Toad X Taming X Shadow Spike

The instant his words fell, a massive black silhouette surged upward in the very center of the hard, gray-white plain.

The ground did not crack. Instead, the shadow swelled and rose as though something were pushing it up from a two-dimensional plane.

Then a toad nearly the size of an adult slowly emerged from the shadow.

Jiang Ye finally got a clear look at it.

Its rough skin was covered in dark gray-brown bumps, like a hard crust formed over a dried mudflat.

Its head was broad and flat, with the typical outline of a frog. Dark markings surrounded its two bulging eyes, as though it were wearing a pair of irregular goggles.

Its limbs were thick and powerful, its hind legs especially muscular. As they pressed against the ground, they left two shallow depressions in the hard gravel.

Its most striking feature was on its belly.

A circular pattern stood out clearly.

The Rito Mirror!

It looked like an ancient bronze mirror embedded in the surface of its skin, glinting dully beneath the pale gray light.

No armor, no horns, no exaggerated armaments.

But as it crouched there, the air over the entire open plain seemed to be held down by a heavy pressure.

Toad!

"Grr...!"

The low rumble welled up from deep inside Toad's body, carrying a signal of some kind.

The next second, its tongue shot out.

It was so fast that Jiang Ye's eyes could barely track the dark red afterimage.

Toad's long tongue shot from its mouth like a living snake, aimed straight at Jiang Ye several meters away.

It sprang out as fast as a cracking whip, its surface coated in slippery fluid that left a gleaming trail through the air.

Jiang Ye did not run. Instead, he took half a step back with his right foot and swiftly crossed his hands in front of him, forming a rabbit shadow puppet.

"Rabbit Escape!"

Thousands upon thousands of black rabbits swarmed out of the shadow at his feet, instantly covering the entire stretch of hard ground between him and Toad.

They leaped and rolled, scattering in every direction like a pot of black rice porridge overturned and splattered across the ground.

At the very last instant before it could lick Jiang Ye's face, Toad's tongue veered off course.

It had targeted the larger mass of moving creatures first.

The long tongue swept across the ground, smashing more than a dozen Rabbit Escape clones at once and wrapping around several others in an attempt to drag them back into its mouth.

Jiang Ye seized the chance to sink into the shadow at his feet.

Shadow Stealth!

He skimmed along the ground beneath the swarm of Rabbit Escape clones, quickly moving out of the normal attack range of Toad's tongue.

Toad's tongue shot out and retracted again and again, striking and coiling around the rabbits.

Each strike took out dozens of Rabbit Escape clones, but each time, the same number of rabbits poured out from where Jiang Ye had disappeared to replace them.

The original Rabbit Escape crouched quietly behind a raised pile of gravel in the distance, its red eyes narrowed as it idly twitched its ears.

There was no end to its clones.

One gave birth to two, two to three, and three to all things, in an endless cycle of life.

And after extending and retracting repeatedly, Toad's tongue had developed an almost imperceptible sluggishness.

Jiang Ye resurfaced from a shadow ten meters away and brought his hands down into a wolf-head shadow puppet.

"Divine Dog: Totality!"

A massive black-and-white mastiff leaped from the shadow. The instant it landed, all four claws dug into the ground, its forequarters lowered, and a deep growl rumbled in its throat.

Without pausing for an instant, its massive body burst forward at a speed utterly at odds with its size, hurtling at Toad's flank like a black-and-white cannonball.

Toad was forced to retract its tongue and turn around.

But Totality was faster than it could react.

The giant dog struck the side of Toad's face with one paw, tearing three shallow gashes in its rough gray-brown skin. Dark red body fluid seeped from the wounds.

Toad let out a muffled croak.

Jiang Ye's entire sequence of moves had been smooth and seamless, without the slightest delay or hesitation.

Not long ago, he had already rehearsed this very scene countless times in his mind and planned his tactics around Toad's weaknesses.

Toad had been at a disadvantage from the very beginning!

Toad now hopped several steps back and steadied itself on its hind legs. Its broad head turned as its gaze shifted between Divine Dog: Totality and Jiang Ye, who was maintaining Rabbit Escape in the distance.

Jiang Ye did not look at its expression.

He had long known the logic behind Toad's tactics.

He would first try to capture the nearest enemy with his long tongue. When suppressed at close range, Toad would use its jumping power to leap high and dive from the air at a distant enemy.

That was its final killing move.

Sure enough, Toad kicked off hard with its hind legs.

Its massive body sprang into the air, then dove toward Jiang Ye beneath the gray-white sky like a falling boulder.

But Jiang Ye simply stood there, making no move to dodge.

He took a black cylinder from Shadow Space, pulled the safety pin, crouched, and rolled the bomb along the ground to a point two meters ahead of where Toad would land. Only then did he dodge to the side.

