Ozzy readied his rifle in the same way he had so many time before. Cheek pressed against woodgrain, as his finger hovered just above the trigger. He wanted to take this thing in the air. It was a hard shot, no doubt about it, but Ozzy knew a thing or two about gravity. There was no way in hell this thing would like falling any sort of way other than normally.

  With each leap it hovered for just a moment or so at the apex of its curve before coming crashing back down into the muck, spraying mud and rotten wood out in a grimy, foul smelling, explosion. He watched it leap twice. Letting it come ever closer before on its third leap as it reached just before the apex of its curve. Ozzy trained the barrel upwards not tracking, but waiting exactly where he knew the frog would end up and pulled the trigger.

  BOOM

  The report of a rifle was as much a thunderclap as it was a dinner bell to all of the frogs he knew would be further into this wasteland. To this frog though? It was just the thunder.

  A second report fired out as the round tore its way into the frog’s center mass, its explosive nature making itself known as it ripped a hole the size of a watermelon out of the frogs back. Gore flew out past the frog as it continued its descent. Spraying up above it in a red and green shower as organs mixed in with blood.

  With the shot destabilizing the frog mid-flight, it let out a massive bleeding ribbit. It was nearly as loud as a honking car, and it tumbled through the air like a toddler's discarded toy. Mud and waste went up as it crashed into the earth. The spray nearly reaching far enough to touch Ozzy who was already heading towards the frog ready with a follow-up shot.

  His first attack had been all about overwhelming force to immediately weaken the monster. The buckshot round currently sliding into his weapons breech was all about ensuring the catch.

  Before Ozzy was even finished reloading. The frog was already managing a slow and unsteady return to its feet. Despite the gaping wound that Ozzy knew existed in its back and the sizable entry wounded its chest it was hot pissed and ready to go.

  During Trinidad's little debriefing she had explained to Ozzy that monsters were categorized into tiers in two ways. That was through either individual strength or overall group power. Monsters like a Root Sucker were generally categorized as Tier 1 due to their immense strength, combat ability, and ability to just keep on swinging. Something like a sting crab however was categorized as a Tier 1 because of their tendencies to move in groups.

  Great Frogs were in a similar camp to Sting Crabs. Individually posing less threat than a large swarm of murk rats but together posing more of a risk to take on than even the largest of Root Suckers. Alone though? It was practically a sitting duck, and Ozzy made sure it’d never take to the sky again.

  His shotgun boomed as he fired the buckshot directly into the frog’s knee. Close to 40 pellets tore into the monster’s leg and teaching Ozzy something invaluable about the frogs. They had minimal protection from piercing attacks.

  The frog's leg had been minced, the knee barely holding Via a few bits of connective tissue and hopes and dreams. Despite this it still tried to leap desperate to get at Ozzy and prevent him from attacking again. As the muscles in the frog's leg bulged it let out a low pained grunting noise before turning all of that coiled energy into a massive push.

  With a wet schluck the frog's leg tore coming off at the knee as it leapt spiraling in a barrel roll as its right leg completely overpowered the left. Sending the frogs spiraling up to the side and onto its back. It again worked to write itself letting out low grunting moans of pain is it tried using its left leg’s stump as a partial leg. It was ill-prepared for the next attack.

  With the frog now incapable of effectively closing the distance, Ozzy began to lay into it with a barrage of shotgun shells. While they weren't nearly as effective as his rifle rounds, he only lost chunks of his mana pool compared to the gaping wound summoning our rifle round would cause to his mana pool.

  Advancing as he put a third buckshot shell into the frog, he could tell it wasn't long for this world. Already it had begun to slow. It's grunting, moans barely coming out as a wheeze, as its perforated lungs did their best to support a body it was dying upright.

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  Pausing to assess the frog's damage and determine whether or not it was worth continuing the barrage of shotgun shells Ozzy made his first combat mistake of the day. Assuming the frog was as good as dead, he turned to Trinidad to see if she had any comment on the situation. The whooshing of air told him the frog was far from done with him.

  A cantaloupe-sized slimy object impacted the center of his chest, breaking ribs and driving the wind from his lungs as it sent him sprawling backwards. Before he could even begin to write himself however he was yanked back. As the stars rapidly cleared from Ozzy's eyes, he found himself being reeled towards the frog by a long slimy pink tongue.

