Chapter 10: Toad Lord(2)
The order broke.
It didn’t shatter like glass; it dissolved like mud in a monsoon. The scream of the Toad Lord was a frequency that bypassed discipline, training, and faith, hitting the lizard brain directly. It was the roar of an apex predator announcing that the food chain had been reset.
"Run!"
The scream didn’t come from Krug. It came from a female weaving near the central fire. She dropped her basket of dried fish, the carefully cured strips scattering into the dirt. She didn’t look at them. She grabbed the two hatchlings clinging to her legs, her claws digging into their soft shoulders, and scrambled over the back wall.
Others followed. The structured evacuation drills Krug had preached—*women to the center, warriors to the perimeter*—vanished. There was only the animal need to be away from the water.
Krug stood in the center of the chaos, his Shepherd’s Stick raised, the red gem pulsing with a frantic, useless light.
"Hold!" he roared, but his voice was a whisper against the panic. "Not the forest! The forest is death! To the Hollow!"
A young male, eyes wide and white with terror, tried to sprint past him toward the treeline. Krug reached out, grabbing him by the scruff of his neck and hurling him toward the massive, tangled roots of the Elder Tree.
"The Hollow!" Krug bellowed, slamming the butt of his staff into the ground. "Hide your heads! The wall will not hold!"
The tribe hesitated. The lizardmen stopped their chaotic flight, tails twitching, eyes darting between the towering monster in the lake and their Priest.
"Go!" Krug shoved a frozen youngling toward the roots. "Into the earth! Move!"
They ran.
It wasn’t a march. It was a rout.
Mothers clutched eggs that had not yet hatched, pressing them against their chests as they squeezed through the gaps in the Elder Tree’s roots. The Hollow was a natural cave formation beneath the massive tree, reinforced over the last forty-five days by the tribe’s diggers. It was dark, damp, and smelled of wet earth. It was a grave, or a womb.
Krug watched them go. He saw the potter, his hands still gray with clay, look back at the drying kiln. The fire was still burning. The first batch of true bricks was inside, hardening into something permanent.
The potter hesitated, a look of pure anguish on his face. He took a step toward the kiln, as if to save his work.
GROAAAAAAK.
The sound vibrated through the ground, shaking the unbaked pots on the drying racks. They fell, shattering into dust.
The potter flinched, then turned and ran for the Hollow, leaving his life’s work to be trampled.
Krug felt a heavy, cold stone in his gut.
Civilization was fragile. It took forty-five days to build a home. It took forty-five days to learn how to stack brick, how to cure meat, how to stand tall.
It took one roar to turn them back into refugees.
He looked at the camp. The huts they had woven. The cistern they had dug. The walls they had raised with such pride.
They were just mud. They were just sticks. Against the mountain of flesh rising from the lake, they were nothing.
"Priest!"
Grak was at his side, his spear shaking in his grip. The former leader’s face was pale, his scales dull with fear.
"The hatchlings are inside," Grak gasped. "The mothers are safe. But the entrance... it is open."
"Collapse it if you must," Krug ordered, his voice hard. "But not until every tail is inside."
"And you?"
Krug looked at the wall. At Vark and the warriors trying to form a line.
"I am the shepherd," Krug said, gripping his staff until his knuckles cracked. "I do not hide while the wolves are eating."
He looked back one last time at the empty camp. The fire was still burning in the center, casting long, dancing shadows against the huts. It looked warm. It looked like home.
Regret, sharp and bitter, rose in his throat. They had done everything right. They had prayed. They had worked. They had obeyed the Architect.
Why give us the strength to build, Krug thought, staring at the looming shadow of the Toad Lord, if you only send monsters to tear it down?
He turned his back on the safety of the Hollow and walked toward the wall. Toward the slaughter.
"Lines!" Vark screamed, his voice shredding in his throat. "Form lines!"
Six enforcers stood at the main gate. They held their ironwood shields, but their arms shook violently, the heavy bark rattling against their chests.
The Toad Lord didn’t care about formation.
It hopped.
The ground jumped. The impact threw Vark off his feet, sending him sprawling into the muck. He hit hard, rolling instinctively as mud sprayed like shrapnel.
