Chapter 12:

Way of the Hunter

"Hmmmm! Magic Lightning Fingers… Activate!"

After channeling as much energy from within as he could, the orange-haired boy thrusted his arms forward, with his fingers spread apart from one another. What occurred afterwards was a fantastic display of power, as energy gathered around his fingertips before it bounced off in a form of lightning that struck anything within range. The boy had unleashed a magnificent, lightning magic given to him by the gods! A power so great that it threatens the stability of the mortal realm, the underworld and the heavenly skies above!

… At least, that was what he had hoped would happen. But upon opening one of his eyes to check for himself, he was left disappointed when everything in front of him seemed to have remained the same. No lightning coming out of his fingertips. No energy forming in the palm of his hands. No nothing.

"Hm… Maybe I'm doing it wrong?" Sprig asked himself, as he pulled his arms back and looked down at his hands.

He took a few seconds to think about what he should have done differently, and when a few ideas came to mind, he decided to execute each and every single one of them to find the results that he was looking for.

He closed his eyes once more, as he took another deep breath. He focused on gathering energy inside of himself, whatever that might be, and when he felt the time was right, he proceeded to thrust his arms forward once again.

"Unleash the lightning!" he shouted.

… Nothing happened, just like last time.

"Hrrm… Come on, lightning powers. Work with me here…"

He repeated the same steps as before, and he tried again a third time.

"Thunderbolt attack!"

… Then a fourth time.

"Unlimited power!"

… Then a fifth time.

"Sprinkled on the bones of the beast! Sharp tower, red crystal, steel ring. Move and become the wind, stop and become the calm. The sound of warring spears fills the empty cas-!"

"Dude, what are you doing?" asked the brown-haired girl who suddenly stepped out from behind a tree next to him.

Her sudden appearance caused the boy to accidentally bite his tongue in the middle of his incantation.

"Ow!" he shouted in pain, sticking his tongue out as he massaged it with his fingers in an attempt to soothe out the pain.

"Oh, sorry, Sprig!" Anne apologized. "Didn't mean to startle you while you were doing… whatever it is that you're doing. Seriously, what's all this about?"

"Mm…! I'm trying to activate my magic lightning powers here, Anne." he explained.

"Your magic what now?" She tilted her head in confusion.

"My magic lightning powers. I'm trying to shoot lightning from my fingers." he further explained his actions, imitating his movements from his attempts at using his newfound powers.

"… Sprig, did you somehow snuck off with my phone while I wasn't looking and watched too many anime videos or something?" Anne asked, finding the idea that Sprig has magic powers to be a complete fantasy. "Come to think of it, some of the stuff that you just said sounded like it came straight out of an anime too."

"I'm serious, Anne! I really do have lightning powers!" he insisted. "If I could just find a away to use it somehow…!"

"Sure, buddy. You have lightning powers. I believe you." she said in an unenthusiastic tone, not even trying to sound like she believed her friend even for a second.

The Plantar boy sighed. "You know what? Never mind all of that." he said, putting aside the subject of his powers for now, since his best friend would continue to not believe his words as long as there is no proof.

It had been several days since the incident at the Ruins of Despairs. The Plantars continued their trek through the unfamiliar land of Amphibia to get to the capital city of Newtopia, both to find a way to get Anne back to her home world and to find the ingredients for the cure to Sprig's human transformation.

Along the way, they stopped by their first town called Bittyburg, an average small town - read it as a very small town that a person as tall as Anne could easily tower over - that looked like it came straight from the wild west, inhabited by tiny frogs. The townspeople were being terrorized by the Hasselback gang, a family of malicious amphibians who loved to conquer over the weak.

Hop Pop, surprisingly, stepped in to liberate the Bitties from their ruthless rulers. His motive for doing so was that, when recounting the events at Toad Tower, the elderly frog had done nothing heroic compared to Anne and the rest of the family. He sought to change that by becoming a hero to the people of Bittyburg, someone who will be remembered for years to come.

In the process of doing so, however, even though he was able to hold his own against the notorious family at first, it was clear that they were simply too much for him, and he almost had his life cut short.

The sight of their hero being beaten to a pulp, as well as suffering years of abuse under the gang's tyranny, caused the Bitties to snap and tear the Hasselback gang to pieces, in a shocking display that was just too gruesome to describe.

