I was keeping pretty busy with my stray cowbird hunting and the magic and sword-fighting practices I was assisting with. From time to time, I’d go into the forest to gather more plants too.
I didn’t wander far from my base now on my expeditions, so fortunately, I hadn’t had any more run-ins with a Ducalursus since that first encounter.
Considering I’d spent a whole month in Patia Forest unbothered by one, and that in my two subsequent visits, I’d only been attacked once, it seemed like my chances of another encounter were statistically extremely low.
In any case, Hester, Ralph, and I had been pretty productive lately. Not only had Hester mastered ball spells, but now she’d mastered arrow spells too. So today, she and Ralph were freeing themselves of the shackles of goblin hunting to take on a bronze-level quest. Since it was their first one, I decided to accompany them.
The quest they’d accepted was, naturally, a monster-hunting one. They were to locate a herd of fragor frogs in some field to the southwest and slaughter them.
Fragor frogs were large, frog-like monsters with a cacophonous croak that attacked mostly by trampling people with their ferocious jumps. Their skin was also coated in a faintly toxic mucus membrane that apparently caused pain and tingling if you came into direct contact with it.
On their own, fragor frogs were really no big deal, but in a group, they were a bit harder to contend with. That made them the perfect hunting target of a bronze-level quest.
“All set?” Ralph asked Hester. “You got everything you need?”
“Yep, I’m all ready to go. How about you, Ralph? You haven’t forgotten our strategy, right?”
“I-I remember. You’ll take out as many fragor frogs as you can from a distance, and I’ll handle any that get too close. Right?”
“Exactly! All right, shall we get going, then?”
“H-Hey... Don’t you think our strategy’s a little too simple, though? Is this really going to work? It didn’t sound very solid when I said it out loud just now.”
“Stop dawdling, you two,” I cut in. “Everything’s gonna be fine, so let’s just get going already!”
“You don’t get how terrifying this is for us, Chris!”
“Hurry up before I change my mind about coming with you today.”
All of our stuff was packed up and ready to go, but Ralph and Hester were dragging their feet. I knew I had to start cracking the whip if we were ever going to make it out of the city.
I’d been a little nervous too when I’d accepted my first bronze-level quest to hunt that sludge slime, so I could understand where they were coming from, but I was starting to get impatient.
Not only had Hester been learning some new magic, but Ralph had been making leaps and bounds too, thanks to his daily sword-fighting practice.
Hester had requested that they keep doing goblin-hunting quests until she mastered the arrow spells, so that’s what they’d been doing until now, but at this point, they’d both improved so much that I felt confident a bronze-level quest would be perfectly doable for them—even with Ralph’s handicap.
Besides, I was going with them today. No matter how badly things might unfold, they weren’t in any danger.
Once I’d given them that little kick in the butt, the three of us finally began to make our way to the field to the southwest of the city.
“Guess this is the place, huh? There are fragor frogs everywhere you look.”
“I can’t believe we’re about to fight our first nongoblin monsters... And what’s worse, all of these fragor frogs are as big as me,” Ralph whined.
“You’ve got Hester’s magic on your side. They’ll be no problem. All you need to do is keep your distance and focus on taking them out one by one, just like we practiced.”
“Right,” Hester said. “Let’s go.”
Ralph and Hester walked side by side toward the field, ready to face the fragor frogs that had claimed it as their turf.
I stood back a bit, keeping my distance as I observed them.
I’d seen Hester’s magic before, but I hadn’t yet witnessed for myself if she could put it to good use in actual combat. Based on what she’d told me, though, one spell was all it took to slay a goblin. So, I figured there was no real need to be concerned.
As I waited for her and Ralph to engage with the fragor frogs, I couldn’t help but look forward to seeing her magic in action.
One of the fragor frogs must have noticed Ralph and Hester approaching, because it turned and started hopping toward them.
Ralph unsheathed his sword, and Hester raised one of her hands in front of her, preparing to unleash a spell.
The fragor frog made the first move.
Crouching as low as it could on its ridiculously long hind legs, it suddenly sprang up into the air so high that it looked like it was flying.
While Ralph and Hester were laser focused on the leaping fragor frog, two other fragor frogs began closing the distance too, coming at my two teammates from the side.
I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t butt in with advice, but when I imagined the panic they’d feel when they finally noticed the other two fragor frogs closing in, I couldn’t help myself.
“Hester! You’ve got two fragor frogs approaching from the side! Leave the other one to Ralph and take them down with your magic!” I instructed.
“Right!” she replied. Immediately turning to the two frogs approaching them, she yelled, “Wind ball!”
She produced two balls of wind from the palms of her hands, both a lot smaller than the ones I’d seen her conjure when she was practicing. They grew in size, though, as they flew toward the fragor frogs, absorbing the wind in the air.
Fragor frogs were weak to fire, so a fire ball would have actually been the most effective spell to use against it, but I assumed that her choice of element—as well as the size of the balls she produced—was intentional. She was probably trying not to disturb the field too much.
Taking our surroundings into account, wind balls really were the least destructive choice to the environment. And, while they might not have been the most effective from an offensive perspective, they still did plenty of damage.
The two fragor frogs must have determined that they had no chance of evading the wind balls, which were flying toward them at great speed, and instead curled up into defensive positions.
Unfortunately for them, Hester’s direct hit ripped them to shreds.
The wind balls continued flying, churning pitch-black with the blood and chunks of meat they’d picked up from the decimated fragor frogs, until they eventually smashed into the ground ahead and vanished into thin air.