
Not Ganesha.
The smarter gods had seen the signs, watched from afar as he fought Mahoraga, an event that few even understood.
A monster that adapt to any phenomenon, healing, killing, destruction.
They had seen the violence, the sheer inhumanity of his battle.
Toji Fushiguro was not a man to provoke lightly.
Not even for the crime of protecting a monster.
In the halls of the gods, conversations grew cautious, layered with unspoken fear.
It wasn't just his strength that unsettled them, it was his absolute indifference.
He didn't follow the rules of Orario.
He didn't care about them, about mortal politics, about divine authority.
He simply existed, a storm, unpredictable and unstoppable.
Some gods whispered that he was more monster than man.
Others thought he was a harbinger, a reminder that even gods could be killed.
But none dared move openly against him.
Not yet.
Back in his hidden base, Toji finished sharpening a blade and tossed it aside, stretching out lazily.
Kuro was curled up nearby, practicing breathing techniques he'd drilled into her, her small body rising and falling slowly.
He watched her a moment.
"Maybe you'll survive after all," he muttered, closing his eyes.
In the darkness, the faint glow of her crystal horn was the only light.
And in that light, a monster and a killer, both outcasts of the world, drifted into uneasy sleep.
...
The deeper floors were a different world entirely.
The very air was heavier, saturated with the stink of blood, stone, and something old, something alive.
Toji moved through the labyrinthine corridors with his usual casual menace, one hand resting loosely against the hilt of a blade, Kuro trailing behind him like a ghost.
The girl was growing tougher. She didn't stumble anymore.
She didn't whimper at every monster's roar.
Still, her small hands occasionally clenched into fists when the darkness pressed too close.
She trusted him.
A dangerous mistake.
Toji didn't protect her out of kindness.
He protected her because he chose to, a choice made without reason, without need.
It simply was.
And he didn't tolerate weakness.
Not in himself.
Not in her.
They crossed into a wide cavern, a place where the walls seemed to pulse faintly with their own heartbeat.
Kuro froze, sensing it before he did, a presence, no, many presences, surrounding them.
Toji smiled faintly.
Finally, something interesting.
He stepped forward lazily, his cursed energy buzzing faintly beneath his skin, subtle enough that only the sharpest senses could even detect it.
From the shadows, figures emerged.
Not adventurers.
Not normal monsters.
Something between.
Their appearances were varied, scaled skin, twisted horns, claws, and feathers, but their eyes burned with awareness.
With intelligence.
Xenos.
The intelligent monsters whispered of in rumors, dismissed by most as fairy tales.
Toji didn't look impressed.
He didn't even slow down.
The group, half a dozen at least, moved to block his path.
They didn't attack immediately.
No, they were smarter than that.
They tested him first.
A quick feint, one lunged low, claws flashing for Kuro.
Toji moved before she could even scream.
One hand shot out, a brutal backhand, and the lunging Xenos was sent sprawling into a nearby wall with a crack of breaking bone.
The others stiffened, reassessing instantly.
The second came from the side, faster, cleverer, trying to pin him with a net woven from living vines.
Toji ducked lazily, letting the net pass overhead, and in the same breath drew a slim, cursed tool from his belt.
It blurred through the air in a deadly arc, slicing the net cleanly, and leaving a shallow, precise cut across the attacker's chest.
Blood splattered.
Another Xenos charged straight for Kuro, thinking the girl the weak link.
Bad mistake.
Toji didn't even look.
With a flick of his wrist, the Divine Dog: Totality materialized from the ground, black as the void and twice as vicious
The shikigami snapped its jaws around the attacker's arm, crushing bone and muscle in an instant, then hurled the screaming creature aside like trash.
The rest of the Xenos hesitated now, fanning out warily.
Toji yawned, as if bored.
"You're not getting it," he said casually, shifting his stance.
"I'm letting you live."
Another one — larger, armored, a crocodile-like beast, roared and charged.
Brave.
Stupid.
Toji didn't dodge.
Instead, he invoked the Soul Splitting Katana, the cursed tool humming in his hand, and slashed upward as the creature closed the distance.
The blade tore through the thick armor like paper.
The Xenos dropped mid-charge, howling, blood gushing from the gash that cleaved from hip to shoulder.
It wasn't dead.
But it wished it was.
Kuro pressed against his back, small fists trembling against his coat.
But Toji didn't waver, didn't glance at her.
This was survival.
This was life.
The leader of the group finally stepped forward, a tall, lean figure with reptilian features, wearing tattered armor and wielding a battered sword.
He raised a hand in a gesture of peace, his body language screaming caution.
"Enough," he rasped in a voice roughened by disuse.
"We see it now. You are not... normal."
Toji smiled thinly.
"Took you long enough."
The Xenos bowed slightly, not out of respect, but out of a pure, simple desire to survive.
"We meant no harm to the girl," the leader said cautiously, glancing at Kuro.
"We only wished to test your intentions."
Toji didn't answer right away.
Instead, he sheathed the Soul Splitting Katana and flexed his shoulders, loosening the tension that hadn't even needed to fully rise.
"You test a beast, you get bitten," he said finally, voice low.
The Divine Dog circled the surviving Xenos once more, growling lowly, before melting back into the ground like a shadow.
Kuro peered out from behind him, clutching his coat, her red-orange eyes wary.
The Xenos stepped back, giving him and the girl a wide, respectful berth.
