In dark wet cave in the middle of a rain forest the croaking sound of a massive frog resounded.
Right next to this frog were several eggshells that had all but broken apart.
From those broken shells crawled small creatures, slimy and quick, no bigger than a cat.
But they were growing.
---CROAK!!!
The massive frog lowered itself and let these small creatures climb over its back. Its skin bubbled and pulsed with a deep green light.
It was feeding them.
Meanwhile,
"Bing!!"
"Bing!!"
The sound of metal kissing metal rang through the makeshift workshop.
This time though, it wasn't frustration. It was progress.
"It's working!!" One of the Carlos brothers slammed his fist on the workbench in excitement. The jet engine heat had finally done it, the windigo bone was beginning to bend.
Slowly. Reluctantly. But it was bending.
"Don't lose focus!" The other brother grabbed his tongs and worked the glowing strip of bone back onto the mold.
They had been at it for two days straight with barely any sleep.
Arthur had drawn out the blueprints himself. Three weapons were priority. One large sword for Jack. Twin short blades for Leon. And for Arthur himself....
Something else.
"He wants it hollow in the middle?" Carlos the elder squinted at the blueprint.
"He said it'll make sense later." Carlos the younger shrugged and kept hammering.
Outside,
"Again!!"
---woosh
Arthur dashed low, his movement was like a stone skipping across water. Fast, unpredictable, close to the ground.
Leon swung wide.
---whiff
"You're still too slow." Arthur said flatly, not even breathing hard.
"Give me a break man..." Leon put his hands on his knees and wheezed. He'd been at this since morning.
Jack sat on a log nearby, wrapped in bandages. His forearm had been cut during yesterday's session, nothing too bad, but enough to bench him for a day.
"The beasts coming next aren't going to be the windigo." Arthur said, walking slow circles around Leon.
"They'll be smaller. But faster."
Leon lifted his head.
"How much faster?"
"Fast enough that if you blink, you're dead."
'Damn.' Leon thought in his mind.
He straightened back up and gripped the windigo rib tighter. Wincing from the soreness in his shoulder.
"Again."
"...yeah, again."
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
The world outside was becoming a different place.
In Delta city alone, there had been six beast sightings in the past 48 hours. Three of them had resulted in deaths. The government was urging civilians to stay inside and call the authorities if they saw anything unusual.
The authorities had no idea what to do.
From the farmhouse, Arthur could see the smoke rising in the distance.
Something had been set on fire.
'Two weeks.' He thought in his mind. 'In two weeks the carriers finish laying their eggs and the real horde begins.'
He looked down at his stat screen.
[Name: Arthur Naldir
Physical Strength: 15
Stamina: 100
Speed: 18
Will Power: 200
Class: (not selected)
Level: 3
Exp: 140/1000]
Still level 3.
He had spent these days training the body and not hunting. It was a calculated choice.
His stats from the previous life told him the most critical thing in these early days wasn't raw level. It was foundation.
But he couldn't afford to wait much longer either.
'Two more days.' He decided. 'Then we hunt again.'
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
The eggs hatched three days ahead of schedule.
Arthur had noticed the signs. The birds stopped singing. The forest went quiet. The wind smelled like iron and something else. Something rotten.
"Wake up!!"
He kicked Jack's boot hard enough to send him rolling off the makeshift bed.
"What the-"
"They're moving. Get the others."
Arthur was already pulling his coat on by then.
---rustle
---rustle
From the treeline beyond the farmhouse, the leaves shook.
One by one.
Then all at once.
"...what are those?" Leon stepped out and squinted into the darkness of the treeline.
They were small creatures. Low to the ground. Moving in pairs at first, then in groups of four, then ten.
Their bodies were like lizards but their heads were wrong, too wide, with rows of teeth that went all the way back.
Grin frogs.
That's what they'd be called eventually. Arthur remembered.
In his past life, grin frogs were responsible for the deaths of over forty thousand people in the first month alone. They weren't the strongest beasts, but they were fast, they hunted in packs and they were completely silent until they weren't.
"Positions." Arthur said simply.
Jack grabbed his windigo rib sword, Leon nocked an arrow into the modified crossbow Arthur had gotten him two days ago. The Carlos brothers had been told to stay inside no matter what.
Marcove had long since disappeared. The greedy man hadn't been seen since the night of the windigo. Good riddance.
---rustle---rustle---rustle
The tree line exploded.
"Roar!!!!"
Not one grin frog.
Not ten.
A hundred.
"Leon, wide arc. Jack, hold the center." Arthur said, his voice didn't shake.
"And you?!" Leon yelled.
"Don't worry about me."
---woosh
Arthur launched forward.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
'Thirty of them.' He counted in his head as he dashed into the horde.
In the chaos of a hundred frogs, there were always thirty that led the charge. The rest reacted off of them.
Kill the thirty.
The rest scatter.
That was the theory.
---clang!!
The blood rage dagger caught the first grin frog across its wide jaw and sent it skidding back.
[Ding
+1 stamina from Blood Rage effect
]
Arthur didn't stop.
He cut left.
---woosh
He dropped under the leap of a second one.
---THUD
It crashed into two others behind him.
"Bang bang!!" Leon's shots rang out from the back, catching two frogs mid-leap.
"ROOAR!!" Jack charged into the right flank like a wall. He wasn't fast, but he was immovable. Three frogs leapt at him and he simply took the hits and swung his rib sword in a wide sweep.
---clang!! ---clang!!
Two of them flew back.
Arthur moved deeper.
The leader was always at the center of the pack. That was something nobody in his past life figured out until it was too late.
He had figured it out.
'There.' His eyes locked on to a grin frog twice the size of the rest. Its body was a darker shade of green and its teeth glinted even in the low morning light.
The pack leader.
---woosh
Arthur cut a straight line through the chaos and drove the blood rage dagger directly into the base of the leader's jaw.
It screamed.
---ROAAR!!!
Then, it went quiet.
And just like that, the rest of the horde stopped.
Confused. Directionless.
Then they scattered.
Leon kept picking them off as they ran. Jack crushed two that were too slow.
And then it was over.
Just like that.
The farmhouse clearing was littered with frog corpses, some still twitching.
[Ding!!
Grin Frog Horde Repelled.
+800 Exp.
Bonus: Horde Leader slain. +400 Exp.
]
[Ding!!
User has Leveled up to Level 4
Awarding attribute points...
+5 attribute points.
]
Arthur distributed them without hesitation.
+3 speed. +2 physical strength.
"How are you not even sweating?" Leon stared at Arthur with wide eyes.
Arthur looked back at him.
"I'm sweating."
"....you're barely sweating."
"Train harder." Arthur walked towards the corpse of the pack leader.
Just like the windigo, there was something inside.
[Ding!!
Host has found a nascent stage item: Grin Frog Leader's Venom Sac.
Effect: Can be distilled into a poison compound. Paralyzes target's limbs on contact with blood.
]
Arthur pocketed it without a word.
'This will be useful.'
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