---
The earth beneath the Frog-Man cracked. His webbed feet shuffled involuntarily. For the first ti... he looked uncertain.
Kai’s voice rumbled like divine thunder. "Enough mockery, Let’s end this."
Lightning forked overhead, thunder growling like an angry god vomiting frogs.
Kai didn’t blink.
Across from him, the Corrupted Toad Prince bellowed, mucus whipping from his cracked jaws. His body towered now—eight feet of warted muscle, sli-dripping horns, and many eyeballs where no god ever intended eyes to be. A second tongue slithered from his belly-mouth, slapping the ground like a cursed eel in heat.
"YOU THINK YOUR FORM INTIMIDATES ?!" he croaked with madness. "I AM BEAUTIFUL! I AM A TOAD GOD! MY MOTHER SANG TO THE SWAMP!"
Kai tilted his head slightly. "She sang out of pity, didn’t she?"
The Frog-Man’s eye twitched.
Kai lifted a claw, aura flickering red-black like a burning eclipse. "Azhara."
"Yes, my sexy war god?" She replied.
"Take care of the last idiot log. Don’t address with these types of nas. Call sir or master."
"Gladly." (she ant about the log) Azhara kicked up a clod of muck and stalked toward the trembling frogkin pretending to be bark.
"I am swamp wood," he whispered.
"You’re a dead branch," she replied.
SLAP!
He was knocked out by Azhara.
Kai stepped forward. The swamp held its breath. The Frog-Man shrieked and charged.
His mutated tongue shot toward Kai like a whip of bile. Kai didn’t flinch. He ducked. Swatted the tongue aside like a fly. Took another step.
Boom!
The ground cratered beneath his heel.
The Frog-Man unleashed a volley of venom spit. Kai spun, his tail slicing through the air, dodging every glob it landed toward the trees—where each one exploded like acid grenades.
From the sidelines, Vel whispered, "He’s not even trying."
Akayoroi stared, eyes glowing like lanterns in love. "He’s... elegance incarnate."
Azhara shouted, "Back off! I want him first!"
anwhile, the Frog-Man was losing it. "STOP DODGING MY ATTACK!"
He hurled himself at Kai. Faster than before. Aura flaring like toxic geysers.
Kai vanished. With a blink he teleported mid-leap. Reappeared behind the Frog-Man in a heartbeat.
His voice landed first.
"Too slow."
CLANG!
A backhand. Just one. But the force—
The Frog-Man was sent hurtling fifty feet. Through three trees. Into a rock wall.
BOOM!
Birds exploded into flight. The forest wailed.
Kai stood still, steam rising from his back.
Azhara drooled.
Akayoroi’s antennae rose like hearts.
Vel whispered, "...I need to sit."
From the rubble, the Frog-Man scread.
Blood and bile dripping.
"I’LL CONSU YOU—TEAR OUT YOUR ORGANS—BAPTIZE YOU IN MY TOAD BELLY!"
Kai slowly turned, red rings glowing in his eyes. "You just made it weird."
He stepped forward again.
And the Frog-Man? He crawled back. The battlefield was no longer his, where he was killing carpenter Ants. It belonged to the Ant Monarch now.
The Frog-Prince’s voice bood, thick with mucus: "I will pluck you apart, ANT—bone by bone, plate by plate, until you beg to end you!"
Kai didn’t answer with words. He answered with motion. A single step. A silent pulse of killing intent.
WHOOSH—
Kai blurred, launching off his back foot like a catapult. The ground cratered under the push.
The Frog-Prince swung with a boulder-sized fist, but Kai slipped and stepped beneath. His claws scoring across the hide. He rose in a spiral uppercut—razor forearm spike leading and gouged out the first eye on the monster’s left pectoral.
SHLORP! A fountain of black-green ichor sprayed ten feet. The eye dangled, still blinking on a nerve stalk.
Kai ripped it clean and hurled it aside. It hit a stump with a wet splut! where a passing mosquito imdiately dissolved on contact with its acidic goo.
"ONE!" Kai marked an statent.
The Frog-Prince snarled and backhanded. Kai ducked under the sweep, dashed inside the guard, and jab-hook-slash—POP!—took a second eye from the right shoulder cluster.
"Two!"
Azhara pumped her fist. "Yes! Pluck him like grapes!"
"Gross grapes," Naaro added.
The Toad Prince roared so loud a distant flock of storks exploded from the treetops. He swung both arms downward to smash Kai.
But...
Kai vanished and reappeared behind him, raking elbow spikes across the frog’s spine. Third eye (lower back) was shredded in half.
POP! "Three."
Another roar, this one angrier, wetter.
"STOP COUNTING, MAGGOT!"
Kai’s answer was a front-flip kick. His leg spike speared a chest-eye so deep the optic nerve snapped like a violin string.
"Four." The eye slapped the ground with a little plop like dropping pudding.
The Frog-Prince’s rage make aura pulsate. Acid mist hissed from pores. He turned too slow—Kai tore free, twisted mid-air, and plucked out a shoulder-eye using two fingers like picking a cherry.
"Five."
Akayoroi gasped, equal parts horror and adoration. "So efficient..."
Even Azhara winced. "I’ve seen kink, but eyeball plucking is new."
The Frog-Prince bellowed and lashed his barbed belly tongue like a whip.
The tongue blurred, it was thick as a tree branch, barbs glistening like black hooks soaked in acid. It shot out with terrifying speed, trailing a sar of mucus through the air. The wet snap echoed like a whip cracking through storm clouds.
It aid straight for Kai’s torso. He twisted but it was too late.
SCHLACK!
The barbed tip slashed across his lower hip plate. The force of it lifted him from the ground, a spray of shimring chitin and blood arcing behind him. The cut was shallow but angry, the barbs scoring his armored flank and leaving a burning trail of pain.
CLANG!
CRASH!
Kai’s body smashed through a boulder the size of a cart, pulverizing it on impact. Stone shards exploded in every direction. So hissed into the swamp, others embedded into nearby trees. A gust of air burst outward, flattening the nearby grass and throwing mud like shrapnel.
The tongue snapped back, retracted with a sucking hiss. Then it lunged again.
This ti it ca not as a whip, but as a harpoon. The sharpened point twisted, aiming to impale and nail Kai to the swamp floor.
But Kai wasn’t done yet.
User Comments
0 comments from readers