Chapter 27
King of the Jungle
As I arrived at the outskirts of Waning with Torvac, Durg'un, and Winslow, rice paddies filled the horizon. They stretched for over two miles before giving way to wild forest. In my previous life, I never got the chance to visit Japan, but I couldn't imagine it was anything like this. The forests were too thick, and the mountainous terrain was filled with monsters that made travel between cities impossible without a small army.
The only similarities would be the cities. Everything in Lunar was small and compact. Every inch of space was utilised so they could cram their population into what little room remained. Being out here provided a stark contrast to everything I'd seen until now.
The king toad stood in the distance, slowly lumbering toward the city behind us. Its dimensions were more like a hippo's than a toad's, with thick forelegs and hind legs of equal length. The dark green patterns across its skin gave it a grand appearance and a regal bearing to match the bone crown atop its head.
King toads were supposed to have a royal presence. They were supposed to make you feel like you were standing before a king. This was a truly majestic creature, but it wasn't nearly as impressive as a king as my books described.
I turned to the others. They were all staring at it without a trace of awe. "It's big, but the books I read gave me the impression it would be more impressive."
Torvac and Durg'un burst out laughing.
Winslow snorted and shook his head as he turned me. "That beast is walking towards us from beyond the horizon. That's why we can't see its feet. The only reason your jaw is still attached is that it's too far away for us to get a proper sense of its true scale."
I turned back to the horizon and noticed the missing feet, trying to process what I was seeing and what Winslow had said. The others left me to process as they began setting up, pulling out the equipment I would need to kill it.
My mind struggled with Winslow's statement.
From what I remember from high school, on a flat surface, the horizon was supposed to be three miles away. If only its feet were hidden, then it would be much further away. For the king toad to look this big from that far away meant its size had to be beyond anything I'd ever seen. We were talking about a creature bigger than New York skyscrapers.
That fit the descriptions I'd read, but my brain still couldn't process something that big.
I glanced at Torvac. "Can you tell how big it is?"
Torvac shook his head while he helped Durg'un assemble the mithril crossbow. "Too far."
Winslow looked over while his eyes scanned his interface. He'd been waiting for us when we arrived at the teleportation circle, offering to act as a liaison between us and Lunar's military and adventurers, so he could make sure everything went smoothly while we recouped his investment. He had so much influence in Lunar that no one would try anything funny.
He'd already transferred Krinda to his farming in Waning. He moved me over with her, so everything was ready to move ahead. He would warn us if one of the adventurers or soldiers accidentally engaged the king toad before it arrived, so I didn't waste my champion ability. This wouldn't be the only migrating knot, so if today didn't work out, we'd get another chance later in the week.
Winslow's eyes continued to move across his interface before settling on me. "The military has classed it as a category four king toad without any irregularities."
The classification mean that it was in the second greatest size and weight category without any mutations which might give it additional abilities. Mutations were extremely rare among king toads and beasts in general, but when they occurred, they usually resulted in the king toad becoming significantly smaller and more deadly. On even rarer occasions, they would become larger. However, category five king toads were so large that they couldn't support their body weight on land, which prevented them from being a threat.
I turned and stared at the creature lumbering towards us, trying to process the fact that I was looking at a living creature more than a mile long. Unlike regular toads, king toads didn't hop. Instead, they took slow, methodical steps with their webbed feet, even placing their weight. Each step was supposed to cause a minor tremor, but I could already sense these minor tremors, and it was miles away.
"What's with the tremors?"
"Give me a moment." Half a minute went by. "Apparently, it's hurt its foot and has a slight limp. It's causing earthquakes with every step. Will that be a problem?"
Durg'un shook his head as he pulled back the string on the crossbow. "So long as they don't knock Landlord Arnold off his feet, they shouldn't be a problem. The area for a critical hit should be too large for him to miss."
"I'm telling the military and adventurers' guild to maintain their distance."
Durg'un walked over with the loaded crossbow. It was a dwarven design, made from mithril, with a mithril bolt placed in the groove. Unlike the one Farentine had lent me, this one was built for my height and arm length. I had no idea who had made it, and Durg'un wouldn't tell me, because supplying me with a weapon right now was something that the dwarven kings would take issue with.
