Chapter 216: 216 | The Grapefruit-Sized Problem

I moved in a slow circle, tracking the source of another loud croak through the trees. The sound was closer now.

Then another croak followed.

And another six, surrounding us completely.

"They’re boxing us in," I said, pivoting to monitor the sounds coming from every direction.

Belle’s gaze turned distant as she activated her ability. "Twelve signatures. Frogs, probably. Coming from all sides."

Misato remained stoic. "Diamond formation. Backs together. Wait for them to come to us."

We clustered tightly on a relatively solid patch of moss-covered stone. My boots finally found stable ground that wasn’t actively trying to dissolve the material. Small win, but I’d take it. The spongy terrain had been wearing down my patience along with the soles of my footwear.

The frogs didn’t rush us in a blind charge. They were smarter than that.

They tested us in pairs, probing our defenses with that horrible croaking that seemed to vibrate through your skull. The first two burst from the northern brush. Naomi’s Wave Motion blast took off the lead one’s head so cleanly it almost looked surgical. Jordan’s shadows wrapped around the second frog like hungry serpents, crushing it into paste before it could even process its partner’s death.

Two more exploded from the western undergrowth. Belle’s crossbow snapped twice in quick succession. Both bolts punched through frog eyes and out the backs of their skulls. The creatures collapsed mid-leap, bodies still jerking reflexively in the shallow water.

Then the remaining eight hit us from every direction at once.

Chaos broke loose.

I rammed my spear through the gaping mouth of a frog as it launched itself toward Belle’s exposed back. The blade erupted through the top of its skull in a spray of green-black gore. I planted my boot against the corpse and wrenched the spear free, spinning just in time to catch another frog mid-leap. Wave Motion erupted from my palm at point-blank range, the spiral energy blast launching the creature backward into a tree trunk with enough force to crack bark. It hung there for half a second before sliding down, leaving a wet trail behind it.

Misato and her clone moved like a synchronized killing machine, tearing through three frogs with coordinated brutality that bordered on artistic. Naomi’s staff blazed with constant blue-white energy as she fired calculated shots, each burst timed to intercept a frog’s trajectory. No wasted motion, no hesitation.

Jordan screamed something that might have been words while his shadow manipulation hurled two frogs together with such catastrophic force they practically fused on impact, becoming a single grotesque mass of shattered limbs and pulverized organs.

The fight ended as suddenly as it had started.

Twelve dead frogs. Twelve cores collected. The water around us now carried a sickly green tint from all the spilled blood and dissolved mucus. The smell was getting worse by the second.

We stood there in the aftermath, breathing hard, weapons still raised.

"Everyone intact?" Misato asked while visually inspecting each of us for injuries.

"Define intact," Jordan muttered, examining his tactical suit with growing dismay. Frog mucus had eaten through multiple patches of fabric, exposing his undershirt underneath. "My gear is dissolving."

He wasn’t being dramatic. All of us showed visible damage wherever the frog slime had made contact. My left sleeve hung in acid-burned tatters. Belle’s right pant leg looked like someone had taken scissors to it, leaving quarter-sized holes scattered throughout the fabric. Naomi’s boots appeared to have been gnawed on by something with serrated teeth, the reinforced material chewed down almost to the inner lining.

Belle knelt to examine one of the dead frogs. "The mucus is acidic. Not strong enough to melt through instantly, but extended contact will destroy our suits."

"So we avoid getting hit," I said flatly. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"Yeah, I picked up on that myself."

I ran a quick inventory check. Stamina sat at seventy percent after three Wave Motion blasts. The Bronze upgrade worked exactly as advertised so far.

Misato gestured southeast. "Boss is that direction. We move fast, kill anything that gets in our way, and get out before our suits turn to tissue paper."

"Time check?" Naomi’s voice carried an edge.

Misato tapped her gauntlet. "Forty-three minutes in. We need full clear and extraction under ninety or we lose eval points."

Forty-seven minutes left. Doable if nothing catastrophic happened.

Which meant something catastrophic was absolutely going to happen. Gates loved that shit.

We pushed deeper into the swamp. Belle navigated us through the worst of the terrain while the canopy thickened overhead until only thin shafts of green light pierced through. The water around us turned murky, almost opaque.

Something huge passed through the water thirty meters to our right. Whatever caused the wake dwarfed the frogs we’d just slaughtered.

"Contact," Belle kept her voice low. "Thirty meters right. Moving parallel to us."

"Mire crawler?" I asked.

"Most likely."

"Do we hit it?"

"No," Misato kept us moving. "Crawlers are territorial. We ignore it, it ignores us."

The wake shadowed our path for another hundred meters before disappearing into deeper water.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.

The trees opened up ahead, revealing a stone platform that jutted from the swamp like something out of an ancient ritual site. Glowing moss covered everything, bright enough to create actual shadows across the weathered stone.

And coiled on top of that platform, sleeping, was the biggest goddamn snake I’d ever seen.

Forty feet long at minimum. Body as thick around as a sedan. Scales that shifted from pure black to iridescent purple with each breath. Its massive head rested on its own coiled body, eyes closed, breathing slow and rhythmic.

Belle whispered, "That’s our boss."

"What gave it away?"

"There’s a Silver-tier core signature in its skull. About the size of a grapefruit."

A core that size meant serious money. Ten thousand credits minimum, possibly much more depending on quality.

Which meant we were about to fight a giant murderous snake in a swamp while our protective gear disintegrated around us.