I sidestepped a piercing attack and jumped back my crossbow already drawn. In the next moment, I fired without the intent to kill, and the bolt jammed perfectly into the frog's neck sack. It was a test more than anything, could the frog still use its psychic croak when its vocal sack is compromised?
I got my answer a moment later as it let out a dried hiss instead of an ear-piercing scream, I smiled despite the serious situation. My spear flew true and landed in the amphibian's neck, just in case I began knocking my crossbows slide back and loading another arrow. Now I could do it in under eight seconds, not great but a marked improvement.
Whisps of essence enter my chest a moment later confirming that I killed the bipedal frog.
So I was able to confirm one thing after running across this straggler, if I could comprise their vocal sack they couldn't use their psychic croaks. There was a small problem with that, I only had about thirty more bolts left after the Rat King's Maze. Meaning that the number of ways I could compromise their neck sacks was getting significantly lower, sure I retrieved as many bolts as I could but more often than not they would break and become useless.
Yet another reason I needed a temporary base was so I could make a crafting table and try to jerry-rig a few bolts out of the hundred arrows I have from the second Bullywug I killed.
I pretty much explored everything around the large hill I came from and found a whole lot of nothing besides mud. I hoped I might find a small cave at least but luck wasn't on my side. Though there was an odd rock formation around a mile away that would probably be my best bet.
With that in mind, I headed in that direction while paying special attention to avoid any groups I could.
I was interested in the area due to the odd lack of bipedal frogs moving about, whether that was because of the lack of water or something else was yet to be decided.
Luckily I managed to make it there without running into anything. The rock formation turned out to be ruins of what I could guess was some type of settlement, whether that was human I couldn't know. Rusted tools and farming equipment littered the area proving that it was at least a fairly intelligent village.
The 'homes' themselves were made of stone and looked like they were rather slapped together when they were made in the first place. A layer of moss covered most of it to the point I could barely tell what kind of stone it was.
Nothing remained besides ruined cobblestone and half-destroyed homes. I entered one of the few that was the least worn, with a stable roof and only a few holes in the walls.
The main reason was the shed connected to the back that had rows of firewood that somehow wasn't rotted. Where they found actual trees or how it wasn't rotten when the buildings were in shambles and tools rusted I had no idea. It was as dark as could be but I was the only living thing in there so it would make a perfect base.
It would work for what I needed it for, I wasn't intending to stay here for an extended period of time anyway. I just needed enough safety to refill my bolts and think up a real strategy for the hundreds of bipedal frogs that were out to get me.
It had wooden furniture that also looked well-maintained, as I looked over a specific chair I noticed a discrepancy. It had slightly glowing symbols carved into it.
'Who the hell would enchant a chair and not a building? How was this even enchanted?' It was an obvious sign of either someone having too much to do or this was the home of a rather rich person.
But there was something greater I could take from this, other people have been here. Intelligent life at that, so it led me to a conclusion I was curious about to begin with. Without a doubt, I would run into other humans or even different races in this tower. I'm in a magical world after all so there will be a plethora of different races, elves surely, and maybe even beast races.
But there was only so much I could gather from a completely dark room, so I headed outside to grab a few pieces of firewood. It seemed that the shed the wood was placed in was enchanted as well, as soon as my hand entered to grab a few pieces I noticed a difference.
It had some kind of humidity control placed on the area inside the shed, even though it was open the wood felt fresh and there wasn't a hint of moisture anywhere on it. There was an importance to having fire wood in this dungeon and I was about to find out why.