"Hold this for me, I have things to do," Durg'un said diplomatically, before walking away.
Its familiar light weight couldn't convey the deadliness of the weapon. It had more in common with a high-calibre rifle than a crossbow. I'd spent a day practising with it, and Torvac had tested its range out of curiosity. The bolt had travelled over a mile before dropping. And that distance was without my champion ability. Considering how big the king toad was, we were going to need all the range we could get.
I checked that the safety was engaged in case I had to move positions. Everything I'd learned about king toads told me that once they were within fifty miles of a city, town, or village, they would move in a straight line until they reached it, but just because that's how they behaved most of the time didn't mean I wanted to leave anything to chance.
The safety was on.
I could run if I had to.
The king toad took another step, causing the water in the nearby rice patties to ripple. Each step across land seemed to be a struggle, as if it were constantly fighting its own weight and gravity. I didn't notice any hesitancy from this supposed limp, though.
"Will that thing even notice me?" I asked.
Winslow shook his head. "King toads ignore humans unless attacked. If they didn't eat the cores of every village, town, city, or metropolis they come across, they wouldn't be a threat. We only die because we are in their way, not because they intend to harm us. We're no more ants to them."
"Great peep talk."
Winslow sighed. "Only a fool wouldn't consider that a blessing. If they considered us food like most beasts and monsters, there wouldn't be any of us left."
He had a point, and he raised another question. "I know why they eat when they're juveniles, but what do they eat when they're this big?"
"Besides mana, the leading theory is that there are massive dungeons hidden throughout the ocean depths with very large monsters which break out frequently. However, that's mostly guesswork."
I frowned. "Why is it guesswork?"
"We've never seen these monsters. But occasionally, you'll see a king toad with battle scars and bite marks which don't match anything we have on record."
"So, wiping out the king toads might create another problem?"
"We're not sure about that either. We don't have a clue what they're holding back. The monsters could be entirely aquatic or far more deadly. However, thinning their numbers won't cause any harm. When their population was smaller, we think they had more food, which is why only the lone bulls would migrate across land. In the old days, the knots were content to slowly circle our kingdom before reaching the mainland. Their instincts push them to reach their mating grounds, but now their hunger causes them to rush over the obstacles in their way to get there sooner."
"The sooner they mate they sooner they can go back to searching for food."
"Exactly."
The king toad on the horizon was growing larger by the second, and it was already reaching the point where it was starting to match the description in my books.
I turned to Torvac. "You really tried to kill one of these alone?"
Winslow turned to Torvac, raising an eyebrow questioningly.
Torvac sighed. "Torvac's friend Grandmaster Wizard Misk claim to Torvac that Friend Misk kill king toad alone."
Winslow knew his history. "The only king toad that was ever killing alone was a mutated dwarf."
Torvac nodded. "This done by Torvac's friend Misk.
"That was an annoying mutation. It was barely larger than a dragon, but it could leap so far and so quickly that only champions could keep up with it. They were off dealing with another knot, if memory serves."
"This why Friend Misk could kill alone."
"And then your friend claimed he killed a king toad alone, failing to mention that it was a mutated dwarf, so you went off to try to do it too."
"Friend Misk make sound easy. Torvac learn hard way Friend Misk exaggerate very much."
Winslow snickered. "You're as crazy as your stories make you sound."
"Torvac not crazy. Torvac competitive. Friend Misk only kill three monsters that Torvac not kill. Torvac kill four monsters that Friend Misk not kill, so Torvac try to maintain Torvac's lead."
Durg'un looked over with interest. "Which monsters?"
Winslow turned to me as they started sharing old hunting stories. "I just received word that the military and adventurers are pulling back to engage the knot. They don't see any reason to interfere with the bull. Do you need anything else?"
I watched the king toad continue to grow, shaking my head. Its size was starting to concern me. "So long as no one has engaged it, there is nothing else we can do except wait for it to arrive."
Winslow nodded and turned to leave before turning back. "Thank you for what you said. Krinda is as stubborn as a mule. Without your assurance, she never would have accepted the experience."
