The frog didn’t hesitate, and started that very same process that had allowed it to become the 'frog’ in the first place.

  It relished the moment the gem floated out of its grasp and the filaments started to wrap loosely around its body. Up until now, it had still doubted its success, certain that something was going to come up any moment to steal its prize.

  This was the confirmation it sorely needed.

  Unlike that first time - but in line with the attempt with the snake - there was only a dimming of its awareness. A soft touch tugging at its mind and simply trying to lull it into an altered state of mind, rather than into a full-blown trance.

  It didn’t want that. It needed that first experience, again.

  Not because the feeling of unbound potential and freedom was exhilarating - though that was admittedly a factor. But because it wanted that increased focus, that increased depth.

  The bison stood at the pinnacle of what this world had to offer, or so very close that the gap didn't matter. This was likely going to be the last transformation.

  And so the frog would do it well.

  It willed the filaments to step up their efforts, and this time they obliged: they exploded out of the gem, rushing to envelop its body whole, tightening and burrowing into its flesh.

  And then it was back to the world of endless possibilities.

  The frog couldn’t feel.

  There was nothing at all in this space beside it.

  In that nothing, it was suspended. Free of any constraints.

  It could play around however wanted. Shape and size only the beginning.

  But it didn't. The awareness that it could was enough.

  This part of its life had been pleasant in a way that it was only able to appreciate now, with foresight.

  But if it could choose to go back for good, the frog would once again refuse, and more vehemently than ever before. Exploring and living the world out there – for all its downsides – was simply superior.

  All this... it was nice. And very pleasant. But it was the past.

  And now there were more important things to do.

  The frog knew immediately that, unlike the other times before, now it had absolute freedom: the bison's filaments had so much power in them that it could choose to alter its new form in any way it wanted, and it would still be an improvement.

  It could even stay in a body that was almost the exact same as the 'frog', and it would still be enormously better. However, it hadn’t trained so hard and gone through all that only to toss it away by becoming just a weird copy of what it already was.

  If it could change, then it would change.

  The problem was that such complete freedom was overwhelming: it could choose so many different parts just from the stuff it had seen around the world!

  The quills on that porcupine back then had never stopped fascinating it... With some of those, it would be able to defend even- but what if it got a stinger instead? Then it would be able to attack rather than just defend, and attack was almost always the better option! And then something to bridge the gap with faraway enemies, somewhat like the guards could do, but what- a tongue! One so very long and sticky, so that it could grab anything it latched onto and bring it back, and which felt so very weirdly appropriate, for some reason.

  And poison, horns, tusks, venom, scales... there was no limit to what it could pilfer from its travels! And that was without bringing in what it could imagine entirely!

  It wanted a little bit of everything, but piecing it all together was extremely awkward, especially when some of these parts just didn't mesh well with each other, and then there was the overall balance and weight distribution to consider on top of the maneuverability and that it wouldn't be worth it to change its base that much because then it would lose most of what it had learned like its moves and...

  ...

  Truly it might be stuck for a very long time if it reasoned along those lines.

  ... But things changed if, rather than coming up with new and original shapes, it thought back to the strongest creatures it had met.

  Unbidden, some some shapes it knew very well pressed conspicuously at the back of its mind. Predictably, the first to come into complete focus was the bison.

  It was a very enticing option.

  The bison had been more than powerful: it had been indomitable. An unstoppable landslide that was even faster than it was strong - and it had been really, really strong. That unbreakable charge against the knight, where it just changed direction without ever slowing down, only growing more and more dangerous…

  Just thinking about the possibility, how very tempting it was, had the transformation respond eagerly: the filaments slowly emerged back into awareness, coiled around… it didn’t know what exactly they were coiled around besides that it wasn't its body, because it didn't have one right now. But they were there, and they were eager to start - squeezing down, as if pressuring it to take this shape.

  Pushing the process back and stalling the transformation was incredibly hard, as if the gem itself wanted it to choose this one, for how absurd that was. And the frog couldn’t deny it was sorely tempted.

  But even if it did end up making this choice, it needed to be really, really sure. And going with the bison had downsides too.

  For one, this shape was extremely different from the frog's. It could feel with absolute certainty that it would lose almost everything of its progress. The moves would be the first to go. Maybe it could try to come up with new ones appropriate for that shape, but that would be extremely hard. Its lack of success with reentering the trance didn't bode well for that endeavor.

  And would it even be able to use the indomitable charge? There had been nothing too strange going on with that technique, but it still felt out of reach, for some reason...

  Nevertheless, even in worst case, the bison remained a huge improvement and a strong contender.

  But it needed to beat the others first.

  The shape that came to mind immediately after was, of course, the other immensely strong creature in the frog's life. And a bane for such a big part of it.

  The owl.

  For how much the frog disdained the creature, for how hateful it had been, the owl had still been incredibly strong. Even if quite weaker than the bison – especially if it was serious... but, to be fair, it hadn’t ever seen the owl remotely serious, had it?

  If taking the bison’s form after what it’d done - after its betrayal - felt annoying, then taking the owl’s felt awful. But the frog liked the owl’s approach to things and way of fighting much more: there was a cruel and brutal, but sharp mind behind it.

  The bison had been impossibly strong and fast, but there was nothing more to it. It had only levered that and its bulk to try to bowl over anything that stood in its way, and nothing else.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  When it had met a creature that could resist its charge, it had been helpless. True, the fight had been mostly equal, but the frog felt that with those natural advantages, the bison should have fought a lot better. After all, it hadn’t hit the knight properly even once - before the dark one had butted in - while the knight had smacked it all around. If the bison hadn’t also been so ridiculously sturdy, things would have been very different.

