~~~Lee~~~
Lee stood still and stared out at the night, waiting for something to show itself.
Nothing did.
Elsewhere in the complex, he could hear screams and yells, along with the occasional crash of something breaking, but because of the buildings echoing the sound from different directions, he wasn’t sure exactly where the noise was coming from…
A dark shape shot towards him.
Lee flinched away, holding his makeshift weapon out in front of him as he tried to step aside... and tripped over his own feet.
Before he could fall, a heavy tongue slammed into him and smashed him against the building at his back. It hurt, but granted the second he needed to get his feet back under him while he flailed wildly with his weapon.
I’m an idiot, Lee thought, as he expected at any moment to be swallowed up. Went outside like an idiot and got killed by the first damn monster.
He wondered what it would feel like to be eaten by a frog, but… the tongue never pulled him away.
As something croaked in the darkness, Lee staggered forward from the wall, still somehow on his feet and with the curtain rod still in hand.
The feel of the tongue sticking to his chest and flapping about like a dismembered lizard tail was extremely unpleasant, but better than being dragged into a hungry maw. Trying to pull it away only made things worse when it stuck to his hand…
In the dim light of the stars and moon, Lee spotted the shape moving a moment before it leaped toward him.
He ducked, mostly reflexively, and with one hand on his almost sword, as the frog passed just over his head. Along the way, he felt a slight tugging on his weapon and a noticeable decrease in the strength of the runes holding the thing together.
The wet thud on the wall behind him was accompanied by a hot, wet splash against his crouching back. Lee surged upright and away, almost falling, and took a few steps before he spun to face the monster.
The dead and now in two pieces, monster.
That wasn't... that bad.
Barely a moment later, the sticky tongue holding his hand and chest abruptly stopped sticking to anything. It fell to the ground, and Lee hurried back to the enchanted wall of his building. Partly to grab the core when it appeared, but also because fighting in the dark was bullshit. The fork wasn't enough; he needed something more... substantial.
He stuck a finger on the wall and looked away before starting to draw out a rune he’d used before to make light, only this time making it much larger. Unfortunately, Lee felt resistance to his plan almost immediately, and it came from his own rune already on the building. More specifically, the one he’d forced to include the entire structure before the frogs could destroy it.
Apparently, the runes didn’t play well together… or rather, they had to be linked intentionally at the time of creation. However, once he'd enchanted it the way it was now, that singular rune had stretched to claim everything, and he couldn't add to the building...
Pulling out his glowing fork, Lee used its light to check the ground for loose rocks. He found one and, immediately upon touching it, understood that the rock wouldn't work as a light, at least not only a light. It couldn't hold the light rune without the high levels of mana destroying the brittle stone, but he could link a strengthening rune with the light, and that would work. His class knowledge seemed to indicate that such a tactic would be a waste of runes, but Lee did it anyway.
The rock was small, and he had to cover nearly the entire surface to get both runes on it while linking them together. This meant he had to use both hands…
Lee worked fast in the light of his fork and, miraculously, didn't make a mistake. Other than staring intently at his work when it finished…
He thrust the intense light overhead, out of his line of sight, and tried to blink the spots from his vision while his other hand grasped blindly for his weapon. Which meant he didn't see the tongue blast directly into the source of light, catching his hand.
The upside was that in hitting him, it also stuck itself to the wall behind his hand. So when it tried to drag him away, the frog ended up pulling against the entire building.
Lee's free hand closed around the sharpened rod, and he swung at the tongue that stretched from over his head out into the dark.
Before he made contact, the tongue abruptly stopped sticking to him and snapped away, out of sight. Lee dropped the light rock before he could recover from the surprise release and took a step away, trying to avoid looking at the blinding light and also to not be a target if the monsters wanted to attack his lights.
It was something he'd seen a few times now, though he wasn't sure why they would target a light over a meal…
The frog went for the light again, its striking tongue ignoring Lee in favor of the glowing rock. He swung at the appendage, already expecting the attack, and completely missed the lightning-fast strike.
The enchanted rock flew away in a streak of light through his vision.
Then the bright spot vanished from the night, and a glowing red frog took its place where the light disappeared… like shining a flashlight through your hand, only instead of a hand, it was a six-foot tall frog.
That glowing body shifted a heartbeat later, orienting directly on Lee. He knew it was too late to run for cover; he was too far from the doorway. So Lee did the only thing he could; held onto his weapon for dear life as a tongue smacked into his face and yanked him away.
Shiiit!
It was pure luck that had him fly into the frog's gaping mouth at just the right angle for his sharp curtain rod to bisect its head straight down the middle. Even luckier that he didn't cut himself in half when he hit.
The butter knife still clenched in his teeth must have cut the tongue stuck on his face because a disgusting slime trickled past his teeth and made him choke.
Lee gagged and dropped the knife, spitting out the goo, then didn't move for a few heartbeats as he caught his breath and stared at his enchanted rock lying in the split-open belly of the frog all around him.
Then he cursed and squeezed his eyes shut against the glare while crouching down deeper into the mess. He also willed the runes on the rock back into himself.
