Wyn, with Psai and Froggy in tow, hikes through the mountainous areas surrounding the main road. Every few hours, they come across a handful of straggling boomfrogs, and thanks to Wyn’s upgraded abilities, quickly dispatch them. After several days of hunting, many of the regular boomfrogs have been killed.

  It couldn’t be better for Wyn. She levels up once again and continues to gain more experience with her newfound abilities. Fortify Self is useful whenever she’s unable to dodge out of the way of an attack, and she’s able to use her Refined Essentia Manipulation to continue exploring the possibilities of magic in this new world.

  Each night, Wyn climbs up a tree and focuses herself on improving her magical talents. On the first night, Wyn continues improving her understanding of how essentia works. She pulls it from her pool and forms a flat disk of essentia. It takes hours, and the essentia resists her at every step. While it moves freely within her body, anytime she wills it to leave her body for any reason, it refuses. But after hours of work, forcing herself to work into the wee hours of the morning, she manages to create a magic disk.

  Holding it like a frisbee, Wyn throws the disk at a nearby tree, only to be struck with disappointment. The disk doesn’t act like a typical frisbee, and flies through the air in a strange pattern. It bounces from side-to-side midair, each erratic movement causing the disk to lose some of the essentia charged into it. By the time the disk reaches the tree, only a thin remnant of its former self remains, crumbling to the ground in a feeble slump.

  But with morning arriving, she must continue onward in her conquest of boomfrogs, and saves the training for another night.

  The next night, Wyn tests a theory that formed from her previous failure. First, she takes out her essentia generator and sets it on a large branch beside her. She sets one of the monster essences she’s collected into its proper spot, then draws flame-affinity essentia to the tip of her finger. A small mote of essentia appears, no larger than a marble. It swirls with blue energy to start, but as Wyn focuses her flame affinity essentia into the mote, it shifts to a red-orange color.

  The mote grows darker and darker, getting more intensely red as time passes. Pulsing, the mote threatens to burst as the essentia inside becomes overwhelming. Carefully, Wyn points her finger at the essentia generator’s flame just as the marble-sized mote bursts with a tiny jet of flame.

  “OUCH!” Wyn says, the flames scorching her finger.

  Her pain subsides as a smile widens across her face. The generator is lit, and now the essentia can be extracted from the essences as she needs. With the essentia generator at last able to use essences, she’ll be able to continue with her experimentation.

  She creates another mote of essentia, and tries to play with it, but it doesn’t work. The mote forms easily in her palm, but whenever she tries to move the mote, it sinks back into her skin and returns to her essentia pool. No matter what she does, the essentia refuses to act like a physical object, and only responds to her mental commands.

  “Psai, got a question for you.”

  Psai floats closer to her. “Wonderful. Ask away!”

  “Is there a way to physically manipulate essentia? Like make a ball and throw it?”

  Psai blinks a few times, confused. “I am uncertain of your intention. Are you not controlling essentia already?”

  “Yes, I can move the essentia with my mind, but if I try to throw it, or move it somehow, it always fails.”

  Psai considers this for a moment. “You are attempting to throw it?”

  “Yes!” Wyn gestures with both hands, exasperated. “I can feel it in my palm. I can make it hover or twist or pulse but if I try to toss it like a rock, it just collapses. It doesn’t want to move the way I expect it to.”

  “Ah,” Psai says. “Then you are confusing energy with substance.”

  Wyn frowns. “It’s a little ball. I can see it.”

  “You see a concentration,” Psai corrects gently. “Not an object. Essentia is not matter. It is not a physical object you can interact with; it is motion, vibration, potential. You can direct it, yes. But you cannot throw it any more than you can throw heat or sound.”

  Wyn sighs. “So I’ve been getting at this all wrong?”

  “Not wrong,” Psai says, his tone bright and reassuring. “Merely simplified. You control the pattern of energy, not the energy itself. When you release it, it seeks equilibrium. It flows back into your core, or into the world around you. Throwing would imply inertia, but energy does not have mass to carry inertia.”

  “So I’ll never just, I don’t know, lob a fireball?”

  “Oh, you certainly can,” Psai replies cheerfully. “But you wouldn’t be throwing it exactly. You would shape the essentia into a fireball, and upon completing a fireball spell, you grant it the properties of flight through your essentia manipulation.”

  Wyn gives him a long look. “And how do I do that?”

  Psai brightens. “I haven’t the faintest idea!”

  Wyn rolls her eyes. The friendly orb’s words were in stark contradiction with his tone. Ever the eager orb Psai is, and terrified of disappointing her.

  “I… Have I caused you strife, Wyn? You seem upset.”

  “No, it’s not you. It’s this system. Eden, all of it. I feel like there is no real tutorial.”

