BXBX NOVEL Chapter 44: Burn
Seeing this, Chang loaded another bolt, preparing his next attack. He didn’t run away after the first attack because the scarlet tongue had showed him how good the bullfrog’s dynamic vision was – it could even intercept the flying bolt. No matter how fast he could run away, he couldn’t escape anyways.
Plus, from what he had known, frogs had good dynamic vision but not static vision. Therefore, Chang was quietly and calmly changing the bolt.
However, he was wrong.
His information was outdated. The idea that frogs had poor static vision was an old notion; they evolved a lot after the red fog.
Therefore, just when he was pulling the string, a scarlet tongue swept towards him from outside the grass bush in just a blink of an eye.
Chang didn’t have time to dodge at all, the horrifying long tongue wrapped around his waist and he felt an enormous force coming from it, pulling him upward. Chang was 60 kilograms but instantly, he was caged in its tongue as if he was a mosquito. While the tongue was retracting, Chang made efforts to maintain balance of his body, and while he was nearing the big bloody mouth, he was silently calculating the rapidly narrowing distance between him and the bullfrog.
3 meters, 2 meters, 1 meter...
Bang!
Finally, Chang hit the edge of its mouth, but he was well prepared for this scenario; He stretched out his body widely so that his limbs could hold the mouth open. It was a tough battle between the biting force of the bullfrog and the power that Chang was using to prevent the bullfrog’s mouth from closing.
A level 5 and a level 4 were not that different in power. Chang was stuck in between its upper and lower jaw. Although he felt the force became stronger, he still managed to keep it open. Suddenly, he noticed some strange mucus on its oral lining.
The mucus was grass-green and exuded a pungent smell; it must be either toxic or extremely corrosive. At the same time, he looked down to the tongue that was still wrapped around his waist, there was mucus secreting from its taste buds too. His t-shirt started producing some smoke after touching the mucus, and a stream of heat came after the smoke on his waist.
“It secrets acid?!” Chang was shocked after he started to feel the pain.
Time waited for no one!
Although Chang was in panic, he didn’t lose his pace. He clearly knew that it was impossible for him to escape in this moment, so he chose an alternative – He held up the frog palate with his left hand arduously and aligned the crossbow to the center of its mouth quickly.
Whoosh! He pulled the trigger again.
Without the keratin armour, the bolt easily cut through the air and pierced the oral lining. It slowed down after went through the lining but it continued to penetrate to the abdominal cavity as if it was a marmot digging through the ground.
“Pop.” The bolt had been deeply inserted into the bullfrog’s body.
The unexpected injury caused the green acidic mucus to be ejected from its mouth by reflex. The acidic streams were so forceful that it splashed onto Chang’s body like a storm. His t-shirt started to burn off first, and the extremely hot sensation became more apparent on the front of his body. Even though Chang was strong-minded, he could not bear it and started twitching up.
The acidic burning almost burned off his skin but not his mind. Under the pain, Chang threw away his crossbow and took out the scalpel from the pocket of his pants. He used his greatest strength to slice apart that scarlet tongue.
The scalpel cut down half of that thin tongue and when the tongue tendon fractured, it sounded like a violin string was cut off.
The bullfrog instinctively retracted the tongue from the pain, and Chang also fell back onto the ground from its mouth.
Stepping on the ground solidly, Chang didn’t step back at all but continued to clench the scalpel. And then he advanced, rushing to the front of the bullfrog and stabbing into the delicate skin on its mandible; A vertical cut was created when he jumped up high, the cut was about half meter long and its blood poured down from the top of Chang’s head. He immediately withdrew and picked up the crossbow that he just threw away. He now calmly loaded a bolt in few meters away while looking at the bullfrog struggle vigorously.
Whoosh!
The third bolt hit its target – it was completely lodged into the frog’s watery eye.
After this shot, Chang was sure that the bullfrog had lost its ability of escaping. There were two bolt in its abdominal cavity and eye respectively and the one in the stomach had make a deep penetration. Other than that, the cut on its mandible was fatal since it sliced open its throat. It would be dead even though it had such a strong vitality.
Everything fell within his predictions. The frog convulsed a few times and tried to jump away from Chang, but the last jump was also its last step; it spun in the air then fell back on its back. The blood kept oozing out from the mandible and it was twitching involuntarily. It was dying.
After seeing his prey became lifeless, Chang loosened his taut nerves completely, and the pain that had been repressed, came back to him violently—his attention was directed away when he was battling with the bullfrog, but he was relaxed now. The extreme sensation flooded his body and mind. Chang quickly took off his shirt and checked his burn marks.
Looking down, he found his entire upper body up to his nose had been burned, blisters in all sizes were spread on top of the burn mark. His body had turned red and was rapidly darkening. The intense burning pain came from his whole upper body, making him scream hopelessly.
“Ah——-!” His scream was shrill; the corrosive burn was one of the most painful forms of injury. He felt like someone had lit up fire on his body, and subconsciously he scratched his body, hoping that can reduce the suffering. But instead, the scratching resulted in quite an amount of charred skin falling off.
“Chang!” Jing’s voice came from 10 meters away, she detected that level 5 organism was weakening constantly and Chang’s index had been fluctuating up and down. She had inferred the result of this battle.
Parting the grass, she finally found them, and then she saw a charred and scarlet Chang.
“Ah!!!” Acid burns were not fatal at the beginning, but the complication came after made some terrifying marks. Some mucus remnants kept making more blisters.
“Chang, what happened?” Jing cried anxiously after she saw he was suffering. “What, what made this?”
“Don’t touch me, the mucus is corrosive, get me some water... quickly.” Chang didn’t wait for Jing to reach to her water bottle. He hastily snatched the water bottle from her waist, which was their water supply for the whole day. He impatiently poured the cold water.
The whole bottle of water flew down from his nose, the acid was diluted. The smoking was stopping and the charring was terminated temporarily. He started to breathe deeply while lying on the ground.
“Chang, are you all right?” Nervously looking at Chang breathing with difficulty, Jing cried out loudly “Answer me, are you okay?”
“I....... I am...fine.” Chang lied on the ground, the subsequent complication of burns caused his muscles to spasm unnaturally, but his words sneaked through his clenching teeth. “I....I feel like...I ... can’t ... stand up. Go..... go back, tell Mr. Li.... tell him.... I got......burned....”
“And..... there is.......tons....of.... meat...” His voice became quieter.