When he looked up, spitting grit, the gate was gone.
The massive log barrier, reinforced with woven vines and hours of sweat, had been smashed into splinters. The Toad Lord sat in the ruin of the camp entrance, its golden eyes blinking slowly, indifferent to the destruction beneath its belly.
It was too big. Up close, the warts on its skin were the size of shields, pulsing with a sick, yellow light. Its smell was a suffocating blanket of rotting swamp gas and old blood.
"Throw!" Vark yelled, scrambling to his feet. He hurled his spear with every ounce of strength in his thick arms.
The ironwood shaft flew true. It struck the toad’s flank, right above the knee.
Tink.
It bounced off the thick, mucus-coated hide like a twig thrown at simple stone. It didn’t even leave a scratch.
The Toad Lord didn’t flinch. It didn’t roar in pain. It simply opened its mouth.
The tongue blurred.
One of the enforcers, a brave male named Rot, vanished. There was no scream. Just a wet slap and a swallow.
The line broke.
"Back!" Vark commanded, stumbling backward as his warriors dropped their useless weapons. "It cannot be hurt!"
The soldiers retreated, terror replacing their training. This wasn’t a fight. It was feeding time.
The Toad Lord let out a low, guttural croak that vibrated through the mud, shaking the very foundations of the camp. It shifted its weight, crushing the remnants of the gate further into the mire. Then, its massive head turned, scanning the scurrying figures not with malice, but with hunger.
Another enforcer tried to stand his ground, raising his shield in a futile gesture of defiance. The Toad Lord simply extended a massive, webbed hand and swatted him aside like a fly. The lizardman flew through the air, crashing into the wall of the Processing Pit with a sickening crunch.
Vark watched, helpless. The disparity in power was absolute. They were ants fighting a boot.
"Retreat!" Vark roared, grabbing a stunned warrior by the shoulder and dragging him back. "To the Hollow! Now!"
They ran, abandoning the walls they had sworn to defend. The Toad Lord watched them go, its throat sac expanding again, a monstrous balloon gathering breath for another roar.
The camp was lost. The illusion of safety was shattered.
As Vark reached the edge of the clearing, he looked back. The monster was moving further into the camp, its massive bulk smashing through the meticulously built drying racks. Months of work, destroyed in seconds.
And it was still hungry.
Zephyr’s hands shook on the mouse. The calm, calculated demeanor he had maintained in the safety of the tutorial phase evaporated in the heat of a real-time crisis.
[Entity: Toad Lord]
[Status: Feeding]
[Damage Dealt: 0]
The [Ballista] blueprint he had so confidently projected was still glowing on the screen, a ghostly outline of hope. But the text below it was a death sentence.
[Construction Time: 12 Hours]
[Status: Pending Resources]
"Twelve hours?" Zephyr spat, slamming his fist onto the desk. "They’ll be digested in twelve minutes!"
He cancelled the project. The golden lines above the camp vanished, taking with them the only plan he had.
He needed something now. Immediate. Lethal. Something that didn’t need to be built, cured, or calibrated.
He clicked furiously through the [Creation] tab, his eyes scanning the lists with desperate speed.
[Structures]... No. Walls were useless against a siege engine that could jump.
[Crafting]... No. Spears bounced. Arrows would be jokes.
He hit [Life].
The menu expanded, showing a list of biological creations. Most were locked, greyed out by level requirements or lack of biological samples.
Worker Drone. Scout Beetle. Mud-Crab.
Trash. All of it trash against a 450-Strength boss. He needed a predator. He needed something that could match the sheer biological mass of the Toad Lord.
His eyes snagged on a flashing icon in the [Experimental] sub-menu. It was a red tier creation, something he hadn’t even looked at because the cost was usually prohibitive.
[Chimera Protocol: Hydraboat Variant]
[Cost: 4000 Faith]
[Rank: Mid-Boss]
[Status: Unstable / Highly Aggressive]
Zephyr checked his faith counter: 4,500.
He had hoarded it for weeks, saving for a tech jump or a miracle. Now, it was the price of survival.
He didn’t read the flavor text. He didn’t check the debuffs or the lifespan. He looked at the icon: a coiled, multi-headed serpent with scales that shimmered like oil.
