The road to the wetlands was paved with regret, at least for Kazuma. He walked a few paces ahead of his new companions, a desperate attempt to create a buffer of sanity between himself and them. It wasn't working. Their unique brands of idiocy seemed to radiate outwards, enveloping him in an aura of secondhand embarrassment.
"Are we there yet?" Deadpool whined for the seventh time in ten minutes. He was poking a stray wildflower with the tip of one of his katanas, looking profoundly bored. "This scenery is a snooze-fest. Trees, grass, dirt road. It's like the tutorial area of every RPG ever. There's no environmental storytelling. Where are the abandoned wagons with tragic backstory-implying skeletons? Where are the suspiciously convenient treasure chests?"
"It's the countryside, what do you expect?" Kazuma snapped over his shoulder. "And stop unsheathing your swords! You'll scare away the… well, the birds, I guess."
"Hmph! A goddess such as myself should not be forced to walk on such unpaved, common ground," Aqua huffed from the rear, delicately trying to keep her celestial boots from getting dusty. "In the heavens, our paths are made of polished starlight. And we certainly don't associate with… with delinquents who smell faintly of stolen undergarments."
Deadpool stopped poking the flower and turned to her. "For your information, that smell is called 'victory'. It's the sweet perfume of a successful acquisition. And besides, I'm not the one who got fired from paradise for poor job performance. You're basically a divine intern now. You should be happy to have a job."
"It was not a firing! It was a… a temporary, divinely mandated sabbatical!"
"Right. And I'm just a misunderstood anti-hero. Tell it to the toads, sister."
Kazuma groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. This was his life now. He was the exasperated parent on a road trip with two bickering, super-powered children.
After another miserable twenty minutes, the landscape began to change. The solid ground gave way to marshy turf, and the air grew thick with the smell of damp earth and stagnant water. They had arrived. The wetlands were dotted with large ponds and populated by reeds as tall as a man. And sitting placidly near one of these ponds were their targets.
The Giant Toads were… giant. They were the size of small cars, their mottled green-and-brown skin glistening unpleasantly in the sun. They sat perfectly still, their huge, bulging eyes blinking slowly, their expandable throat sacs pulsing with a deep, resonant bwwwwoooop.
"Okay, there they are," Kazuma said, pulling his party behind a large clump of reeds. He unrolled the quest parchment. "The Guild says their main forms of attack are their long tongues and just… swallowing people whole. They're slow and not very bright, but they're tough. Here's the plan: I'll use my Create Water spell to make puddles and my Freeze spell to trap their feet. While they're immobilized, you two hit them with everything you've got. Understood?"
Aqua sniffed haughtily. "A fine plan, for a mere mortal. But unnecessary. You forget who you are dealing with. I am a goddess! A creature as lowly as a toad is no match for my divine authority. Watch and learn how true power is wielded."
Before Kazuma could tackle her, she broke from cover. She strode toward the nearest toad with an air of absolute superiority, her staff held high.
"Behold, foul creature!" she boomed, her voice echoing across the marsh. "I am Aqua, the Goddess of Water! Your very essence is subservient to me! Bow down before my magnificent radiance and prepare to be purified!"
The toad stared at her. Its throat sac pulsed. Its huge, lidless eyes blinked once. Then, its massive mouth opened and its tongue, a thick, sticky appendage the length of a fire hose, shot out. It wrapped around Aqua's waist with a wet thwump and yanked her off her feet.
"Wha…HEY!" was all she managed to get out before she was reeled in like a fish and swallowed whole. The toad's throat bulged for a moment, and then it let out a contented-sounding burp.
Kazuma stared, horrified. His plan had lasted for approximately twelve seconds.
Deadpool, on the other hand, was observing the scene with a critical eye. "Well, that was a thing that happened," he remarked, rubbing the chin of his mask. "I'll give her a 2 for presentation, but a 9 for comedic timing. The abruptness really sells it."
"Don't just stand there, do something!" Kazuma shrieked, drawing his own short sword. "It's going to digest her!"
"Nah, she'll be fine," Deadpool said dismissively. "Goddesses are probably full of preservatives. And anyway, I'm not getting slime on my katanas. You know how hard it is to get viscera out of the fuller? It's a whole process. I need a different approach."
While Kazuma was having a panic attack, Deadpool began gathering rocks from the ground. "The problem here is not one of power, but of motivation. This toad is content. It has a full belly. We need to make it… discontent."
He started pelting the toad with rocks. Not hard enough to injure it, but just enough to be profoundly annoying. Each rock made a dull thok against its slimy hide.
Thok.Thok.Thok.
