“You think he really ran away?” Raskar asked, his voice hoarse from the weeks spent in the damp cell.

  “Tsk, of course, he doesn’t have a shred of remorse for life, what are three stupid boarlings in exchange for his precious life?” Dashura mocked. The previous innocence now replaced by bitterness.

  “Mhmm..” Raskar answered before leaning his head back, an oppressive silence once again descending on their bodies.

  ***

  Torin spent a few weeks traveling through the swamp. A couple points of suspicion he noticed were that the temperature increase in the swamp as a whole was rather abrupt with no in between gradient with the fluvian’s forests.

  Second, the wildly different wildlife, as well as the mild increase in average Jak density. It went from wolves, foxes, squirrels to various forms of massive amphibians both aquatic and land as well as squamates as abruptly as the temperature itself.

  What even decided what biome it was? The sun shone high in the sky everywhere the same, maybe Jak played a crucial role, but then, why do certain places have more jak while others less? Shouldn’t it all disperse and even out?

  ‘Even my own existence doesn’t make sense. Which part of me is alive? It’s blood and flesh whether you’re dead or alive,’ Torin mused in his mind while habitually scanning the environment just for his thoughts to stop as he noticed another new species he hadn't seen before.

  It was a giant toad, usually nothing special, but this one stood on its hind legs while holding a big stick. Even with its hunched back it reached over a hundred centimeters in height. And it seemed to be searching for something, its eyes glued to the ground.

  After a moment of observation Torin stepped out of the tree's shadow, he was confident in his physique and abilities, while the toad was bulky and clumsy. And if his thoughts about it being a sapient were right then a mutually beneficial relationship made more sense.

  “Hello” He called out, the toad’s head snapping to him. After a second of scanning for threat it replied with..

  *ribbit*

  Before waving its big stick as if telling him to go away.

  ‘Not a sapient? He knows how to use tools though’ Torin squinted his eyes. ‘A deception?’ he considered before dismissing it. The guy's big innocent eyes convincing him.

  The boarling retreated, showing that he wasn’t a threat to the toad, and when he was far away for the latter to forget about him he hid in some tree to watch the thing.

  Around thirty minutes passed as the toad kept wandering around the area until eventually with a whack it crushed a snake's head and threw the body over his shoulder just to resume searching.

  A dozen or so snakes and a couple hours later seemingly satisfied it started hobbling back. Torin decided against following as it might get dangerous if it had a tribe and the sun was already about to set so finding a place to sleep for himself was a priority.

  The next day he arrived where he last saw the bipedal toad, he wasn’t there, which figures, who goes hunting in the same spot every day?

  Two hours of walking in a wide arc led him to the toad once again. He was hunting for snakes once more. Everything proceeded the same as yesterday until at some point the toad lifted both arms into the air and let out a cry of victory.

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  “Wah! wah!”

  ‘What’d he fo-’ Torin was about to ask himself before seeing the toad shoving down a couple of small eggs down his throat.

  ‘Snake, perhaps bird eggs hmm..’

  The day passed and so did the next few. The toad always hunted in the same cardinal direction, always arriving just after sunrise and leaving in the evening.

  While watching him Torin practiced his ice magic as well. He wasn’t quite able to replicate the same coldness as he did during the battle with the centipede, but it still increased significantly in the past few weeks.

  Instead of the coldness only being able to protect a patch of his skin when concentrated now it could do so at a two-fist-wide radius significantly reducing the risk of the fortified skin being avoided.

  He still ran out of jak in around thirty minutes when focusing on the effect, but the manipulation inside his body could now last for an hour.

  He also abandoned the spear as a weapon, now using it as a staff for traveling convenience rather than battle, his bare hands proving superior. The spear just couldn’t transmit the cold and the sharp tip kept breaking off with the constant hunting he did. It just wasn’t worth it.

  ***

  “I, gift” Torin said as he gently laid a large noodle-like amphibian’s corpse in front of the twenty meters away giant toad.

  He lowered his posture to show he didn’t mean danger while slowly retreating to see what the toad would do.

  After making sure Torin retreated far enough the bipedal creature approached, sniffed, picked it up with his off-hand and swallowed it whole.

  “Wah!”

  It exclaimed before returning back to hunting snakes, this time though it returned back home a couple hours earlier, most likely Torin’s gift taking care of his portion of the food.

  The next day Torin did the same, but this time instead of the gift being dead it was alive, but crippled, he seemingly wanted to see if the toad would react differently, and well it did, kinda, by giving its club a couple of swings before consuming the whole thing once more.

  “Wah wah wah!”

  This time it seemed happier, the additional Jak it received most likely being the cause. Regardless, after a short celebration it returned back to collecting snakes.

  And so the next few days passed. Torin came every morning and after looking around, finding the toad and giving it something dense in Jak, retreating to watch from a distance.

  After a week the toad grew around three centimeters taller and a bit bulkier but other than that almost nothing changed. Leaving a drop of blood on a nearby bush also didn’t incite any hunger in the toad.

  His blood as he assumed only mattered to other boars. Even for half-intelligent beings it didn’t seem to matter.

  The same day he finally decided to follow the toad back as well, to see whether there were more of them, probably, or not, and if the former how many.

  Tracking the toad down was easy, he could keep it in his sight from afar most of the time, not to mention its big feet left large footprints in the damp ground.

  An hour of walking later he saw a few cone shaped mud huts, six to be exact. He could see other toads similar to the one he followed as well as many smaller toads running around or returning home with sticks and bugs alongside the bigger ones.

  After a moment of observation he spotted what must’ve been the chieftain. It was thirty centimeters bigger than any other toad as well as instead of having a club it had a big and thick stick the length of a staff but ending in a hook, resembling an upside-down L shape.

  Another thing worth mentioning was that there were quite a few black birds perching in the trees surrounding the small settlement. He’d seen them sparsely here or there, but never so many in one place.

  It had a long curved neck with ruffled feathers near the head, azure-outlined eyes, a sharp yellow beak, wings that started in white then transitioned to coal black as well as a tail the same color.

  As he was analyzing them one of the said birds, not dissimilar to an anhinga, spotted him and let out a loud cry. The calm and bustling toads stopped to look at it, before following its gaze towards Torin.