A deep rumbling splits the silence of the forest. It’s a deep and guttural sound, as if from the pits of hell.

Aiden, crouching in the thick forest underbrush, slowly sneaks towards it. Hiding in the bushes and behind trees, he prowls after the sound.

It gets louder and louder until eventually faint thuds come to accompany it. Aiden looks up from his hiding spot and there, just a couple meters to the side, is the monster.

A large creature, maybe half the height of Aiden himself and as long as he is tall, slowly lumbers through the forest. Its two short front and two big powerful hind legs, along with the rest of its body, is covered in a disgustingly warty hide. A wide head with a similarly wide maw adorns the front of its body. And two, soulless eyes rise out from the head, a clear ooze being secreted from behind them.

Its strong hind legs push it forwards again. It leaps a meter ahead and lands with another thud. The guttural croak is almost ever-present now, most other sounds completely drowned out.

It jumps again and just as it’s landing Aiden finally reveals himself, along with a ball of fire that soars through the air and lands on the hell frog, scorching its eyes.

It lands with a screech even louder than its ongoing droning. Aiden expected this though, so he isn’t stunned and immediately conjures a blade of compressed air. He launches it toward the monster’s neck, where it splits it skin, letting viscous blood flow.

It doesn’t take long after that for the toad to succumb to its injuries. The forest quiets again, the invader defeated. But not for long.

It happened only a couple of days after I started teaching Aiden about souls. He’d already managed to fully perceive his own and even achieved some minor success with manipulating his soul-mana (that’s the placeholder name for mana that hasn’t joined the mana pool).

Then, Aiden had the idea that maybe we could sense the souls of other beings. I never really thought about it, being too focused on finding the solution to my own problem at the time. But it would be useful to locate creatures we couldn’t see, as Aiden pointed out.

So, we were out and about in the forest, searching for some small critters, to experiment with seeing the souls of other creatures.

I was just lazily floating around Aiden, trying to see if I can perceive anything similar to my own souls, when a strange sound appeared off in the distance. It was very faint at that time, yet as time passed it quickly grew to ungodly levels.

At this point even Aiden noticed it. He froze for a second. Without even me having to remind him, he set out back to camp. At least he learned from our first night in the forest. There’s no need to risk an encounter with the unknown.

And yet, as we arrived at the clearing inn front of our cave entrance, the sound hadn’t abated a single bit. Instead, it still seemed to be getting louder.

Certain that it was just a coincidence, Aiden settled back into practising his magic, leaving me to do whatever.

With not much else to do, I flew up high. Maybe I’d be able to see the cause of our recent disturbance. But he trees completely blocked my way, making it impossible to notice anything on the forest floor. I don’t know what I expected. At least I know it isn’t a flying creature.

Some more time passed, but the guttural droning sound continued to grow all the while. We had to face the truth; it was definitely heading straight to us.

After that, it only took maybe ten more minutes to come into view. Aiden was ready though, his focus sharp ever since the dull thumps of the creature became audible.

And then it was there. Flying across the line separating our clearing from the rest of the forest came a giant frog. Or perhaps toad or maybe even a bullfrog. No, definitely not a frog, those are cute.

The monstrosity landed in front of us, pausing briefly as it noticed us. I’m sure we looked like a very tasty snack to such a hideous beast. Or at least I did.

It didn’t hesitate for long though and soon its greasy tongue was flying at us. Well, mostly at Aiden because I quickly flew away.

As surprised as Aiden was, it seems that all his training paid off. Still in his semi-frozen state, he conjured a translucent barrier in front of him.

And just in time. The tongue barrelled straight at it, shattering it but using all its momentum to do so. Seeing this, the frog quickly retracted it.

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By then I had managed to gather my wits and launched a firebolt at it. And with my recent experiences, I knew all (not really) the weaknesses of flesh. The bolt flew true and struck the monster right in its eye.

Aiden, woken up from his stupor by my success, gathered mana for his own spell. The toad though wouldn’t let him. It didn’t like my firebolt one bit and let its displeasure known loudly. Very loudly, as it’s croaking momentarily amplified, causing Aiden to lose his concentration and his building spell to dissipate.

A hop later, it was ready to launch its tongue out a second time, this time from a shorter distance.

Aiden wouldn’t falter again though. He conjures another shield spell in front of himself. This time though, he has time to properly shape it.

As the tongue hurtles through the air at him, the barrier changes into a conical shape with the point pointing at the tip of the tongue.