Needless to say, the Plantars skedaddled out of town.

Days later, they found themselves in a middle of a tropical forest, where they were facing a shortage of food supplies. Despite packing more than they needed back when they were preparing for the trip, the trip itself proved to be more arduous than they initially thought.

However, it was no concern for the Plantar family, for when they run out of food, the next logical step is to go on a hunt.

Anne offered to go hunting for them, taking it as an opportunity to return the Plantars' kindness the entire time that she was in Amphibia. Sprig intended to tag along in hopes of teaching her a thing or two on how the Plantars hunt. And so, the two humans marched through the forest in search for food, fully embracing their roles as hunters.

"Anyway, did you find anything around here, Anne?" Sprig asked.

Anne shook her head. "Nope. No sign of wildlife here." she said.

"Hmm… Okay. Then we'll just have to do some more tracking!" The boy immediately got down on all four, as he eagerly took the dirt in his mouth and munched on it. "Mm! Come on, Anne! Help me out so that we can more accurately pinpoint where our prey is!"

"Seriously? Urgh…" Anne shuddered at the thought of following her friend's lead surrounding that disgusting method. "I'll pass, thanks."

Sprig spat out the dirt from his mouth. "What's wrong? Didn't you say yourself that you wanna help us out by going hunting?"

"Well, yeah, but I thought that hunting would be less… icky than this." she replied. "I was expecting thrills! Action! Explosions happening at every corner as we chase down the biggest animal that we could find!"

"Now who's been watching too many videos?" he asked with a smirk.

"Hey, don't appreciate you dissing me, dude." she frowned, resenting the fact that he used her own words against her about something that she deemed more believable than whatever he was doing a moment ago.

"Hate to break it to you, Anne, but hunting is more than just thrills. It's about becoming one with nature." he explained as he picked up a chunk of soil in his hand. "As soon as you attune yourself to nature, you'll feel like you can locate anything that it has to offer with just a finger snap. Like so." He proceeded to shove the handful of soil in his mouth.

"Ok, sure, but do you really need to do the whole eating the dirt thing? That's a little much."

"Never doubt the expert, rookie!"

Sprig chewed on the piece of earth for some signs from within that could guide them to their goal in finding some food. When he found nothing to discern from it, he spat out the soil from his mouth, crawled to a different spot, take a handful of some new soil and out it in his mouth, where he began to chew on it. He would repeat the same process over and over as long as there was nothing to be found.

Anne watched him work from the side, still disgusted at Sprig's method to even partake in the act herself. Some time had passed, and it did not seem like Sprig was making process with it, wearing Anne's patience thin over the practicality of the technique.

"Okay, this is going nowhere." she spoke her doubts. "No offence, dude, but I don't think your hunting way is helping. You've been savouring the 'buffet of clues' for a bit longer than we would like. Maybe it's time that we switch gears and find some others ways to-."

"Wait!" Sprig suddenly raised a finger up, stopping his friend from continuing her speech. The boy found some sort of clue within the soil: a flavour on one part of it that was different from the rest. To pinpoint exactly what the clue was, he slowly and carefully chewed on the soil, juggled it around for a bit, until he finally detected what he was searching for.

"Got it!" he declared while spitting out the dirt, as he stood up from the ground.

"Wait, seriously?" Anne asked with a raised eyebrow, still having doubts about the method.

"Yeah! According to this, there's a set of fresh tracks left behind by our prey! Like, really fresh! Meaning they're really close! Like… There!"

Sprig immediately pointed at one of the nearby bushes.

Anne followed where he was pointing and, at first glance, it did not seem like much. The bush did not look like it was hiding much of anything.

Until it started to shake, surprising the human girl. Then came popping out a reasonably-sized insect that resembled a larva, but it looked like an eclair pastry, with bumps on top that looked like cream toppings.

"Whoa! There really is something in there!" Anne expressed her surprise.

"See? Step 1 of hunting the Plantar way is a success! We found some grubbles!" he proudly announced with his fists placed on his hips. "Still think that it's just crazy talk?"

"Honestly, still just a bit." Anne admitted, as seeing her friend's effort paid off did not completely dispel her doubts in her mind. "But never mind that! Let's get those things!" She quickly pulled out a wooden spear that she carved out a while back, and was about to run towards the grubbles.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" The orange-haired boy stopped her from taking immediate action. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Uh, trying to catch food. Duh." she replied to him like it was blatantly obvious.

