Chapter 14 Toads Are No Fun

Slowly Sam came to again. Luckily no other toads had attacked her while she lay there defenseless.

“Auch, using all your mana hurts!”

After checking, she saw that she now had five mana again.

“I guess that five mana is the minimum to keep functioning. Would have been nice to have known that.”

Carefully, so she wouldn’t make her headache worse, she looked around.

“Noo, it bled on my snack! No way I’m eating that now.”

Luckily Sam had packed a few more snacks, as they were free for recruits. Opening a second one, she sat down again to recover.

Only a minute or two went by, when she once more heard a whoosh sound.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” She yelled while she dodged, this time keeping hold of the snack.

A second toad had come close enough to her to attack her once more. The moment she found it though, half hidden behind one of the rocks, it spit its tongue again at her. Incredibly, Sam only had to move a bit to dodge the flaming tongue, as the creature targeted the snack in her hand.

“Okay, these things really like my snack. I wonder why nobody told us they did. Ah well, who cares, I’m gonna cheat the crap out of it!”

Immediately Sam started waving the snack about, trying to spread the smell without losing the snack herself. While she did this she made sure to keep an eye on her surroundings. As she had surmised, soon there was movement around her.

“Oh damn, that’s more than one!”

Only a moment had passed since she had seen the first movement, but now she counted at least three toads making their way over. Immediately she stuffed the whole snack in her mouth, unwilling to let the toads have this one.

After that she moved toward the toad to her right, determined not to let herself get surrounded.

Now that the snack was gone, or at least not in the open as Sam’s mouth was still full, the toad immediately targeted Sam herself again. This one though, didn’t attack with her tongue. Sam had been ready to dodge the appendage, but instead the toad did what toads do, hop.

The immense weight of the toad suddenly hurled towards her, and surprised as she was she didn’t manage to dodge in time. Luckily most of the momentum was still going forward instead of downward, and she tumbled backwards for a dozen meters. Dazed she laid on the ground looking at the ceiling.

Soon there was a sharp pain on her arm, which shook her out of her dazed state. When she looked she saw that due to the tumbling she had gotten into range of one of the other toads. It had caught her arm with its burning tongue.

“Shit, there goes my uniform,” was the first thing she said. After which she looked for her sword, only to find it missing. She had let it go when the toad hit her.

The burning sensation on her arm started to hurt more and more, and soon she would have a really bad burn there. Then another tongue shot towards her and was about to hit her face. Luckily she could still move her left arm, even though the other toad had wrapped its tongue around it. With some difficulty she managed to get her shield in front of her face. Unfortunately, the tongue hit it hard enough to make the shield hit her in the nose. Blood splattered everywhere, ruining the uniform even more.

“You damned shit pieces of fat! Now I’ll really get it from Quincy!” Now that Sam had gotten accustomed to her situation, she could finally think about getting out of it. Remembering her backup weapon, a knife, she managed to pull it from the sheath on her back. She had to squirm a bit, because even though she had one arm free, she still laid with her full weight on the knife.

The moment she got the knife free, she cut the tongue that held her shield-arm. With a snap the end separated and the remaining tongue shot back towards the toad. Immediately Sam rolled over to get back to her feet. Just in time too, because the moment she did, the first toad slammed down right where she had been a moment ago.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Now that she was free, she sprinted to where her sword had ended up. While running she managed to put her knife away in its sheath. Now rearmed, she could finally hit back.

Another good thing was that the toads were now bunched up. No need to keep looking around for the other two while focusing on one.

“It would be easier if I could use another of those [Slash] attacks. But I have.. thirteen mana.. Lucky me that it isn’t Friday today. At least I think so, no idea if they even use the same days on this planet.”

Having not more time to think about useless facts, she ran at the nearing toads. Keeping to their previous pattern, two shot their tongues, and one tried to crush her with a hop.

By parrying the tongues with her sword and shield, she had a straight shot at the hopping toad. When it neared, she didn’t try to dodge to the side like before, but she dove towards the toad. This way she used its speed against itself.