The fleshy appendage suffers defeat and impales itself on the magical conjuration. Said conjuration disappears the next moment, allowing blood to spurt from the shredded tongue.

Before the toad can do much more, I fire another bolt into its other eye, blinding it completely.

From there, it’s simplicity itself to down it completely. In the end, we’re both left winded and exhausted, at least magically if not otherwise.

That wasn’t the end of it though.

Just a few days later the noise reappears and not long after that, there’s another toad corpse in our clearing.

A couple of days after that, it happens again. And then again. By then we’ve already learned how to fight them more efficiently, but it’s still exhausting.

And now, this is already the fifth one. I suppose that there’s truly no denying it.

In the year that I studied in the library, I didn’t just read about magic and its sub-professions. I also read many tomes about the world itself and the creatures within. One of which are the monsters.

Now, I don’t know that much about them, the topic didn’t seem relevant at the time, but I definitely remember that they are attracted to large quantities of ambient mana. Mana like in our cave-dwelling.

I guess it makes sense. The books hadn’t mentioned anything about this, but the again who’d expect that someone would create a formation out in the wilderness. Normally you’d want one somewhere in a city or something defensible like that.

No matter.

Floating out of Aiden and towards the corpse, I inspect our former adversary.

It’s the same type of creature as the other four. Hell frog, bog frog, bemoaned toad, mold toad and many, many more. There were many names for this most monstrous of creature, at least as many as the regions it inhabited. All of them described the same creature though. A lumbering, mindless beast that cause its environment to wither and die.

The worst thing is that none of its parts are useful for anything. The skin unworkable, the flesh poisonous and the bones too soft (which is strange because they don’t seem soft at all when the frog is alive). It’s just a complete pest.

And so, we do the only thing there is to do. We set fire to the corpse and watch, making sure it burns completely until only ash and embers remain.

Our trip back is silent. We’re both still trying to sense souls, though without much luck.

As we arrive at the clearing, I ponder about how it’d changed.

Once we realized that the toads were definitely gunning for our cave, we built some fortifications. At first, we tried to dig some moats, but after the very next frog simply jumped over we realize our folly.

And so, the massive pile of lumber that was just sitting by the cave entrance for almost a month now finally became useful.

The border of our clearing no longer appeared as an indistinct line between forest and not-forest, but instead sported a sizeable barricade of wooden spikes pointing outwards.

Rocks supported them, so that they don’t just fall over and become useless, causing the stockpile of boulders to also dwindle.

Entering our burgeoning compound consequently became a chore. I could just fly over, but Aiden had no such spells available to him yet. As such, every time he leaves, a long chore of ripping out the stakes and planting them back into the ground ensues.

Of course, I, as the loyal Familiar that I am, dutifully help him out.

Once on the other side, we separate. Aiden stays there, continuing to work on his magic, and I enter the cave.

Not much has changed on the inside, at least at first glance. And yet, at the spot where my corner used to be is a small dark tunnel, just large enough for me to fit through. And on the other side is my room. Or rather the room where I experiment.

The walls, floor and ceiling are all marred with hundreds of squiggly lines. Formations. Eh, technically it’s just one type of formation, but still.

At first, I wanted to just increase the efficiency of the mana gathering formation so that we could grow even faster. But once the toads started heading this way a new goal added itself to my project. I needed to figure out how to contain the gathered mana so that it doesn’t act like a beacon, attracting monsters from all around.

And oh boy, is that difficult. Sure, I could technically encircle the whole cave with a containment formation to keep all the mana in. That, combined with keeping the mana gathering formation, should be enough to last a pretty long time with only occasional repairs.

However, our own internal mana would eventually reach big enough concentrations that this constant amount of ambient mana would no longer be enough to mitigate leakage.

What I need to figure out is a way for a mana gathering formation to constantly attract more mana without me having to repair it more and more frequently while at the same time keeping all that mana contained. Which produces an additional problem.

A containment formation keeps the mana from going either way, so it not only keeps it inside, but also refuses to let any more enter.

And so, I spend the next couple of hours experimenting with minute changes to the gathering formation, seeing how the effect changes. Eventually it gets dark though and I have to leave without much progress.

As the dark falls and Aiden heads off to sleep, I head outside and remain watchful. Ever since the toads started attacking, we’ve been doing this. I watch in the night while Aiden sleeps and then we switch. And with me needing less sleep than a true fleshy being, I don’t even have to sleep through the whole day.

Another night passes, this time without a disturbance.