The light vanished.
Lee stayed crouched in the dark for a time. He didn't know how long, but it was enough time to call himself an idiot more than once. Coming out here was crazy enough, but he could have at least gone with his neighbor. The guy had a shield, for fuck's sake, if a bit of a makeshift one. Just having someone to block those tongues… Lee was pretty sure they hadn't been able to stick to Alejandro's shield.
Retreating while he was still alive was an appealing option, but Lee knew he needed to get stronger… and it wasn't just a feeling or assumption because of the cores. It almost felt like a compulsion. He Needed to get stronger. He Had To!
Is this what Stanley was feeling? The thought made his stomach twist, thinking about how things had ended with his brother. Why didn't Stanley say anything?
Except Stanley had… not in those exact words, but the signs had been there. Like he hadn't actually known what he wanted but felt the urge all the same. Neither of them had known about cores before, but now they had a visceral and very visual glimpse of exactly how they could grow stronger.
Nothing else for it now, and Lee would not quit while he was ahead. He still had to do this… and luckily, the frogs had shown him a much better way to go about killing them that shouldn't involve feeding himself into their mouths...
It's the mana.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
That had to be what kept drawing them to his rune-enchanted items. Even now, the runes in his staff felt almost extinguished, part of the reason he suspected the first frog had basically attacked the blade itself, draining it a bit in the process, which sent the next one after his freshly charged rune rock.
First things, Lee sent his mana into the curtain rod. It took a small amount of power, and Lee was trying to gauge the loss while wishing for something as simple as a mana bar… and realized he didn't need one.
The lake of power in his center was clearly where the mana was coming from, and he could practically see it with how easy it was to visualize. All that practice the day before had paid off, or maybe it was part of the class knowledge he'd gained... It was honestly hard to tell.
His best reckoning on the mana told him about 80% remained after recharging his staff. Some of the loss was probably from making the rock, though he had regained mana when taking the runes back… he just wasn't sure how much of the original cost. It was something to test later.
Out here, away from his Liquid Mana Well, his mana clearly regenerated slower than it had since this started. Despite that, it wasn't actually that slow either, and Lee watched it tick up a couple of percent as he crouched in the split-open corpse of a giant frog.
He slowly calmed down as he waited and watched his mana regenerate. He also had a plan now, a much better one than swinging a shitty weapon at monsters trying to swallow him whole.
They wanted mana, and, as demonstrated multiple times now, they would attack anything, even if it might kill them. All he needed was enough stuff to enchant, and they would kill themselves by trying to eat it. He could waltz in after the fact and collect the cores with no danger.
Speaking of which, Lee found the core and absorbed it.
+0.1 Strength(-.9 Energetic Resilience)
Oh, he hated that trait right now… How much stronger would he already be if not for that shit? He couldn't even tell if each core did anything other than the feeling of it flowing into him.
The real problem at the moment was that he had nothing to enchant. The rock had barely held two runes, and he would need more than that if this was going to work… or did he? No, the rock was too round to be sharpened…
Lee grabbed his butter knife from the gore and cut the rock in half. Using his free hand and much more care, he cut those halves in half again. His blade, while more than sharp enough to cut stone, was also rather wide in relation to the magically thin slices they tried to carve into unyielding stone. Luckily, the rocks shattered apart close enough to what he was aiming for, and he came out of it with three potential weapons.
On the relatively flat sides of each stone, Lee drew out two runes. He started with strength to keep it from shattering further and then finished with sharpness. That one he could feel focusing around the edges... the thick edges more akin to blunt hammers than blades. Testing with a finger, however, revealed that his magic was carrying the load, and they were indeed sharp.
He didn't need them to glow for the plan... hopefully. Lee chucked the first one toward the fence that lined the complex and flinched when a flickering shadow snatched it from the air almost before it left his hand. They are so close! The sense he had for his runes let him feel it fly not nearly far enough before stopping at just the right height to be inside a giant frog belly.
The fence on this side of the complex bordered a bit of wilderness, and he was pretty sure the slight ravine out there was where he'd heard the frogs singing the night before. If he could get enough of these traps out there…
He threw another, and this one went farther before suddenly zipping away.
The first, meanwhile, was hopping erratically until it fell abruptly and didn't move again. He guessed it had cut its way free from the frog, ideally dealing a fatal wound on the way out.
The runes in the rock had faded significantly during the short time it had taken, which hopefully meant it had dealt a lot of damage rather than just being a shitty weapon. To make sure, Lee threw the third just above where the last one stopped moving. He couldn't see where it was, but the feeling of the runes was enough to tell that the last rock didn't reach the ground. It also didn't move at all after.
It would have been nice to have the light turn them into glow-frogs if only to know where they were.
Lee shuffled back, trying to keep the deflating corpse between him and the fence as he sought more rocks… and found hard asphalt below him.
He considered retreating to the building, specifically to the dirt and plants around the outside, but finally remembered that there was a playground right next to the fence, one with likely metal equipment… a treasure trove of potential weapons.