"Fight a monster with a monster," Zephyr whispered, his voice trembling slightly.
It was a gamble. An unstable creation could turn on his tribe just as easily as the Toad. But he had no choice. The Toad Lord was already smashing the cistern. In moments, it would be rooting through the Hollow.
He dragged the icon onto the map, directly between the Toad Lord and the fleeing tribe.
The grid lit up red. **[Invalid Placement: Structure Obstructed]**.
"I don’t care about the structure!" Zephyr hissed. "Override!"
He smashed the confirm button.
[Faith Consumed: 4000]
[Summoning Initiated]
"Eat this," Zephyr hissed, his finger still pressing into the mouse.
Down in the swamp, the air split open.
The mud in front of the Toad Lord didn’t just ripple. It exploded.
A geyser of black sludge and swamp water blasted fifty feet into the air, soaking the stunned Toad Lord and coating the fleeing lizardmen in grime. The shockwave knocked Vark flat onto his back again, his breath leaving him in a wheezing grunt. Krug shielded his eyes against the rain of debris, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
Something was rising from the crater.
It didn’t emerge with the slow, ponderous weight of the Toad. It shot up, a coiled spring released from the earth’s core.
At first, it looked like a single, massive trunk of wet, black muscle, slick with the birthing fluids of the Creation protocol. It towered over the mud walls, casting a long, writhing shadow that swallowed half the camp.
Then, it split.
With a sound like tearing wet canvas, the single trunk divided into three distinct necks.
Three heads snapped into position, their movements jerky and unnatural, fueled by an artificial aggression that had no place in the natural order of the swamp.
They were serpentine, but wrong. Their scales were the color of an oil slick, shimmering with iridescent purples and greens. Their eyes weren’t the cold, slit-pupils of a reptile; they were burning, solid crimson orbs of pure mana.
The Hydraboat Variant.
The first head hissed, a sound like steam escaping a high-pressure valve. Its maw opened, revealing rows of translucent, needle-thin fangs that dripped a viscous green venom.
The second head didn’t hiss. It screamed. A high, metallic shriek that shattered the nearby ironwood saplings and sent a fresh wave of terror through the cowering tribe.
The third head remained silent. It simply stared at the Toad Lord, its crimson eyes narrowing with a predatory intelligence that felt cold, calculating, and alien.
The Toad Lord, for the first time since it had woken, stopped chewing. The half-eaten remains of an ironwood tree fell from its mouth, splashing into the mud.
It blinked its massive golden eyes. It shifted its bulk, the ground trembling under its weight.
This was not a tree. This was not a snack.
This was a challenger.
GROAAAAAAK.
The Toad Lord bellowed, inflating its throat sac until it looked ready to burst. The sound was a challenge, a claim of dominance over the swamp it had ruled for decades.
The Hydra didn’t care about dominance. It didn’t care about territory. It existed for one purpose.
Kill.
The silent third head struck first.
It moved faster than the eye could follow, a blur of black scales. It slammed into the Toad Lord’s shoulder with the force of a falling boulder. Fangs sank deep into the thick, warty hide that had deflected Vark’s spear like it was nothing.
For the first time, the Toad Lord roared in pain. Black blood sprayed across the marsh, sizzling where it hit the water.
The Toad reacted instantly, its powerful legs kicking out, trying to dislodge the attacker. But the Hydra held fast, its other two heads coiling around the Toad’s massive limbs, constricting, biting, tearing.
The swamp became a churning nightmare of mud and blood. Trees were snapped like toothpicks as the two titans rolled into the deeper water. The sheer violence of the clash sent waves crashing over the boundary stones, flooding the lower parts of the camp.
Krug watched, numb with shock. He looked at the monster his god had sent.
𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦
It wasn’t a savior. It was a weapon. A living, breathing siege engine made of hate and hunger.
"Architect," Krug whispered, the word trembling on his lips. "What have you done?"
In the interface above, Zephyr didn’t hear him. He was watching the health bars collide, his knuckles white as he gripped the mouse.
"Get him," Zephyr hissed. "Tear him apart."
The Hydra shrieked again, a sound of pure victory, as it dragged the Toad Lord under the black water.