Boom...!

In an instant, the fire and shock wave of the explosion struck Toad head-on just as it was about to land.

The blast knocked Toad off its intended landing point, sending it crashing onto its side on the gravel. A large patch of skin on the outside of its right hind leg was blown open, and dark body fluid dripped down its rough skin onto the ground with a faint sizzling sound.

Jiang Ye stood up and brushed the dust from his cuffs.

"Next round."

Divine Dog: Totality pounced again without waiting for Toad to regain its stance.

The swarm of Rabbit Escape clones surged forward again like a tide, tangling around Toad's limbs and lower back, interfering with its jumping and balance.

Toad lashed out with its long tongue again and again, trying to break through the blockade.

But the Rabbit Escape clones moved too frequently, and every strike could only catch clones that could be sacrificed at any moment.

Meanwhile, Divine Dog: Totality's claws kept leaving fresh gashes across its body.

Three minutes, five minutes, eight minutes, ten minutes...

As time passed, Toad's movements began to grow sluggish.

Its tongue retracted noticeably slower, and its skin was covered in scars left by bombs and claws. Wounds of varying depths marked its once-thick body.

Its hind legs no longer had that explosive spring. Each jump fell half a meter shorter, and landing became more difficult as well.

But Jiang Ye's expression showed no sign of relief. Instead, it grew even more solemn.

He knew Toad still had a trump card left.

The closer this kind of defensive Shikigami came to destruction, the more its final instincts would erupt.

It was an urge to devour, regardless of the consequences, at any cost.

It would not flee or retreat. It would use the last of its strength to try to swallow the threat before it whole.

That was the deadliest stage of the entire ritual!

Jiang Ye had Divine Dog: Totality withdraw to the side and reduced the Rabbit Escape swarm to just over thirty, scattered around the field.

He stood in the very center of the open plain, less than six meters from Toad.

He had no way back-or rather... he had never intended to retreat!

Toad's body went still for an instant.

Then the last of its consciousness drove it to launch its final attack.

Its long tongue shot out at an unprecedented speed, abandoning all restraint and aim as it recklessly curled toward Jiang Ye.

At that instant, Jiang Ye glanced down at the shadow by his feet, a smile appearing on his lips.

He held the last bomb in his hand and pulled the safety pin, but did not throw it.

He simply let go, allowing the bomb to fall onto the hard ground at his feet.

"Clang."

The sound of metal striking the ground rang out especially clearly across the empty plain.

The next moment, Jiang Ye fell backward into the shadow.

His body vanished into its depths in an instant, like a drop of ink dissolving into water.

Boom...!

With a tremendous bang, the bomb exploded where Jiang Ye had disappeared.

Gravel and dust churned and flew as the shock wave spread along the ground.

Toad's long tongue curled into the center of the explosion at precisely that moment.

The shock wave and intense heat tore the slippery tongue apart, blasting it in two. The front half turned to ash in the explosion, while the back half drooped limply onto the gravel, charred and twisted.

Toad let out a low whimper that sounded as though it had been squeezed from deep within a swamp.

Its final attack had been completely broken!

And in a shadow less than two meters behind Toad, Jiang Ye silently emerged from the ground.

His entire body was covered in pitch-black shadow armor. The aftermath of the explosion had left cracks across its surface, but had not harmed him in the slightest.

He raised his head and looked at Toad before him, battered to its limit.

The next instant, he pressed his right hand against the ground. Shadow flowed down his arm and into the earth as he used a new move he had recently developed.

"Shadow Spike!"

As his words fell, the ground rose silently.

A sharp black shadow stabbed upward from directly beneath Toad's belly, piercing straight through the Rito Mirror pattern.

Deadly and unavoidable!

The instant it was pierced, Toad's body went still.

Its bulging eyes blinked one last time. Then its entire massive body began to crumble from the edges inward into tiny gray specks of light, like furnace ash scattered by the wind.

The specks of light merged, strand by strand, into the depths of the shadow on the ground.

A moment later, the plain was empty, with only the gravel ground, scarred and mottled by explosions, left behind.

The air was filled with the mingled smells of gunpowder smoke and wet mud.

Jiang Ye stood where he was, breathing heavily as he looked down at the shadow beneath his feet, now still once more.

A new outline had appeared in the depths of the shadow, heavy and solid, lying prone on the ground.

It was Toad's shape!

He closed his eyes and felt the flow of Aura within his body.

He had used up more than half, but the taming had succeeded.

From that moment on, his third Shikigami, Toad, was officially his to command.

Jiang Ye opened his eyes, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.

Then he opened both hands with his palms facing outward, bringing his thumbs, index fingers, middle fingers, and ring fingers together to mimic a toad's mouth.

His little fingers bulged outward and curled to form frog eyes, and the shadow took the shape of Toad.

"Toad!"