She almost lost her sword for the second time, when she tried to slice the belly of the creature during her dive. Unfortunately her sword didn’t cut more than half a centimeter into the belly. Just like when she tried to cut the first toad, its hide was thick enough to resist the cut. She had hoped that its belly was less thick, but no such luck.

“How am I going to do this? I don’t have enough mana to use slash!”

Looking back at her mana once more, it had ticked up to fourteen.

“There has to be a way to kill these things! Else they wouldn’t have sent me here with my level.”

Thinking about it, she came to one conclusion.

“I guess I need to cut them from the inside. That tongue wasn’t that hard to cut, even my knife was good enough.”

She decided to test her theory out on the toad that already lost part of its tongue. That might make it easier for her to hurt it more.

“I really hope I won’t lose my arm, but here I go!”

Once more the three toads used the same predictable attack pattern, and Sam used the same way to defeat it. This time though, she didn’t waste time by slicing the belly of the creature. Instead she immediately rolled to her feet, and rushed after the other wounded toad.

If toads could look surprised, then this one would make a great example.

With a squeak it shot its tongue again, but strangely enough it didn’t shoot out as fast nor as coordinated as before.

Without trouble Sam dodged the tongue, and managed to reach the toad before it could retract its tongue to close its mouth. This gave her the opportunity to attack.

Using all her strength she shoved her sword up trough the mouth, into its brain. At once the toad stiffened.

“Yes! It works!”

Then, to make her start to believe in bad karma, her sword got stuck in the toad. She didn’t have the time to get it back, as the other two toads didn’t wait while she was busy killing their brother, sister, friend?

With rage in their eyes they attacked. This time they both used their tongues, which Sam couldn’t cut off because of her lost weapon.

Now only armed with her knife she still had two more opponents.

“Okay, new plan. Let’s go for their eyes.”

Once more she charged at the toads, dodging one of them when it hopped at her again. Apparently killing one of the creatures close to others of its kind made them angry enough to use both attacks.

Luckily, the hop had separated the two toads, so Sam could attack the one using its tongue.

She sliced at the eye, but the toad was quick enough to close it, negating most of the damage. A quick second slice though, managed to hit its target.

Immediately Sam jumped away, warry about what the toad would do. This was a good choice, as the toad apparently didn’t like being hurt. It trashed about, using its tongue as a whip.

Sam put some more distance between herself and the toad, looking for the other one. It had followed her back to the other toad, and now it put itself between her and the injured one.

This gave her the opportunity to move back towards the toad she had killed a few moments ago and retrieve her sword.

But the toads didn’t give her the time to do that. The moment she moved towards the killed toad, the other two went after her again. Thinking about it, she decided to finally lose the shield. It was only slowing her down, and she wasn’t strong enough to use it to block the toads as they jumped. It only helped her block the tongues, but those were easy enough to dodge.

Now, having lost the unwieldy shield, she was a bit faster. Using this advantage, she once more attacked the half-blinded toad. With a quick feint to the blinded side, she managed to get the eye into reach. One slice managed to blind the second eye, removing the toad as a threat.

Now she only had to find a way to win against the hopper. Luckily she had thought of a way to do so during one of the earlier clashes.

The toad though, didn’t appear to want to use its previous hopping attack. It kept defending the blinded toad, using its tongue to keep Sam at a distance.

“Well if you want to play it like that, I’m going to whittle you down bit by bit.”

The next time the toad used its tongue, Sam counter attacked like she had done a few times before with her sword. Now though, she had to be faster as her knife didn’t have the reach that the sword did.

Luckily she was just fast enough to cut the tongue. This gave the toad no other choice than to try and crush her again with a hop. This was what she had wanted it to do since she had blinded the other toad.

Jumping under it once more, she used her [Slice] skill. Hopefully she had enough mana to stay conscious. To give herself a better chance, she only used the skill by thinking about it, not by pushing mana in it.

As she thought, this way was not as expensive as the stronger version. Still, it was strong enough to slice deep enough to get through the skin of the toad.

What she hadn’t thought about, was what would come out of the toad when she sliced its belly open while it was above her.