“Wah! Wah Wah Wah!”

  The toads started croaking before the chief waved his staff signaling for them to stop. It looked at Torin before snapping its hand to one of the snakes its subordinate was carrying, then stepped outside of the village and laid down the ‘gift’.

  It then hit its chest with its offhand before retreating to watch what Torin would do. ‘Simple’ he thought, ‘so being nice pays after all, let’s see how far I can take this…’

  He approached the dead snake before pinching it, lifting it up above his head and dropping it into his gullet.

  “Waehh!”

  He hoarsely exclaimed, trying to mimic the toads to show his appreciation for the offering.

  After another moment of tense silence as they scanned each other he retreated.

  And so another two months passed in this routine.

  Every few days he would arrive by the village and exchange prey. As they grew familiar he also started to differentiate between the toads a bit more. In fact, the one he was spying on before approaching the village might’ve been not one, but multiple toads, just similar to each other.

  ‘That makes more sense,’ Torin pondered, the toads did seem a bit too friendly. ‘One might be dismissed, but multiple voices not so much’ regardless he dropped that train of thought as he once more concentrated on the task at hand, training.

  As of late he’d faced a bottleneck. In these two months his progress slowed down significantly. He had only managed to increase the strength of his icy skin by around thirty percent, active outside manipulation to forty minutes and inner manipulation to two hours.

  The size of icy skin technique remained the same, in reality no matter how much he focused the energy there it would only grow denser and just disperse at the edges whenever he willed it to grow wider, at last that soon also hit the aforementioned bottleneck.

  Inner manipulation stopped improving after the first month, the boarling seemingly achieving the most efficient energy transfer possible at this point in time.

  Not all was bad as he managed to completely befriend the toads. With today being a big hunt meant to commemorate their new found friendship.

  ***

  They set out with the rising sun in a party of five, making it six with Torin. He couldn’t quite grasp the exact reason for these monthly hunts, but it seemed to do something with the small toad-child they were bringing along.

  As communication was still in progress, this was the best he could figure from all that pointing and shouting the chieftain ‘performed’ the day before.

  “Wah!”

  ‘What now?’ The boarling grumbled before one of the toads in their party seemingly called out to him. It waved its stick in the direction they were going, before sticking out its hunched back even more while raising his hands as if trying to warn him that big danger was there.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  ‘Everywhere is danger’ Torin thought as he shrugged his shoulders, but the toad, persistent, pointed in other directions and puffed out his chest while doing so, trying to say those ways were no big deal.

  “Yes, yes, let’s just go” he answered, trying to calm down the all worked up creature.

  ***

  As time passed the surroundings grew denser, bushes and trees covering their vision, the previously sparse swamp now felt stifling, like a living, breathing cave. The heavy moisture in the air weighing everyone down.

  ‘Stop’ The chieftain signaled with his open hand, before clenching it into a fist showing that the prey was found.

  The toads moved out from a straight file to surround the creature in a semi circle and only then did Torin get the opportunity to creep to the front and see what the thing looked like.

  It had the shape of a deer, and was brown in color, but its skin didn’t seem to boast any fur, and its legs didn’t have any hooves, just ending in smooth tentacle-like appendages.

  Most interestingly its head was.. A skull, a deer’s bare bone skull. Only the creature's horizontally pupiled eyes shining through the sockets.

  *thunk*

  *thunk*

  The chieftain stepped out, the toads finishing their encirclement.

  “WAHH!”

  It cried out before its skin pulsed. Once, twice, thrice… until the sound of creaking bones alongside tearing skin could be heard as it grew in size one third more of its body.

  The creature finally feeling threatened writhed its body into an octopus-like shape before launching itself at the chief like a bullet.

  *BANG*

  *Crkk*

  The chief swung his club at the monster. A small crack appearing in its skull as it was slung head over heel.

  Before the cloud of dirt could even settle three other toads jumped out and started clobbering the thing’s soft appendages.

  Only one or two hits landed before it got to its senses, dodged the others and tried squirming away to safety just for the bounding chieftain to catch up and grab one of its legs.

  *bam*

  *bam**bam**bam**bam**bam*

  The chief swung it around like a ragdoll back and forth. Deep exhales and inhales followed his whistling muscle before the dust settled and the chieftain's body shrunk once more to his normal size.

  *WAH!*

  It roared before it tossed the, probably, still alive victim next to the youngling toad’s feet, who rammed his comically small club more akin to a stick into the monster's eyes a couple times before feeling the surge of Jak and stopping.

  As the toads celebrated Torin was deep in thought. ‘How did the chieftain do that?’ It might be an ability that it does instinctively on command, like sprinting, but maybe he could replicate it? ‘I mean it’s just Jak moving.’

  Previously when fighting the so-called ‘Tideguards’ the mere ability to manifest water seemed mystical, so he didn’t even know where to start, but now, he could do something mystical as well.

  The other part that made his ambition to learn it more plausible was that the other toads couldn’t do it, only the chieftain could, and eventually the chieftain would die and somebody would have to replace it.

  Or it was all chance that he met a one of a kind chieftain that could do one of a kind ability that only specifically works for their race.

  Resolving to at least try figuring out the ability he could already feel a headache coming from the amount of misunderstandings their primitive way of conversing would create.