• Published 7th Sep 2022
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Ponosuba! - 2SuriYourself



Finding herself facing a very strange afterlife, the former-human Twilight Sparkle sets out on her new life's quest to save Equestria from chaos with the help of her unlikely new companions!

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Chapter 3- Frog Horizon

As I woke up the next morning, I nearly fell out of bed in shock. I’d managed to forget for a moment what had happened yesterday, so waking up with hooves caught me off guard enough to make me nearly start screaming.

Okay. Actually start screaming. Somehow Celestia slept through it, but Fluttershy came rushing in. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

I calmed myself down. No need to make her panic. “I, uh, just had a bad dream. It’s fine.”

Fluttershy gave me an odd look, but left. I decided to spend the rest of the morning checking the bookshelves. After all, if there was anything that could help us adventure more easily, one of the most surefire places to check for it is definitely a book! I may need to ask if there’s a library somewhere in town, actually…

While I let Celestia sleep in a while longer, I checked the small collection of books on the shelf above the desk. Although a quick glance over the small reading selection showed mostly fiction, one of the books was titled “A Beginner’s Guide to Equestrian Fauna”, and was a fairly heavy hardcover. I sat at the desk for an hour or so until Celestia loudly yawned and promptly threw her cover off and flopped onto the floor gracelessly.

“Ow. Luna, what have I told you about levitating the bed?” She opened her eyes and stood up. “Oh. Right. Good morning Twilight! Did you get a good night’s rest?”

I nodded. As Celestia walked towards the door, I grabbed the volume and what I would have described as my tracksuit just a day ago to throw it on. There may not be as many rules about clothes in this world, but I definitely appreciate what little familiarity it still gave me.

As we went downstairs, Fluttershy was sitting behind the main desk. She seemed to hear us come down.

“Good morning! How are you two doing so far today?”

“Pretty good so far. Would it be alright if I borrowed this?” I held up the book.

“Oh, sure! I can’t even remember the last time I read it, to be honest.”

“Thanks! Do you have any work for us today?”

Fluttershy shifted nervously.

“Well, I only really needed the lavenderpole reeds for the week, so I’m afraid I don’t really need help with anything today. But, um, you can still feel free to stay for a while! I can always use some help around here!”

Fluttershy gestured at the neatly organized, totally clean, and absolutely empty store.

Celestia waved a hoof dismissively.

“I’m sure you’ll manage. Now, Twilight? Let’s go check back at the guild hall to see if there are any other quests!”

And with that, we left for the guild hall. If yesterday was anything to go off of, she probably can handle the day on her own.

I can’t help but wonder if the shopkeep was looking forward to our company, though.

As we get to the corkboard, I take a moment to check out some more of the posted papers. Or what’s LEFT of them.

“Oh, you have GOT to be joking.”

The board seems absolutely RANSACKED compared to yesterday, with barely any of the easier quests that I remember seeing yesterday in sight.

Remembering what Fluttershy had mentioned last night, I couldn’t help but get a little ticked off. One of those quest-hoarders who doesn’t even bother finishing the requests probably showed up and registered all the easy quests already! If I’d have known, I’d have grabbed a few extra easy ones yesterday!

Stomping a hoof in anger, I hear a slight crunch. Looking down, I can see the only paper I’ve seen today that seemed remotely doable, torn up a bit and forgotten on the ground.

BY ISS—— — THE CITY OF PASTELBURG

BOUNTY- 5 G—— TOADS

REWARD- PER TOAD: 50 BITS

UPON COMPLETION- AN ADDITIONAL 10—

DIFFICULTY- E———

I can’t say that I know much about catching toads, but they must be pretty hard to find if just scooping one up nets 50 bits! The poster seemed to be torn, but it isn’t so hard to think what’s missing. “Issue of”, “Green”, “100 bits”, and “Easy”! Context clues win again!

I show Celestia the paper and explained my reasoning.

Celestia looked over the near-barren board and shrugged. “Well, it seems like it should be easy enough! Let’s register it!”

We went over to Maude’s desk, finding it once again without the line the desk next to it had. I briefly scanned Luna’s line to check if any of them had a telltale overflowing pile of papers either in their hoof or in their saddlebags.

Speaking of saddlebags, it’d probably be a good idea to pick one up today. Although humans don’t have many issues carrying an object, when you’re trying to hold a book with a forehoof, walking definitely feels off.

I put the paper and book on the counter to give my hoof a break.

“Hey Maud!”

“Hello.”

“We’ve got a quest we would like to register!”

Maud looks at the paper and slowly raises an eyebrow.

“Uhm, where’s the rest of the quest paper?”

“It was sorta-kinda torn-up when we found it. On the floor. I think somepony snatched almost every other easy quest today.”

Maud stared at the paper for a second.

“Well, I should be able to register it, but it might take me a while since I’d need to check the quest registry. I’ll make a copy of the quest sheet when I’m done, if you want to pick it up later. You can feel free to get a head start today.”

“That sounds great! By any chance, could we rent a saddlebag? This book is pretty hard to carry around.”

Maud ducked under the counter and came back up a few seconds later with a drab gray saddlebag, which seemed to match her coat.