"It was a wise investment."
Winslow snorted. "Sure, it was."
I didn't bother correcting him. He was too pessimistic to believe me, and he'd see the truth soon enough.
"I'm going to pull back now, best of luck. I'll remove you from my farm if anything changes, so make sure you have your notification switched on."
I opened my interface and changed my settings while Winslow dashed off. Radian only had a level one metropolis, while Lunar had a level three. They had an Academy of Lore alongside their Academy of Law. Both magical buildings affected their interfaces, so they provided much more information than I was used to. However, most of it was annoying, so I turned everything off while I was working with Irana.
As I turned everything back on, a cascaded of notifications appeared. I closed as quickly as they appeared while the shaking grew more intense, and the king toad came closer. The king toad had to be entirely within the metropolises' farming zone before I could kill it, so it was going to get a lot worse by the time it arrived.
Thankfully, there was ample space to work with. The rice paddies on this part of Winslow's farm covered more land than the entirety of Blackwood. It wasn't as impressive as it sounded. A metropolis was 196 times larger than a village. With that much space, it was easy to keep it away from important infrastructure, and the entire kingdom was earthquake-prone, so there wasn't much chance of its steps or death causing widespread building collapse.
I finished closing the notifications and checked the crossbow again, making sure the safety hadn't slipped. It could punch a hole straight through Torvac's head, so I didn't want to risk getting jolted off my feet and accidentally misfiring. Torvac's reactions would likely prevent any chance of a misfire killing him, but there was no need to take any chances.
Durg'un opened the satchel he was carrying while continuing his conversation with Torvac and handed me Ririon's experience potion. It was a fraction of the size of the last one Durg'un had given me, fitting in the palm of my hand, but he'd warned me that the taste was worse.
While working with Irana, I'd learned why Lunar respected Ririon so much and was willing to go to such lengths to accommodate his plan. Whenever there was a particularly bad migration, Ririon would bribe the dwarven chiefs with ale to come and help. He viewed the king toads as Lunar's version of Village Eaters and acted as his conscience dictated. He'd saved millions of lives over the centuries, so he held a special place in the kingdom's heart.
Irana had actually fangirled when I told her I'd gotten drunk with him, asking me all sorts of questions I couldn't answer.
I open the potion bottle and put it to my lips before I could think too much. The taste was as bad as I'd been warned, but not having to chug half a gallon of the stuff made the experience better overall. Durg'un took back the empty bottle as I dismissed the notification telling me I'd received a tenfold increase in experience for the next ten days.
This time, there was no additional permanent buff.
Durg'un checked the crossbow one last time, then Torvac pulled back, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
My mind wanted to slip back to my conversation with Irana about experience. The idea that experience might not be real, but rather another form of currency that the system offered was intriguing. If leveling people up were something the system could do without expending a finite resource, it would open up all sorts of possibilities and explain why I could generate so much farming experience from my trap method.
It also raised another question.
Why didn't the system just make everyone max level?
Wouldn't everything run more efficiently?
Wouldn't we be able to fulfil its desires more easily?
The king toad continued its lumbering approach, entering the farming zone and crushing large swaths of rice paddies beneath its giant webbed feet. Now that it was so close, it made me think of a living hill or iceberg. Its size dwarfed what my mind said was possible for a living being. The largest stadium back home would have sat on its back with room to spare. The existence of a creature so large could only be explained by magic. Physics simply didn't allow for the possibility.
I put my thoughts about experience aside, focusing on what was walking towards me. Durg'un had set me up between its legs, but if it changed direction even a little, I might end up squished. Each step brought it closer, causing it to take up a larger and larger portion of the horizon.
And then it began to happen.
It crept up on me slowly, but it was undeniable. I felt small. Insignificant. The books didn't do the feeling justice. Here was a titan that roamed the earth as it pleased. Lesser beings fled from its crashing footsteps. Inescapable awe filled me. It wasn't like the giant. That monster had been a force of nature, intent on destroying everything around it.
This creature was nature.
It wasn't trying to destroy anything.
