Chapter 488 – Jade Frog

Sophia expected that finding things in a treasure hunt where she could locate the caches in space and shouldn’t go after the ones guarded by monsters would be both simple and boring.

She was wrong. 

Most of them were as easy as she expected, as easy as the first two, but that was far less boring than she expected. Some of them were out in the open, but most were inventively hidden in the trees. They might have to dig below the roots in an old animal burrow or move leaves out of the way or search a hollow in a tree; all of those were common. 

Less common was caches hidden as leaves or pine cones or flowers or even fruit. If you looked carefully, there was always something about them that wasn’t right, even if it was the simple fact that a pine cone didn’t grow on an oak tree or an acorn didn’t grow on an ash tree. Sometimes it was the single pink flower on a tree that flowered in white or a golden seed pod anchored to one tree when it was the tree next to that one that dripped with seed pods. There was one time when it was the black mushroom hidden in a group of deep brown mushrooms and another time when it was the only five-leafed clover.

Sophia found that one particularly amusing for some reason. There were no four-leaved clovers, only three and five.

More than half of the caches did have monsters around them, but the vast majority of monsters were either very obvious to everyone or showed up easily to Sophia’s aura before they were close enough for the monsters to notice and avoid. The handful that were sneaky enough to avoid being seen or alert enough to see (or feel) the party coming were not strong enough to be truly dangerous. 

Only one monster, a tiny green jade frog that was able to hide under a leaf and pass unnoticed even while in Sophia’s aura, was actually able to hurt either of them. Most monsters were easily spotted and fairly insensitive, so they called Rivexy’s team over to deal with them. A handful were easily spotted but sensitive; those were the ones they dragged over to the team for help.

Well, other than one particularly tenacious glass butterfly that would not leave Dav alone until Sophia melted it with a cluster of Elementally Enhanced fourth upgrade fire-based feather Aural Plumes. The feathers weren’t cheap, but they were still far less expensive than the stained glass flower Natural Treasure the butterfly guarded. Sophia wasn’t sure what it did, but it had to be more valuable than a couple of Cache Reward Chips, now that both she and Dav had enough to complete the Event and therefore qualified to reach the fifth branch of the Moonlit Branches.

The jade frog was different. It hid until Dav was on his hands and knees searching for the bag or bos that held the cache they expected, then hopped straight at Dav and sank into him like it was jumping into a puddle.

Sophia saw a patch of green jade shimmer into existence where the frog hit. It expanded quickly, almost like he was turning into a giant version of the frog. There was very little Sophia could do other than depend on Dav to handle it; there was nothing for her to attack and the only magic she could find was the same feeling that originally made them stop to search.

Wait. The feeling was coming from Dav, or more specifically from the spot where the frog superimposed itself upon him. Was the frog the natural treasure?

Sophia didn’t have time to think about that. She wanted to do something to help Dav, but she didn’t know where to start. She could break spells but that didn’t kill a monster. Maybe she could break the spell that let it do whatever it was doing to Dav?

As she reached for the malevolent magic hidden inside her boyfriend, Dav erupted with golden flame. Sophia knew that the color indicated his Purifying Phoenix Embodiment. She paused just long enough to see the and the jade began to fade. It was working!

That didn’t mean she didn’t need to try something; it only meant that she had the time to make certain that whatever she did was the right thing. She reached out with her aura to examine the magic and found that it was identical to what she felt earlier, only larger. It was strange; the magic felt weirdly frozen, as if it was some kind of stasis magic, but that made no sense if it was related to the frog. At least, she thought it didn’t.

It also meant that it would be far harder to disrupt. The magic was stable and reinforced itself; there was no obvious weak point to target the way there was in most attack spells. It didn’t even have the structure she expected in a spell or magical Ability; instead, it looked more like a magical material, solid and firm in what it was.

Sophia bit her lip and tried to follow as the magic pulsed each time the area shrank. If it did the same thing when it advanced, Sophia wasn’t sure; it simply moved too quickly then. It retreated far slower than its initial expansion, which might have been a problem if there was more than one frog, but there wasn’t.

Was there?

Dav seemed to have things under control and Sophia still didn’t see any way she could really help, so she shifted her attention to look for more jade frogs. The thing was tiny and hid well, but Sophia thought she knew its trick now: it looked like a cache. She didn’t think it was one of the mimics they hadn’t seen yet, but it might as well have been. It was a sort of magical mimic.

She didn’t find any more frogs by the time the part on Dav’s back was only a little larger than the frog was initially, but it was a good thing she was looking. She noticed immediately when the patch of jade that occupied Dav’s side dimmed suddenly as a magical signature the exact size and power of the original frog hopped out and headed directly for Sophia.

