The battles in both valleys ground to a halt as the komo, spider, and lemur forces nursed their wounds and lay down in the dirt, recovering from the exhaustion inflicted by their prolonged ordeal. Watching their movements through his spyglass, Nick could tell that the beasts understood that their trial was still underway; that this moment was only a lull in the storm, and that the worst was yet to come.
Taking advantage of the opportunity to take stock of the evolving situation, he turned his attention to the third hilltop. Until now, the only beasts he had seen up there were a few scattered komos. As he ran his gaze across the hillcrest, he watched as a row of undulating figures ascended the hilltop from the far side. Beasts that he was unable to identify at first glance.
Nick peered through his spyglass to get a better sense of what was happening. It took him a minute to process what he was looking at because it was a battle unlike anything he had seen before. Raging across the hilltop was a fierce melee between giant snakes and giant frogs. Or, to be more precise, twenty emerald frogs a bit smaller than the bonecrunchers were engaged in a brutal brawl with a colossal vermillion serpent the size of a shipping crane.
Both species must have been living in the swamp. Nick was immensely glad that he had decided to abandon his exploration of that region immediately after discovering the marsh. I wouldn’t have stood a chance against either of them. His certainty only grew more pronounced when he realized that instead of fighting by leveraging the strength of their bodies like the other beasts on the island, the oversized amphibians were mid-range projectile specialists. The first beasts utilizing ranged attacks that he had encountered thus far.
Every few seconds, the frog battalion paused in their evasive maneuvers, long enough to spit a mouthful of neon yellow goop at the snake. Wherever the corrosive mucus landed, it bubbled and smoked as it ate through the beast’s scales before dissolving the tissue below. Inflicting what had to be incredibly painful wounds all along the great serpent’s body. The snake writhed and bucked as it struck back, crushing three of the frogs beneath its bulk before they could hop out of the way. Pressing its advantage, the great serpent opened its mouth and blew, emitting a cloud of bright blue venom that engulfed another pair of frogs before they leapt out of the noxious haze.
The unfortunate amphibians were dead within seconds, convulsing in a heap of tangled limbs, foaming bloody froth from every orifice. Maybe the megasnake can turn this around despite the severity of its wounds. Wait, that’s a stupid name.
Nick was saved from the trouble of having to invent a less cringeworthy moniker when he saw what happened next. Although he had judged this epic battle between venom and acid to be a tossup, it soon became clear that he had underestimated how badly the frogs’ caustic compound had injured the serpent during the earlier stages of their battle, which had taken place on the hillside that was hidden from his view.
Less than a minute later, the toxic serpent abandoned its wanton rampage and began thrashing in place, overwhelmed by agony as the frogs’ solvent devoured its flesh all the way down to the bone. The instant the snake lost control, the remaining frogs swarmed it in unison. Effortlessly avoiding its erratic thrashing, they took aim and prepared to fire, moving with impeccable teamwork that sent a jolt of fear running down Nick’s spine.
As one, the green amphibians pointed their heads toward the serpent’s face and launched a barrage of bright yellow goo, encasing the snakes’ head in a solid sphere of acidic mucous. It tried to wipe the gunk off by dragging its face along the hillside, tearing a deep rent into the soil in the process. But the frogs’ acid proved to be just as sticky as it was deadly.
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Nick wasn’t sure what killed the gigantic snake in the end—the massive shock to its system, suffocation, or the solvent dissolving its brain. Perhaps a combination of all three. Regardless, he was intensely relieved that he had not been forced to face either of the deadly species himself. Especially the snake, which he could not even begin to imagine being able to injure. The giant serpent seemed just as lethal as the lurk, with a mid-range area of effect attack to boot.
As the frogs celebrated their victory by feasting on the serpent’s solvent-softened flesh, Nick lowered his spyglass and returned his attention to the problem at hand. How to survive the next series of battles as the surviving species fought to claim the hilltops. If he waited to act until the ocean rose to flood the valleys below, an occurrence that seemed certain given how events had proceeded up to this point, both prides of komos would be forced out of the basins, attacking his location from both sides of the hill at once.
While it was possible that the lizards would head for the other hilltops instead, Nick judged the odds of that happening as near zero. The spiders had fortified their position, and he was willing to bet that the corpse of the titanic serpent would trigger the komos’ instinct for self-preservation, minimal as it was.
Even without these considerable deterrents, Nick’s hilltop was clearly the weakest position of the three. The one that he would choose to attack if he were fighting alongside the lizards instead of the lemurs. His sword and the tribe’s crude spears simply didn’t stack up compared to the might of the other beasts. Unless he found a way to alter this dynamic before the ocean rose, Nick’s team was going to get hit from both sides simultaneously and overwhelmed within minutes.
Before the island sank and precipitated a hopeless battle, he needed to figure out a way to cull the lizards’ forces. Or at least obstruct their path up the hillside so that the tribe would only have to face a portion of their enemies at once. The problem was that Nick had no idea how he could accomplish either objective given the limited time and tools at his disposal. The tribe was in bad shape from their flight through the jungle and the skirmish with the komos. In addition to having lost over a dozen members outright, at least a quarter of the lemurs had mangled limbs or chunks torn out of their furry hides.
Although they whimpered in pain, the lemur warriors did not panic or break ranks, a show of courage that Nick found unexpectedly touching. He wondered idly why they had no young or nursing mothers among them, but he didn’t know enough about beasts or System-sanctioned tutorials to hazard a guess. Hopefully, it meant that the children of Earth would be spared a survival tutorial as well.
“Don’t worry, little buddies. I’ll come up with a plan before it’s too late.” Despite his show of bravado, this was a bad situation. One beyond the ability of Nick’s background to suggest a solution, no matter how many stratagems he cycled through.
While he analyzed the dynamics of his desperate dilemma, he walked over to where the lemur soldiers were strung out along the hillside. He worked his way down the line, using his dagger to sharpen every spear, then handing out berries and scooping up scattered stones to deposit into the pile, although the modest mound wouldn’t last long once the fighting began in earnest.
As Nick wracked his brain for everything that he was worth, time marched inexorably on, bringing him ever closer to the cusp of annihilation. An hour passed, then another, as the sun completed its daily arc and began sinking toward the horizon. And still, nothing that he could come up with was good enough. He thought that he could eliminate one of the lizard armies, although the tribe would bleed to eke out the victory. But nothing Nick could do would stop the other band of komos from overwhelming the lemur forces, slaughtering them without hesitation or mercy.
Just as he was beginning to despair, an unexpected event tilted the game board, throwing the pieces into chaos and disrupting the flow of events to come. A familiar yipping growl reverberated across the eastern valley, then another, followed by dozens more.
Nick stared on in shock as twenty hyena-boars burst out of the water and came charging into the valley, led by an alpha even burlier than the one he had slain. After falling into a tight formation, the bonecruncher pack charged, tearing into the komos with bloodthirsty abandon.