"Not with that bombastic attitude! And didn't I say that we don't need weapons?" Sprig snatched the wooden spear off of Anne's hands and casually tossed them aside.

"Hey!"

"If you charge at them like that, you're gonna scare them off, and we have to track them down all over again."

"I mean, I don't think that they're gonna run much. Just look at them."

She pointed at the grubble that was sticking out of the bushes, before it fell off and landed face-first on the ground, helplessly moving its tiny limbs in the air.

"Well, sure, that's not exactly the case for the grubbles." Sprig admitted. "But with any other species, that's a different story. So if I'm going to teach you how to hunt properly, then following the Plantar way is a sure way to go!"

She sighed. "Okay, fine. Let's get this over with. So what do we do next?"

"Great! Next up, we use our surroundings!"

The boy looked over at where the grubble was and inspected the surrounding area with his eyes. The two humans were currently in the middle of one of the few wide-open areas of the deep forest, and the grubble was located at the very edge of the area, and everything beyond there was dense flora.

He figured that it would do them no good to have the grubble escape into the dense part of the forest from behind, where it would be hard to go after it with the many branches, vines and other plants slowing their movement. So their best bet would be to lead them into the wide-open area.

"Hmm… Luckily, we have a lot of options to consider." he noted. He turned his head towards Anne. "Quick! The first thing that comes to mind! What trap should we make for the grubbles?"

"Oh, uh… I guess we dig a big hole and cover it up with leaves and stuff?" Anne shrugged, unsure if her suggestion was viable.

"Then that's what we'll do! I'll dig up a hole near where the grubbles are and you go get some leaves to cover it up!"

"Ok, sure."

Sprig and Anne split up to perform their respective duties. The brown-haired girl went into the deep part of the forest to gather some leaves, while the orange-haired boy moved closer to the grubbles, but not too close to signal his presence to them. He then proceeded to dig up a sizeable hole, making sure that he did not dig too deep that it would be difficult to reach anything that might fall into the hole.

He finished creating the hole in the ground, and Anne came in just in time with a large amount of leaves in her hands. The two humans then used them to cover the hole.

"Here we go! That does it for step 2!" Sprig said after they have finished with the task at hand.

"Ok, so now what?" Anne asked.

"Now for the third and final step of hunting the Plantar way! And this is the most important one of all! The Dance!"

"The dance?" She tilted her head in confusion. "So, what, is it like one of those ritual dances that indigenous people perform from way back when?"

"Well, I could tell you what it is, but I think it's better if I show you. Take a step back, and feast your eyes on this."

Anne complied with Sprig's instruction and stepped back a bit.

Once he had enough space to perform the dance, the boy closed his eyes, slid his foot to the side, and crouched down with knees bent and palms rested on the ground in front of him. Then he focused his hearing.

He listened intently to the sounds provided by nature, the area around him. For the first instance, he heard noises from a variety of sources, from the plants, the wildlife near and far, the wind, anything that resided within the deep forest. All of those noises combined created a chaotic, unsynchronized sound so powerful that it disrupts the senses. It was like going through a fog that offered no end in sight.

Then, he heard the drums. From there, his hearing was focusing solely on the beat of the drums played by not a living being, but nature itself. Then gradually, the chaotic noises from a moment ago suddenly followed the beat of the drums, one by one, until it became a harmony that invigorated the senses.

He bopped his head to the rhythm. He let the music of nature flow through him. He allowed nature's energy penetrate his very being.

"Uh, Sprig?" Anne spoke to him, after noticing that the boy was seemingly doing nothing for a minute or two. "What exactly are you waiting for- Oh my gosh, no."

Her question had been answered, but she was left embarrassed when the boy finally began to move, by shaking his butt around.

From that point forward, Sprig allowed his body to move to the beat of nature's music. His butt spun around in the air. His arms swayed from side to side. His feet, spread apart from one another, hopped alternatively from each other. He slapped his cheeks while his lips formed an O-shape. His body flopped on the ground like a fish. And finally, while standing up, he slammed his face down against the earth multiple times. All while following the beat.

Anne had her hands shielding her eyes, as she felt discomfort in watching her friend dance in a very strange way because she was expected to follow his ways. Her doubts about how feasible the Plantar way of the hunt is came back in full force, thanks to the dance.

