There is a monster called Troll.
This monster is classified as a demihuman, but it is much more powerful than goblins and orcs.
Its monster rank is C, which is comparable to that of the Orc Lord.

Trolls are about three meters tall when they stand upright, but since they tend to live in caves, they usually bend forward and walk with their unusually long arms almost dragging on the ground.

In addition to the monstrous strength, sharp claws and fangs, and unusual vitality generated by their huge bodies, these monsters have an amazing regenerative ability that allows them to quickly regenerate minor wounds, making them so strong that even a bunch of ordinary adventurers would be unable to compete with them.

Now, two of these trolls were walking together through the cave.

The cave was relatively wide and had a high ceiling, so even the giant trolls could pass through without any problem as long as they were bent over in their normal forms.
The two troll brothers walked back and forth through the cave, side by side.

Their purpose is to find prey for them to eat.
They were not very intelligent to begin with and had not had any prey for some time, so their eyes were those of starving beasts.

'Ugh...?

At that moment, the brother troll walking in front of them stopped.
Suddenly, the younger troll behind him bumped his nose against the older troll's back and screamed in complaint.

However, the older troll calms the younger troll and encourages him to look further down the path.
The younger troll sticks his head out from beside his older brother and looks beyond, squealing with delight at what he sees.

At the end of the cave where the two trolls had walked, there was an extremely large underground space in the shape of a mortar.
It was so vast that it could have been the home of a dragon.

But the trolls were not happy because they had found a comfortable place to live.
It was because they had found a school of prey that would satisfy their hunger.

It was a school of rockworms.
They looked like giant worms or caterpillars, and they were wriggling all over the place.
There were probably no less than thirty of them by rough count.

Strictly speaking, they seem to be juveniles, not adults, of rockworms.
They are about two to three meters in length, about half the size of adults.

The adult rockworm is not a mere prey for the troll.
In a one-on-one fight, a rockworm would be an opponent that the troll would somehow win after a mortal struggle.

However, a juvenile of that size would be insignificant.
Their meat is not too small, and they are just the right prey.
Even if there were that many of them, they would be able to kick their way through... at least that's what the troll brothers thought.

The trolls' current location was a hole at the relatively top of the mortar-shaped space.
They would have to leave the cave and walk down the slope to find their prey.

But there was no room for hesitation.
The troll brothers jumped out of the cave in high spirits and ran down the slope as fast as they could.

But after a while.
The younger Troll, who was racing his brother down the slope, saw something strange out of the corner of his eye.

In a hole at the bottom of the mortar - a cave similar to the one the Trolls had passed through, but even larger - hid a horrifying figure.

It looked like a bundle of rock worms with their roots tied together with string.
Each of the rockworms in the bundle was as large as an adult, but the central one in the circular bundle was even larger, with a diameter twice that of the others.
In addition to this, there were countless long tentacle-like things growing and wriggling from around the roots of the bundle.

Seeing this, the younger troll felt a chill run through him.

That's not good.
I have to get out of here.

But the older Troll was unaware of this and ran down the slope, intent on his prey...

Tentacles shot out of the cave at once.
They were swift and quickly entangled the limbs and torso of the elder brother troll.

The older troll cried out in confusion and fought back against the tentacles.
Trolls are powerful.
He could not be restrained by a simple bondage device.

However, the tentacles are flexible and elastic, and it is useless for the troll to move his limbs to pull them.
Even if the troll manages to tear one off with both hands, it will be entangled by many more tentacles in the meantime, and eventually its entire body will be tangled up in the tentacles.

In no time at all, the brother troll was in bondage.
Even though the strength of each tentacle was no match for the strength of the troll's arms, when twenty or thirty of them tightened around him at once, there was no way for him to escape, no matter how powerful he was.

The troll's massive body, which weighed as much as a horse, was lifted freely by the many tentacles that were entwined with it.
The troll's body is pulled by the tentacles to the body...

Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch!
The Troll was thrown into the large mouth of the giant rock worm in the center, and without being given any room to regenerate his body, he was crushed to death.

The body of the dead troll was thrown out of the giant rockworm's mouth and rolled on the ground.
The flesh of the corpse was swarming with rockworm larvae, and the Troll's figure quickly disappeared from sight.

His brother Troll, on the other hand.
He didn't just sit by and watch the whole thing.
As soon as the older brother was caught by the tentacles, he crawled up the mortar-shaped slope and tried to escape.

However, the slope was unexpectedly steep, and the ground was covered with a slimy substance that might have been the bodily fluids of the rockworm, making it difficult to crawl up.

In the midst of his panic, he looked behind him and saw his brother being swarmed by the young rockworms.
The little brother troll became impatient and tried to crawl up the mortar, but...

Just then, the horrifying form of the Rockworm's master crawled out of the cave.
It came up the slope, slowly but surely...

Shrrrrr...
Tentacles extended.

The tentacles caught the legs of the younger troll and dragged him down with them...

And so, the younger troll suffered the exact same fate as his older brother.