After talking with the frog person, the party had a slightly better idea of where the town was, but it was hard to give directions when you were living in a lake. With that being said, they weren't sure what to do next, and thus, a discussion had arisen.

  “Look, saying that way and pointing into the darkness of the lake is not great. It also doesn’t help that we don’t know what 50 ribbits are in our measurement,” Arctur said, mimicking the frog by pointing into the dark, his last words showing how annoyed he was.

  “I understand, but that’s what we have to go on, and we still have plenty of daylight left, so we should at least try and look for it,” Alexion responded.

  “Sure, but we should at least try and speak with some other adventurers, see if they can tell us something,” Arctur added.

  “Maybe, what about asking a few more frog kin? Maybe we can have someone guide us there,” The elf answered, trying to think about all their options.

  “Guys, I think I got it,” Adriana said, speaking up, and her two friends turned to look at her, their faces indicating for her to go on.

  “So, remember what Pepe said about the lilies, the currents, and the villages?”

  Her two friends took a second to think of her words and Pepe’s information, then realization struck them at once.

  “If we find the other spots where the currents meet, we will find the village and town,” Alexion responded.

  “And since we know the general direction of the town, we just need to go to the spots that are that way,” Arctur said, pointing in the same direction he had earlier.

  “Exactly,” Adriana told them with a bright smile.

  With their decision made, the trio started swimming up. They would head to the surface and follow the currents until they reached a spot, then swim down and see if there were frog people. If not, they would repeat the process until they found the town or the village.

  The trio didn't make it that far up before they realized the frog guards were fighting above them. There was blood in the water, and a number of large fish were swimming about, attacking the guards. Naturally, upon seeing the battle, the three of them knew they had to intervene and quickly enhanced themselves before joining the brawl.

  Getting closer to the fight, the party saw that the same types of fish, but of different sizes, were present. Some were only the lengths of arms, while the biggest were the size of people. Either way, they had glittering silver scales with dark streaks across their lithe bodies. Finally, once close enough to the fight, they were noticed by a couple of the fish, and a few of them swam in their direction. Much closer now, the party could see that their mouths were filled with few but very large, razor-sharp teeth.

  Not wanting to let the fish get too close to them, at least not at first, the party unleashed their magic upon them. It was then that they received a surprise. For Arctur and Alexion, their bolts of water and green energy scratched against the scales of the fish, but ultimately did no damage. Even Adriana’s pressure attack failed to squish one of the smaller fish, at least until she dumped a good portion of mana into it.

  Upon seeing one of them being killed, the rest of the fish were driven into a frenzy, and they sped up, closing the distance even faster than before. Caught by surprise, the trio did not react in time, and four fish arrived. Two went for Adriana, who was ahead of the party, while the other two split, one going for Arctur and the other for Alexion.

  Adriana managed to move her tail out of the way of the one that was going to bite it. However, the other one took her in the stomach, its fangs biting deep, and the force of its arrival pushed her back as a chunk was ripped off her. Wincing in pain, she got a hold of herself and summoned her shield.

  Alexion and Arctur tried to grab their fish to stop them from biting. A strategy that worked, at least for the most part. The fish veered off, one managing to bite only Arctur’s hand, spilling green blood and chopping one of his fingers off. As for Alexion, well, he managed to move his hand in time, but the fish's large fin still cut his skin. Neither of the wounds was much of an issue, but it did piss them off.

  Switching over to their shields, the trio got serious about the fight that shouldn’t have been that serious, and on that note, it wasn’t for much longer.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Adriana began by highlighting all the attacking fish in the nearby area and proceeded to hit them with a slow debuff while healing the frog guards with the same move. All the while, she ignored the two fish whose teeth managed to puncture her shield but did not actually break through it.

  Alexion waited until his attacker came back down and also bit into his shield, giving him a good surprise when the teeth went through it. However, the fish had stopped, which let Alexion drop the shield and supercharge the area around him, easily punching through the fish's magical defense and killing it.

  Arctur was also surprised when the fish’s teeth punctured his shield, but that didn’t stop him. Dumping some mana, Arctur conjured large wooden spikes as his eyes turned green. Then he proceeded to impale the crap out of his fish.