  The owl though… Even if it was indiscriminate in its violence, the way it inflicted that violence was different. It had taken the frog a lot to notice, but it had slowly understood: the way the creature knew exactly where to hit, peck and lacerate to cause the most suffering without killing, to prolong and enhance the pain as much as possible...

  A deadly meticulousness was needed for that. There just hadn't ever been an opponent challenging enough for it to show.

  The frog felt it could pull off fighting that way, become a more powerful, perfected version even: this gem would easily bridge the huge gap between the owl's and bison's base strength.

  And then there was the ability to glide. If the frog could have done that, it would have recovered this gem in no time. The owl itself might even be able to glide past the knight and into the castle!

  It was probably the better option, if it came down to a choice between it and the bison.

  But did it have to?

  Both of them were good contenders, of course. However, there was one more hanging in the back, and one that rushed into focus overbearingly after barely a brush by the frog's mind. The other immensely strong creature it had interacted with.

  The knight.

  … though it was a choice that came with its own drawbacks. And the more the frog considered it, the heavier those drawbacks felt like they would weight.

  The knight was strong. Incredibly so. With how it had handled the bison, it might as well be the strongest thing in this world. And if the frog's senses hadn't failed it back then, there was even more that the creature had kept hidden. After all, the guards were ever so fond of holding back, weren't they? Sometimes to a ridiculous degree.

  But that stinginess wasn't the only thing the knight had in common with its underlings. Even if to an entirely different magnitude, the concept was the same: the guards' strength didn’t come from their body, but from that mysterious, unfathomable thing that enhanced them much further beyond what they should be capable of.

  Even before it got its moves, the frog had managed to handle an un-empowered one. Somewhat.

  Obviously the knight was bound to be more impressive than that, but without its secret power would it measure up to the owl or the bison? If it turned out that the frog couldn't benefit from the whisper, then it might as well choose one of them. Or even just empower its current shape - at least it would avoid becoming all rigid and jerky, then. And it was quite sure that even by mimicking the knight it wouldn't ever be able to touch...

  ...

  ...Wouldn't it?

  Just as the frog was reminding itself how impossible it would be, a new path appeared. That if it just altered the knight’s shape this way, and added this other little thing... It could form a connection. And then… maybe through the actual knight, it might be able to access the whisper?

  That would be momentous on its own. Even if it were limited to what the lower guards could do, it would still be such an enormous leap forward...

  But more than that, it might be the missing link to finally uncover the ineffable thing! Something it had wanted since forever, that had taunted its most profound desires since at least back then, when it was hiding from the owl.

  Such a precious treasure...

  Alas, no matter how much it was tempted, the frog knew this was a bad idea. More than just a worse choice than the owl or the bison, it was actively dangerous.

  A link with the knight - with any of the guards - was a very bad idea. Once again just thinking about the possibility had been enough to stir the filaments, enough to feel the barest hint of that potential connection. And what came through that…

  When the frog had first seen them, the guards had of course seemed terrible, though no more than the cruelest predators around - and there was no shortage of those. But what was coming through right now was confirmation of its later feelings: something was incredibly wrong, in a way that was unique to them and that had little to do with complexity or cruelty.

  They were misshapen.

  Even the owl, the most savage creature the frog had ever encountered, made sense. Both for itself and its motives, and for the wider world.

  The knight and the guards though, they were twisted. Always out of step with themselves and the essence around them, causing harm to both with each action the took.

  The frog didn’t know how this was possible or what it meant. Just that it wanted nothing to do with it.

  So it decisively pushed the knight out of its mind, severing the budding connection permanently, and forcefully brought to mind the only reasonable choices.

  It was either the bison or the owl now, which meant it should pick the owl.

  ... Or did it?

  After all, wasn't there another impressive creature it had met? Maybe even the most impressive.

  So why was it so hard to focus on it? Why did it it feel so inconceivable? There such a strong resistance, as if the filaments themselves - and maybe something else too, something less substantial - didn’t want it to go there.

  But the frog had never been one to give up easily, and once it had caught this thread, it could only pull.

  It had to push extremely hard to even get a glimpse, but finally the dark one came back into its mind. Or at least something similar enough to it in principle, something that the frog could use.

  ... something extremely lacking.

  It had the general shape and the same number of limbs as the dark one – which was quite small, to be fair – but it lacked something crucial.

  Similarly to the knight, the dark one was more than brute physicality. Of course it would have to be quite strong too – it had to be, to even wound the bison, let alone behead the creature. However, the real power was the moves.

  Copying them might have resulted in an improvement it was extremely happy about. But there was more. Much more. What it had felt during the trance was undeniable: the frog had barely scratched the surface of something deeper. Something the dark one had.

  And even if it didn't, the dark one was just too fascinating. Not just for how it had punished the bison after its betrayal - in such an astounding way! - but because it was so much of what the frog aspired to be. If it came out that it was also secretly capable of wielding the ineffable thing, like the knight did through the whisper, the frog wouldn't even be too surprised. There was a reason it had spent so much time trying to mimic that creature, after all.

  If there was even a small chance to reach for some of that strength, then frog would.

  And maybe also add a little something to protect its neck. It had seen way too many creatures die that way.

  No matter how hard the filaments pushed back or how much the annoyances acted up, the frog wouldn’t relent! It kept pushing until something new started coalescing in its mind.

  Appearance-wise, nothing with its candidate shape had changed. But there was this added layer now, just beyond the real... Something that wasn't, but also absolutely was, there. The frog grasped it like its life depended on it and pushed even more.

  What came out was, again, the same as it had been before, but entirely different.

  Smaller and frailer, but smoother and deeper.

  Weaker, but much stronger.

  Just like the dark one.

  The frog loved it.