“You can borrow mine for a while. I’m not planning a hunting trip for a while”

“You hunt?”

Maud blinked, as if it should have been obvious.

“Yeah. For rocks.”

Of course.

Donning the bag with the book inside and waving to Maud, we headed out towards the town’s gate.

“Twilight? Where are the frogs, anyways? We should ask somepony.”

Ah, right. We probably should get an idea of where we’re supposed to go before we just run off into the woods.

Celestia walked up to the town guard nearest to us and smiled at her.

“Excuse me, we have a quest that involves frogs, would you know where we could find them?”

“Frogs? They should be out in the fields west of town, especially near the river. You shouldn’t have too much trouble finding em.”

And with that, we head out of the town.

After walking a ways, I decide to take a moment to sit down and check the book for info on the frog. Skipping all the technical information that I’d normally love to read just for the sake of it, I go straight to the section on habitats.

Frogs tend to show up near water. They range in size from even smaller than a tooth to as big as your head! Some common frogs are the following-

I looked over the rest of the page. It had a staggering amount of frogs even just starting with g, from the assumed “green frog” to the somewhat worrying “Galvanized frog”, which seemed to be made of solid metal and quite a bit heavier than we could probably carry back.

Actually, are we supposed to carry the frog back? If it’s a bounty, it probably was just to slay them and be done with it. But none of the entries made any of the frogs sound like a significant pest, so aside from the valuable, and exceptionally rare, Golden Frog, I don’t have much to go on as for what frog we need to go after…

I’m broken out of my reading by a frantic hoof tapping on my shoulder.

“Twilight! Hello? I think we may have a bit of a problem.”

I turn to look at Celestia, but while my head is turning I see her hoof pointing at a nearby hilltop, where a frog that was quite a fair bit bigger than a pony was sitting, looking directly at us.

Is this book outdated or something?!

I quickly flipped through the pages on frogs in case I was missing something, and ended up on the page after the frog section.

Toads are generally similar to frogs, and appear in similar places. Formerly, toads were considered to be varieties of what we now call dry frogs, but after the appearance of the Greater Toad, and subsequent species, presumed to be due to meddling by the Chaos Lord, the old categorization was done away with.

Seriously?! How does the entire section on frogs not even bother to mention this once!?

“Twilight? I think it sees us!”

Toads in the modern sense are almost always larger than a fully grown pony. Due to being animals affected by chaos magic, but not themselves a chaos creature, Lunar magic will not have any extra effectiveness. All known “species” of toads share classification with normal frogs, aside from their obvious size.

I felt the ground shake somewhat.

“It’s getting closer, Twilight! What should we do?!”

“I’m trying to find anything I can here!” I said, skipping ahead a few paragraphs.

Toads are known to hunt any number of creatures, most notably, of course, any size of pony. Toads primarily hunt by sight, with moving or especially flying targets being easily noticed. However, there is one surefire way to not get eaten as an adventurer–

The ground shook even harder and Celestia let out a screech.

- as Toads cannot stand the taste of metal. Wearing enough armor is enough to make any toad immediately spit out any adventurer it eats. Afterwards, the toad is an easy kill.

Alright! All we need is a bit of armor! Which we don’t have. Fantastic.

I noticed Celestia wasn’t screaming behind me anymore, and the ground hadn’t shaken for a few seconds, so I turned around. A short distance away, the toad remained sat still, with a few white legs poked out of its mouth flailing around.

“Celestia!”

Drawing my sword with my hoof, I charged around the toad and leapt onto its back.

After a couple of inexperienced blows to the head, the blade finally did its job, and the toad’s would-be meal was freed.

After I dragged her out of the toad, Celestia sat up and remained silent, shivering for a bit. She was lucky the toad decided to sit still while it tried to snack on her, since if it had hopped off or even squirmed I’d have probably had trouble getting the frog downed.

“Are you okay, Celestia?!”

She turned to face me with dull eyes.

“I want to go back to purgatory.”

I was going to consider putting a hoof on her shoulder, but Celestia had been absolutely coated in sticky frog spit, and I have no faith in this world’s detergent if THAT got on my sleeve. It smelled like rancid fish.

Choking back a small sob, Celestia continued, “Thanks for the save, but if it’s alright with you, I think we should just head back for the day. I want this gunk off me as soon as possible.”

I considered our options. On one hoof, go back and make almost no progress on the quest today. On the other hoof, charge at another frog (TOAD, Twilight, this is why we even HAD a problem!), and personally hop in its mouth with the express goal of slicing the tongue.

One gust of the breeze while downwind from Celestia was convincing enough for me!

“We just have to defeat five toads, we can take our time. Besides, we already made as much money as yesterday, so we’re fine! If we come back prepared, it shouldn’t even be a problem.”

Celestia looked at me with an exasperated face. “Do we have to finish it?”

“We can decide that tomorrow. Let’s just head back.”

And so we returned, with only 20% of the quest fulfilled.

Unless the quest WAS for frogs all along, I guess. I’m not sure which would be worse at this point.

Author's Note:

Next chapter- Recruiting another member to help with the toads!
Feel free to take one last guess in the comments before they get revealed!