In a moment, she peeked her eyes through her fingers to see if Sprig was done with his dance. Instead, however, she was shocked to see the grubble's behaviour towards the dance.

The grubble bounced its body up and down in rhythm for the first few seconds, before it started to crawl towards the two humans' trap without missing the beat. Then, a few more grubbles popped out from the bushes, all bouncing up and down, before they followed the first one towards the trap, also moving to the beat.

They all gathered on top of the piles of leaves where the hole was hidden underneath, and once the last one reached the spot, the leaves fell in, pulling the group along down the hole.

As soon as their trap was set off successfully, Sprig stopped dancing, which included slamming his face against the ground.

"And that, my friend, is the Plantar way of the hunt!" he said as he turned his head towards Anne, smiling at her in spite of the bruises on his face that he gave himself.

"I… see…" Anne slowly nodded, still embarrassed by what she had witnessed. "Uh… You're gonna have to tell me exactly what this is all about, dude."

"Gladly." Sprig complied, quickly shaking his head to somehow remove all of the facial injury from a moment ago. "The sacred Plantar hunting dance has been in our family for generations. It's designed to both entice and disorient. All it takes to do it is to connect to the harmony of nature, listen to its beats, and move your body to its rhythm."

"And you're telling me that funny little dance that you just did seriously works?"

"There's nothing funny about it. Besides, the results speak for themselves, right?" he asked, motioning his hands over to the grubbles that unwittingly fell into the trap. "Now you know how we Plantars do the hunt! It's time for you to partake in the hunt yourself and use our ways to get what you deserve! Track down food! Use your surroundings! And most of all, ensnare your prey with the sacred dance!"

"Yeah, no." Anne declined.

"Huh? But why not?"

"No offence, dude, but this seems a bit too silly for me." she said. "For one, even if I want to, I'm not sure if I'll pull this off. It might work for frogs like you guys, but it probably won't work for a human like me."

"Anne, I'm a frog who has been turned into a human for the past few weeks, and my human form can do all of this just fine." Sprig shot down her reasoning in a bland tone.

"Ok, you got me there. But second of all, do we really to do all of this, especially the dance? I mean, these little guys seem pretty easy to catch." Anne picked up one of the grubbles from the hole and presented their harmless-ness to her friend.

"Well, sure." he agreed to her assessment this time. "But like I said, that's only the case for the grubbles. Other prey are going to be much more challenging than them. If you're gonna stand a chance against the hostile wildlife, then you gotta become one with nature. Listen to its music. And let your body move with the flow."

"Yeah, sure, whatever." Anne said with little care.

She looked up in the sky, past the branches and vines that occupied the air above them, and noticed that the sky was starting to turn into a shade of orange.

"Looks like it's gonna get late soon." she said, as she picked up a few more grubbles in her possession. "How about you and I split up? That way, we can catch double the amount of food than when we're together in one place. What do you think?"

"I dunno, Anne." Sprig expressed his worries. "We're still in uncharted, hostile territory. We still don't know what's out there. How about we come back to the camp where Hop Pop and Polly are waiting?"

"With this amount of food that we have here? No way!" she disagreed to his suggestion. "We need to catch a lot more to last us the whole trip! I'm not going back until I'm sure that we have everything that we need! Besides, if we split up, it'll make things go a lot faster!"

"Yeah, I see your point. But Anne, if you go on your own, how exactly are you going to do the hunting, if you're clearly not gonna do the Plantar way?"

"No worries. I've done a lot of research back home on how to hunt." she reassured him. "So I'm pretty sure I'm gonna be fine on that front."

"I seem to recall you saying the same thing about parasailing back at the valley." Sprig reminded her with skepticism. "And we both know how that ended up for you."

"Geez, dude. What's with the sass, lately?"

"Just stating the facts." he defended while raising his hands up in front of him. "But I'm serious, Anne. The Plantar way of the hunt works wonders in this kind of environment. Heck, it's even gonna save your life."

"Yeah, I can do without." she rejected his proposal. "Now come on! There's no time to waste! Our family and this whole trip are riding on us doing this thing!"

Anne then sprinted off deep inside of the forest in search for more food.

"Anne, wait just a second!" Sprig tried to stop her by shouting out to her, but his words did not seem to reach her ears, as she disappeared deeper and deeper into the forest.

