Monster Hunting 401: A LitRPG Fantasy Adventure by Andrew Karevik (book suggestions .TXT) 📗

the ground. I leapt with the energy to reach my full height and in the process, forced the beast to pull me even harder with its tongue. I managed to get about six feet backwards, to where Trig was lying. He was slowly recovering, rolling over onto his side and producing a longer knife.

The tongue pulled harder, but I forced my feet even deeper into the earth, causing the ground to drag along with me. I waited a moment, letting it waste even more energy pulling me and then leapt backwards again, with all my might. The tongue jerked back even farther this time and the frogbeast let out a frustrated grunt as it began to back up with its hind legs, into the darkness.

My Quiverling, unhindered by the tongue, was quick to change out my new Glurp charm for the old L’Gara charm, granting me 2 more Strength. As soon as the charm activated, I felt a tremendous surge through my body of both sturdiness and steel. With a groan, I straightened my legs out hard into the ground, stopping instantly. The beast was strong, but so was I, far stronger than moments before. If I had been able to resist it with my regular strength, those two extra points made me more or less unstoppable.

“Trig, I got it,” I gasped as I began to walk backwards, dragging the beast along with me. The tables were turned and now it was in my snare. However, the stupid thing was too stubborn to release me and instead let me drag it along the ground, like a toddler being forced to go to bed.

“Almost up,” Trig wheezed. He was on his hands and knees now, crawling forward to try and get to me with the knife. This was an advantageous position for us, for if he were able to cut the tongue off, we’d be permanently removing the thing’s combat advantage.

Little Hig was still sitting atop his new owner, unmoving and unblinking, watching the whole scene unfold with a morbid kind of curiosity. It seemed unaffected by the noxious fumes. How very strange.

With a heft and a slash, Trig managed to get on his feet and bring the blade down hard around the tongue, slashing it off with a single blow. He then fell back to the ground, promptly passing out.

The frogbeast let out a pained roar as its tongue fell to the dirt. My arms easily broke out of the remains of the sticky tongue wrapped around my shoulders and instantly my bow was in my hands. The mouth of the frog was open wide, for it was still panicking from losing its tongue, so I fired a shot, putting a great deal of mana into increasing the damage.

The arrow burst into flames in midair and struck the monster in the back of the throat, knocking it backwards. “Eeeeighhh,” the frogbeast screamed as it began to warp and contort, slowly shrinking down. I blinked a few times, picking up the torch that Trig had dropped and holding it up to confirm what I was seeing. The damn frog was indeed shriveling up, shrinking down to a more manageable size.

I fired another shot, meeting no resistance from its natural armor. A flurry of arrows turned it into a pincushion and I tossed Trig’s torch at the thing, to ensure the beast stayed out of the shadows. By the time I was finished shooting, the creature was dead. It had shrunk down to the size of a creature no bigger than the height of a child.

“Damn thing must have had some ability to temporarily grow,” I mused, realizing why my attack advantages didn’t work. If the creature could expand itself, it might not technically count as a giant class beast. An interesting advantage.

Behind me, I heard a soft, gentle clapping. I turned around to see Little Hig, sitting atop my unconscious companion, grinning widely and clapping its little hands. For the first time, it looked like I had impressed the monkey. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Chapter 15

The fire crackled, as did the grease in the frying pan, thoroughly cooking the frog beast we had slain. We had left the Stabwagon back in the mountains, in the hopes that we could scout this forest out, get our bearings and then determine if the wagon should be brought in. This was a better idea than losing our extremely valuable wagon to whatever was inside of this place. Besides, if we survived the trip but lost the wagon, Dette and her engineers would almost certainly kill us when we got back home.

“I’m…sorry,” Trig mumbled as he stared into the pan, emptily poking the meat with a stick, trying to get it to cook as evenly as possible. He had a gift for turning monster meat into something more palatable. At least, far more palatable than what I could make.

“Don’t worry about it, if I hadn’t been covered in blood and guts for the last few days, I’m pretty sure that smell would have taken me down too,” I said, working on the frog charm. It was difficult working without a charm bench, but I had taken a few tools and a cutting board to make it work. One of the horns from the dead frogbeast made for a perfect little pendant. The shape of it made it easy to work into a whistle as well, so that was my current project. A whistle would be perfect for coordinating with Trig’s echolocation ability, for it could carry much farther than a voice.

“I don’t know what I’m doing out here,” he confessed.

“I thought you were valiantly protecting me,” I said with a chuckle, still working on the charm. It was just about done. All that was left was to smooth it out a bit more with a polishing stone.

“You completely ignored that noxious attack. When it grabbed you, you somehow managed to pull the frog back towards us. And