  “And most players of Eden don’t have me as their companion!” Psai says proudly.

  Wyn stares at him, trying to understand his words. “What do you mean most players don’t have you? I thought you helped everyone.”

  Psai shakes his orb no. “Sadly, that is incorrect. While all players interact with a version of my consciousness during character creation, and while in the interstice, you are likely the only player that has me as a bona fide companion!”

  When Wyn first joined Eden and went through the character creation process, Psai joined her in Eden. Previously, she had assumed that it was part of the game. That he was the intended tutorial character whose sole job is to explain things to the player. But is he more than that?

  Her train of thought is disrupted by Froggy croaking a warning in her direction. Another boomfrog is nearby. She tucks her essentia generator back in her inventory and begins casting a mage bolt. She will get back to Psai later. There are frogs to kill.

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  After another successful hunt, Wyn checks her quest once again. She’s read the description nearly 50 times at this point, so quickly scrolls past the spell text and focuses on the objectives.

  Objectives:

  Defeat Boomfrogs — 12/15

  Defeat Warrior Boomfrogs — 3/10

  Defeat Elder Boomfrog — 1/5

  Defeat Boomfrog Matriarch — 0/1

  With Wyn cutting down so many of the regular boomfrogs, their evolution into warriors has slowed. However, the elder boomfrogs have increased once again. Yet one of them died? Wyn hasn’t encountered one yet, so it must’ve been killed by someone, or something else. The warrior boomfrogs still present her with a significant challenge, so only time will tell if she’s up for the elder variant. She’s grateful one of them has died of unknown circumstances; less work for her after all.

  Nearby, Froggy calls out once again about another frog.

  “Have at it, Froggy, this one’s all yours.”

  The Froggy croaks with excitement and sucks in a gulp of air. With a loud boom, a nearby bush explodes in a sizable fireball. It’s impressive how explosive such a tiny creature could be. Just as he’s done many times before, Froggy absorbs the enemy boomfrog’s essence, growing slightly in size.

  He hops his way back to Wyn, a small rodent in his mouth.

  “Hey! Save some for me.”

  Wyn snatches the rat out of his mouth, much to the frog’s displeasure. While frogs aren’t usually expressive creatures, Froggy sure knows how to pout. Its large frog eyes go wide, begging Wyn for the rat. With a sigh, Wyn shakes her head no. Food has continued to be a major issue on her journey so far. A distinct absence of wildlife has caught Wyn’s attention; she suspects the boomfrogs’ presence is responsible, though she lacks proof.

  Wyn tucks the half-eaten dead rat into her inventory, yet another item to add to her evening pot of food. It’s been five days now since she first met Froggy, and things have continued to go well, but something feels off. She expected to find at least one of the elder boomfrogs by now. While she has thinned the army of frogs, it’s not like she’s taken out many of their strongest.

  She’s only found three warrior boomfrogs so far, and they looked half-dead, their stomachs shrunken and empty. Even their eyes were clouded with exhaustion, far different from Froggy’s bright golden orbs. Wyn ventures a guess that the frogs she’s come across are outcasts, or are frogs hunting far from home out of desperation. Yet despite her searching, she’s not found the boomfrog home.

  But if there is a boomfrog home, there must be a large food source to support it. If she can find the food source, then she can find the frogs. But there have been no signs of any major food sources in the crevices between mountains. Sure, there were the sulfuric apples that some of the boomfrogs had been feeding on, but those couldn’t possibly satisfy all of their nutritional needs.

  Wyn ventures back onto the main road, searching around the areas she first encountered the boomfrogs. The quest mentioned boomfrogs being spotted along the road, so if nothing else, that seemed like a good place to start looking.

  Along the main road, tracks are scarce. Horse hooves and wagon trails hide any sign of the smaller frog creatures, but Wyn doesn’t stop right away. She follows the main road for most of the afternoon, searching for any signs of frogs or struggle. After about an hour, she finds no evidence of a struggle, save the exhausted expressions of travelers.

  She waves one of them down, a large man riding a horse-drawn carriage.

  “Whatcha need there, little lady?” the man asks.

  Wyn resists the urge to roll her eyes. She may be small, but she’s not just a little lady. As the carriage nears, Wyn wishes she had waved down someone else. It reeks of manure, and judging by the oinks coming from inside, is filled with many pigs.

  “I’m hunting boomfrogs out here. Have you seen any?” she asks, doing her best not to breathe.

  “Aye, saw one of ‘em. Was about an hour back now, I think. Real big one too. There were a couple of adventurerin’ types nearby that fought it off. You with them?”

  “No,” says Wyn. “Where did those adventurers head off to?”