Of course, that meant going closer to where he guessed the frogs were coming from.
The gain was too good to pass up, and Lee inched forward again, the curtain rod in one hand and the butter knife in the other. He also pumped mana into both as he went, holding them away from his body, hoping to draw any attack away from himself.
It was a few nerve-wracking minutes until the jungle gym appeared, sticking up into the starry sky.
Lee didn't wait, immediately attacking the structure, particularly the metal bars. It was loud and took considerable effort, as well as depleted his runes with each strike, but he quickly piled up new weapons in the form of lengths of pipe.
They were far too tough to hammer flat, so they were not a weapon he could use as a sword, but as expected, he could make the ends sharp. The hope was that they could still cut their way free of a frog's stomach.
Lee enchanted each six-inch length as fast as he could before chucking them high and far in every direction, especially over the fence. As high and far as he could manage, at least.
Some got snatched as they flew, zipping away in different directions, while a few completed their arcs uninterrupted.
Lee kept at it until his mana ran too low to make another. Then he waited for it to recharge, crouching low among what remained of the jungle gym. All the crouching made his legs burn slightly, but it wasn't without reward, that, or maybe all the throwing...
+1 Strength
He didn't feel noticeably stronger after the notification but thought maybe he could feel the mana flowing into his muscles... though that might have just been his regeneration healing them as he worked.
The sounds of violence deeper into the complex were fading as he'd worked out here on the fringes, and Lee didn't know whether that meant everyone was dying or if they were killing the frogs. The enchant he'd given to Alejandro was still active, though definitely diminished from its original strength.
Based solely on what he'd experienced tonight, Lee was getting a better idea of how his runes worked, especially regarding the sharpening rune. The drain on the rune seemed to be directly proportional to the original sharpness of the object. He could make a dull rock or slightly flattened pipe razor sharp, but the same rune on the machete would last exponentially longer. Probably because the rune had less work to do.
Obviously, he needed a real weapon... and maybe some armor.
Enough mana regenerated, and Lee made a few more rune traps before throwing them over the fence. Nothing grabbed any of them. So either everything was dead, or they had wised up to his tricks...
Lee made one more, with just a light and strengthening rune. It didn't get grabbed.
So they're all dead... hopefully.
He could feel his runes scattered in the distance, a fairly even spread by his own estimation.
The last one served another purpose as well, and it allowed Lee to get a visual of the area. Not a very good visual since the light was nearly buried in the dirt, but still enough for his needs.
There were plenty of lumps that looked like dead frogs. A lot of shiny pools next to them that could be blood...
Lee tossed a handful of unenchanted metal over the fence and tried to climb over... before abandoning the effort. I'm an idiot. It only took a few dozen hacking swipes to cut a gap through the iron fence, which also gave him a lot more material to work with.
Crossing through to the other side of the fence felt more dangerous somehow, despite the obvious failure of the fence to keep anything out... Lee used one of the iron spikes, made it sharp, and threw it at one of the unmoving lumps further away.
He missed.
The next throw landed true, mostly, and garnered no response from the frog when it punched straight through. It also cut Lee's hand in the throw, the sharpness rune failing to confine itself to the pointed ends.
He watched his wound this time, along with waiting for his mana to regenerate, and got to see the healing in action. It happened fast, almost too fast... and with more benefits besides...
+1 Vitality
That almost felt like a loophole...
Debuff Upgraded: [Hungry So maybe not a free loophole. Also, it hurt. Lee kept enchanting new weapons, waiting only for his mana as he went through the pile of scrap while still crouched next to the fence. He only threw a few of the new weapons, sticking most into the dirt at his feet to be ready for when he had a real target. In the darkness, he could already see a few points of light that he was pretty sure were cores waiting to be collected. Lee still waited. Nothing moved until, finally, Lee headed for his prize. He took it slow, a few crouched steps at a time, mostly ignoring the tingling in his thighs since he knew it might pay off with another free attribute. Most of his newer weapons went with him, picked up, and stuck back into the dirt ahead as he inched his way down the hill. Then he started chucking them ahead, scrambling faster toward his loot. Along the way, he put the runes back onto his fork. Lee controlled his growing desire to sprint ahead and grab the cores and threw his weapons around the nearest one before finally rushing in and claiming it. +0.1 Wisdom(-.9 Energetic Resilience) Shitty, but there were a lot more where that came from. It would add up... Lee saw what he thought was a hill abruptly move in the corner of his vision and reached for something to throw... Then something struck him in the back and drove him face-first into the muddy ground. A mouthful of mud later, Lee was flying backward. His curtain rod hit something, and he felt the runes drain almost to nothing before it was yanked from his grip. At nearly the same time, the starry sky vanished behind dark, wet walls, and something crushed close around him. There was a squeezing, pulsing feeling... and he was falling through open air. The glowing fork in his belt illuminated enough for Lee to see what had happened and where he'd ended up. It wasn't the open air at all... Then he splashed down into the bottom of the stomach he'd just been swallowed into.