Egosum leapt at the closest member of the troop with his mouth agape. A dawning look of horror overcame their face as they began to rear back from the lunging maw.

His attack connected with the human and locked around his head to slowly crush it between his jaws. The screams of terror erupted through the clearing and suddenly ceased completely in the same second.

A sickening pop and crunch signaled the death of the person as their body fell limply to the ground.

“Oh fuck!” Multiple troop members reared back in horror as the body crumpled.

One of the members rushed forward in the hopes of getting the drop of Egosum while he was busy. His weapon came flying down with as much force as he could muster only to glance off the side of him puffed back ineffectually.

The toad opened his mouth and turned to the new enemy that had struck him. He empowered his legs and jumped straight at the person's center mass. Another cracking sound filled the clearing as their chest collapsed under the blow and threw them back.

“Daimon!” The member lying on the ground coughed violently as blood and spit sputtered out of his mouth.

The remaining members appeared unsure of what to do as their numbers dropped quickly.

“Attention, all advance, focus defense with pressure!” The same man who commanded them before stole Egosum’s attention.

‘Without him, they would be like a headless bird. I guess he is now target one. Just gotta remember to leave that dwarf alive for later.’

He glanced at the dwarf who appeared frozen in fear.

‘Guess he isn’t doing anything but fleeing in terror if worse comes to worst.’

The group members slowly crept closer to him in a tightening encirclement. The man that gave them commands lagged behind the others.

“Shorten distance, m net, stake corners!” One of the dwarves grabbed something from their back and threw the object over his head.

Mid-flight, the object unfurled and encompassed a large area above Egosum. The crisscross pattern of a net fell over him before he could react like it had magically pulled to the earth at its apex.

Egosum tried to jump upwards to throw it off before it became an issue only for it to barely lift off the ground, ricocheting him into the dirt below. A few other members pulled some objects from their sides and pulled the net taught before anchoring the corners with the object.

“Test waters!” The members with the longest reach stabbed at his trapped figure as he tried and failed to budge the entrapping net.

The prodding failed to produce any real injuries but the blows grew progressively more powerful and the people got closer and closer with each attempt.

‘These assholes are toying with me!’

A particularly rough jab nearly gouged his eye out. The near-marring injury roused his anger as he thrashed around with renewed vigor.

The surrounding troop backed away as the toad managed to loosen the spikes that helped hold the net down. A few of the members peeled off to fix it before waiting for its vigorous thrashing to dissipate.

After watching the amphibian ire itselft out, they advanced again with more stakes ready to restrict its movements more.

‘They might actually capture me like this. I need to figure something out.’

The area he could move around in diminished greatly with the next set of stakes lodged in place.

The eight members finally felt confident in their success as they closed in on the violent monsters. The adrenaline and anger they held in their bodies fueled their fighting spirit.

They could taste victory in the air. The elves all around them lay unmoving under the effects of the poison and the frog was completely trapped.

It wouldn’t be much longer until they win once and for all.

The fibrous rope was nearly as thick as Egosum’s back legs and was stained a deep brown. The strange heaviness he felt from it when it slammed into him threw him for a loop. How could the dwarf have thrown it so high into the air and how did it fall so much faster than anything he had seen? It fell like a force outside of gravity yanked it down.

Sadly, it wasn’t time to think. it was a time of action. It was do or die for him. His dao poured from his body in floods of intent. The ground under his feet turned muddy and dark with life, the air grew muggy for all of the people around and a strange smell wafted into their noses.

“Poison! Cover and retreat!” The leader called for action and backed up to the edge of the net where the smell disappeared. All other members followed suit and watched with uncertainty at what was happening.

The small area around Egosum changed completely. The bodies that were trapped under the net with him melted and decomposed before their very eyes like they were submerged in fresh acid. Their bones were quickly covered in moss as their flesh was devoured by some unseen entity.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“What the fuck.” One of the members gaped at the sight with fear. The dwarf that had been left out of the formation earlier stood in place with unhidden disgust and terror.

“Wait it out! Let it tire!” They watched the changes taking place in the small area around him with uncertainty.

The rope net that kept him trapped appeared resistant to his magic, unlike the area around him.

His lobed toes sat deep within the mud, squishing and squashing around him with each movement he did. The rough fibers on his back lost some color with each second they were exposed to his dao.

The rough strands scraped at his flesh. The wet puddle encased his limbs as he pressed down for better footing. Something in the earth pressed right back against him, offering help he wasn’t expecting.

He felt the swamp with his hands. His dao had leached into the world and it was answering his call. He looked around the area with a clear view of what was happening.

The net was glowing with a slick oily light. It seemed completely unnatural and devoid of any life that was present in elven or amphibian magic.

It reminded him more of the sick bench he saw the goblin abomination on in the alchemist's hut.

He watched as the dao that fled his body with glee, returning to the ground and air, slowly corrupted the gross webbing.

