Big Frog on the Road
“Pretty, right? That glowing thing down below is from the Moonlight Mouth Fish we grilled earlier.”
“Oh…”
The moment we reached the lakeshore, the older sister launched into an explanation without being asked. To check her words, I let out a short sigh and glanced into the water. What I’d mistaken for starlight was faintly moving. No wonder the lake had seemed brighter than the sky—it was the fish giving off light. While I stood there staring blankly, she added a few more words, sounding regretful.
“If I’d known we were coming here, I would’ve brought a fishing rod.”
A summer night that felt dark yet faintly luminous. After filling a small corner of my dried-up emotions, we greeted the morning at the inn and, with stiff stretches, found a carriage heading for Windren.
Unlike the royal capital, at least three carriages were bound for Windren. If even one of them had been in Karsion… The distance made it inevitable, but the disappointment still lingered.
Before boarding, we bought dried foods like jerky and dried fish, along with water. Why buy water when a river and lake were nearby? No matter how clear it looked, drinking it without boiling would give you an upset stomach.
While I purchased the usual jerky, the older sister filled a large leather pouch with an armful of dried fish. Apparently fish sold better than meat here.
“What are you staring at?”
Her voice tickled my ears as I gazed at the thick leather pouch. She quickly tied the opening shut and hid the pouch behind her opposite leg. I tilted my head at the rare display of gluttony and voiced the question that had been on my mind.
“Do you like fish more than meat…?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Her answer came without the slightest hesitation. It wasn’t hard proof, but the edge of the pouch peeking out from under her plump thigh confirmed it. For someone who liked it this much, it was surprising I’d never seen her eat it in the capital. Wondering if there was a special reason, I muttered as if to myself.
“I never saw you eat any…”
“I know the local prices. Even with decent earnings, it’s too expensive to buy in the capital.”
I paused at her casual reply. So the price in the capital was so high that even knowing the local cost made it unaffordable. It made sense—when I first saw the merchant inflating the price of Yellow Wrinkle Fruit from our village several times over, I’d thought, Has this guy lost his mind? By the same logic, she probably didn’t buy it for herself either. Thinking about how five coins vanished with each casual bite left an unpleasant aftertaste.
After indirectly understanding her feelings, I thought to myself, Distribution technology really needs to improve. Even if it did, there was no guarantee prices would drop. With that vague future in mind, I climbed into the carriage bound for Windren.
The closer the cities, the more frequent the exchanges—that was only natural. Just as naturally, we weren’t the only passengers. While the growing crowd made us strangely quiet, the others chatted as if they already knew each other.
“What brings you all the way out here this time?”
“Going to see my son. Those little ones started living together not long ago…”
“Goodness, have those kids already grown that much?”
…It wasn’t just an impression. They really did know one another. Paying no mind to their surroundings, their conversations piled up until the carriage was filled with voices. Perhaps because they were older, the topics weren’t about themselves but about their children—how a son was working in some city, how a daughter was doing after sending a letter last time, and so on. Even just listening from the side, I found myself oddly absorbed in other people’s stories.
In the warm atmosphere, the wheels rolled with a low grinding sound against the dirt. Under the blazing midday sun of midsummer, sweat trickled down. The carriage that had been running smoothly gradually slowed and came to a stop.
“Oh dear, there’s a monster up ahead…”
What followed was the coachman’s short sigh and troubled voice. The tail that had been swaying beside me like hair also paused its restless movement. Visible in front of the carriage, even from a distance, was… a frog? I rubbed my eyes at its size, so different from what I knew. Even after my vision cleared, the scene remained unchanged. As I stood there tilting my head at the sheer gap between expectation and reality, the older sister spoke.
“It’s a Big Frog.”
So it really is a frog. I thought briefly after hearing her confident declaration—she must have memorized monster names. What kind of ecology would let a frog grow that large? Even as a tadpole, it would have to be the size of a boulder, wouldn’t it? While I blinked in silence, the coachman turned the carriage around.
“We’ll take a detour.”
“Can’t we just kill it and keep going?”
At the older sister’s remark—something no ordinary citizen would ever say—all the other passengers turned to look at her at once. If it had been a sturdy man dressed like a mercenary, maybe. But she wasn’t wearing armor, just an ordinary city girl with an innocent face. Except for me, who knew her strength, the passengers reacted the same way.
“Goodness, that’s impossible for us, miss.”
“Right. If you charge in recklessly, there won’t even be bones left.”
“Didn’t they say even a mercenary couldn’t recover the body last time?”
To an A-rank mercenary’s eyes, a single oversized frog would be nothing. But whether in the city or countryside, this was how ordinary people perceived monsters. Mercenaries who would hunt them for money were everywhere, yet people clearly understood the danger involved.
As the mood seemed to shift toward just going around it, the older sister jabbed my side with her elbow.
“Then you can just kill it.”
“Ehh?!”
She suddenly dumped the task she’d brought up onto me. I let out a flustered sound at the sudden, unplanned hunt. There was a much stronger person right in front of her—why me?
“What do you mean, ‘ehh’? You’ve got a weapon, so go kill it already.”
“Why say it yourself and then make me…”
She spoke lightly, as if telling me to go catch a bug. Still, I moved as ordered while grumbling and stepped down from the front of the carriage. Just before I got off, she gave my arm a dull little punch, like scolding me. Stop complaining and hurry up.
Left with no choice, I fully disembarked and slowly approached the Big Frog—or whatever it was. Its eyes were different from the lizard I’d seen recently, horizontally slit pupils. Eyes whose gaze was hard to read. Its heavy body twisted toward me. Its torso and vocal sac swelled and contracted in turn. The distance was still too far for my sword to reach.
At that moment, the frog’s front half began to tilt sharply. From its wide-open mouth shot a thick, pinkish rope-like tongue.
Look at that…?
Treating me like a single bite of food, the tongue stretched straight toward me. I grabbed it firmly with my gloved hand. Even I was a little surprised that my body had moved unconsciously to catch it.
My reflexes weren’t this good before.
So this was what it felt like when physical abilities improved. Levels weren’t just about raising strength and stamina. I set the surprise aside for now and focused on the unpleasant texture I could feel even through the glove. Though my posture was a mess from grabbing the tongue, I swung the sword in my other hand and sliced it clean off.
The severed part lost strength and tumbled to the ground. The long tongue quickly retracted to its original position. What I saw next was the frog squeezing its eyes shut, mouth gaping wide as it thrashed in pain. A monster’s suffering was an extra opportunity. Without stopping, I closed the distance in one go and left a deep wound in its balloon-like body. As if riding the flow, the sword’s trajectory connected smoothly into a second strike.
A final cry like a bursting vocal sac—“Kueeeek”—heavily covered my ears. Only after seeing the frog lying in the field with its legs twitching did I begin to breathe evenly again. Amid the fading tension, I briefly assessed myself.
Around Caldera, this much is manageable now?
After shaking the frog’s bodily fluids off my sword and sheathing it, I thought, The obstacle blocking the road is gone, so I can just get back on the carriage. Leaving the corpse as it was, I walked back to the carriage.
“Wow, that young man’s impressive.”
“Is he a mercenary? He didn’t look like one…”
“My, having a reliable little brother must be nice, miss.”
Waiting in the carriage were the passengers’ enthusiastic cheers and the older sister, who looked proud as if she’d taught me herself, her lips curved upward as she smacked my back with her palm.
“Nicely done~!”
The carriage kept rolling, and before long we arrived at our destination—Windren.