  He shrugs. “No idea. Their leader was a big lady; bigger than me even. Said they were huntin’ down goblins and were kind enough to help with the boomfrog. I tossed them a couple coins for the trouble.”

  Wyn nods. While they're not exact directions, they at least give her a direction to go. She nods her thanks to the man and heads off down the road. With any luck, she’ll find these boomfrogs before nightfall.

  Luck, it seemed, was not on Wyn’s side this day. She traveled an hour up the road with no signs of anything significant, save for a single regular boomfrog that Froggy dispatched. Peering toward the horizon, the muddled oranges and yellows of sunset are starting to show behind the cloud cover. If Wyn wants to deal some damage to any of these boomfrogs, she’d better find them quick.

  “Got any ideas, you two?” she asks her companions.

  Psai shakes his orb no, and Froggy stares back at her with his usual lack of understanding. They are sadly of no help when it comes to hunting down boomfrogs.

  As the sunset ends and night falls, Wyn finally spots something of interest. The clean tracks along the main road go muddy, crisscrossing with footprints going in every direction. Across the road, a fallen tree rests, the base shattered from some impact, with flecks of ash marking its trunk. There was a fight here, and judging by the carnage, quite a big one.

  She kneels to study the prints more closely. Boot marks litter the battlefield; some small and hurried, some wide and deep. Several have only three toes, featuring visible claw marks. Goblins, most likely. Then, off to the side, a heavy imprint far larger than the rest dominates the area. The mark is round, cratered at the center, with the surrounding ground blackened.

  “I doubt a person made that. Or a goblin.” Wyn says.

  Psai drifts lower, the faint light from his form glimmering over the mud. “The spherical impact pattern suggests an explosion.”

  “Boomfrog, but larger than we’ve seen so far,” she says. Her attention shifts, focusing on the more human signs of battle. “Look here. Cart tracks dragged off the road. Merchants, maybe. They must’ve been caught in the crossfire. Just like that pig guy said.”

  Psai gives Wyn a questioning look. “He was not a pigman; he just had pigs with him.”

  Wyn chuckles at Psai and rises to her feet. She follows the trail off the road, the signs of battle growing thicker: a broken spear haft, torn leather packs, a shattered shield half-buried in the muck. Scorch marks stain the grass in erratic bursts.

  Froggy hops ahead, croaking softly as if sniffing out the air. Wyn follows his gaze toward a set of enormous ruts in the dirt, dragging lines that lead deeper into the trees.

  Her brow furrows. “That’s too big for a normal boomfrog.”

  “Perhaps a… very well-fed one?” Psai offers.

  “More likely, an elder boomfrog. Might be the dead one marked off in my quest.”

  The trail leads them to a small clearing. There, the ground is glassy and blackened as if lightning struck it. And at the center lies the corpse of a frog. Though it’s far more monster than frog. Its body is easily the size of a horse, skin split and blistered from within. On its head, a crown of spiked horns jutting out, sharp to the touch. Even in death, faint wisps of essentia shimmer along the wounds, flickering like heat mirages.

  Corpse: Elder Boomfrog

  The corpse of a deceased Edler Boomfrog.

  This creature has been killed by another player, and cannot be looted.

  “An Elder… that could prove dangerous.”

  Psai speaks uneasily, voice low. “If there was one, there may be others.”

  Before Wyn can reply, the air trembles.

  A deep, resonant croak rolls through the forest; low and heavy enough that Wyn feels it vibrate in her chest. The sound is almost physical, rattling her bones and setting the leaves shivering. Froggy’s throat pouch quivers in answer, a muted, instinctive echo. A second later, the air splits with the clang of steel, the hum of released essentia, and the sharp, desperate shouts of men.

  Wyn’s pulse quickens. “They’re close.”

  Psai’s glow dims slightly, his voice cautious. “Too close.”

  She scans the treeline. In the deepening dusk, flashes of color flicker through the gaps between trees. Bursts of blue flame light the forest, catching the reflection of shining steel. All echoing with the telltale detonations of a very angry frog. The smell of ozone and burnt moss drifts toward her on the wind.

  She tightens her grip on her staff. Froggy crouches beside her, muscles taut and eyes gleaming. Another dull thud rolls beneath her feet, followed by a faint tremor through the earth.

  Psai drifts closer. “It seems we found them.”

  A brilliant flare of blue light erupts through the treeline, silhouetting a figure falling backward in the distance. The next croak shakes the ground itself, deafening and close. Froggy hisses low in his throat, ready to spring.

  Wyn nods, eyes narrowing. “And it sounds like they’re losing.” Wyn raises her staff, every nerve alight. “Come on. Let’s make sure someone lives to tell the story.”