Chapter 891 (1/2)

Zuek Tuan studied the crater that the Demon Prince had left as he had destructively teleported away after stealing away a young Frogling. The blast radius was large enough that the nearby dwellings had been cracked by the force and collapsed in on themselves. If the Demon Prince had not forced the crowd to back before teleporting away…

Zuek shivered. He had seen his own Toad Lord fight, just once. The mass of gore that had been left in his master’s wake still haunted him.

This would have been just as bad.

Zuek turned to his companion, one of the three-star generals that had served one of the two Toad Lords that had been killed by the Demon King. After his master’s death, the general had been happy to come work for Zuek’s master. “Explain to me what happened again. Slowly. Don’t leave anything out.”

The frog nodded hurriedly. Although both he and Zuek were three-star generals, there was a large difference between their masters. As such… Zuek believed himself more than capable enough of wiping the floor with this frog ten Levels his senior.

That was why Zuek had been dispatched. It quickly became clear that the Demon King could sense Levels. So agents that would slip by its notice were necessary. Yet even if the Toad Lords didn’t believe this interloper was a true threat, they didn’t doubt that the Demon King could handle run of the mill foes.

So they started sending carefully groomed talents to infiltrate the situation.

“Well…” The former three-star general began, “He arrived suddenly, bearing that same crown that the Demon King wears. Yet it was clear that this crown was… different. To look at it…”

The frog shivered. Zuek held his tongue at the disgraceful reaction. Normally he would have been extremely suspicious of the veracity of what this fellow was saying, but Zuek had been in a distant part of that same crowd. Before the Demon Prince walked among the Frogpeople, he had seen the crown.

Zuek’s tongue coiled in his mouth. His instincts screamed that the Demon Prince was not someone to fight against. If this was what the Demon Prince inspired, then the Demon King… But then Zuek gestured curtly for the general to continue.

“Ah, after that, he walked in and… selected his guide. From what I understand, another individual, Shual, volunteered in her place. They are both still froglings, but they were spawn mates-”

“Do we have any information about him?” Zuek cut in.

The general shook his slimy head. “Nothing concrete. He attended a public academy and his performance was… unsatisfactory. Most of his instructors recommended expulsion, but he was marred by infractions, not lack of results.”

“Mmmm…” Zuek vibrated his vocal sack as he unpacked that. Reading between the lines, the kid was likely a capable troublemaker. And due to poor performance, unaffiliated with any Toad Lords interested in scouting him. Which meant that more information about him would be hearsay, and likely useless.

“Ah, but, after the Demon Prince seized Shual, he gestured with his hand and said, ‘Stand back’. When people weren’t quick enough obeying his orders for him, vines sprung out of the ground and forced everyone backward. Hard. Many were injured in the press of bodies-”

“And then?” Zuek said curtly. He couldn’t care less about how many of these cowards were injured. He needed to know if his lord needed to be worried about this new element.

“Then… he jumped.” The general gestured helplessly at the shattered ground.

“He jumped,” Zuek repeated. The ground was cracked and broken. The force of this… jump was enough to disperse all of the peat and reveal the tightly packed clay. And then that clay had shattered, revealing a crater several meters deep.

It was a force that was difficult to quantify. It was possible to disperse the peat beneath one’s feet with a sudden enough shift, but to disperse it in a circle with a thirty-meter diameter…? And to crack the clay underneath that…?

Strong, Zuek was forced to admit. Too strong to ignore.

*****

After piercing back through the cloud cover quite a distance away, Randidly hit the ground and staggered, wincing underneath the pressure his legs were forced to bear as they landed. Unfortunately, he would not be able to do that again; Inspiration meant that the active use of Yyrwood Body of Yggdrasil would be impossible without Mana for the next twenty-four hours.

But the feeling of leaping off the ground with enough force to immediately break through the sound barrier was certainly a novel one. The speed of the motion was like a heady drug of which Randidly could still taste the aftermath.

And they had covered quite a bit of ground in that initial leap. More than Randidly had expected. So much so that Randidly realized with chagrin that they were slightly more East than he had intended.

Although he hadn’t used it in a while, Inspiration was still overwhelmingly powerful. Even more so as his Stats continued to rise. It was a multiplicative increase in power, so it would grow increasingly overwhelming in the future.

Randidly set the cocoon of roots he had made for his guide on the ground and cracked his neck. As he no longer had access to Mana, he couldn’t dismantle it nicely. He would have to rely on Acri for that. The plant creature slithered down from his neck and began to cut into the cocoon to free the guide.

Honestly, Randidly felt a bit bad for the guide that had been brave enough to volunteer in order to save its… spawn mate? Most likely a sibling of some sort. But he had certainly been given a rough treatment since then. Randidly hadn’t bothered to explain himself when he had bound the frog person in vines for its own protection.

He had simply done it and then leaped.

And perhaps that was exactly the sort of thing that the Demon Prince would do, Randidly thought sourly. His Crown of Upheaval and Gloom continued to pulse above his head. Hissing in impatience, Randidly gestured at Acri to speed it up.

If Randidly wanted to catch Roy, he would need to hurry. No matter how far they had traveled in that initial jump, they were losing time waiting here. Especially if the thrust had carried them off the course that Randidly had initially planned to take.

The plan was to try and search for traces of Earth’s Aether so Randidly could zero in on this dumb fool’s location. But although his SKill Level was very high, there was a limit to his effective range; he would need to be within a dozen or so kilometers in order to catch a whiff. Once he caught that scent, he would be on him in a second. But...