Ren closed his eyes instinctively, but it was too late.
For a fraction of a second, he had seen the toad's three hypnotic eyes.
His muscles began to go numb.
The melodious croaking intensified, now coming from all directions. He could hear the soft padding of their feet approaching, the wet sound of their skin secreting acid...
The paralysis was spreading through his limbs when the spore, without warning, fused with his body.
Ren wanted to scream in frustration, 'Now's not the time to be stubborn, a miserable strength increase won't help me here!'
The weak glow of the mushrooms in his hair would only serve to attract more predators, making him a more visible target in the night.
The Moon Toads were getting closer.
He could hear the rhythmic padding of their feet, the wet sound of their skin secreting acid. The acrid smell already reached his nose, like rotting fruit and hot metal.
But something was strange.
The toad in front of him, the one that had paralyzed him, tilted its head.
Its three eyes blinked in an erratic sequence, breaking the hypnotic pattern. The melodious croaking turned to discordant, confused notes.
The mushrooms in Ren's hair pulsed with bioluminescence similar to the toads', creating patterns that mimicked the glow of their internal organs. It was as if his head had become a distorted version of his predators.
The leader toad jumped forward, its three eyes now fixed on the glowing mushrooms. The confusion broke its concentration, and with it, the paralyzing spell.
Ren felt control of his body return just as the ground beneath the toad began to give way.
Everything happened in an instant.
The toad, disoriented by the luminescent mushrooms, didn't notice it had landed on the edge of an Excavator tunnel. The earth crumbled beneath its weight with an ominous crunch. Its bright eyes widened in surprise as it fell, its melodious croak transforming into a shriek of panic.
A deep roar rose from the tunnel's darkness, followed by the unmistakable sound of jaws snapping shut.
The other Moon Toads froze, their bioluminescent patterns becoming erratic with fear. The acid smell intensified, an involuntary defensive reaction.
Ren didn't stop to think.
His legs, newly freed from paralysis, moved by instinct.
A jump to the right, away from the formerly invisible tunnel edge he could now see thanks to the freshly collapsed earth.
"The tunnels!" he gasped as he ran. "They form a pattern!"
Night Excavators were methodical, territorial. Their tunnels always followed the same design, a main entrance with traps in a semicircle around it. If the toad had fallen into one...
Another crunch to his left confirmed his theory. Two of the remaining toads, in their rush to chase him, had jumped directly onto another weak section.
The earth opened beneath them like a hungry mouth.
More roars from the depths. More abruptly interrupted shrieks.
The last Moon Toad, perhaps wiser than its companions, disappeared into the night with a terrified croak.
Ren stopped, panting, his heart threatening to burst.
The mushrooms in his hair still pulsed weakly, but now they seemed more like a reminder of his luck than a curse.
"You," he whispered to his spore, still fused with it, "are still the weakest beast that exists. But... thanks. I guess."
A distant crunch reminded him this was no time to celebrate. Somewhere beneath his feet, a Night Excavator had just enjoyed an unexpected dinner of Moon Toads.
And he didn't want to be dessert.
The dead tree. He had to find the dead tree before…
A deep roar made the earth tremble beneath his feet.
It was just an excavator, he reassured himself, they wouldn't come out...
But the noise attracted something else.
A new sound froze Ren's blood, a metallic hiss, like blades dragging against stone.
The underground roars quieted, as if trying to go unnoticed.
The new sound came from the deep forest, toward the bronze ring, where darkness was densest.
Ren hid behind a tree.
A Mirror Mantis emerged between the trees, its body covered in reflective plates that fragmented the moonlight.
It was huge, horse-sized, but something was wrong with it.
Its plates, which should form a perfect pattern, were cracked and misaligned. Deep scars furrowed its exoskeleton, and one of its main scythes was broken near the tip.
There shouldn't be a creature within 20 kilometers.
Mirror Mantises were creatures of the deep forest, Bronze-rank beasts that would normally never approach a zone so poor in mana.
Their bodies were designed to absorb and reflect the dense magical energy of their territory, using their reflective plates to disorient prey with light and mana illusions.
This one had been expelled from its territory, probably after losing a territorial battle. The wounds had weakened it so much it couldn't even maintain its natural habitat.
And a wounded beast, hungry, forced to hunt in poor lands...
Was a thousand times more dangerous than any local predator.
The Mantis turned its triangular head toward him. Its eye facets, normally a kaleidoscope of iridescent colors, were dull with hunger.
The plates on its body tried to reflect the moonlight, but the pattern was erratic, sickly. Instead of the usual hypnotic illusions, it produced only desperate flashes.
"Don't look at me, don't look at me," Ren silently pleaded, remembering the basic lessons about beasts that every child learned.
Mirror Mantises usually hunted by creating illusory duplicates of their prey, confusing them until they stumbled over their own reflections. But this one, in its famished state...
A stray flash created a small reflection beside the tree and illuminated Ren.
Despite its wounds, its speed was terrifying. The scythes, even the broken one, cut the air with a deadly whistle. No games, no illusions. Just pure, desperate hunger.
The dead tree had to be close.
His father had mentioned that the twisted roots pointed north, that the bark marked by ancient lightning formed an arrow-like pattern...
Behind him, the metallic hiss drew closer.
The Mantis couldn't maintain that speed for long in a zone so poor in mana, but it didn't need to.
It only needed to catch him once.
A scythe plunged into the ground beside him, so close he felt the displaced air cut his cheek. The Mantis's broken plates tinkled like broken bells, its breathing a tortured hiss of hunger and desperation.
And then Ren saw it, the dead tree, its twisted silhouette cut against the night sky.
But the Mirror Mantis was getting closer, and the sound of its broken plates was like a promise of death.