  The tongue had bonded with the front of his jacket, and Ozzy couldn't tell if it was some part of the frog's strange biology or magic by which it maintained such a firm hold of him but it didn’t even budge. It was like he had been perma-bonded to the tongue. Slowly however he realized that wasn't the case. Only moments had passed but thin tendrils of steam were beginning to rise from where his jacket and the tongue met. Then like pain boiled down to its purest form and given anger issues the tongue made contact with his bare skin.

  Ozzy realized in that moment that the tongue was not sticky in the normal sense but in an evil chemical engineer’s wet dream kinda way. It rapidly burned through skin and flesh, bonding itself to his very bones which he could feel connect and sizzle against the tongue. It was a pain that put absorbing cores to shame, and it made him rethink ever having thought of frogs as cool creatures.

  The pain was the greatest wakeup call Ozzy could have had, and it pushed him to use one of his newest abilities, void shift. While the ability had come with a fancy little text box that gave him the gist of things Ozzy still had several questions as to its general use. Now was as good a time as ever to test though and he actively pushed mana into the ability.

  Pain became a fleeting dream as the world went from bright and sunny to hellishly dark. It was like someone had gone and used one of those color inverter filters on the world, and the very sun itself was a source of darkness set on consuming them all. Ozzy fell, the tongue’s chemically bonded hold on him no longer having any authority over him as his body slipped between the plates of reality and into the void.

  It all came to a close as Ozzy hit the ground and lost his momentum. The ability spitting him back into reality as he stopped moving perhaps as one of the powers balancing points but as Ozzy thought about it perhaps more as a safety measure. Keeping Ozzy from having to deal with whatever energies would beset him in that place should he linger too long.

  With Ozzy no longer attached to the tongue, the frog reeled in the sticky appendage with gluttonous abandon, preparing for another strike. Injured and barely able to breathe, Ozzy activated two abilities simultaneously. One to protect himself and one to fix his shattered ribs.

  First Ozzy stretched out a hand casting darkness over the frog's form. Immediately it vanished from view as a circle of complete darkness nearly thirty feet across surrounded where the frog had only just been. Immediately moans of pain began to rise from the unholy darkness but Ozzy ignored them, slipping into his rat form.

  In his furry form Ozzy watched as the great frog slowly stumbled its way out of the darkness. Its skin which had before been a mottled green and brown existed only in shades of black and grey. Its entire body looking like it had been grayscaled. As Ozzy looked closer however he noticed that wasn’t exactly true.

  The bright red crimson stood out like a beacon against the sea of black and grey that was the frog's new body. It did not pour and flow from the wounds as blood would normally, but it flowed up traveling over bumps and ridges on the frog's body as it sought out the black pit that was the unholy darkness.

  Slowly but surely the blood drained out of the frog who grew weaker and weaker, eventually ending its slow and pained march back towards the light only mere feet from salvation.

  Ozzy watched in growing horror and respect of his new void powers. It felt like he just witnessed something that human or mortal eyes were not supposed to. Something alien, something so unnatural to the extent that even just witnessing it happen left him with a feeling if distance between himself and normal human consciousness.

  He barely even registered as heavy footsteps approached him, squelching their way slowly through the muck to stand just behind him. Slowly and gently a hand pushed itself through the mud and under him, and he turned to see Trinidad peering down at him.

  “You have the weirdest ability set I’ve ever seen.” She commented, looking in concern between him and where the unholy darkness had only just been, a look of clear distaste on her face.

  “Yeah… that wasn’t very fun to watch happen.” Ozzy said, agreeing with the opinion she hadn’t needed to share.

  “I’m probably guessing you don’t feel too bad about it after it landed that tongue on you though?” She asked, doing her best to change the subject. “I was just about ready to come to the rescue.” She teased.

  “Not gonna lie that’s probably the worst thing I’ve felt since coming here, and I had to wake up to cuddles from you the other day.” Ozzy said seriously, looking off into the distance as if remembering a traumatic memory.

  “You do realize you’re the perfect size to be thrown right? How would you like for your next fight with one of these frogs to be in melee?” She said, her fingers closing dangerously around his rat form, nearly forming a cage around him.

  “I would very much not like that.” Ozzy said, a pleading note in his voice.

  “Then you should hurry up and heal before the rest of them get here. You won’t get a good view of my fight if you’re stuck watching it from the floor.”