Dav groaned but Sophia didn’t have time to listen. She had to stop that frog!

Sophia reflexively flashed into her Spread Plumes form. It was the fastest way to get a variety of plumes out where she could work with them … but mostly it was her default defense, and it would probably work against the frog. She wasn’t sure what it was doing, but if it needed to get inside someone to do it, it wasn’t going to be able to get inside a feather.

The frog hit a feather and passed through it. Sophia didn’t celebrate, because in the short time the frog touched the feather, the feather stiffened and swelled, then seemed to pop as it became a second jade frog. It wasn’t as magical as the first one, but that probably only meant that the frog couldn’t infinitely replicate itself. She had to keep her feathers away from the frog!

No, from the frogs. Both of them. Two was two too many.

Dav swung in place. His sword appeared in his hand as he struck at the original frog. It hit perfectly … with no more effect than knocking the frog off its trajectory towards another feather. 

Sophia’s feathers were also her attacks. That wasn’t good, but maybe they’d hold off whatever magic the frog did if the feather hit the frog instead of the other way around. Sophia quickly ran through her options and threw away most of them, but a few required additional consideration.

Sweetfire Purge was used to remove negative effects. It might help Dav if his Purifying Phoenix wasn’t enough, but it probably wasn’t the right thing to use against the main frog. It might work against the duplicate.

Disruptive was worse. It only worked on spell structure, so it definitely wasn’t the right Plume.

Piercing and Rending were the basic attack Plumes, designed to focus on either the Shield or hurting monsters once their Shield was gone. One or the other might work, but they’d do it by attacking the physical form instead of the magic. Dav could do that better than Sophia could.

If Dav couldn’t do anything to it even though he struck it, she wouldn’t be able to either. He was still channeling his Purifying Phoenix Embodiment but that made very little difference; his weakest strikes were as strong as her strongest. That was his strength, not hers. No, the real options were Corruption, True Death, and Prismatic. 

Corruption - Erode the core element

True Death - Lay that which is not living to rest

Prismatic - Split affiliated magic into its components

Sophia wasn’t sure if the jade frog counted as living. If it really was jade, it wouldn’t, and True Death would kill it easily. If it merely looked like jade, True Death wouldn’t work at all. 

Sophia’s guess at this point was that she was dealing with a frog that managed to merge with the natural treasure it guarded. That was clearly intentional on the part of the World Tree; without its power, a frog would be a terrible guard. With it, the frog was terrifying.

If that was the case, True Death almost certainly wouldn’t work at all; a frog wasn’t vulnerable to it.

Corruption and Prismatic were both reasonable choices. They were both able to damage magic and might be able to suppress the magic of the treasure long enough to kill the frog. Dav would have to kill it; while Sophia might be able to manage it, it would be faster if Dav did. “Dav, can you hit the frog when I say to?”

“Sure,” Dav answered as he batted the lesser frog into the original, knocking it away from another feather. “Can you hurry? This is going to get really tough if it makes another frog, and I’d really rather not have to switch Embodiments to duplicate myself.”

That didn’t sound good at all. Neither did the fact that Dav was still maintaining Purifying Phoenix.

“The small frog -” Sophia stopped herself. She’d been about to tell him to go after the duplicate frog first, but it was definitely a magical creation. True Death would likely work on it and it was weaker, so it would be a good trial run. “Hold off the original. I’ll get the lesser one first.”

Sophia grabbed the three nearest Plumes, infused them with True Death, and sent them hurtling into the frog made from one of her feathers at the same time. When they hit, the frog seemed to shatter. All it left behind was a weak cloud of dissipating mana and a feather that looked like it had been beaten up and folded repeatedly.

Sophia shifted her attention to the original frog just in time to see Dav smack it with the edge of his sword again. Just like the first time, it had all the effect of striking metal on stone; it didn’t accomplish much. There wasn’t even a spark. He did, however, manage to hit the frog directly down and partially embed it in the forest loam.

It was the best chance Sophia was going to get. She grabbed another trio of feathers, then hesitated for a moment as she waffled between Corruption and Prismatic. Corruption was a little slower but did real damage to almost any magic. Prismatic was a little faster and was far easier to repair, since everything was still there, merely temporarily separated, but it wouldn’t work if the magic was truly singular and even if it wasn’t, it might not solve the problem if one of the resultant components was what was protecting the frog.

If that was the case, they’d just have to try again. Faster was important; she couldn’t exactly keep her plumes in contact with the frog, given what it could do.

Sophia infused the plumes and sent them shooting at the frog. They were effectively magical constructs now, rather than the physical feathers they started as; hopefully that meant the frog wouldn’t be able to convert them the same way it didn’t harm Dav’s manifested sword.