Toji started walking again, completely unconcerned.
He didn't even glance at the wounded ones writhing on the ground.
Not his problem.
The leader called after him.
"Wait — what are you?"
Toji didn't stop walking.
"Nothing you need to worry about," he said lazily.
"Just a man walking his monster."
After the brief confrontation, Toji made the decision.
They weren't going anywhere. Not yet.
The Xenos had made their point, and now, they would stay for a while.
The cavern was large, with stone walls that seemed to absorb sound.
At the far end, an ancient, almost forgotten spring trickled down into a shallow pool.
A few of the surviving Xenos were nursing wounds, while the others tended to a fire.
Toji and Kuro, however, remained at the center of it all, silently observing.
The silence stretched on, but it wasn't uncomfortable.
It was a kind of waiting, like the calm before the storm.
Toji didn't sit.
He never sat for long, especially when there was something to observe.
Instead, he leaned against a rough-hewn pillar, his gaze sharp, always scanning the surroundings.
Kuro was beside him, quieter than usual. She never let go of his sleeve, and her orange-red eyes darted around the cavern nervously.
Toji noticed, of course, but he said nothing.
"Why are you here?" The leader spoke againm his voice low but strangely earnest.
His name, Toji learned, was Izo. He had a long scar running down one side of his face and a peculiar, jagged sword sheathed at his side.
Izo had been the one to initiate the test earlier, and now, it seemed, he was looking for something. A reason. A purpose.
Not just from Toji, but from himself.
Toji tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing.
"You're asking the wrong question," he replied coolly, his voice almost lazily indifferent.
"I'm not here for some grand purpose or meaning. I'm here because I can be."
The others exchanged quiet glances, their movements slowing.
Some of the younger Xenos, their faces covered with thin masks of scales, whispered among themselves.
They, like Kuro, seemed more cautious, more unsure.
Izo, however, wasn't so easily dissuaded.
He stepped forward slowly, his movements more calculated than confrontational.
"You're different. I feel it." His eyes bored into Toji's, a deep, unfathomable gaze that seemed to read him like a book.
"Most humans would have killed us. Wiped us out. Or worse... enslaved us. We've all heard the tales." He paused, his voice growing softer.
"Yet, you don't even seem to care about us. Not really."
Toji let the silence hang.
Care? He didn't need to care. But that didn't mean he'd let them die, not yet.
"It's simple," he said. "You're not worth the effort to kill. I've got better things to do."
There was another moment of silence.
The Xenos absorbed his words.
Then, unexpectedly, Izo lowered his head slightly.
"I know what that's like."
Kuro's curiosity peeked through her shell of fear.
She tugged at Toji's sleeve, a silent request for attention.
Her voice was barely above a whisper, but it was enough to reach him
"Do you think... we're all like that?" she asked softly.
Izo glanced at her, his expression thoughtful.
"You ask a dangerous question, little one," he answered.
"We've all been hurt. All of us. Betrayed. Cast aside. Only for being born different."
He paused, as if weighing something heavy in his mind.
"I was once human, too," Izo added, almost too quietly. "A long time ago, before I became what I am now."
There was a bitter edge to his words, a weight of regret that hung in the air.
Toji glanced down at Kuro, who was now staring at Izo with wide, innocent eyes.
She didn't know the full weight of what Izo said, but there was something there, something she could feel.
"Why?" she asked, her voice soft and unsure.
"Why did you change? Why are you here?"
Izo looked at her, his gaze lingering.
"There is no simple answer, child. Some of us were made for war. Some were born as experiments. Some... like me, sought refuge from a world that would never accept us." His tone grew darker, almost melancholic.
"We are the result of countless tragedies. And the humans... they're the ones who created us. But still, most of us was created by the dungeon"
He shook his head, as if shaking off the weight of his own thoughts.
"But that's a story for another time. We live in the Dungeon now, because we don't belong on the surface. Not anymore."
Toji watched all of this with detached interest.
He didn't care about their story.
But he was here. And as much as he might not admit it, there was something in his bones, something curious about the creature he'd brought into his life.
Kuro was one thing. But these... Xenos? They were something else.
"So," Toji finally broke the silence.
"That's your tale. War, betrayal, being discarded, rebirth. A story I've heard too many times."
Izo blinked, surprised by the lack of anger in Toji's voice.
"What will you do, human? Will you abandon us, like the others?"
Toji gave a short, dismissive shrug.
"Maybe. Maybe not. I don't care much about your future." His eyes gleamed. "But if you get in my way, I'll treat you like any other monster. You're not my friends. You're just... a stop on the road."
There was a harshness in Toji's words, but also a strange honesty, a cold truth.
Izo remained still for a long moment, processing.
"I understand."
Kuro, though, looked uneasy.
She stepped closer to Toji, her small frame trembling slightly.
"Is it wrong to want a place?" she whispered, more to herself than anyone.
Toji didn't answer immediately, his eyes scanning the others.
Maybe this was something he didn't have an answer for.
Instead, he turned to Kuro, kneeling down to her level.
"You want to survive? Then stop worrying about whether or not they have a place. We're here, and that's all that matters."
Kuro nodded slowly, but the worry never left her eyes.
The days passed uneventfully after that.
Toji spent his time training Kuro, teaching her the ways of survival in the Dungeon.
But beneath the cold brutality of his methods, there was a glimmer of something else, something that neither he nor the Xenos could quite name.