"Hey! Fatso! Yeah, you! The one who just ate the party's only healer!" Deadpool shouted. "Your mother was a tadpole and your father smelled of elderberries! I've seen faster-moving glaciers! You're the reason they invented the word 'sluggish'!"
The toad shifted its immense weight, letting out a low, irritated gurgle. It seemed more confused than angry.
"It's not working!" Kazuma yelled, making a few tentative slashes at the toad's leg, which had all the effect of hitting a truck tire with a butter knife.
"Patience, grasshopper. Psychological warfare is a delicate art." Deadpool picked up a particularly large, flat rock. "Phase two."
With a flick of his wrist, he skipped the rock across the surface of a nearby pond. It bounced once, twice, three times, and then flew up and smacked the toad directly in its bulging eye with a wet splat.
That got its attention. The toad let out a roar of infuriated pain. Its mouth flew open and it wretched violently, vomiting up a torrent of slimy, half-digested pond water and, thankfully, a still-living goddess.
Aqua lay on the ground, drenched in a thick, translucent goo, weeping hysterically. "It was dark and slimy and it smelled awful!" she cried, curled in the fetal position.
The toad's roar had alerted its brethren. Two more massive amphibians turned their attention toward the party and began to hop ponderously in their direction.
"Okay! Now they're mad!" Kazuma screamed.
Aqua shot to her feet, her face a mask of tear-streaked, slime-covered fury. "You… you foul, disgusting, slimy BASTARD!" she shrieked at the toad that had eaten her. All her divine grace was gone, replaced by pure, unadulterated rage. She drew back her fist, which began to glow with a brilliant, holy light.
"GOD BLOW!"
She punched the toad square in its jaw. The sound was like a thunderclap. Despite its immense size, the creature was lifted off its feet and sent flying backwards, landing with a sickening crunch that shattered its bones. It lay still, very much dead.
Deadpool let out a low whistle. "Damn. Remind me not to get on her bad side."
The other two toads were now almost upon them. Kazuma, seeing Aqua's success, felt a surge of courage. He thrust his hand forward. "Freeze!"
A jet of icy energy shot out, encasing the lead toad's feet in thick, solid ice, just as he had planned. It tried to hop and immediately fell on its face.
"It worked!" Kazuma cheered.
"Nice one, kid!" Deadpool yelled. He finally drew his katanas. "My turn! But I'm not touching the slimy parts!"
He rushed forward, not at the toad's body, but at the long, sticky tongue that was shooting toward him. With a movement so fast it was almost a blur, he leaped into the air, did a complete flip over the incoming appendage, and landed behind it. In a single, fluid motion, he sliced the tongue clean off at its base.
The toad froze, its eyes wide with shock and pain, before it toppled over, incapacitated.
They had killed three. Two to go.
The final two toads attacked at once. One lunged for Aqua, who was still fuming. The other opened its mouth wide and swallowed Deadpool whole before he even had a chance to quip.
"WADE!" Kazuma yelled.
Inside the toad, it was dark, cramped, and smelled like a swamp had died.
"I told you this was a bad idea," stated the white box calmly. "Current environment is highly acidic. Suit integrity is compromised."
"IT'S SO GROSS! GET US OUT! GET US OUT!" shrieked the yellow box.
"Oh, this is disgusting! This is the worst thing that's ever happened to me, and I've been blown up by my own grenades!" Deadpool's voice echoed from within the toad's belly. "When I get out of here, I am going to be so emotionally scarred!"
The toad that had swallowed him suddenly began to spasm. It looked confused, then pained. Its stomach began to bulge and contort in unnatural ways. From within, Kazuma could hear the distinct, muffled sounds of twin katanas being put to work.
SHING! SLICE! HACK!
With a final, wet explosion, Deadpool burst out of the toad's side like a party guest jumping out of a cake, drenched head-to-toe in gore and digestive fluid.
"FREEDOM!" he roared, holding his bloody swords aloft. He was a horrific sight.
The final toad, seeing what had happened to all of its friends, seemed to have a moment of dawning intelligence. It let out a terrified croak, turned around, and began to hop away as fast as its massive legs could carry it.
The three of them stood there, panting, covered in various amounts of slime and toad guts. They had won. They had completed the quest.
Deadpool looked down at himself, at the goo dripping from his suit. "I feel… violated," he whispered. He then proceeded to fall to his knees and scrape handfuls of dirt and grass onto himself, trying in vain to scrub the slime away. "The filth! I can't get it off!"
Kazuma just stared at the carnage, at his weeping goddess and his filth-caked mercenary. This was his party. This was his victory.
It felt an awful lot like defeat.