Suddenly, the former frog was back.

  Not in the smooth, gradual way as before, that would allow it to acclimate. But in a dramatic shift: one moment it was in a formless state, basking in unbound potential, and the next it was curled on the ground, aware once again.

  A passing thought, that maybe it could admire the changes better on its feet, and barely a twitch of a leg later it was standing, staring down at its form. A quite bigger one, considering how much farther away the ground looked, and with far less limbs - a pair above, and a pair below. A paltry amount compared with before.

  But there was so much more power coursing through them. And finesse.

  It had got exactly what it had wished for: everything had improved, even where it looked like it hadn't at first glance. Its claws, for example, might be duller - so much shorter they probably couldn't be used to strike anything anymore - but they'd left space for far more versatile digits, which it couldn't wait to explore the new possibilities of.

  But later. There would be time to test its new, raw strength soon enough. What else had improved was far more compelling at the moment...

  Its gaze moved to the mouth of the cave. To the little mystery of where this was exactly, and the insistent tug at the back of its mind.

  Right now, it was feeling much more contemplative than self-satisfied.

  It moved up with a slow, confident stride.

  The transformation had taken long enough for the surge to have seemingly subsided entirely, but the former frog felt confident it would have been able to leisurely take a stroll regardless.

  Even if it had decided to postpone the gloating, it couldn't help but admire its new might in every little thing: in the controlled explosiveness of its steps; in the certainty that it could pull off jumps, landings and ridiculous maneuvers that would've been impossible before; in the fact that no creature around felt threatening in the slightest, anymore. None whatsoever. If felt like could squeeze a stone into dust! ... but better avoid testing that out. The fragments would hurt in case it was true, and the failure would hurt more in the very likely case it wasn't.

  When pivoting away from the bison's shape during the transformation, this one had looked a bit unimpressive. But that was only skewed perspective: even the knight and the dark one would look disappointing next to the bison. And just like them, not only was its real power beneath the skin - in more ways than one - but they didn't actually lack raw physical might at all, no matter the appearances.

  In what felt like no time, the former frog crested the hill and found out this was one of the farthest reaches of the valley, but still on the same side as its little cave. The hill that cave was inside of easily seen from here - the dark one still on its own summit, even closer.

  How had the frog managed to get all the way here while in that terrible state would forever remain a mystery.

  Below, the creatures moving towards the castle were still quite a lot, but far less than before. Which meant the surge was well and truly over and they were now in a downtime. The knight had pulled back, the guards were expanding their territory and the dark one was staring. All was as it had been many times before.

  But the frog was watching it as if it were the first time.

  So many things were so much clearer now. More than just having gotten smarter, but a change similar to a new instinct, and yet different: some matters that had eluded it before, now the frog just knew. Was this a normal result of transforming into such a superior form, or an unexpected consequence of its wishes? Of focusing more on its ‘moves’ and its ever-growing craving for the fleeting, mysterious principle behind the knight’s whisper? Perhaps a mixture of both. Most likely both.

  It had started subtle, almost as soon as it had gotten on its feet. But it was gradually coming into focus, slithering its way from the recesses of its mind where it had been relegated, to the very front. The frog couldn't have done anything but resist the temptation and push away the thought. Relegate it to a remote corner of its mind, where it had become a weak, but constant and unrelenting pressure battering at its determination, trying to make the frog throw itself to its death, like its companions had done.

  But whatever the former frog was now, it knew better: something very wrong was going on here.

  There was a hole inside the castle. Nothing else could be perceived about what was in there, but its awareness of essence had improved enough to allow for sensing this... void, where none of it could go.

  Clearly, the void was anathema: any creature that touched it would find itself stripped of essence and cease to exist. The former frog would be no exception.

  And just as clearly, it was the collateral.

  Making sense of this discovery, of why instinct would guide it to that thing, was quite hard. But the truth was undeniable: past the frenzy, past the guards, and past the knight... lay only a different kind of death.

  The world after the great humming... whereas to the frog it had felt like everything was pulled in different directions - and in one more than the others - to what it was now the world felt like had been a flat surface, which something had smashed against, tilting the entirety of it. So that every unfortunate thing on top was now plummeting to its death, with no way out. They were just taking different paths and amounts of time.

  All that marching, fighting and giving their all... just to get killed in a different way. And none seemed to be aware of this truth.