  Having killed both fish, the two guys turned to Adriana and found her surrounded in fish guts, the two fish that had been attacking her having been turned to pulp.

  After killing their targets, the rest of the fight went by without too many issues. The party and a few more adventurers managed to help the guards kill the rest of the fish, and even though some of the guards did die, it wasn't a huge loss. Of course, they also learned that the fish that had attacked were called Tigerfish. Then, with a final goodbye from the guards, who thanked them to the surface and back, the party got started with their task of finding Fraggles.

  Finding the town turned out not to be a significant problem. Adriana latched on to the nearest current, which she said would take them to another of the spots where they converged. However, that first spot turned out to be way too small, and after an hour or so of searching and going to two other small spots, they finally made it to an area that had plenty of the lily pad monsters floating about. This spot was about two to three times the size of the one they had visited with the lily pad quest. And since they weren't there to deal with the lily pads, the trio quickly dove down.

  In the depths, it wasn't hard to find the town, even though the lily pad spot was not directly above it. The town itself was lit up like the village, making it easier to spot, considering it wasn’t far from where the party had dove down.

  Approaching the town, the party quickly found it to be about two to three times larger than the village. Naturally, that meant there were even more frog people swimming about, as well as guards and even adventurers. Of course, with all these people, there were plenty of buildings to go around, with plenty being much larger than any of the ones that could be found in the village. However, even then, the trio saw a good number of farms on the outskirts of the town, all being attended to by a multitude of frogs.

  Going into the town proper, one of the main differences they quickly spotted was what the frog people wore. In the village, everyone more or less wore the same clothing without much flair to any of it. However, in town, there was clearly a much more distinguished class system where people wore different clothing articles to differentiate themselves. With that being said, the party didn't know what use frog people had for top hats, jewelry, or canes, but they weren't going to question it.

  Much like they had done with Ribbit village, the trio spent time swimming around and enjoying the place. Due to this, they found a number of businesses and general things that could not be found outside of the town. The primary example of this was the hatcheries where the frog people were born. Sure, frog families could have small hatcheries for themselves, but there were also large ones used to shore up the number of frog people, mainly the guards.

  Two other processes that were mainly carried out in the town were those of leather and metal weapon making.

  The party wasn’t sure why that was the case, and it was likely that the entire thing was just a dungeon thing. Either way, they weren’t going to question it. So, after exploring the town for an hour or so, the party decided it was time to take a break and head to the surface. On the way to the surface, they were attacked by a few sharks and suckerfish, but all were quickly dealt with. Arriving at the surface, they found that it was an hour or two after noon, and they decided to spend an hour relaxing before heading back down and looking for some more quests to do.

  Should Dan have felt bad for the party when he saw chunks of them bitten off? Yes, yes, he should have. However, was he? No, no, he wasn’t. Not like the injuries even lasted for long, since by the time they made it to the second spot in search of Fraggles, they were all healed up. Still, it had been good to see them get a bit humbled. After all, the Tigerfish was one of his best creations. Their metal scales gave them good defenses, something that was further compounded by the magic-resistance Dan had given them. Of course, they were also very strong and incredible swimmers, which let them handle the extra weight just fine. Additionally, there was the frenzy aspect that gave them a slight boost in power, and finally, his favorite aspect: their piercing bites.

  The tigerfish were already good at tearing chunks out of things, but Dan had wanted to give them something extra. Hence, their ability to puncture shields. The thing was that even if it was good for spooking adventurers, the attack itself would be hard-pressed to break a shield, at least once it was stabilized. Still, it was a good one, and he loved seeing the faces of people when the teeth went right through their shields or armor, considering how sharp the damn things were.

  Focusing back on the party, Dan saw that they were now heading to the surface to rest. And since Dan couldn’t be bothered to watch them rest, he switched to watch a different party. Primarily, the three guys with whom the trio had dealt. The three dudes were so funny to watch, because they acted all high and mighty but barely survived fight after fight, seeming to learn nothing from their mistakes. In fact, at that moment, they were on the verge of failing a shore gatherer escort quest after being unable to keep up with the constant fights.

  “Ooof. That looked like it hurt!” Dan said, wincing as he watched a flamingo send one of the guys flying with a kick.