Monster Eater

Meet Rudd — an E-rank adventurer whose only skill is immunity to status effects. Not exactly a resume builder. He makes a living foraging medicinal herbs in toxic dungeons nobody else can survive, which leaves him perpetually reeking and earns him the nickname 'Grubby Forager.' Other adventurers won't even stand near him, let alone party with him. So when a group actually invites him along as a porter for a dungeon expedition, he jumps at the chance. Bad call. Turns out they just needed a warm body to throw at whatever monster showed up so they could run. Left bleeding and abandoned deep in a labyrinth with no supplies, Rudd does the one thing every adventurer knows you're never supposed to do — he eats the monster. And something changes. This is a dark fantasy TV series about a guy at the absolute bottom of the social ladder clawing his way up through a power system built on consuming the things that almost killed him. The setup has strong parallels to Arifureta and The Rising of the Shield Hero — protagonist gets betrayed, left for dead, comes back different — but the monster-eating mechanic gives it its own identity. There's also a Goblin Slayer-adjacent grittiness to how the dungeon environments are portrayed, less polished heroism and more desperate survival. If you're into underdog revenge arcs wrapped in genuinely hostile world-building, this one's worth keeping on your radar for 2026.