  Just as they hadn't been. Its friends. Or rather, those clueless creatures that had happened to share some of its journey. Because this too was clear now: whatever the frog had meant back then with the concept, they hadn't reciprocated.

  It had been somewhat suspicious even back then, to be fair, but ignoring the issue had been rather easy with its lower intellect. Now it was impossible: they had been entirely too simple to feel something like friendship.

  The frog had been simpler too, it knew. Even now, there was still much it missed. But nothing compared to them. It should've been so obvious since the beginning that they were just non-predators going in the same direction and with barely enough sense to stay where they were safer! That safe place happened to be with the frog, and so they followed along. There was truly nothing else to it, for them.

  Perhaps only the grasshopper…

  But it would never know. And thinking about that one felt even worse.

  The sheer disregard they would show when they just refused to help others in danger… The frog had thought they didn’t know they needed to help, but now it realized they hadn’t even considered anything but themselves at all. And why would they, when they struggled to do even that? After all, if the frog hadn’t fed them directly, most would’ve left all those gems lying around. And the way they’d just walked to their death, following the calling... not any different than the everything else around.

  But the worst part was that the frog... could empathize.

  No matter what its new senses insisted, a big part of its mind felt that it too should obey. Throw itself to its death like every other creature around wanted to do.

  ... All besides one.

  Its gaze moved, once again, to dark one - feeling only a passing disappointment that the creature wasn't looking back, acknowledging this achievement.

  No, the dark one was here for something else. Whatever its objective, it wasn't the collateral. How could it be when essence refused to even touch its skin?

  Just as always, the former frog felt admiration for the creature, and still doubted that it could win a fight against it, even now. The bison had fallen like nothing after all, and that thing had much more experience with its own body.

  Even if once the frog got acclimated too it would be much better off than the bison, that still might not be quite enough. For how much it had accomplished…

  Well, another thing it had realized was that these ‘annoyances’ weren’t just there to annoy it: they must be some part of itself, something about its strength. Why else would they appear each time it got stronger or was thinking about that, otherwise?

  If only it could understand what they were about... Perhaps then they could help it assess its capabilities, in what they were lacking and in how much it had improved.

  Case in point.

  ... for how much it had accomplished, the former frog might still fail to measure up. If not to the dark one, then to the challenge.

  It wasn’t just a matter of strength. That was the least thing actually. But becoming this much smarter made it realize just how not smart it was, and there were so many things it still couldn’t understand, so many others it knew it missed but had no way to get. The mystery of the calling and the collateral - what they were, and why reaching the latter still felt like a good idea - was only the biggest of them.

  This might not be enough. It needed another transformation to reach completeness.

  But would it be coming? This one was from the bison, and in all its travels the frog hadn’t met anything that felt stronger than that. Once it trained this body, would there be anything that could stand up to it?

  Of course there was the one it was looking at right now, but the dark one felt completely… alien. Even if it managed to get its hands on the dark one’s gem - or of a creature such as that - could it even make use of it? If there even was a gem in there, in the first place. The dark one felt so empty and different from anything the frog had met… Incomplete maybe, if in a much different way.

  Most likely, the frog would be stuck in this form and with these limits for good.

  ...

  ...To think that such a huge step forward would leave it wistful, more than anything! So many things were clearer now, but it felt like the more it found out, the more it realized was missing!

  Ah, but this wouldn’t stop it, obviously. There were still a lot of improvements to make: things to get used to, gems to absorb, skills to train.

  Looking around, the former frog found...

  but it couldn’t keep going by the 'former frog', could it? Since it didn’t feel like a frog anymore, it needed something else.

  There was a name that felt right enough for this body. But should it really settle for that? After all, it had been 'the frog' for such a long time and didn't want to repeat the experience: if it wished to become even more, it should better avoid a name that would need to be dropped later, lest it stick for longer than wanted. Because it definitely didn’t feel satisfied like this.

  Without a better option, it was better to return to something... neutral. Maybe a bit too self-important now, but it was the best it had.

  Back to the matter at hand, looking at these creatures all around, the being found that it felt even more reluctant at fighting them than before: they were too simple, too much lesser to pick on them, even if they happened to attack first.

  Luckily, there were some others it didn’t feel reluctant in slaughtering at all.