Chapter 42 Battle with the Ashtongue

Chapter 42 Battle with the Ashtongue
From the woods, the screams continued. With them came a deep sense of dread. They were being hunted.

“Jax, something is near,” Mira said as she pressed in closer. “It can’t be one of those… demon creatures, can it?” She shuddered at the thought of their presence plaguing the outside world. “You did kill that one on the turtle, right?”

Before he could answer, the pressure built.

An enormous, low-slung beast stepped out of the woodline, its scaled body moving with the heavy drag of something built to crush rather than chase. Heat bled from the seams of its armor-like hide, and its tongue slapped against the dirt in front of it, leaving black scorch marks wherever it touched.

Without a word, they moved into position. Jax backed Mira while ice flashed outward from her in droves. Then she lunged toward the monster, sliding beneath its lashing tongue as flame and smoldering heat trailed in its wake.

Her ice-covered blade scraped against its scales, shearing pieces free but never fully punching through.

“This thing is tough, Jax. Can you open some space for me?” Mira said as she ducked another strike. “See if your spikes can chunk some of its scales off near the neck.”

Before she had time to finish, bolts of stone erupted from Jax, striking the beast repeatedly just below its neckline. The creature screamed as fire rolled out through the gap in its armor. The force of the impacts drove its front end down, cracked scales peeling wider around the wound.

“There—get it, Mira!” Jax yelled, hunched over from the strain of using so much mana at once.

Like a glass bottle smashing against concrete, Mira blitzed the creature. “Ice Shatter!” she shouted as she drove her blade into the exposed opening.

Ice detonated inside the beast.

Spikes burst outward from within before shattering soon after, leaving behind an almost hollow creature. Then it began to dissolve, the mana it left behind fading slowly. In its place sat a beautiful jewelry box, polished dark and elegant against the dirt.

“Did that monster just disappear?” Mira asked as she walked over to the box and picked it up for inspection. “This feels more like what happens inside the dungeon. Can you explain?”

“To the best of my knowledge, monsters in this area follow more of a cycle-of-life pattern,” Jax explained, reaching for a book to help him. “They’re born from ambient mana, and after they die, they return to it. Sometimes they leave behind a drop, similar to the ones we’ve gotten from beasts inside the dungeon before.”

He closed the book and slipped it back into his backpack.

“What did it drop anyway?” he asked, walking over to Mira. She was inspecting the box, rolling it around in her hands, her eyes gleaming more with every turn. “Seems like you know what it is.”

Mira carefully lifted the lid.

Nestled inside on dark velvet sat a pair of earrings shaped like flames, their metal worked in curling red-gold lines like captured fire.

For a second, neither of them spoke.

“They’re gorgeous, Jax… can I have them?” she asked, already glowing with joy and determination. “What if they’re—”

Cutting in to steal the punchline, he grinned. “Magical? Mira, no kidding, they’re magical. Put them on.”

Without waiting for a second approval, she removed them from the box, pulled her hair back, and slipped them in one by one. After giving each a soft tug to make sure they sat snugly, she turned toward Jax, practically gleaming.

“So… do they look good?”

“They look fantastic. How do they feel?” he asked, studying her to see if they had changed her aura at all. “You seem the same. Definitely still hard-headed too.”

“Hey. Tenacious. Get it right,” she teased back, sticking her tongue out before laughing. “I don’t feel any kind of magical power coming from them either. We can sell them whenever we get a chance next… if you want, Jax.”

Almost biting his own tongue, Jax explained that the drop was probably just the base jewelry. Without any knowledge of the local fauna or the kinds of drops they left behind, he could not offer much more than that.

“What are we going to do with this egg, by the way?” Mira asked as she walked toward the egg and Jax’s rest setup.

His area was as organized as ever, every item set in a place that made it easy to reach in an emergency. Next to his bed sat the Wardback egg, just as large as it had been the day it spawned. It had never shown any signs of life beyond the heat and mana that bled from it.

“I’m hoping it hatches soon. Carrying it is getting tiring,” he answered, letting out a huff as he joined her. “I haven't felt anything from the mark since it appeared. My mana seems to have stabilized. That fight proved that much.”

He moved closer and rested a hand on top of the shell, giving it a quick pat. “It’ll come out when it wants to, I guess.”

The moment his hand touched the egg, mana bled out.

It came in a sudden rush, visibly thick, emerald and gold pouring across the shell in slow rivers of light. Cracks formed near the top and raced downward in branching lines, spreading all the way to the base. Pulses rang out from inside it, deep and steady, rolling through both Jax and Mira where they stood.

The sensation hit them instantly.

Warmth. Relief. Joy so pure it almost didn’t feel human.

“Jax…” Mira whispered, eyes wide. “It’s hatching. I can feel it.”

Another pulse rolled out, stronger this time. The shadows behind them danced wildly as the mana brightened, turning the whole camp strange and holy. The crack at the center widened with a sharp split.

Light poured through.

Jax took an involuntary step back, his hand falling away from the shell as the pressure in the air changed again, not threatening this time, but enormous. Alive. Watching.

The egg split wider.

And whatever was inside was about to meet them.