SSS-Ranked Trash Hero: I Was Scammed Into Being Summoned-Chapter 23: The Price of Victory

The sunlight hurt Hiroshi’s eyes. He stepped out of the dungeon portal onto grass that felt impossibly soft after days on water. The air was warm. Birds sang somewhere in the distance. Everything was calm.

"We did it," Aria said, her voice quiet with disbelief. "We actually did it."

Kenji sheathed his sword and looked back at the dungeon entrance.

Marcus sat heavily on the ground, still too drained to stand for long. "The Church is going to lose their minds when they hear."

Hiroshi took a few steps away from the portal, just to feel solid earth under his feet. His legs felt weak, but that made sense. They’d been fighting for days with minimal rest. Fatigue was normal.

He tried to take a deeper breath and felt resistance in his chest. Probably just exhaustion catching up. His body needed time to recover.

"Let’s get back to Castle," Kenji said. "Let’s sleep for about three days straight."

They started walking. Hiroshi fell into step behind the others, his movements heavy, Something felt off about his grip on his weapon. His fingers didn’t want to close properly.

He opened his status screen to check his HP. The window flickered before appearing, the text loading slower than usual. His HP sat at 85 out of 95. Fine. No debuffs listed.

The window closed on its own after a few seconds.

"That’s new," he muttered.

"What?" Aria glanced back.

"Nothing."

They continued down the road. Each step felt heavier than the last. Hiroshi’s breathing grew labored, like he was climbing stairs instead of walking on flat ground. His chest hurt.

Probably just the accumulated damage finally registering. Bodies were weird like that sometimes. Adrenaline wore off and everything hit at once.

The pain in his chest spread to his abdomen. A hollow sensation, like his muscles were dissolving from the inside. He stumbled slightly but caught himself before anyone noticed.

Don’t worry them. It’s just exhaustion.

His vision blurred for a second. The road swam in front of him, then stabilized. Hiroshi blinked hard and kept walking.

Something warm spread along his left side.

He reached down casually, like adjusting his armor. His hand came away red.

Blood. A lot of it.

Hiroshi stopped walking and stared at his palm. The blood was bright and fresh, soaking through his clothes from somewhere beneath. He pressed his hand against his side, searching for a wound.

No cut. No puncture. The skin was intact.

But the blood kept coming.

The pain didn’t match any injury he remembered from the boss fight. This felt different. Like something was tearing apart from the inside.

"Hiroshi?"

He looked up. Marcus was watching him, concern clear on his face.

"I’m fine," Hiroshi said. His voice sounded strained.

"You’re bleeding."

Kenji and Aria turned. Their expressions shifted from tired relief to alarm in an instant.

"Where are you hurt?" Kenji moved toward him quickly.

"I don’t know. There’s no wound."

Marcus was already activating healing magic, golden light gathering around his hands. He pressed them against Hiroshi’s side where the blood was worst.

The light flared and Hiroshi screamed.

Pain exploded through his entire body, sharp and overwhelming. It felt like the healing was accelerating the damage instead of fixing it. His knees buckled.

Marcus jerked his hands back. "What—that shouldn’t..."

"Don’t," Hiroshi gasped. "Don’t heal it."

"What’s happening?" Aria asked.

"I don’t know."

Hiroshi tried to open his status screen again. It took ten seconds to load. When it finally appeared, the HP bar flickered rapidly. Numbers changed without pattern—85, 72, 85, 68. No debuffs. No status effects. Nothing to explain what was happening.

"This isn’t an injury," he said, his voice tight with pain. "It’s something else."

His breathing changed, becoming shallow and ragged. Each inhale hurt. Kenji heard it and moved closer.

"Talk to me. What do you feel?"

"Like something’s being pulled out. From inside."

More blood dripped onto the road. Hiroshi looked down and saw it spreading across his shirt in a dark stain. Too much blood. Way too much.

His weapon slipped from his fingers. He tried to catch it but his hands wouldn’t respond properly. The blade hit the ground with a dull clang.

"Hiroshi!" Aria’s voice sounded distant.

His legs gave out completely. He dropped hard, hitting the dirt road on his knees. The impact barely registered through the pain radiating from his core.

Something was wrong on a fundamental level. This wasn’t damage from combat. His body was rejecting something it had accepted before.

All three of them surrounded him now. Kenji grabbed his shoulders, keeping him upright. Aria tried a different healing spell. The magic washed over him and did nothing.

"It’s not working," she said, panic creeping into her voice. "The magic isn’t taking."

Marcus reached for his mace. "We need to get him to castle."

Hiroshi tried to respond but only managed a choking sound. The hollow feeling in his muscles spread further. His chest felt like it was collapsing inward.

Blood kept flowing. He could feel it now, warm and wet, soaking into his clothes and pooling beneath him on the ground.

"Stay with us," Kenji said firmly. "Don’t you dare die after everything we just survived."

Hiroshi wanted to agree. Wanted to say he’d be fine. But his body felt unbearably heavy, like gravity had doubled. Parts of him were going numb. His vision darkened at the edges.

He understood now.

This wasn’t random. This was a consequence. Something he’d done in the dungeon had triggered this. Some price that hadn’t been clear until after victory.

His status screen flickered open without him calling it. The text was glitched, stuttering and incomplete.

[Warning: Structural instability detected...]

The message cut off mid-sentence. New text appeared.

[Error: Subject no longer meets...]

Gone. Replaced by another line.

[Adaptive Evolution entering forced...]

The screen vanished. Hiroshi’s vision went completely dark.

The last thing he heard was Kenji shouting his name.

Then nothing.