With Anne gone, the boy could only let a tired sigh. "Anne, come on… Why do you always have to make it so hard?"

There were actually two reasons why Sprig wanted to tag along with Anne on the whole hunting business. While the primary reason was to teach her how to hunt, the second reason was that it was a once in a while opportunity for him to pay her back for all of the times that she helped him since they first met. If he was not allowed to help her in her long, emotional struggle, then the least that he could instead was to help her in a more practical kind of way.

Seeing her blow off his attempts to help her with even that was disheartening. He wondered if humans were that complicated of a living being in that regard.

He probably could live with that fact, but there was another thing that bothered him the most: his presumed lightning powers.

The boy turned around and took a few steps forward. Then, he started doing the same process that he did before Anne showed up a while ago. He took a deep breath, focused on gathering energy from within, and then thrusted his arms forward to unleash his powers.

Only for nothing to happen, just like before.

He let out another depressed sigh, as he pulled his arms back and looked down at his hands. "Come on… I know I'm not just seeing things. So what's the problem?" he asked himself, wondering what exactly he was supposed to do to active his problems.

A loud, scared squeal was heard from behind, before it was suddenly silenced and replaced by the sound of chomping.

"What the…?" Sprig turned around to see what was going on, and he froze in place.

Standing over the trap hole, where it took the remaining grubbles in its red mandibles before tossing them into its large mouth, was a very large, grey-furred, ferocious-looking beast. It chewed on the grubbles for a bit before it swallowed them down into its stomach. Immediately after the action, it opened its two pairs of glowing eyes and crossed its gaze with the scared boy in front of it.

Sprig stared at the enormous beast with fear in his eyes, staying still in hopes that, by pretending to be a statue, the monster would ignore him and leave him alone. But as soon as it opened its jaws, showing several of its sharp fangs as it let out a hot breath that blew in the boy's face, he instinctively took a step back.

The beast then approached the boy slowly and menacingly, taking a few large steps with its pair of front feline legs and its pair of back insect legs.

"N-n-n-nice little fella…!" Sprig stuttered, trying and failing to pacify the beast. "I-I-I'm just passing by…! Y-you don't want to eat me…!"

He continued to walk backwards away from the beast, but the large monster got closer to him with just a single, large step. The boy, in a state of fear, could not help but look at two prominent parts of the beast that he deemed to be dangerous: Its large, gaping mouth consisting of sharp fangs and two red mandibles, and its large tail stinger that most likely capable to spewing out some sort of venom.

"… Wait… A tail stinger…?"

He was hit with a sense of familiarity. After quickly considering the beast's appearance, he could of swore that he saw that beast before. But how? He never went outside of the valley until recently, so by all accounts, that should have been the first time that he encountered the large creature. So why did he felt that way about it?

Then he remembered.

He quickly pulled out a scroll from under his jacket, opened it up, quickly looked over its content until he found a section that contained pertinent information.

The Scorpileo's Venom

A poisonous and acidic substance from a dangerous beast called a Scorpileo that is said to be capable of consuming a living being's flesh from the inside out once injected. Even a single, outside touch from the venom can cause one's flesh to disintegrate, and the only way to stop it from spreading further across is to cut it off.

In other words, don't touch the venom. Ever. And you might be wondering how you're supposed to get the venom, then. I found that you don't have to collect the venom in its pure, liquid state. You only need to bring the object that contained traces of the venom, preferably one that has been inflicted very recently, and we can use that as an ingredient to create the cure.

And in case that you don't know what a Scorpileo is, I drew a picture of it down below.

A crude drawing of the beast can be found underneath the section.

Sprig let out a huge gasp.

"Wait… That means…"

Lowering the scroll down, he looked over the large beast's entire appearance once more, to make sure that he was not mistaken. After going over it a few times, he was left with no doubt in his mind about what the beast in front of him really was, and what it held in its large, tail stinger.

"Oh my frog!" he shouted, as he formed a wide smile on his face, and any trace of fear that he had a second ago was replaced by joy. "I can't believe it! I actually found the first ingredient! The first step to turning me back to-!"

BAMF!

Sprig was unable to finish his words, when the Scorpileo swung its paw at him, sending him flying towards a nearby tree where he hit his head hard against.

As he fell down on the ground, the boy lost consciousness.

End of Chapter