As far as it was concerned, it was walking across a plain. The trees it stepped on were like the grass beneath my feet, and the mountains it came across were large boulders. The path of destruction it left behind was no different from the path I left while walking through a wheat field. The damage wasn't intentional. It was just a byproduct of its existence.
Humans were so far beneath it that we weren't even in its food chain. It wasn't malicious. It wasn't vindictive. It was just so gigantic that it destroyed everything in its way.
It stopped half inside the metropolis's zone and sat on its haunches. "Ribbit! Ribbit!" The sound was like a thunderclap, vibrating through my chest.
Its head turned to the king toads following it in the distance and then towards the city. It inhaled, as if searching for something, and then I heard the distinct sound of its stomach rumbling. It was like a plane taking off.
"Ribbit! Ribbit! Ribbit!"
It launched to its feet and started moving more quickly, forgetting its slow stroll through the wilderness. It had been deciding whether to share its food.
I stood in its path, bouncing with every step, water sloshing around me. This definitely felt like an earthquake, but instead of feeling concern, I was filled with excitement.
I quashed those feelings.
The king toad's presence was awe-inspiring and wonderful, but it was also following its instincts. Instincts that would lead it to killing tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people as it stormed through the city on its way to the core to fill its belly.
I raised the crossbow to my shoulder as the distance quickly closed, doing my best to steady my bouncing aim. Its aircraft-carrier-sized head passed over me like an eclipse, and I uttered the word that would end its life.
"One shot."
As my discount store Super Siyan transformation began, surrounding me in golden flames, my analyse ability chose that moment to kick in, and a stat window appeared.
King Toad, (Beast)
Level: 50
HP: ?????????
Description:
The king toad is the largest beast on the planet. Standing before one is said to be like standing before the king of nature. It is an experience many seek out as they find their place in the world. If you are not one of these people seeking it and happen to be in a village, town, or city when you witness it, vacate the area with all possible haste.
I calmly closed the stat window as a glowing eighty-yard-wide target appeared under the creature's jaw. The crossbow I'd been given had an inbuilt critical enchantment which would ensure my ability did bonus damage. I lined up my shot with the glow as the king toad blocked out the sun and flicked off the safety.
I squeezed the trigger.
The recoil was worse than last time.
The dwarves had done something to the weapon they'd given me, overriding the safety protocols that were supposed to be built into my ability.
I was directly beneath the king toad's head and aiming straight up so that there was nowhere for the recoil to go but into my body. The butt of the crossbow shattered my shoulder and ribs, snapped most of the bones in my right arm, before tearing it off, and continuing down like a cannonball to shatter my leg and foot. The force behind the crossbow drove the butt into the ground, dragging what was left of my right foot with it. The weapon pinned it in place and caused me to tumble backwards as my body twisted.
Damage notification flickers across my vision as the sudden injuries caused my adrenaline to surge, slowing time. I felt like I saw the crossbow bolt pass through the king toad's jaw, tongue, and roof of its mouth, which couldn't have been possible. The impact caused ripples to cross its flesh, but they had barely begun before the bolt detonated inside it. The force of the explosion sent its tongue flying out of its mouth as my back slammed into the ground.
There was barely any shockwave, though. The creature was so massive that its body absorbed the downward force. There was no stumbling step either. No momentary question from its body about what had happened. Its legs instantly gave out as a notification replaced the damage notifications.
You have killed a king toad.
My mind appreciated the fact that Lunar's interface seemed to be able to tell that lingering damage notifications weren't useful during a life and death situation, while my mouth reacted to what was happening above me. "Shit, shit, shit, shit!"
Durg'un wrapped my shatter body in a spell while I swore, tearing my foot and crossbow from the ground as he launched me backwards. I flew out from under the falling hill at breakneck speeds, getting my first clear look at what I'd done. The crown on its head was airborne, and its tongue had extended for nearly a mile.
My champion ability had lived up to its name.
The toad crashed down well after I'd cleared its path, and the shockwave from its fall decimated the surrounding rice crop. I landed on my back between Durg'un, Torvac, and Winslow as the pain began to set in.
Durg'un waved his hand over my head, and the world faded.
The last thing I saw was another notification.
You have been incapacitated by Chief Durg'un.