The rope that made up the net had lost the dark color and the imbued light that once covered its surface.

“What is it doing Joel?!” The frantic yell was pointed towards the leader who stair in uncertainty at the fading rope.

“On guard!” He yelled at the members as the rope began to fray at the thinner parts.

Egosum’s dao finally wore the sick magic used to enhance the net away from it completely. With the supernatural barrier gone, the digestive nature of his qi ate away at the natural fibers used to construct it with ease.

A loud snap signaled the first line of rope that broke, quickly followed by the others closest to him. He rose to his full height and stared at the surrounding members of the troop.

“Shit!” One of them turned around and tried to run for his life, only to slip in the slick mud that had crept its way to their feet.

“Don’t falter! It will seal our deaths!” The remaining members stayed rooted into place as the man who slipped fumbled around on the ground trying to right himself.

Egosum lept high up into the air with a burst of strength, soaring in an arc, directly toward the dirtied man stumbling in the mud.

His full force slammed into the person's back, causing them to get thrown to the floor. The troop reorganized themselves around him with a few attempting to rescue the downed figure before he could be killed by the toad.

Egosum battered away their futile attempts at saving the man before slamming his front legs into the man's back repeatedly. The ground around him turned stickier and deeper, forcing the man farther into the muck below.

“Please-argh- Help! I don’t- argh-die!” The pained gasps of the man fell on deaf ears as they watched with horror as the human slowly got crushed into the mud and choked on the gritty mire.

A final slam with both arms buried the person's head deep down, leaving his arms flailing behind him as his attempts at freeing himself slowly disappeared from his limbs.

"Sorry, I didn't want to make that man a liar." The poisonous tone that laced Egosum's voice was audible over the struggling man

The troop had varying levels of horror painted on their faces as their old friend died choking on dirt from a magically enhanced toad.

There were only six of them left in fighting order, four dwarfs and two humans.

The leader weighed his options. The possibility to run away was at the forefront of his mind as he watched the toad turn around and gauge each one of them. The remaining members had mostly short-range weapons beside him.

The odds just kept getting worse and worse.

One of the dwarves spoke in something Egosum couldn’t understand, eliciting a reaction from all of his kin. They turned tail and ran away with everything they could. Their stubby legs were ill-suited for speed and the sticky ground caused them to trip tumble and fall in various ways.

“Halt, hold formation!” The human leader tried to keep them from fleeing, only to be completely ignored. “Damn you bastards!”

Egosum used this opportunity to target the newly opened flanks of the other human, quickly launching himself at the tense person's chest. The blow crushed his sternum inwards, much the same way he had killed one of them earlier.

A mouth full of blood sprayed from his teeth as raspy breaths quickly faded away, ending their life.

“You devilish fuck. Your gonna kill us because you want to protect a bunch of tree fucking elves? They don't even care about you, you warty piece of shit.” The final living human spit each word with hatred and vitriol.

“Joel was it? I believe you were abandoned. That’s fine, I will track them down. They can’t have gone far. I am glad to say that your group will be the first beautiful piece of revenge against the people who destroyed my entire world.”

The nearly emotionless voice only had a hint of pleasure seep through his tightly held expression.

The man’s shoulders slumped as he glanced at the desecrated and abused bodies of his past troop mates.

“Fuck you, you pile of-” His curses were abruptly cut off as Egosum shot forward to end his life.

The leader lifted his sword to attempt and deflect the blow. The shiny iron flexed against the force before being knocked aside completely.

The toad's muscular forearms threw him back without cracking too many bones. He raised his arms to try and beat the toad back, only to brake his hands as he punched his rough-skinned enemy.

“Argh- you fuc-” His abuse was silenced quickly as the toad bit his face with its wide maw, cracking his neck and ending his life in one abrupt twist of his body.

“Now the runners, eh?”

“Oowah!” Egosum looked back to the location of the noise and saw Coyotl sitting in the small swamp he had made earlier. The dwarf he threatened earlier was trembling on his hands and knees.

“I'll be back in a few minutes. Got to do some cleanup.”

“Oowah oowah.” The calm call sent him off as he lept through the forest to chase down the dwarves that ran.

The heavy-set figures spread out through the forest in hopes of distancing themselves enough to buy each other time to flee.

The tracks they left in the dirt were obvious and easily followed. Their deaths were quick and brutal to the extreme. Within a few minutes, Egosum hopped back to the clearing that housed the single living dwarf, the many elves, and his amphibian friend.

“That felt pretty good. I think I have the whole fighting thing down already. It hasn’t even been a week and I can already defeat an entire group of murderers.”

“Oowah.” Coyotl shimmied his body deeper into the fresh mud with undisguised delight.

“I bet you I could beat the shit out of that hag.”

“Woah, what happened here?” The familiar voice drew both of them away from their musings.